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there is a fact about our existence thus far in avignon that i must admit to. neither of us are proud of this, and at times we feel ashamed, irritated, and angry. but other times, i must sheepishly confess, we've felt satisfied. since we've moved into our place at the 1st of the month we've been full throttle shoppers, indulging several times a week at various avignon-area hypermarchés and troc stores. we can say that we have no choice because we've moved into a vacant apartment with nothing but clothes and we had to fill it up with furniture, pots and pans, and mayonnaise, and this is true, and so shopping at french equivalents of walmart is a necessity, and this is also, mostly, true. to our knowledge, the smaller "independent" stores where you would get such goods intramur* are upscale boutiques and we can't afford a 180€ sauté pan.

so we've supported, on several occasions, our local hypermarché so that we could get the stuff we needed to live in some semblance of what we're used to. which, if you know our previous living situation, you know that it's pretty minimal, but there's still the aforementioned basic stuff of modern life. i think it's a shock to accumulate everything in such an accelerated manner, but then to get everything at once from one store borders on surreal: your sheets with your yogurt, your tile cleaner with your spaghetti strainer. opposed to the ordinary accumulation of detritus**, which, if you are not huge consumers (and we don't consider ourselves to be, though i realize that can be argued given our relative placement on the wealth of countries scale), you barely notice the accumulation and then when you move you look at the heaps and heaps of stuff filling your small space and you marvel at how it entered into your world.

considering this makes me think of the idea of "need" and how seth and i, as modern consumers, decide that we need a spaghetti strainer. why don't we just use a pan lid? well, because it's a pain to do that. and if we consider that inconvenience spread out over eight months and then divide it into 2€90, the result is that we decide we need the spaghetti strainer. if we were more ascetic we might decide that we can live without one, but we're not. the consumer equation works on us: the existence of spaghetti strainers creates a need for one.

some of you reading this might be wondering why we don't just head on over to the french goodwill-equivalent. the aforementioned troc stores come close, but they don't have everything. all of our furniture either came from troc stores or was lent to us, but there are no used clothes and very little housewares. also, it is illegal (!) to sell used mattresses here so we had to get that new.

overall, what is most interesting is that the big box consumerism i always though of as an unfortunate american characteristic exists on nearly the same level here. there's so many superstores around here; nearly every bus line terminates at a commercial shopping district with a few of them. on a related note, the other day i was depressed to discover that the bakery in town whose bread we like the most is an enormous chain.

so what do i do with this knowledge? i'm not about to let my french romanticism go, as there are still things to be romantic about, but i will change parts of it along the way.

i'm sure i will, in the course of this blog, talk about getting this thing or that thing and maybe i'll even be exited about it, and it will seem like this examination means nothing. but here i must admit something else and that is that i enjoy shopping. even if to just wander a store for a half hour looking for scotch tape and kleenex, there is something about being lost in a place with all of these unattached objects that is compelling for me, and as long as the place isn't a literal walmart or isn't crowded, as long as my consumerism isn't sonorous, i can block out my inner protests and consider the merits of different brands of tissues for a good long time. i can be lulled into a place where it is safe to buy things, and it momentarily feels good. these aren't big purchases that have this effect; those infrequent purchases have different feelings altogether. but grocery shopping, for example, is something i really enjoy. it's one of those things that as a child seemed very adult to do and i couldn't wait to do it, but then, unlike many things in that category, the thrill has never worn off.

here there's all the new fascination of the differences and similarities between american and french products, and trying to decipher the language and labels, but that topic is for another post, another time.

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*intramur - inside the literal walls of avignon, as opposed to extramur.
**in an act of tinstac, i checked out steev's blog tonight where he discussed the opposite of accumulation; deaccumulation (?).