Jen’s take:
I’m standing on the edge of a windswept rec in suburban Calais. Grey-washed and bleak. If I’d known about pathetic fallacy when I was 12, I’d have said: ‘This is a great example of pathetic fallacy’. Except I’d have been talking to myself. Because my French Exchange partner has abandoned me there, while she sashays off (in head-to-toe Benetton. It was a crushingly good look) to meet her friend for a cigarette. Except that I didn’t know this was what she was doing, because I didn’t understand her explanation. Since I didn’t speak French. All I knew was - this is horrible, and I want to go home right now.
There are still moments - and people - who inspire this feeling in me. Do you know this sensation? A kind of bleak and windswept, internal Calais? Where you feel alien and unwelcome, and desperately want to be back in your bedroom?
Salima and I talk about people who are like a ‘warm cup of tea’ - who you can fall apart with, be cradled by, be comfortably silent with. And, conversely, ‘French Exchange’ people, with whom you feel misunderstood and undesirable. Where there’s also possibly some kind of ‘language block’; a failure of communication, where everything seems to get lost in translation…
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