At the end of the first day or two, I’d lose words. I faltered. I had a headache. I knew what I wanted to say, then I’d reach an end, an errrrrrrrr, an emptiness, basically, an open field void of sound, where I didn’t even have sufficient English at my disposal to say what I meant, let alone the French.
Then a couple more days and the field was loud. Loud! I knew what was being said to me, I could respond with adverbs, jokes, dumb references to chanteuse américaine Taylor Swift. Actually, trying to joke about Swift’s recent concerts as the époques tour and how I was feeling myself, being in France again, in a kind of Frenchy-Frenchy époque way… that got a bit confusing for people.
There’s a lot of talk about the notion of third spaces. Meaning, sociologically and pop-culturally, the idea that most of us have two primary places in our lives: home is the first, work is the second. But then we have third spaces – people argue we have a need for third places – to find even more community: churches, coffeeshops, barbershops, a public park. Locations where we put aside home and work concerns and simply enjoy time with others.
I bring this up because, after spending two weeks in France, mostly speaking French all day and night – I’m lucky enough to be decently fluent from working in the country in the late aughts (there’s a book about it) – I wondered if living in another language isn’t a fourth place of some kind.
Speaking another language all day, even thinking in it, dreaming in it, puts me in a different place. A different way of feeling; a different geography for expressing feeling. In my case, it’s a place where new words tap into deep sensations. Because tranquille is more languid then “calm,” more sensual than “peaceful.” The word malaise, as I understand its meaning, is something that lives in the body’s basements, in ways I don’t associate with “discomfort” or “illness.”
If living in a second language can be a place, even abstractly, it may be hard to measure, but it infuses me, it compels me. It gives me, surprisingly, a sense of home.
Ten days later, I returned to Los Angeles telling myself I needed to find a way to make a France trip annually, to re-experience that feeling – and then I got out of the Uber and accidentally wished the driver a bonne journée.
In tomorrow’s Sunday supplement for paying subscribers:
A new smartphone app that successfully defeats jet-lag
A smart series of spy novels for fans of John le Carré and/or Mick Herron
A favorite album of piano music, a favorite bicycling book about France, honky-tonk Luther Vandross, and several other things
What the what
Meditations in an Emergency is a weekly dispatch from author Rosecrans Baldwin about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with 3+ things to love, along with a monthly longer piece sent from the road, for some inbox wanderlust. ⛰️
Books mentioned in Meditations in an Emergency are stored in a Bookshop list.