Quand le ciel bas et lourd pèse comme un couvercle...

(When the low and heavy sky weighs down like a coffin...)

Welcome to the world of Baudelaire. It's the first line of one of his more famous poems "Spleen." I had to do an analysis of it last year for intro to francophone texts. It was not until today, however, that I truly understood what he was talking about.

Baudelaire must have spent his winters in Nantes.

The winters here are incredibly...déprimant (depressing). I woke up today to see sunshine and blue skies. by lunchtime, the weather was absolutely DISGUSTING. Grey skies, heavy clouds and miserable cold rain. It won't snow here, but it in the Bretagne region in sure does rain. A lot. the kind of rain where I want nothing more than to stay in bed with a good book and a mug of tea and read all day. Instead, I have to pretend to be productive when the weather puts me in an incredibly UNproductive kind of mood. I told my French Writers prof that the weather was disgusting and that it was making me grincheuse (grumpy) and he said "of course -you're suffering from the Spleen". I realized he's exactly right: now I can say I truly understand Baudelaire. of course, I'm not sure if that's a good thing...

in other news...the grèves continue. There's supposedly going to be lots of manifestations tomorrow...I'm gonna go take my camera and lots of extra batteries! Of course, since I won't have classes tomorrow at the fac (the president closed ALL the buildings at the fac until wednesday), I can get lots of work done. Fortunately; part of my work consists of reading a novel, so the morning is going to be spent in bed reading like I wanted to do today =D

à +!