Ambiguity

My boss has been watching more SOCCER! this world cup season than he's ever watched before. Still his Americaness does not allow him to reconcile the ambiguity of a draw. It just doesn't happen in America, there is always a decisive winner and loser. Americans live in black and white, right and wrong, love and hate, winners and loses. In France, swallowing ambiguity or shades of gray is, maybe better than the cheese, the wine, and all the pastries. I hate Paris for it's lack of parks and my morning Metro commute, but the nuance in which the French inhabit makes life a lot more interesting.

Sylvain and my relationship was for months, undefinable, I barely told my parents about him before I was moving to Chile to see what might transpire. Something about Sylvain made it unnecessary for me to have a label or to define it. While he sent emails to friends in France about his American girlfriend, for him it just was, and one didn't necessarily have to discuss it the definition wasn't of any grave import as it is for most Americans- at the same time, I wasn't defining anything to anyone- as a girl I didn't want to step into territory I wasn't explicitly given permission to tread so while my friends knew about Sylvain, they probably didn't give it much stock because I never defined it for them, it never got the all important "title". Recently he has said to me yes of course we're engaged, we have been living together for a year and a half.

I have given up a lot of the pomp and circumstance relationships often embody, but in return it has been replaced with a much more mysterious intriguing space. I hope my kids grow up with that nuance, because black and white is not an interesting space to live in, it lacks possibility, it judges.

The Monica Lewinsky debacle is a good example. Americans went nuts over did they or didn't they- in France it was considered a scandal that anyone gave this any time- they first considered it no ones business but their own and I have to agree here, because after all, the not having a definitive answer is what was so exciting in the first place - it's not that the French don't gossip but the nugget of excitement lies in the mystery. They aren't out to judge, I think the French for their own part understand well that life is more fun when we all acknowledge that being good all the time is no fun, and furthermore, no one is good all the time anyway, so lets stop pretending otherwise.

This brings me back to the pomp and circumstance. I am not a girl that hopes for flowers and chocolates on valentines day because it seems contrived and fake. If my boyfriend loves me, chocolates and flowers dont prove anything but lack of creativity. But in America they're like a box you tick to prove something, to show your friends. I have a British friend who proposed to his girlfriend with a specially crafted box, when I told this to a table of co-workers over lunch they all considered it blasphemy. I had thought it was the greatest expression of love I'd ever heard... I sat there silently trying to work it all out in my head after that. I guess for me what it comes down to is if at the end of 90 minutes to teams have a draw, they have a draw, if you have to have a definitive answer, well, you can have your penalty kicks, but isn't that kind of fake, sure, it can give you a black and white answer, but it's not real, it's a decisive decision on penalty kicks, not the game itself. In love you can label and define, and you can follow the pop culture traditions of candy chocolates, and engagement rings, but it doesn't mean love anymore than penalty kicks define a winner. I like a life better when we aren't following some script, when we aren't joking for some position and we can't follow a manual. In black and white we gag all the possibility out of everything. Without an engagement proposal I told my friend, what story would I tell our kids (this is a sensitive topic for me because I was disappointed my parents didn't have a good story to tell, they just got married after my dad graduated from college)? But the truth is I have a far better story than most, the story of our chance meeting in New York, leaving everything for a chance possibility in Chile and then Paris, no engagement story can capture all of that.