expat_chats

Manuscript

2012-01-08T23:22:00.000-08:00

I do not remember these things
— they remember me,
not as child or woman but as their last excuse
to stay, not wholly to die.
~ Janet Frame's "The Place"

The shuffling and banging together of poems has quieted, the slipping almost stopped. As I piece together these bits of thoughts that I call poems, they make all kinds of racket ("a systematised element of organized crime," Wikipedia ;) New threads emerge, old ones seem raveled and frayed. Being home has been like this. Settling back into an old life that no longer exists, dusting, baking, finding new homes for things from my most recent past life, missing things and people.

How to talk (briefly) about my own manuscript. Today is my niece's fourth birthday and I feel like I just met her two weeks ago. It's true, they grow up so fast. I didn't go to her party. Blame geography, the dog's dislike of children, this manuscript. But I am thinking of her. I am thinking of finding the stars uncountable with her in her back yard the day after Christmas, the playhouse lamp beckoning, bedtime fast approaching. The old chair in my kitchen that would look great in her room. I am thinking about helping her play Pac Man on her mother's iPhone. I am thinking of my sister and wondering how she does it all... so well.

These poems are certainly for them. Old love stories. Thresholds. I am thinking of Elizabeth Bishop's take on lost things. Dickenson's advice on telling the truth. Adrienne Rich's words on all the little lies we tell. These poems are certainly for them, too. There are airplanes and linens, manicures and landscapes. There is furniture. Even love. This is me, closing a chapter. There is nothing left to do but begin again. And vacuum up the pine needles. And put this manuscript in the mail.

Here's a video to hold you over.

Laundry

2012-01-06T00:33:00.000-08:00

The cat almost snores on the clean sheets, papers and books under his head, and the next load of laundry is almost done. American washing machines are SO much faster… and bigger. And the dryers. If you’re even lucky/rich enough to have one in Paris, (usually a washer/dryer combo) you have to wait two hours for jeans and a couple of towels. I still air dry plenty of things—undergarments. My favorite tops, those new fuzzy sock slippers I got in my Christmas stocking, which I’m sure would combust from the heat or at least lose all the sticky dots on the bottom of the feet. Filou loves these socks but only when I’m wearing them.

He also “loves” the corner of the bedspread when it hangs long enough for him to hump. When it doesn’t, he looks at it, then at me, and whines. He also loves the throw blanket on the sofa.

I have a sheet fetish. Pure cotton. Mix-n-match. Folding fitted sheets so neatly you can’t tell they’re not flat. But I can. The worst part of doing the laundry is the socks, never coming clean enough, forever losing their mates, escaping the pile, all that pairing and tucking and stuffing into the only drawer I can spare for them. No. I prefer sheets, even towels, their plush stacks on the shelves. Something like my grandma’s linen closet, but never quite.

All of my (current) favorite blankets come from France, each with its own little history—where it came from, which beds it has dressed in which apartments, who slept beneath it. All of them increasingly soft and supple from use. I left only one behind, but it was as much his as it was mine. It was the only one that ever felt like “ours.”

Fif Walk - 2012!!!

2012-01-03T15:38:00.000-08:00

Sat down to write to you today. This is what came out. I was tempted to turn it into poetry. Maybe it is. Anyway, hello from Long Beach… And happy 2012!

The first half of our walk around the block, I am thinking about work. Finding work. What I will write to whom and how. I start to develop a cover letter in my head. The dog darts back and forth across the sidewalk. Leaves crunch. Tree to shrub, sniffing all the way… “Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing in response to your request for applicants.” He stops predictably at the corner, by the lamppost, does his business, steps away and huffs, scratches at the pavement while I clean it up… “My experience in not only administration but also in sales, management, and training/teaching should fulfill nicely all of the job’s requirements.” We cross the street.

Coming back down the other side, he does more of the same. By the time I see a man—with two dogs, 150 yards or so away—he is crossing the street, then passing us. Filou smells them, then hears them, then sets his sights on them and leans into his huff and scruff. Though the street between us is not wide, the man and I do not speak. I am thinking about how much information to give in my cover letter. Do I mention my time in France? How there were always so many people on the streets? How that last day—on our way up Rue de la Roquette to buy new rings so we could put the old ones in a drawer and move on—how that German Shepard came after him, sensed his fear, and began to snap and snarl. How I lifted him into my arms and that German Shepard kept after him, sniffing his backside, and how those punk-rock homeless guys just stood around laughing and I didn’t find the French to yell at them. « Elle est ou, sa laisse ?! Control ton chien, merde. » No « monsieur. » They would never call me madame.

The man across the street probably would speak to me, if I spoke to him… or even looked at him. I second guess my etiquette. Rue de Lappe was a different crowd, cluttered and drunken at night, high heels on the cobblestones. You try not to make eye contact, which is hard when you like to watch people like I do. Only in the morning was that street ever quiet, littered with broken glass and a feel of propriety. Paris wakes up slowly, especially Rue de Lappe. But I was thinking about work, about rewriting my resume for the fourth time this year. I was walking the dog and letting the coffee sink in.

When we get home, the Rose Parade is being rebroadcast. The surfing bulldog on the most anticipated float of the year can’t catch a wave. The wave maker seems to be giving them troubles, but the TV is on mute so I’m not really sure. No troubles this year, please. You, up there. Maybe a budget trip to Paris, a couple of part-time jobs to cobble together. A little spare time for writing, lots of reading. I don’t ask a lot. Maybe I should.

But I was talking about walking the dog, how it’s different here.

Oh, Champs Elysées

2011-04-15T05:01:00.000-07:00

A metaphorical experience

Last night, he had an after-work social hour just off the Champs Elysées. When I met him there, he was two gin and tonics into a very good mood and I was tired and sobered, having finished my happy hours across town before making the trek to my least favorite place in all of Paris. Don’t get me wrong. The Champs Elysées is gorgeous—wide and tree-lined, cobble-stoned, with classy storefronts and cafes along both sides and the impressive Arc de Triomphe at the end. But no sooner had I come out of the Metro at Avenue Hoche than two Chinese tourists approached me and asked if I knew where the Louis Vuitton store was. “No,” I said plainly, and “I’m sorry… It must be on the Champs Elysées.” But they insisted that it was somewhere else and so what I didn’t say was that I couldn’t care less where it was or is or will be.

This is what I hate about the Champs Elysées: The tourists. All the luxury boutiques—cars, jewelry, clothes that would never fit me—high-priced restaurants and cafes where people go to be seen, where you will be scolded for not having made a reservation even if the restaurant is half empty, the nightclubs that pick and choose their patrons at the door. I can walk for hours and find nothing of interest. Not even the beggars are authentic, and the street dancers that draw large circles of on lookers are too cheesy for words.

He usually walks a couple of paces ahead of me… no matter how many times I ask him to walk beside me. He blames the dog, his Paris tempo, but not last night. Last night we strolled—well, I dragged and he strolled. The weather was not so cold and, as usual, we had no idea where we were going. We were hungry and he was high on life. When we went to cross the wide street—four lanes in each direction, or is it five?—he stopped half-way across the eastbound side to tie his shoe, which took him a while so I waited at the median until the pedestrian signs turned red in both directions. He had just seconds left to get out of the street when what does he do? He walks on across the westbound lanes too, passing me patiently waiting for him in the middle. The light had been red long enough that I knew we would get caught in front of the twin Mercedes already revving their engines, the scooters rocking back and forth. So I waited and he walked. He walked as if he owned the Avenue and all the cars waited for him and there I was standing in the middle, having waited there for him to tie his shoe.

As the cars zoomed past in both directions, I knew that this was a metaphor for my entire life. Patience and caution and observation, people passing me by. He’s right when he says I belong in the past. He usually says that I need to be more assertive. But last night he just laughed. From across the wide street, he pointed and laughed and looked around him at all the pretty things while he waited for me. When the light finally turned, I did not hurry to him. I did not even put my arm around him until he made me. “C’mon!” he prodded. “This is the best street in the world!” I gave him a look that prompted the question, “What’s the best street in the world for you?”

“Pacific Coast Highway,” I replied, though really I’d prefer any late night street in this city. Emptied of cars, emptied of tourists, with just my own footsteps setting the pace.

Anti Bio

2011-02-09T00:04:00.000-08:00

A 300-word poem I wrote for Cecilia Woloch's Paris Poetry Workshop last May.

Suzanne (Allen) never knows if she’s coming or going. She used to think this was only a statement about emotions or where she stood with certain friends or family, but now she understands that things like jet lag, weather, and living in a second language can keep one quite off balance. So she craves sleep, sleep like a princess sleeps, especially in the afternoon. With the washing machine humming along in the next room like a train softly going. Her home is a place of linens and paper, creaking chairs and bread crumbs, sunlight and socks, where she dare not sit too long. So much to do. There are draperies and dresses to sew, decorative pillows to fluff and throw. Dishes to wash and old truths to unknow. She likes pink and white roses and is also rather prickly—like so many of her favorite women. She never wanted more than an old convertible and a back house, still doesn’t really, though she has so much more. Cats and Long Beach, a Filou in Paris. A man with Mediterranean eyes. Lucky. She’s just lucky. Her kindergarten teacher, Miss Able, sent prayers and Christian love—enough to last a lifetime—home in every report card; and at naptime, she moved about in the cool of the blue-green-gray classroom, putting it back in order, backlit by the wide wall of windows. Suzanne began playing teacher after that, lined up her dolls and stuffed animals in attentive rows, took attendance. By the time she was nine, she was dragging and pushing her Sears Roebucks, Country French bedroom furniture around in her room, which ultimately lead to a whirlwind career in interior design. She can space-plan any room out of a conundrum, and she makes a mean omelet, but her favorite projects are always the poems.

Catch up

2010-06-25T05:00:00.000-07:00

I know this is not a vlog, but...

Well, well, well. An embarrassing hiatus to say the least, mostly because I can't believe it's been SEVEN MONTHS!!!

It feels more like two. What have I been up to? The usual back and forth, winter, spring, and now all of the sudden it's summer. The sun came out in Paris right on schedule. Time to shop for my summer flight back home.

I've certainly been relying too heavily on the short cut that is Facebook, but ask any of my friends and they'll tell you: Even Facebook is no guarantee that you'll find me.

I've been planning workshops, writing poems, attending readings and other events. And, I've been filming. Not everything, but enough to tap out the memory on my external hard drive. I can't make the videos fast enough, but I have made quite a few since we last talked.

Most recently, my youngest sister Lisa came to town for my 40th birthday! Watch here.

I got to see Shaun and Eric (all the way from New Zealand!) in LA in April. Watch here.

And did I mention that WE MOVED?! This is a video of me killing a winter morning in our new hood just after we moved in in February.

I made this video when the brothers in-law and their families came to visit us here for the first time. And the last, so far. Apparently, Mehdi watches this video repeatedly and has learned the song by heart. Stay tuned for another video from his recent performance in his school's Diversity Dance Program last week.

And before all that happened, the man joined me for Christmas and New Year's in LA. We road tripped all over--this video almost captures that. And we made it to Cayucos for their annual Polar Bear Dip on New Year's morning. The song is about a car full of people trying to find a party... this auto route, that roundabout.

After he left me and the Fif in Cali, we visited my older younger sister and my niece in Santa Barbara. Maybe this isn't what every Sunday looks like there, but at least it's always an option.

Also in the works are videos of this year's Paris Poetry Workshop with Cecilia Woloch and several poetry videos... if I ever end up happy with the audio. Audio is hard. But at least I managed to get some decent recordings to start with. The workshop was amazing for me this year. It was a pleasure to be able to host it at our new apartment and there were, as there always are, some very talented poets involved. I guess I had met most of them in previous years, but there are always new friends to make, aren't there?

Which always makes me nostalgic for my old ones, the ones who are far away, or just gone. I miss my Grandma everyday recently. Again, her birthday just passed; and soon, though I don't want to know exactly when, the anniversary of her death will pass. Seven years.

Seven months. I'm sorry. I'll try not to stay away so long.

Window Licking

2009-12-21T22:44:00.000-08:00

a new tradition?

Two years ago, we spent our first Christmas together in Paris. We didn't get a tree or make a turkey... didn't even exchange gifts. In fact, I can't remember what we did on Christmas eve or day. Truth is, it didn't feel much like Christmas at all, but at some point we did discover the spectacle of store windows at les grands magasins--the two major department stores near Opera Garnier. (Remember that video?)

Now around the time that I lost the drive to sell, sell, sell furniture, I also seem to have lost the urge to shop. I can list a dozen arguments against it under almost any circumstance, all designed to put my starving poet's mind at ease for her failure at all things capitalist consumer. And department stores are the worst offenders on my anti-shopping list. But these stores, these urban landscapes of fashion and class seem to come almost all undone around the holidays.

And I do love me some window shopping, or "window licking" from the French lèche les vitrines. The windows are so heavily animated that I rarely even notice the products they are probably trying to sell. Of course I suspect them of being very subversive, as are ads in any other medium, but I so enjoy the displays and the people watching that I can't be bothered to put my finger on any of the ways I should be offended... at least not exactly. In other words, I am somehow able to put my cynical, critical habits aside in favor of a sort of suspension of disbelief.

This year, I wanted to spend my last night in town wandering the boulevard, so after burgers and Bud at Hard Rock Cafe, we walked... sleeting rain and whipping wind be damned! Really, it wasn't that bad. See for yourself. The passing storm picked up just as we crossed the street between the two giant stores. The "first" video is posted here, just for you my dear readers. An expat_chats exclusive world premier ;)

And if you want to see the "second" one, go to my You Tube channel.

Marry Kissmas, y'all ;)

Passing Through

2009-12-16T08:38:00.000-08:00

A Happy Landing in Long Beach

So here I am in sunny California. Jet lag still has me up early and the mornings are gorgeous out my second floor windows. Yesterday, I even vacuumed the wood blinds, something I usually don't do until just before I leave again. Next stop: The kitchen!

Besides housework, I've been doing a lot of reading in the week since I arrived. I received two chapbooks in the mail while I was away--winners of the contests I lost last year. One is VERY good--Bar Napkin Sonnets by Moira Egan who lives in Italy and is a FAR more accomplished poet than I. It's published by The Ledge Press and you should probably buy it.

I also read two short story collections and am working my way through (the poetry, for starters) Pushcart Prize XXXIV, because, well I HAVE BEEN NOMINATED FOR A PUSHCART PRIZE! Yes. It's true. And I'm just sorta reveling in the old cliché that it's an honor just to be nominated, because by the looks of things, I won't be getting in there any time soon ;) and April will come soon enough and all of my secret hopes will be dashed to the rocks. But it IS an honor just to be nominated.

Funny thing is, the poem that was nominated--by Cider Press Review, btw--was one of the easiest poems I've ever written. It was my last semester of grad school. My thesis had been turned in and the last of my student loans had been spent. We had just finished reading James Tate's Memoir of the Hawk with Suzanne Greenberg in our Directed Reading seminar. I wasn't even sure I liked it, but SO under the influence was I that I wrote a little response, more off-the-cuff than anything I had ever been willing to call finished. I read it in class.

Truth is, I never thought much of it after that... Not even when Cecilia Woloch picked it out of my manuscript last summer--along with a couple others--and told me she thought they would like it at Cider Press... Not really even when it got accepted and published in their volume 10 earlier this year.

It's called "Free Refills," and while I can remember certain influences for the poem's subject matter, I have never felt that this poem was my own. I was channeling James Tate, much the way I was channeling Alan Ginsberg when I wrote "Wail"--the one anthologized in Not a Muse from Haven Books. It looks like I'll be reading a lot more again.

So I skimmed through Memoir of the Hawk... just to be sure that I hadn't ripped anything off or done some slant discredit to his good name, and I noticed some similarities and some differences. Nothing alarming. Just enough to help me reclaim the poem, which got me to thinking: What the heck is this poem about? As I wrote it, it felt so automatic. The language is plain. One thought led to the next without complications or contemplation. I let my imagination play in the surreal fashion that I had just read in Tate's little scenarios.

But it wasn't until just this morning, not until I started writing this blog entry, that I realized what this poem is about. What this blog is about. What, quite possibly, my whole life is about. Passing through. We are always all just passing through. Life takes such strange twists and turns that we never know when a state of being will be over, irreversibly over. Birth control fails. Friendships fail. Uncles and grandmas and nephews die. Jobs dry up and we move away, some of us farther and further than others. New homes. New loves. New visions of life. And then a blue seahorse rides off into the desert with an old woman on its back. Or maybe it isn't the desert after all. In any case, nothing is the same.

I may have just found the title of my new chapbook manuscript... and the confidence to try, try again ;)

Thanks for reading. And thanks to Caron Andregg, Ruth Foley, and Robert Wynne at Cider Press Review, and Cecilia Woloch... and James Tate and Suzanne Greenberg. I hear an acceptance speech in the makings!

Sleepless in Paris...

2009-10-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

The honeymoon is over... at least for tonight.

12:42 a.m. and some blow hard on some late-night talk show is ranting about how only one of every two French people knows the words to the national anthem, Le Marseillaise. Is this such a bad thing? Have you heard the words? (Click here, and scroll down for the translation.) They're only slightly more gruesome than our bright rockets and bombs bursting in air shedding glorious light on our self-righteous flag.

He can't fall asleep without the T.V. He can't fall asleep with the T.V. So for the first time in my life I am seriously considering an eye mask and ear plugs. Every time one of us rolls over, the remote controls click together or just end up underneath me. Even after he drifts off, he'll wake up. And if I've turned off the T.V. he'll turn it back on. I suppose the upside of this is that I end up dreaming in French. If only it weren't such ridiculous crap all the time. From disputes about how national pride is on the decline to jingles and theme songs that inspire what can't quite be called nightmares. Always men. Mental masturbation all hours of the day. The French love their political debates. Apparently, so does my partner.

The flash of the changing channels, silent but unnerving. The most humane thing he watches is reruns of Fresh Prince. It's dubbed in French, of course, so at least I don't get sucked too far into the story. The thread of the theme song is more than annoying, but I guess it's better than his last favorite: space documentaries... black holes and big bangs, the inevitable self-destruction of Mother Earth. "In West Philadelphia, born and raised... Yo, homes! To Bel Air!"

Counting down the days until I go back to Cali... the sun, the kitties, my bed all to myself. No T.V. in the bedroom. (Who am I kidding?! A bedroom!!!) And downstairs on my twelve-year-old Sony, only digital T.V... not even worth turning on most of the time. Ahhhh....

But tonight, I'll sing myself to sleep in my head... some classic Charles Aznavour, I think:

Emmenez-moi au bout de la terre
Emmenez-moi au pays des merveilles
Il me semble que la misère
Serait moins pénible au soleil...

For my non French speaking friends, a sad little translation:

Take me to the end of the earth
Take me to wonderlands
It seems to me that misery
Would be less painful in the sun.

I wonder how many French people know the words to THAT song...

Members Only

2009-10-15T23:23:00.000-07:00

WICE--The Women's Institute of Continuing Education.

That's what it started out as back in the day when so many corporate wives were here with their husbands... 1979, I think. And the demographics haven't really changed all that much, but they don't ever use the full name any more.

The year I was introduced to the organization, the idea of "World Institute of Continuing Education" was proposed--by a non-WICE member, but who can say if that's the reason it hasn't caught on... yet? It was 2007 and I was weeks away from graduating with my MFA, so as a graduation present, my parents paid for me to participate in Cecilia Woloch's Paris Poetry Workshop: 5 days of workshops and readings in the City of Light with which I had already had a long love affair... In which I had been carrying on a long distance love affair since living t/here for six months in 2005.

So now, here I am, two years later still, "working" in the unpaid sense for that organization over which we only glossed that week. Dependant on the unemployed status of many of its volunteers, WICE is a non-profit organization that offers courses in everything from wine tasting to German. Literature, studio arts, museum tours and walks in various arrondisements, parks and cemeteries, and of course, Creative Writing. This is the reason I joined WICE last year... I took a course called Writing From Dreams with Sandy Florian. I wrote a few poems, none of which I thought very highly at the time, and I made a few friends--the best side effect of every single workshop I've ever attended. I served as a poetry editor for their literary magazine... and will again this year.

I also tried to get involved as a volunteer but found that so many of the desirable assignments were snatched up by veteran volunteers. I once stood around all Sunday morning at the orientation for their annual Paris Writers Workshop... and met a participant... from Long Beach... who had graduated from my MFA just a couple of years before me! But apart from that, I never found my place at WICE, exactly.

Then late last summer, I went to the launch for the literary magazine, Upstairs at Duroc, where Barbara Beck, the editor, announced that WICE was looking for a new Creative Writing Program Director. I jumped at the opening, emailing Barbara, then the then President, and anyone else I knew of to ask for advice and information. This was the summer of change at WICE. Downsizing and relocation had turned everything on end. A few months of run-around and I gave up. Not the post for me, I said to myself.

Then the email came. WICE was ready for me. The program had been dead for a year and they were ready to jump start it again. Inquiries were coming in about writing classes from prospective students and instructors alike, and with fall on the way it was time to get someone on the job. They gave me a few weeks and the contact info for a favorite WICE instructor, and I was to schedule the first course. I guess they figured I should start out slow and easy, but when the first class sold out weeks before the open house, it was clear there needed to be more on the program.

I have been working at a work-a-holic's pace for the past couple of months and have managed to start up four creative writing options, including a second session of the sold out course and a third course to begin in November. I don't get to teach them because I don't have working papers. Argh! But to connect with the students for which I design the courses, I decided to create a Writers' Drop-in/happy hour... On Thursday evenings, guess where... Au Chien qui Fume, of course! A casual, non-committal forum for those who are unable or not quite ready to join WICE and/or enroll in courses. You see, only WICE members can enroll in the courses we offer, and membership costs 50 euros a year--30 for full time students with valid I.D. For people with time--and money--this poses little or no problem. I haven't renewed my membership since it lapsed this spring. After all, there were no writing classes.

And now that I'm working so hard for them--for free--I am reluctant to cough up the 50 euros. It's not that I don't have it. My partner has been more than generous and supportive, especially where my writing is concerned, but we agree that it seems unfair--like life--that I should have to pay to belong to the organization for which I work so hard, so wholeheartedly, for so many hours a week. Instead, I sit in on the occasional workshop, as my title permits, and feel the energy: so many interesting people, so much good material and discussion. I really wanted to participate, but ultimately--and after a call to my level headed, business minded dad--I have decided not to enroll or even join.

Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind ;)

No Reason, No Recourse

2009-09-08T12:18:00.000-07:00

The rare blog entry from LA

It's my last day in So Cal, AGAIN, and all I want to do is blog and read blogs. I have a million errands to run, tons of people I didn't get to spend nearly enough time with, and all I want to do is linger in my little apartment with the kitties and my books and try to say something that matters... after six weeks of sunny CA.

This visit, I applied for an artist's visa, which would have allowed me not only to stay in Paris for longer stretches at a time, but also to work in conjunction with a proposed "project." So I gathered my strength and put together a proposal and the necessary multitude of triplicated documents required with the application, five passport photos, and the 150 US dollars it costs just to submit said application, and about the time I had recovered from the sunburn I got in the 3 hours I spent outside waiting, the phone call came: I was denied my carte de sejour and told that the reason was unknown and there is no phone number to call for further information as they are too busy to answer one.

At least I was a good citizen and served my jury duty. I was on call all week for the first week of August, rejoicing every night when I heard that I would not need to report the next day... until Thursday. I got the dreaded Friday duty. It really wasn't bad. I dodged the first and only call of the day--a murder trial expected to last 8 days, according to reports in the elevator at the lunch break. Two hours of wandering around downtown Long Beach was then followed by another hour of sitting--on the 6th floor terrace with a view of the harbor--chatting with my two jury duty pals and soaking up some sun.

I wish I could remember that woman's name. She was a riot! We were released early, one by one, and given our green proof-of-service slips. I was called before she was and I gave her two French cheek kisses. She thought that was really cute. Then I headed quickly out, not looking back. By the way, French authorities are urging people to forgo the catchy kisses. No more bisoux in France for fear of Swine Flu. La Grippe Porcine. The dreaded H1N1. Can you imagine?

I spent a lot of time with my family, adorable and germ-ridden as they may be ;) They are my favorite subjects--in videos, writing, conversation, and dreams. My new (and only) niece is like a fallen star from a strange and unimagined heaven. And I love the reason to watch that Blue's Clues! I brought her a French bikini. At her daycare, the kids must all wear hats to play outside. This is perhaps the cutest damn thing I've ever seen. A day in the life of Hailey Grace would make a superb little video...

Speaking of videos, the silver lining in being denied my visa was that in shaping my application, I actually harnessed my projects and decided to launch a poetry video site that I've been contemplating for many months now. awaywithwords I wanted to set these videos apart from most of the ones I've created so far because these are more honestly collaborative. I meet so many talented writers and artists that I wanted to capture even a fraction of what I hear and put it together with things I've seen. Sometimes the correspondences are uncanny. I especially like how my personal life invariably seeps into the finished product.

I like art that is a bit sublime: Beaudelaire, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Pink Martini. I haven't really thought of this "like" in relation to my own writing. I remember I want to read Kant, Jane Austen, and more Jeanette Winterson. What to pack this time? What to abandon until December? It's so much easier to go than it is to leave. And even as I write that, I see that it's a lie. Going takes courage, hunger, and passion. It isn't always clear that it's the right thing to do. Surely, it isn't always the right thing to do.

But I'm leaving, and I can't wait to get back. I'm going back to my tourist life, to my Filou and my man. Maybe to a new apartment. And there is a dangling job possibility like the proverbial carrot, luring me back to the City of Light--no S, please. Writing workshops and fall, the most sublime season of all. Once it sets in, there is no reason, no recourse.

The street sweeper passes down one street then the next here in Long Beach. I mentally confirm that I parked on the right side of the street last night. Seafood enchiladas leftover in the fridge. Silver left to polish. Laundry. My little yard and the coolest day since I decided to stay. I'm gong to go soak it all in.

Bastille Day

2009-07-15T03:48:00.000-07:00

It's the people that you meet...

I'm still awed and amazed by this city sometimes. It happens by chance... an intersection of time, place, and people. It happens often, actually.

Last night I ended up at a Bastille Day celebration in Montmartre where I met JoJo from China who was flirting with her gorgeous German colleague--they work for a Swedish company--and Ingrid from Sweden but living in the northeastern US somewhere but I forget where, and her sons Daniel and Niels--ages 13 and 8--who like the Arc de Triomphe best, so far. Georges, the sometimes driver of Le Petit Train de Montmartre--the tram-like train that winds and whirs around that mountain--his Portuguese wife and their handsome young son. (I am old ;) Anna from Michigan. Florence from Paris--he's pretty sure she's Algerian. Yes, he came. It took some convincing but he ended up venturing out with me and my gal pal Theresa--from the LBC. Hehe.

All this after an afternoon spent lunching at Le Relais Gascon and girl-talking at Theresa's "Lola Studio" with Paris rooftops and blue sky out her window. We even had Ellen Fujioka for those precious hours! But when she left us, early evening, Theresa and I went for rum and fromage off the rue Lepic before deciding how our Bastille Day evening would be spent, all the while spending it. Her rental agent had invited her to a party further up the hill... at her 7th floor apartment over looking the whole of the city.

And do you know? I didn't take one picture. Sorry! It happens, especially when so many others are taking pictures. There was a guy with a ponytail and a super professional video camera who finished the evening by playing and singing "Halleluja" on the white upright piano in the mirrored dining area. This was after the fireworks so he had our full attention and got a flattering applause when he finished, which made me feel kinda bad for the guy who had been playing for most of the night--a less sexy character who didn't sing. We stood by the nuts on the clear glass table. A toddler with white blond locks of curls hit his head at least twice near the graciously angled corner. I didn't say anything to either one of them then. What do you say at moments like that?

Speaking of fireworks, the Eiffel Tower--clearly visible from the four french-doored terraces--stood ready to the south. JoJo and Theresa took those pictures where you hold it in the palm of your hand, and the sun went down to the west in its customary blazing glory, Monday morning passing in California. Once the fireworks began, the sky looked more like sea than air, high clouds like foam in moonlight. A cool breeze carried the smoke quickly and predictably to the northeast as everything always blows. I thought of the dust and paper casings from some 15,000 explosions--most ending up in the Seine, Johnny Hallyday--the French Bruce Springsteen--crooning to the million-or-so people trampling the grass that rests all year across the Champ de Mars, so that as I stood at that threshold--so close to the clouds with that plastic flute of Veuve Clicquot--I felt lucky. Even the piano player stopped... soft voices, the occasional ooh or ah--especially when the Tour sparkled with all her usual panache--and the delayed sound of light being made, flames thrown and burned brightly out.

When it was over, we clapped and clung to the few distant and lingering displays outside the city. George and his wife seemed to know which outlying cities these might be. I was happy just to be able to point out to Daniel and Niels the Arc de Triomphe rising like a stage in-the-round and lit-up above the darkening rooftops. Inside, though we tried to regain our earlier conversations, other guests had arrived and the champagne had stopped flowing. Guests took turns at the piano. Daniel and Niels sat next to Ingrid on one of the white leather sofas while she exchanged phone numbers with Anna. Others gathered around the generous remains of nuts, chips, sliced sausage, olives, cherries, and at the center--a gorgeous tray of middle-eastern pastries which went quickly, marking the last movements of the evening.

The table base of giant glass blocks was lined with books, stacks and rows of them, red hardbacks with script and impressionistic painting on the covers wrapped in plastic. One sat open on the table, an illustrated account of one woman's love affair with that mountain and its people... Paris Montmartre avec amour written by the hostess, Theresa's rental agent, Eva Leandre. The images--Cezanne-like studies of the locals--had been framed to cover the two walls not windowed or mirrored in that well-lit space. The artist, an old friend of Ms. Leandre's, Jean-Marc Gueroux was also in attendance. As we said our goodbyes and gave out cheek kisses, Ms. Leandre said I should stop by any time.

We got home after midnight and I finally walked the Filou at around 2. Two guys drove up and asked the way to the Marais ;) An Asian woman was dragged by the arm in halfhearted protest into the Hotel Chatelet by a uniformed officer. A couple argues by their car. Filou grumbled and growled at a group of young drunk guys trotting up his tree-lined avenue, their arms around each other's shoulders. The night seemed darker than usual despite the large half-moon at Saint Jacques' back. Maybe I still had fireworks in my eyes.

Reporting from...

2009-07-05T09:16:00.001-07:00

Amsterdam.

A little rain shower just moved quickly through and we're ready for Sunday, part two.

We did a lot of shopping today, gifts mostly... a few for me and many for people in our other cities. The daytime sky is not as poetic as the Parisian one, but the night sky is sublime... so I'm on a blue kick. Got a Lapis Lazuli ring at the Sunday flea market. And a clutch purse, but that's brown, orange and red floral print upholstery fabric... with tiny pink flowers on one side, too. With a little luck, we'll catch a canal tour this evening. Hope the clouds clear.

All of my web browsers are slowly switching to Dutch, so I'm going to get back to real life. I posted a few photos here... stay tuned for the video(s).

Shakin' Loose

2009-07-03T19:24:00.000-07:00

At last!

I knew there was a good reason I was sleepless tonight. Just finished chatting with my little sis, my favorite sister... though she hasn't been my favorite for months now, not since she told me she was going to see Depeche Mode in August at the Hollywood Bowl--coolest of all LA venues--with SOMEONE ELSE! But now he can't go, so I'm in! I do hope Dave Gahan wears his leather pants!

And that's not all that's super cool tonight. I've finally begun my stint as, get this, the Creative Writing Program Director for WICE--a continuing education institute here in Paris--and our first course is all but on the books for this fall. This responsibility is the main reason why I didn't go home last month, but I'll make good use of my time since I also have a great lead on a job a language school. Thank you, Ellen Fujioka--my little go getter friend! I might have to go see her psychic while I'm in Long Beach.

I'll also be sitting in for David Barnes at The Other Writers' Group at Shakespeare & Co on July 11th and 18th. Come if you can... five copies of a work in progress, or just listen to the fine writing that others bring in. We can always use fresh eyes and ears.

Other great things that have happened in recent months: This spring I had the honor of working with Cecilia Woloch again to organize her Paris Poetry Workshop--click to see the video I made. Cecilia has such a great group of friends and poets every year. The themes of place, image, and collaboration always make for a very rewarding experience, so if you ever need a(nother) reason to come to Paris, I can highly recommend this week-long workshop. This year we also did photography with Jennifer Huxta, the Montparnasse Cemetery with Heather Hartley, a day in the country with Jeffrey Green--read French Spirits!--and an afternoon of collage poetry with Jen K. Dick. We finished up the week with a participants' reading at S&C, then dinner--Au Chien Qui Fume, where else?! The highlight of my week was reading my recently anthologized tribute to Alan Ginsberg's "Howl"--it's called "Wail"--at a reading we organized at Berkeley Books. There was thunderous applause and the owner of the bookstore complimented me on my bravery... They didn't put me in the "Woman as Freedom Figter" section for nothing! I left him a copy to read and/or sell, but if you can't stop in there, buy it here! The anthology is called Not a Muse, a global anthology of post-feminist poetry published by Haven Books in Hong Kong.

Then... I had my 39th birthday. He took me on a dinner cruise on the Bateaux Mouches--not even overrated. Can't believe it's taken us four years to finally do it! He even muscled us up to a table at the front of the boat, which made for a lovely video ;) Miles Davis' Blue In Green made the perfect soundtrack, even the title, given the colors of that evening. The clouds cleared when night fell, and then it was over.

But not my birthday! It went on all weekend long 'cause he took me to Amsterdam the next day. We just showed up at the train station and boarded the next train, wandered around town for two hours looking for a hotel that would allow Filou to stay, too. Then I got sick. Boooo... So, we're going back tomorrow/today. Seriously, does it get any better?! Ok. Depeche Mode at The Hollywood Bowl is pretty damn good.

Oh yeah, and this week Filou turned two. Of course we had a little party... and two of my MFA gal pals came! Thank you, Filou, for the great excuse to open up the Old El Paso Burrito Kit. He even got to lick his Raspberry Charlotte birthday cake. Oh yeah, and I made a video to celebrate his first two years. See it here.

I guess that just about catches you all up. 5am... time to go take my bath and head for Gare du Nord. See you soon!

New Moon on Monday

2009-06-24T03:43:00.000-07:00

Or rather, Tuesday morning

The night before last, my insomnia was further complicated by the most jarring nightmare(s) I can remember. My growing frustrations with our small, top-floor apartment were clearly the inspiration behind the heart stopping energy of the dreams that forced me awake at 4:30... after only one REM cycle of sleep. Rustic charm aside, the sloping roof lines, wood beams, and dormer windows are bad Feng Shui, clearly--all that enclosure and weight, the angles, the sag of the ancient walls and ceilings. The drawers of our dresser have to be wedged closed or they slide open toward the decline of the floors, clothes exposed. Don't get me started on the terrible stairs.

But the dream was, as most dreams are, a mix of lives and epochs--past and present colliding in illogic--faces that are, according to some psychoanalysts, all representations only of the dreamer's self. I tried after each startled waking to go back to sleep only to fall back into the dream, until finally, too afraid to keep trying, I got up, turned on my favorite lamp, and wrote it all down... or at least as much as I could lasso in words:

Way, way, way too scary in my head to go back to sleep. What the hell? Not quite this apartment, not this town. And my old neighbor Paula lives across the hall. She and her friend are feeling it, too--strange and scary energy. Each time we try to light a lamp, it blows, until eventually there are none left to light. Even the communal corridor is reduced to a darkened spiral. The friend asks me if I noticed the spots on the carpet. "No. I mean, just now, yes, but they weren't there before." Large, bird-shit white spots that come into focus and fade with our mounting fear.

When we run outside--to find a hotel and some solitude--there are a few kids, maybe ten to sixteen-years old, throwing things at my windows. Rocks? We sort of chase them off but end up back inside. The TV works. (I can't remember the images.)

We call the landlord, [our real-life Italian slumlord,] because we smell, not smoke exactly, but something like it... something almost electrical. He's annoyed and dismissive, reminds us that last time he came there was nothing. The apartment is our responsibility. We can't talk sense to him and hang up. There are cats. One of mine is black and freaking out. I guess I don't have another, but Paula has at least four--mostly black and one white--that chase and swirl in and out the front door, up and down the stairs after mine. When I gather her up she scratches and claws but I don't let her go, close the door on the others.

We all climb into bed together and begin to feel things in there with us, but see nothing. Something lifts me into the air against the ceiling. I can't scream. I can't even talk. I am struck dumb. My mind spins like a vortex has opened.

Throughout the dream I am dialing and dialing, speed-dialing M on my cell phone, but I never reach him. There is an interference, the intangible energy that fucks with us. It keeps cutting the connection short of any response.

When I turned out the light, I stood at the window watching the Seine. Usually smooth as glass at such hours, its surface looked more like TV snow in olive green--agitated, confused, spots of calm beaten back by the glitter and shimmy that hadn't even sense enough to run west toward the sea. I wrote one last paragraph in the moonless dark:

If I re-enter this dream I will fight. We will not think ourselves crazy for all that we feel. We are among the living with loved ones, each other, all present in the darkest night. We will summon our dead if we must. We will take back the night until it is no longer dark, for we, too, are forces of nature.

Ps) Then, blaming the universe, I slept until nine, nightmare free.

Birthday

2009-06-22T14:45:00.000-07:00

Grace Bernice Allen 1913-2003

Oh... I am soooo way behind on my blogging. So much to tell you. But today I am thinking of my grandma--my dad's mom--because it's her birthday. That also means that the six-year anniversary of her death is sometime in the next week or so. I make it a point not to remember that date, but it's hard to forget that she seemed to wait until just after her birthday to give in to the thick forgetting that had been taking her slowly from us for years. Had she just turned 90? For some reason, I was thinking she was 93.

Last year, my uncle did the same, gave in to his cancer right around this time of year. Again, I don't remember, or want to remember, the date. It's strange to miss someone you didn't see but once a year or so, but it happens. My uncle was my grandma's sweet boy. They both died in Havasu City, Arizona, which I guess is as good a place to die as anywhere. But this is a blog about her birthday.

Every year I forget exactly which day is my grandma's birthday because two of my best friends from Jr. high/high school have birthdays on the other two days between the 20th and the 22nd... I don't talk to them anymore either, but they're not dead, at least not that I know of. I miss them, but not like I miss my grandma. I'm pretty sure today is her day. In fact, I'm positive. (Called my dad anyway, just to be sure. He still carries these dates in his wallet.)

I like to think she's watching over me, watching me live this sublime life in a country she never dreamed about. At least I don't think she did. I don't think she ever traveled outside of the U.S. Maybe on a cruise, the one she took with my grandpa... not my grandpa, her husband who died when I was two. No, a couple of years later she started hangin' out with my other grandpa, my mom's dad. (Alhambra was a very close community ;) He would come over to her house and we would sit around the kitchen table "working the puzzle" as she called it. She loved that word scramble puzzle in the paper, I don't know which paper. Now, the kitchen table is in my back yard in Long Beach rusting in the mild weather. Her tea cups are in my bookshelf. I miss my stuff.

Mostly, I miss her, a lot. I guess I always will. The missing doesn't even seem to evolve, at least not since getting over the initial shock of her physical absence. I want to climb into her hospital bed again, smell her old skin, feel its crepe under my fingers. Better yet, I want to climb into her bed in Alhambra, keep her warm, listen to her snoring. I want to go to Newberry's with her, then Bob's Big Boy for spaghetti and chili and a hot fudge sunday.

Happy birthday, Grandma.

Wednesday Morning Walk

2009-05-27T01:53:00.000-07:00

Our quartier...

Before he leaves for work, we go out "en famille" to our local boulangerie. He has fresh-squeezed orange juice and only a bite of his croissant. They aren't quite as light and flaky since the place changed hands a few months ago, and today they are slightly over cooked. Even Filou leaves the crispy crust on the sidewalk, eats only the buttery bites I tear off the top for him. The foam on my cappuccino is creamy and dense like I like it. When I ask for a second sugar, the blond sever pulls one from the pocket in her apron. She speaks English, but not to me.

The Labrador who sits every morning in front of the restaurant across the narrow street from the boulangerie leaves a big dump in the gutter two doors down, wipes his derriere on the pavement, and comes running to "greet" Filou before he has a chance to piss on the Lab's lamppost. Filou doesn't like dogs, swings wide across the sidewalk, pretending to ignore them until he can't anymore, wraps his leash around my legs or those of passers by as he scurries to escape... then sniffs the air in their wakes, watches them being led away.

Lots of suits and briefcases hurry to and from Les Halles, chatting into cell phones about their whereabouts, when they'll arrive, their rendezvous. (How do you make that word plural?) I wipe the orange-juice mustache from my man's bristly lip and leave him at the entrance to the RER, watch as he slips into the flow of people moving down the escalator and into the labyrinth of stores not yet open. We--Filou and I--cross the exterior patios all freshly washed of the night's piss and everything else. The carousel is empty. The mirrored arches reflect the sky in fragments.

A dad in day-off jeans and a tee shirt rumpled like his hair holds his little girl as they kiss Mommy goodbye at the entrance to the Metro on Rue Rambuteau. Maybe he doesn't have a job. A tanned man in pinstripes asks me the way to the Rue du Louvre and I show him, hoping I'm not mistaken. I am, but only a little. (It doesn't run parallel to Rue du Rivoli but intersects it just past the Bourse de Commerce.) At least now he's headed in the right direction. He's carrying nothing.

I pick up a parcel at the post office at Place Sainte Opportune. The sign on the door says no dogs--a symbol with a red circle and a line through it--but the receptionist is happy to see my cutie, lets me come in anyway... "a votre service," she says respectfully whenever anyone thanks her. It takes the clerk a few minutes to track down my box. His neatly pressed dress shirt and slacks are eggplant and khaki, respectively.

The street sweepers in grass green synthetics, heavy black boots, and neon vests, run water from municipal spouts in the gutters then brush the cigarette butts into the sewers with their brooms. The plastic bristles, all bent and frayed at the ends, match the vests--a pleasing ensemble with the trash cans dotting the curbs. Filou jumps over the little streams like a show horse.

The slight woman who works for her brother-in-law at the creperie just downstairs from our apartment smokes a cigarette at the threshold of the tabac on the Quai de la Megisserie. Her hair used to be so thin that I wonder if maybe she had cancer. This morning, it's pulled back and she's smiley and bright. She isn't always.

There's no school on Wednesdays, which means I won't hear the recess ruckus out my kitchen window today from the primary school around the corner. I often think I'll go to Tuileries and sit and watch the child's play--their chase on the dirt paths, their sail boats floating in the fountain. I never have, at least not on a Wednesday.

By noon, protesters arrive at the Hotel de Ville chanting along with the drum and the guy with the megaphone. I can't see them for the new-green leaves on the trees. Later, hopefully, music will float from the windows at the back of the Theatre du Chatelet... Piano, some stringed instruments, and a woman's operatic voice in curling notes tempered by the passing cars, delivery trucks with plants-a-plenty for the local vendors, not-too-distant sirens at intervals just long enough for me to regather my thoughts and spill them here, in pieces.

Put the Moms in Charge!

2009-04-08T06:07:00.000-07:00

He IS a feminist! Hooray!

Yesterday, Obama held one of his in-but mostly-famous town hall meetings with a group of 100 students in Istanbul, Turkey. The last question had something to do with Israeli-Palestinian relations and burried in his long winded response was this little pearl: "If we just put the mothers in charge, things would get resolved." Not surprisingly, this feminist concept was couched in the supposedly feminine language of qualifiers: "Sometimes, maybe, I think, etc," but clear away all that mealy mouth crap and you've got what I think is a very progressive ideal that applies to A LOT more than Israel and Palestine.

Sunday

2009-04-05T03:47:00.000-07:00

Finally! April in Paris!

A few weeks ago, we discovered a great little market near our apartment. We've only lived here for a year and a half, after all ;) As with most things, it was just a question of being in the right place at the right time. Until now, we've gone to the Saturday marchee in the Marais or on Sundays we would take the metro to Bastille or even La Motte Piquet, our old haunt. Now, we just walk across the trellised garden at Les Halles. Someone was picking the tulips last night... can't really blame them.

Les Halles is a series of glass walls--a sort of shopping mall--which wraps around a park with grassy areas and smaller gardens like this little beauty with topiary elephants to welcome you...

... Closed today, it seems to be one of a couple of tiny water parks that make up the larger garden. And there in the background is Saint Eustache, an impressive touch of Gothic at the northwest corner of this oldest marketplace in Paris.

Though we made a vow--just last night--to eat at home more often, I insisted on a cafe creme before we started down the block-long row of canopies to choose our fruits and vegetables for the week. I don't have a coffee habit, but I do love the French version, especially when the weather's nice enough to sit outside... a perfect spot to sit and watch the shoppers come...

The back of the church is sooty and neglected compared to the rest, which is currently being renovated... like so much of this city, all the time.

We bought fresh butter, eggs and Camembert, plus strawberries, tangerines, avocados, bananas, kiwis, tomatoes, and a gorgeous salad mix.

... and I bought a little bag of these tiny Easter eggs, which I'm eating right now!

The shell is familiar, but the inside is like nothing I've ever tasted before--crystalized sugar with a tiny, liquid pool in the center. Each color has its own flavor. Once in a great while, some color tastes of licorice... I haven't yet figured out which one, but it's a bit out of place with all the fruity goodness of the others.

They match the colors in the garden that we saw on our walk home... so many bulbs popping up in all the flower beds, all the flowering trees in bloom. Ahhhhh, April in Paris. There really is nothing like it, but we'll have to wear our scarves for a couple more weeks... the French saying goes something like "Wear more than a string in spring," except they say April instead of spring because in French it rhymes with string.

This picture is my favorite one in a long time... of course with all the videos I've been making I haven't had much time for photographs. I think they make the blog so much more entertaining. What do you think?

This tree is already loosing its flowers... It must be related to the Magnolia.

It won't be long before people are shedding their winter layers, too.

The dome beyond the trees...

That's the Chamber of Commerce. But who cares?! Look at the trees! Some haven't even sprung their first leaves yet?! Isn't it divine, the way the sun slants through the branches... all the greens and pinks and the robin's egg blue of the sky?! This afternoon, if the sun doesn't disappear into clouds, the grass will be covered with picnic'ers with wine and cheese... and children kicking soccer balls and chasing each other around... the trees. But at the moment--it's 4:00 now--the clouds seem to be winning. Truth be told, I wouldn't mind a little rain.

Spring Fling Videos

2009-03-31T03:38:00.000-07:00

In case you missed my You Tube posts.

It's Tuesday again and Agnes, our housekeeper has just arrived, so before I head out to Au Chien qui Fume, I thought I'd take just a minute to let you know what I've been up to these past few blogless weeks. You didn't think I was sitting around at home, did you?

No... well, yes and no. I'm happily addicted to iMovie, which you wouldn't know unless you're tuned into my YouTube channel. When you go there, be sure to take a look at my "Favorites," too. I just found a couple Def Poetry clips that are not to be missed. And of course you saw my previous posts for my sister's birthday and The Other Writers' Group, right? Since then, I've made three more videos...

The first was in celebration of my dear friends' civil union in New Zealand. I still say it's a crying shame that they can't do this in the United States... they would be so much closer that way. Instead, I had to catch up with their wedded bliss on line... which is fine only because that is exactly how they met... so many years ago. Being film aficionados,they bumped into each other over movie chat and have not stopped watching since, so I was happy and proud to be asked to share in their special day in this special way. See the video here: Civil Union. It's a departure from my usual style only because of compatibility issues in our file exchange. Congratulations, Shaun and Eric! Let me know when you have photos and videos posted from the ceremony and reception.

Almost three weeks ago now, my sweetie and I spent a glorious pre-spring day in our favorite romantic spot, The Champs de Mars. This is where we had our first kiss ;) The Eiffel Tower is as captivating as ever, and our little Filou had so much fun meeting people and running away from the other dogs. I didn't make the video until this past weekend, and he figures prominently. He's going to see Bertrand for a hair cut today after we have lunch. His face is just sooo furry!

And last week, my friend Hillary was in town visiting her charming daughter Sophie who is currently a writer in residence at Shakespeare & Company. We had breakfast and dinner together on Thursday and in between, I took a long wander through one of my favorite places: Pere Lachaise.

I've been thinking a lot about collaboration lately because I'm working with Cecilia Woloch helping her organize her annual Paris Poetry Workshop, and collaboration is the overarching concept this year. We have some fantastic afternoon workshops scheduled with great local poets, and the participants' list is shaping up to be as international as ever. I'm planning on making a video of the week, but you'll have to wait for that.

Because I don't really have great audio capabilities, I set my clips to music. Though I never know in advance which song I'll use--it depends on how the footage feels once I upload it and begin to cut and paste--I'm always amazed at how obvious the musical choice is once I find it. Then I edit the video to fit the song, placing transitions and sometimes definitive moments at specific places in the song. Sometimes this even happens effortlessly. I'm sure this violates all sorts of copyright laws, but if YouTube is any indication, the "owners" don't seem to mind... unless they're drawing up the lawsuits as we speak! I prefer to think of it as artistic exchange. Music is the soundtrack to our lives, after all. And Lord knows I'm not making ANY money for MY efforts ;) I think of it as scrapbooking in the new millenium.

So that should keep you busy for a little while. I can't wait until my friend Ellise gets back from her trip "home" to Dallas. We're planning to whip up a little cooking video to promote her blog Cowgirl Chef and her corresponding cooking classes. They are a hoot if you're looking for an intimate take on American life in this crazy city. She is sooo much fun.

Flashmob Follow-Up

2009-03-09T09:36:00.000-07:00

the first videos... since I was busy reading!

In case you didn't read my post on the Flashmob last month... A Religious Experience:

This was the first video account I found posted... it shows much of what I mentioned in my post:

I THINK this one is my favorite... so far... or it was... until they erased my comment!!!

This one has French narration... the intro is especially good, even if you don't speak French!

Saturdays

2009-03-09T07:44:00.001-07:00

The Other Writers' Group

Since grad school, the only routine I've had is the one that's wrapped around his Monday though Friday work schedule. Fortunately--and unfortunately--he makes enough money to comfortably support the both of us... mostly fortunately since I still don't have the legal right to work in this country! Damn it. But recently, I've become a bit obsessed with finding my own routines even though I've never been a routine kinda gal. And as much as I am enjoying my Tuesdays Au Chien Qui Fume--in fact, my gal pal Alexa is meeting me there tomorrow--one excursion a week hardly seems enough to keep me sufficiently occupied in the 40+ hours a week I have to kill without him.

But there is another weekly activity that I have participated in on-and-off for four years now... This isn't the first time I've written about The Other Writers' Group at Shakespeare & Company, and it certainly won't be the last. But maybe this time is more official than the others. David Barnes began organizing the weekly workshop in 2005, and that is when I stumbled upon it. I was working on my French minor as an undergraduate and had seen a flyer posted on the store's bulletin board. Not much has changed since then. David's keen eye--and ears--continue to facilitate a friendly and savvy environment for English writers from all over the world... some who are only passing through and others who have lived in the city for years.

Here's how it works: Every Saturday evening from 5-7, as many as twenty-five and as few as three-to-five writers and readers meet in the upstairs library at the historic landmark across the Seine from Notre Dame. Some bring copies of their works in process but many don't. Listening and comments are encouraged either way. And let me tell you, you'd be hard pressed to find a more consistently good place to do so. I am constantly amazed at and grateful for the wealth of quality writing and readers that passes through those doors.

One of the most unique things about David's workshop IS those doors... revolving ones if you like. The ever changing faces and voices in the group--due to the changing seasons, vacations, the economy, and so many other fascinating factors--bring equally varied and enlightening works to discuss and critical commentary to rival any I've heard. I don't always take something to read, and there isn't always time to read everything everyone brings, but it isn't ALL about that. There is community at work, and a welcoming one at that.

If you aren't going to be in Paris on a Saturday for a while, maybe you want to check out the video I made after this week's meeting. And thanks for reading... and watching!

Saint Colette

2009-03-06T03:15:00.000-08:00

open letter to my sister on her 29th birthday

Dear Brooke,

Did you know that in this very Catholic country, every single day is named for a saint, this one for Saint Colette. She died on this day in 1447 after devoting her life to reforming the "Poor Clares," a group of poverty stricken and apparently wayward nuns who founded Palm Sunday in 1212. I guess they weren't poor enough for Sainte Colette's liking because--according to Wikipedia--she prescribed more "extreme poverty," bare feet, "the observance of perpetual fast, and abstinence" in an attempt to purify their poor souls.

I, of course, prefer a more modern Colette and so am celebrating this day in her honor and yours. She has a lot to say about women and aging... if you haven't cracked her book of short stories yet ;) Thus begins your thirtieth year and an altogether different decade than the last. You're going out in quite a blaze of glory... a gorgeous new baby and a happy home, a career that promises all of the things our parents always wanted for us, and a persistent beauty fanned by your kindness and grace. I wish you all the self assurance and adventure that these older and wiser years can bring.

I've just come from a long walk all over town... to some of the places we visited when you were here in '05, places I know you love: Along the Seine to the Ile St. Louis, Notre Dame, then back west to Tuileries and the Louvre. There were a few magic moments, as usual... like when a nun came speeding though the swinging park gate at Notre Dame at ten to eight, pushing it open with her front bicycle tire, and when the gardener at Tuileries mistook me for a Russian then wanted to chat with me about movies stars when he found out I was from California, and when a woman found a wedding band at my feet as I was headed for the Pont des Arts and offered it to me for good luck... she tried to insist, but I told her to keep it, that I was never getting married. Then three other women in the next block tried the same scam on me... same exact gold band... probably not even real! Ok, so that wasn't magic after all! Unfortunately these are not the things I caught on film today.

I sure wish you were here now, or that I were there. Instead, this little video will have to do.

I'm thinking of you and hoping you, too, have a wonderful day. Thank you for being my reason...

xo,
S

Tuesdays III

2009-03-03T23:27:00.000-08:00

Au Chien Qui Fume, again

Correction... this is not a chain. Apparently, there are others in town, but they are not related. This is reassuring. I thought the food was too good to be chain made.

Had the fish soup again yesterday... yummy as ever. But everything everyone orders always looks good! Usually it's fish, or shellfish, often a large, ice packed platter of it like this one on display in front of the restaurant.

Yes, complete with a reflection of me, Chatelet, and a tiny slice of sky.

It wasn't a very exciting day but it is nice to be known. I read my Pariscope and contemplated the movies again, but didn't go again even though again, Filou didn't go with me. His eye infection is finally looking a lot better, so I didn't want to drag him around this dirty town all afternoon. Next week, Filou... next week. And maybe Alexa will come with us... if the universities are still on strike, which seems likely.

Tuesdays II

2009-02-25T08:42:00.000-08:00

back to Au Chien Qui Fume this week...

... expecting to be disappointed, especially because I wasn't really all that hungry for fish soup. Of course they have lots of other yummies on the menu, but they do soupe de poisson so well... so I went and I ordered it, all in the name of routine.

The waiter who served me last week didn't take my order, but he did end up bringing my bowl from the kitchen and greeted me with a friendly reconnaissance that surprised us both. I mentioned that the joint was jumpin' and he said the evenings especially have been very busy lately. I suspect the change of pace that I noticed was due mostly to the fact that I had arrived earlier than last week. I had to sit at a floating table for two in the middle of the restaurant. The bar man was lining up saucers with doilies and meringues for after lunch coffees and the fish monger was serving himself a pastis. I couldn't make out any of the conversations around me as they bounced around the room in buoyant warble.

But there was one table that caught my attention... two older gentlemen shared a rather large fish and a half bottle of wine before ordering desert. The one with the short, clean cut hair had a fruit bowl and the other, who was facing me, ordered a slab of cream and custard... maybe lemon. The latter must have mentioned me to the former because he turned to look at me. He tried to see what I was reading--California Quarterly's latest volume--before turning back to his brother, twin brother--I knew it as soon as he turned around. Then he got up and took his coat and hat from the maitre'd and waited by the door. Meanwhile, the less pressed and polished brother caught my eye and took it as an invitation to start up a conversation with me.

The first question is always "What country are you from?" and usually, anyone friendly enough to ask it is happy to meet an American. He seemed a little tipsy, said that "love is life," and then he invited me to dinner. By now it was maybe 3:30 and his brother was standing by the door, all but tapping his foot, but the friendly one kept chatting me up. He would be back with an artist friend for dinner--someone well known, he said--and if I was there, he would be happy to invite me to join them. The idea was enchanting and, truth be told, it hung in the back of my mind as I passed the rest of the day at that small table in the middle of the room drinking Grand Marnier, reading poetry, and writing...

"These crumpled wads of wasted words won't stick. They drip between the walls and the Maitre'd with the thick moustache, and the more I waste, the smaller the words, the vaster the small, blank page... Drinking in the afternoon--la classe Americaine, he says as he works to pay my way. I want to come back again and again. Have dinner with the drunken twin and his artist friend. But can I ask that freedom of my Love, my jealous, zealous Love?"

Ok, not always something worth reading! But there it is anyway. After that, I spent almost an hour on the phone with family and friends back home. Honestly, I don't see how this can last for too many Tuesdays, but yesterday was no disappointment. Thinking I might go to the movies after lunch, I didn't take the Filou; and though I never made it to the movies, it's a good thing I left him home. He would have been clawing at the window after the first hour and a half. Maybe next week, Filou!

Tuesdays

2009-02-19T06:10:00.000-08:00

Au Chien Qui Fume

On Tuesdays Agnes, our housekeeper, comes at one and spends three hours doing what has sometimes taken me days to do myself… if I even do it at all… because I hate it! Dusting, mirror and toilet cleaning, kitchen scouring and heavy duty vacuuming, the occasional ironing. Whew! What a load off. She doesn’t have a key so I usually stay home when she comes. We move around each other in the small apartment, maybe I help her stretch the sheets across the bed or gather up the dirty laundry scattered about, but the late lunch hour is perfect for café sitting, and it's got me thinking...

Every writer needs a café, right? Someplace she can go, away from the laundry and email, and the same old walls. But it has to be someplace particular. Someplace she only recognizes after a few visits but which suddenly becomes familiar… a place where she can sit and forget certain things, remember others. And because I want this to be a routine, I am writing my intentions here so as to be accountable for sticking to it.

So this past Tuesday, I let Agnes in and Filou and I went to a restaurant that I know is very dog friendly... Le Chien Qui Fume—The Smoking Dog is a chain, but the only one to which I’ve ever been is here in Châtelet. In warmer weather the patio is divine, looking out on Les Halles and its sage green trellises, and inside the ambiance is classy without being pretentious. There are pictures of celebrities hung just below the ceilings and little dog statues perched above the bench seats that line the well-partitioned spaces. All this is only part of the reason why I’ve settled on this place.

When we arrived, lunch hour was nearly over. An older woman seated near our table with a matching older man gave us the usual disapproving glances, top to bottom. He didn’t of course. The men rarely do. Plus, he was seated with his back to us. But they were already having desert and Filou settled in at my feet right away, so quiet, so well behaved that it didn’t take long for her to forget me. No sooner had my wine arrived than I found myself privy to the most beautiful conversation I have ever overheard in this beautiful city.

Maybe it was the chocolate, but her face had turned to mush and her eyes were sparkling from wells of almost tears. She was actually smiling… the sweetest smile, truly, and she reached across the table to hold what I can only hope was her husband’s hand. (She spoke with such sincerity and compassion that I thought it might have been her lover.) “When I do things for you, when I show you how much I care, I do it because I want to, not because I have to. Sure, affection is a basic human need, but it’s not about that.” I couldn’t hear his responses, but I could see that he was looking into her eyes, and even from the side of his face, I could tell that he, too, had been moved close to tears.

This is what I wrote in my little notebook: “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this manic happy. I’ve just overheard the most amazing conversation—am still hearing it, in fact. The previously snooty couple across the aisle has been having one of those tell-all talks about their love and life. I could cry… fighting back the tears. I’ll blame the Sancerre.”

So we're all nearly crying, and they were speaking French, of course, so I began writing in French but have translated it here: “Among the most beautiful moments of my whole life. At first, I didn’t want to strain to listen, but I couldn’t help myself... ‘You’ve brought me so much… I think we've succeeded at making a nice life for ourselves, and that’s no small thing.’” She went on to say that yes, they had had their difficulties, but that they had surmounted all of it to arrive at this place today.

And that’s how I chose Le Chien Qui Fume. Their soup de poisson—fish soup with croutons, aioli, and shredded cheese is the best I’ve tasted, but if you’re not careful, they’ll sell you the most expensive wine to go with it. I’ll blame the Sancerre again for what happened next. I gushed to my server about the afternoon I had passed and how I wanted to come back again and again. Then I asked him where I might find my favorite dog statue—they move them around—gauche-ly calling it “le chien qui pisse.”

I love the statue because when he sits on the deck behind the bench seat, it looks like he’s piddling on the head of whoever is sitting there, their back to him, probably completely unaware. Apparently, there is only one pissing dog in the place because the server knew exactly what I was asking for. He laughed while clearing the couple’s table and said he thought it was upstairs, even insisted on bringing it down for me in lieu of my searching.

I took my picture (for you!) and headed for the door with my Filou, and the server said “à la prochaine, alors—see you next time then!” Maybe one day when I’m famous and dead—because I would have to be both!—this place will become lovingly known as Le Chien Qui Pisse. I think it has a certain ring!

When Horses Fly

2009-02-19T02:26:00.001-08:00

Oh my gosh. Outside, the sun is shining in a rare and absolutely cloudless way. It's falling through the windows and warming the new quilt I bought at the local shabby chic shop on Tuesday. I want to go out and just be in it, but I need to tell you some things! Yesterday, I saw a flying horse.

I often see them three at a time, not flying of course, but with Gendarmes all saddled up on top, clattering down Avenue Victoria. In fact, I just filmed a group the other day patrolling the Boulevarde du Palais. I didn't have my camera in hand for the rapturous moment, but it probably wouldn't have made much difference if I had. She was flying pretty fast.

It struck me funny that a lone officer was standing at the corner of the quai and the Pont au Change like that, looking up the Seine more than at the people bustling in all directions or the cars. It was about a quarter to noon and his whistle hung on his lips. I passed him, maybe twenty paces, before I heard the noise that signals a flying horse--The approaching sirens were nothing out of the ordinary, but the whistle, and some shouting followed by a strange absence of movement and chatter on the wide sidewalk, the interrupted flow of traffic.

Just as I turned, there she flew, limbs stretching beyond her barely touching the ground... The moment was suspended. Everything stood still as her police escorts cleared her path, and there she went up the quai towards the Hotel de Ville. I can't say where to after that. Her yellow rain coat flapped only a bit, so graceful were her strides. It must have seemed, to her, that the whole world had stopped. She had gotten loose of her Gendarme and was running. I wonder if she knew where to.

A Religious Experience

2009-02-18T14:28:00.000-08:00

or, Flashmob in Paris the 18th of February.

At my high school reunion a couple months back, an old "friend," after learning that my boyfriend is Muslim, asked me in the most judgmental way, "So what religion are YOU?" It took me a few seconds to respond, for a few reasons... And when I came up with "Literature is my religion," apparently my time to respond had run out and I was thought a heathen. Now I know it's true... at least the religion part! And I don't think S/He will hold it against me ;) This is why.

You see, I went to this Flashmob thing. I had nothing better to do, not until three anyway. So I took my favorite book off the shelf--Jeanette Winterson's Art Objects and chose which passage I wanted to read--pretty much the whole book is worthy and I could never have anticipated how very perfect her voice would be for the occasion. I had no idea what I was in store for.

When I arrived, the Place St Michel was more crowded than usual... more like a Saturday night than a Wednesday at noon. Riot police had lined up their paddy wagons, clearly preparing for the worst. Who knows what can happen when you get a bunch of readers together, right?! I had a few minutes to wait for the whistle and was hoping to run into someone I knew, but alas, I stood alone and smoked a festive clove cigarette while the people came. I wished I had invited that group of students that I passed in front of Sainte Chappelle. I wished I had brought Filou. I wished I had enough courage to walk up to the Addonizio'esque French mom and her daughter with the oh-so-French embroidered beret and to tell them, "Comme vous êtes belles !" Each with her book in hand.

And then the whistle blew. At first it got quiet and I felt self-conscious. This is what I read:

“To begin with the reader. The ordinary reader is not primarily concerned with questions of structure and style. He or she decides on a book, enjoys it or doesn’t, finishes it or doesn’t, and is, perhaps affected by it.”

Second by second the din of dissonant voices rose and within just a few lines I was crying, yes crying... happy to have worn my dark sunglasses despite the ever-present rain clouds.

“When the fiction or the poem has a powerful effect likely to be lasting, the reader feels personally attached to both the work and the writer. Everyone has their favourite books to be read and re-read. Such things become talismans and love-tokens, even personality indicators, the truly bookish will mate on the strength of a spine… The world of the book is a total world and in a total world we fall in love.”

By this time, I was no longer sure if it was the mob or the book that was making me so emotional. I assure you, I could barely hear my own voice and my mouth was trembling and falling all over the words…

“Falling for a book is not the nymph Echo falling for the sound of her own voice nor is it the boy Narcissus falling for his own reflection. Those Greek myths warn us of the dangers of recognizing no reality but our own. Art is a way into other realities, other personalities. When I let myself be affected by a book, I let into myself new customs and new desires. The book does not reproduce me, it re-defines me, pushes at my boundaries, shatters the palings that guard my heart. Strong texts work along the borders of our minds and alter what already exists. They could not do this if they merely reflected what already exists. Of course, strong texts tend to become so familiar, even to people who have never read them, that they become part of what exists, at least a distort of them does. It is very strange to read something supposedly familiar, The Gospels, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, and to find that it is quite unlike our mental version of it. Without exception, the original will be as unsettling, as edgy as it ever was, we have learned a little and sentimentalised the rest….”

I read on through tears… and simultaneous laughter! Giddy does not begin to describe it. I felt much like I did almost twenty years ago coming out from under the anesthesia used by my oral surgeon when he pulled all four of my wisdom teeth! I looked around me and others were giddy, too. Probably not crying, but I didn’t want to stop reading long enough to look so closely. Instead, I pushed through the rush.

“… I do not mean to say that any of this is conscious; mostly it is not, and therein lies a difficulty. Art is conscious and its effect on the audience is to stimulate consciousness. This is sexy…” [and at this moment, I KNOW the older gentleman next to me was listening! I began to calm down.] “… this is exciting, it is also tiring, and even those who welcome art-excitement have an ordinary human longing for sleep. Nothing wrong with that but we cannot use the book as a pillow. The comfort and the rest to be got out of art is not of the passive forgetting kind, it is inner quiet of a high order, and it follows the intensity, the excitement we feel when exposed to something new. Or does it? Only if we are prepared to stay the course, not give up and doze off, not leap from rock to rock after new thrills. Books need to be deeply read which is one reason why it is wise never to trust a paid hack.”

In the unyielding din, I found myself wondering what others were reading, if they had chosen their books as appropriately as I. In the moment, I had given up understanding exactly what I was reading. Everything related to that moment. Every word was about that moment. We were making art… many without even knowing it.

“Our unconscious attitude to art is complex. We want it and we don’t want it, often simultaneously, and at the same time as a book is working intravenously we are working to immunise ourselves against it. Our best antidote to art as a powerful force independently affecting us is to say that it is only the image of ourselves that is affecting us. The doctrine of Realism saves us from a bad attack of Otherness and it is a doctrine that has been bolstered by the late-twentieth-century vogue for literary biography; tying the writer’s life with the writer’s work so that the work becomes a diary; small, private, explainable and explained away, much as Freud tried to explain art away.”

Just as I reached the white space, the second whistle blew and the crowd gave up the joyful noise of a Flashmob well executed, myself included, hooting, hollering and clapping—the muffled clapping of hundreds of hands on the books they were holding, and then the crowd began to disperse.

I’ll post a link to the video once I find it. Or if you find it first, please send it along. I’m just left of the fountain in a red coat and camel colored hat… with dark glasses, of course. Not hard to find in a crowd of black-clad Parisians! In the meantime, here is a quickie video of a Flash-freeze mob at Trocadero.

Short story long, if you have a chance to be a part of a flashmob, do it. Just do it!

Work

2008-11-18T14:36:00.000-08:00

... an uninspiring topic for Spoken Word?

I have exactly one poem about work, but instead of also reading one or two off-topic pieces--I like the big picture a theme can bring to the evening--I decided to search my bookshelf for someone else's words on the subject.

It's no secret that I haven't done a whole lotta "work" since finishing my MFA last spring, but I try to make up for it at home: laundry, dishes, all the daily straightening I can stomach, the mundane and unpaid rituals performed by most women. I don't know if Naomi Wolf occurred to me before or after I thought of that, but one thing's for sure: I hate to miss a chance to share The Beauty Myth. This passage comes from the first chapter aptly titled "Work:"

"'While women represent 50 percent of the world population, they perform nearly two-thirds of all working hours, receive only one-tenth of the world income and own less than 1 percent of world property.' The 'Report of the World Conference for the United Nations Decade for Women' agrees: When housework is accounted for, 'women around the world end up working twice as many hours as men.'

Women work harder than men whether they are Eastern or Western, housewives or jobholders. A Pakistani woman spends sixty-three hours a week on domestic work alone, while a Western housewife, despite her modern appliances, works just six hours less. 'Housework's modern status,' writes Ann Oakley, 'is non-work.' A recent study shows that if housework done by married women were paid, family income would rise by 60 percent. Housework totals forty billion hours of France's labor power. Women's volunteer work in the United States amounts to $18 billion a year. The economics of industrialized countries would collapse if women didn't do the work they do for free: According to economist Marilyn Waring, throughout the West it generates between 25 and 40 percent of the gross national product.

What about the New Woman, with her responsible full-time job? Economist Nancy Barrett says that 'there is no evidence of sweeping changes in the division of labor within households coincident with women's increasing labor force participation.' Or: though a woman does full-time paid work, she still does all or nearly all the unpaid work that she used to. In the United States, partners of employed women give them less help than do partners of housewives: Husbands of full-time homemakers help out for an hour and fifteen minutes a day, while husbands of women with full-time jobs help less than half as long--thirty-six minutes. Ninety percent of wives and 85 percent of husbands in the United States say the woman does 'all or most' of the household chores. Professional women in the United States fare little better. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild found that the women in two-career couples came home to do 75 percent of household work. Married American men do only 10 percent more domestic work than they did twenty years ago. The work week of American women is twenty-one hours longer than that of men; economist Heidi Hartmann demonstrates that 'men actually demand eight hours more service per week than they contribute.' In Italy, 85 percent of mothers with children and full-time paid jobs are married to men who share no work in the home at all. The average European woman with a paid job has 33 percent less leisure than her husband. In Kenya, given unequal agricultural resources, women's harvests equaled men's; given equal resources, they produced bigger harvests more efficiently.

Chase Manhattan Bank estimated that American women worked each week for 99.6 hours. In the West, where paid labor centers on a forty-hour week, the unavoidable fact to confront the power structure is that women newcomers came from a group used to working more than twice as hard and long as men. And not only for less pay; for none."

I did get my usual jitters, the shaky voice and fumbling hands. It may even have been worse than usual because I was reading such a notoriously feminist text with an academic tone at an event meant to delight and dazzle. The last thing I wanted to be was a downer or heavy handed. But I pushed through it, replacing the citations with "blabiddy blabiddy blah," some nervous smiling and giggling. I even let my hair down to appear more feminine. Choosing to read such a passage at Spoken Word was a risk, but I also think I underestimated my audience. A few people thanked me for the enlightening reminders. One woman, French I think, even came over to my table before she left and asked for the name and author, wrote down Shakespeare when I told her I bought the book at the famous English bookstore, at which point I couldn't help but think, "My work here is done!"

It was only slightly easier to read my own words. I wonder what Naomi Wolf would have to say about my one poem about work. In any case, it's a published prize winner--California Quarterly's annual contest last year--so I can share it here... with you. If you'd like a copy of the magazine in which it appeared, (vol 33.4) click here and contact Julian Palley via email for ordering info. Be sure and tell them I sent you! (Note to self: Send more poems to CQ!)

Keep Them All

When you wait tables or teach, you don’t quit
one job for another. You keep them both,
keep them all because you need the money.

You skip a lot of meals because you're broke
or busy. You eat a lot of fast food and feel guilty
when you wait tables or teach. You don't quit

believing it will get better. You don't quit
drinking either. You drink and save up bottles,
keep them all because you need the money.

And you say you do it for the environment—
all that saving, reusing—you do it with people too.
When you wait tables or teach, you don’t quit

stockpiling lovers who ask nothing of you,
lovers you never leave and you never ask to stay.
Keep them all because you need the money.

Let them buy you dinner. Meet them for lunch.
Have sex. Keep living. Keep believing that
when you wait tables or teach, you don’t quit.
Keep them all because you need the money.

Boo Hoo...

2008-11-10T04:52:00.000-08:00

The other shoe...

Amidst all the hope and celebration that last week's election inspired, and apart from the fact that the Electoral College seems once again unable to accurately represent the popular vote, there is one significant disappointment:

“…Bush’s one secure legacy will be [his] demagogic exploitation of homophobia. The success of the four state initiatives banning either same-sex marriage or same-sex adoptions was the sole retro trend on Tuesday. And Obama, who largely soft-pedaled the issue this year, was little help. In California, where other races split more or less evenly on a same-sex marriage ban, some 70 percent of black voters contributed to its narrow victory.” Frank Rich, New York Times

Now if that's not irony...

Why would a group of marginalized individuals vote to further marginalize another group of individuals? And maybe now I understand why Barack went soft on gay rights... to keep the black vote?

Granted, it took a lot more than just the black vote to approve the ban on gay marriage. It wouldn't have made the difference if other groups were less divided on the issue. I can only hope that "President Elect Barack Obama" will finally step up to the plate and remind his supporters that no group of individuals, no individual can be denied their constitutional rights. All (wo)men are created equal... blah, blah, blah.

I once heard the phrase "as goes California, so goes the U.S. and as goes the U.S. so goes the world." But many parts of the world are way ahead of us on this one. In France, there is already such a contract in place... the very one I entered into with my partner last December. It's a sort of civil union called a PACS. There was no white dress, though I guess there could have been... no bridal party, no table piled high with all the gifts we could want from any corporate store, no band, no cake, no crowd of witnesses pretending to believe in the sanctity of one of the modern world's most failing institutions.

I've never been a fan of marriage (click here to see, in action, the battle to define it)... for lots of reasons, and even a civil union seems like a ridiculous formality to me. I even said so much the last time I went to see the authorities about my work permit, which, I'm sure, didn't help my case any. Why do we need a legal contract to love each other? I wish the world would adopt Sweden's ways... no extra benefits for married people. In other words, equal benefits for all, regardless of categorical labels like marital status, sexual orientation, or race.

Marriage might be more successful if people were actually free to do it for other than legal reasons. But probably not. Monogamy itself is little more than social myth, and any governance based on myth is bound to fail... even if we call it love.

I dearly love my gay friends. I have two who are currently in different hemispheres because the U.S. won't acknowledge their relationship... They will probably end up living in the other one, far away from me. And haven't you heard about the gay brain drain calling so many educated, same-sex couples to Canada?
There is the occasional happy ending... my oldest and closest friend and his partner own a successful business and participate actively in their communities, hosting and attending charity fundraisers and offering scholarship programs to University students. They joke that they're so legally (i.e. financially) linked that they could never get divorced. I read a poem for their commitment ceremony several years ago--you see, with enough money and smarts, there are ways around the limitations of the law. At best--and as usual--we're dealing with a class issue.

So now the legal red tape unfurls once again as the fight for gay rights continues, and I have no doubt that one day, gays will be afforded equal rights on all fronts, whether it be legalized marriage or simply some other recognized contract... again, I'm not really sure what they want with our failing hetero institution and all its religious jargon anyway. But whatever they want, I'm on board... boo, hoo!

Woo hoo!

2008-11-04T21:50:00.000-08:00

A few initial thoughts on Barack's election.

I've decided, just now as I'm writing this, to call him by his first name. It was so easy with Hillary. And yes, I was rooting for HER, knowing that I would vote for him too. But when Sarkozy and the French media so warmly embraced him, I started to realize what his election could mean on a global level. Could his can-do attitude actually make people like us again?

Being liked is very important to me. I want to say that it "has always been" very important to me, but the present perfect seems to hint at reform, the potential for change, and I highly suspect that wanting to be liked may well be the death of me someday... my Achilles heel and all that. I try to be a good ambassador, but when I'm not busy projecting my neuroses on my pets, I naturally project them on my country: My country needs to be liked. This balancing act is the essence of ex patriotism! (And on some days, narcissism--If people like my country more, they will like me more ;)

Some say that being liked isn't important, that respect is maybe more important. (I'm trying to think of someone I've respected but not liked.) Of course the U.S. hasn't had much respect in a while either. Now I should probably reread Kant before I go throwing the "L" word around "like this" (hehe!) but it's hard not to like Barack. And it's good finally to have a president elected by something other than corporations, fear, or hanging chads.

True, the "throngs" of supporters at the celebration in Grant Park did cast a pseudo rock star effect... The bullet proof panels on his stage--transparent reminders of the cultural divides in the United States. Just never mind how different that scene was from McCain's garden party! Barack clearly speaks to, and now FOR the next generation. This wasn't a black thing, or a class thing, or a gender thing. If any thing, it was an age thing... Babies of baby boomers taking the reigns.

Here's the thing about change: Change is inevitable, like pennies... and fall.

So the pessimist calls it waiting for the other shoe to drop. The romantic calls it hope, faith. Ultimately, the pragmatist in me wins out: It is what it is... Let's just hope those frat boys don't burn the house down between now and January 20th!

Spoken Word in Paris

2008-11-04T09:04:00.001-08:00

a new home...

To say that the Culture Rapide Cabaret Populare is small would almost be an understatement. It was standing room only and the windows steamed up after just a few readers, right around the time we closed the door on the pickpocket who had been casing the joint. Nevertheless, this home of French slam—poetry, not the Denny’s delight—is booked every night of the week. The drinks are c-h-e-a-p and the décor keeps the conversation going… as if this were a problem for the French! From rue de Belleville, you can’t miss the giant mural on the side of the building—complete with dummy sign hangers…

“Be wary of words.”

Belleville is just ten minutes from our apartment, direct on line 11. This is the latest home of Spoken Word in Paris. I often go alone, but at the last minute, I asked him to go with me. The theme was furniture and I knew I had plenty of things to read, but it has been a season now since the last time I went in July, so I was feeling especially nervous.

He says I read better than some, worse than others. My voice shakes—and the poems in my hands do too, and I never know how to stand. I hate microphones, though I don’t always feel strong enough to project as I should… I haven’t considered myself a performer since back in my high school dance concert days, and THAT wasn’t about my voice.

Since graduation, I’ve been in wallflower mode. It’s easy here… so many characters and talented writers—sometimes one in the same—so many languages and cultural differences, and certainly Spoken Word is the richer for them. But we mostly notice the strange and telling similarities—like how we write more about beds than other pieces of furniture.

There’s music too. Musicians always make me feel inadequate, but the female songwriters are usually my favorite moments of the evening… nimble fingers on their acoustic guitars and velvety voices—instruments themselves stretching across the scale. We left at the break so I didn’t get to hear Erica—long time regular at David’s Spoken Word events, but I did get to hear someone new. She told me she liked the “piggy bank fattened/for April in Paris” in my poem, “Writing Desk.” Nice of her to say so. Hope to see her again…

The next topic is work. I don’t think I have a single work related poem… unless you consider poetry to be a kind of work. I guess that will have to be my angle. My horoscope says that I will soon have some very interesting job offers. Seems like reason enough to send out some resumes… see what falls into place and in which corner of the world.

And the next time you’re in Paris on a Monday… click here.

The Important Things

2008-11-04T03:55:00.000-08:00

It’s Election Day in the states and I’m watching Barack Obama and Michelle vote, live on Euronews—where I can choose to listen to English instead of the ever-annoying French voice over. There are looped segments explaining the Electoral College. Reporters connect the election dots in all directions—foreclosures, health care, and the recession. (We are calling it that now, aren’t we?) Sharply edited interviews with Iraqi citizens reveal mixed opinions, a nation currently overwhelmed with change. The “no comment” segment shows the long line of Kenyans in Kisumu waiting to cast their hand-written votes into a cardboard box. Notice there are two boxes and only one line.

Though we have plans to keep track via the continuing coverage—over couscous and Scrabble—I’ve just gotten word of an all-night election party to watch the results come in and to celebrate Obama’s victory. “Barack Obagels and cream cheese beginning at 3 AM… a Sarah Palin pinata which will be filled, naturally, with hot air. This event is open to non-Americans and even Republicans (we can hope that they see the error of their ways).”

I do hope the results are as positive as anticipated. It would be nice to have a president that “most” of us want… “for a change!” (Sorry. Had to say it ;)

Don’t worry! I did send off my vote-by-mail ballot before I left. Meanwhile, the biggest change I’m experiencing is the weather. One week back in town and I'm finally not aching at the mere thought of the cold. Morning temperatures were near freezing just after I arrived, but then the rains came—and they were lovely—and now the sun, fallen leaves, intermittent clouds. Two days of UV rays and comfortable evenings is sooooo good for this Californian fresh off the latest heatwave!

Whatever the supposedly unusual weather, no matter the home I’m in, it’s awe inspiring how fall flies by. As a student, I became aware of the slow awakening that happens in the first few weeks of the fall, then the downhill spiral to Christmas before winter really sinks in her teeth. This year I’m learning that fall is also a pretty busy time in the publishing industry.

I have officially sent out several copies of two manuscripts to contests of various scope and prize, and though many of the poems—especially those in the longer collection—need some tweaking, it feels really good to just get them bundled and sent away. I always wait until the last minute thinking that I’ll finally get around to those final revisions! And there are plenty of poetry contests in the fall.

The most recent batch of submission was postmarked not long after midnight on October 31st… at the only 24 hour post office in Paris. We took the dog. It was only slightly raining.

Bring on the rejection letters!

De Ma Fenêtre

2008-09-17T05:26:00.000-07:00

La Rentrée

It’s noon, and a group of newly arrived students trickles out of the Hôtel Châtelet Victoria and gathers on the sidewalk where they are briefed by their older and presumably wiser instructor before being led away towards the Place du Châtelet and on to who-knows-where—Notre Dame, Saint Michele, Cluny, La Sorbonne, all patiently waiting to impress. The shortest (girl) and tallest (guy) walk together, bringing up the rear.

Up the rear… “Up yours!”—“Enculée!” (On-que-lay) I want to yell at this terrible city. Leave it to the tourists and wide-eyed exchange students. Just as everyone comes flooding back after summer break and long August vacations, I am packing my bags. Will I miss the noise of the sirens and motorcycles and busses and delivery trucks on the streets below? No. The wandering, screaming, sometimes singing drunks in the middle of the night? No. The piss at our door? The homeless woman who sleeps on the metro vent across the street and doesn’t accept food? The Italian landlord who never returns our calls? No, no and no. And I certainly won’t miss the public service clerks telling me “No.” Will I miss the scolding—in restaurants, stores, the metro, and at the markets? No. At least I hope not.

The pets are all cleared for their long voyage back to the states—two days of paperwork and visits to Dr. Payancé for health examinations and rabies vaccinations. We spent Saturday chasing around the suburbs looking at three-story houses with yards. Three stories… his, mine, and ours. He needs rooms where he can breathe easier, rooms off-limits to the animals, doors to close to keep out the allergens, windows that open onto green. The house in the quaintest town was too far from the city, too many trains to his work. The nicest house was just 100 meters from the train station—a station on the most direct line for traversing the city each morning and night—in a big, small town with little charm, though it boasts a chateau at the end of the wide main street and a forest on the other side of the tracks. But at the end of the day, we couldn’t decide to move out of the city we love.

So with only this day left before leaving, I have manuscripts to polish and post. If I wait until I get “home,” friends and family will vie for my attention, and I fear that the work won’t get done. There are, after all, the proverbial i’s to dot and t’s to cross—words to revise, deadlines to meet, checks to write, envelopes to address. I’ll take Filou out. We’ll walk to BHV for paper, binder clips, and big envelopes to carry my work away. I suppose I could put them all in my suitcase to mail from California, but I want traces of Paris on these packages… to match the subject matter printed on the pages.

I’m looking forward to being “home…” at least for a while. He’s going home, too… to Tunisia for the end of Ramadan, but only for a week. I suspect the weeks without the animals and me will be harder on him than the time away will be on me. I’ll miss the autumn sun slanting through the windowpanes. I will miss our dinners together—at home and in our favorite restaurants. I will miss walking… and walking, drinking wine and cappuccinos in cafés and watching the myriad Parisians pass. I will miss Saturdays at Shakespeare & Company, and David… his Spoken Word nights. I’ll miss Alexa’s frank and saucy tales. I will miss Ellise… our freakishly parallel lives spilled over salads and Gamay in Montmartre. But I’ll be back… at least for a while. I always imagined a bi-continental life. Maybe all these complications are just the universe at work making the decisions I haven’t been able to make for myself.

Last week’s flowers on the dining table are pretty much dead, ready to go out with the last bag of trash. I smoke a cigarette in the bathroom where the last load of laundry turns in the machine. It’s taken me a year to find the smoothest setting, having always used the “E” cycles which make the machine jump and clatter on the white-hard tile. I loose myself in the whir of the non-economical spin. The air is cold and the sun moves further away. I hang my wet clothes on the rack by the bedroom window and hope they’ll be dry by tomorrow.

Anniversary

2008-09-11T19:33:00.000-07:00

a wish for tranquility

He bought me this beautiful bouquet as a peace offering after last weekend’s fight—something about my snapping at him when he was trying to teach me some auto-formatting tricks on Word—which went from an insignificant quibble to “it’s over” in record time. He spares no expense in making each bouquet full and dense, perfectly balanced in color and fragrance, and consequently has a good relationship with the flower vendor in the Metro here at Châtelet. Usually, the flowers are just because. I remember the days when he brought me more modest arrangements, single roses before simple dinners at my place in the fifteenth.

Our first date was up there in the clouds… He said he could make my television receive more than one channel, and he did. He loves the idea that I might have used my TV as a ploy to get him to my apartment. Now we have too many channels, most with nothing worth watching, but we do anyway. The apartment we share is twice the size of either one of our studios was back then, but some days it feels just too close, especially now that he’s been diagnosed with pet allergies… a big problem with two cats, a Shih Tzu and only 250 square feet. They haven't been allowed on the bed in months.

Tomorrow marks one year since I left California to pursue life and love in the City of Light, and I have to admit: The year is coming to a rather disappointing close. Let my try to sum up its lessons: French red tape is endless and incredibly sticky; Long distance friendships are tricky and new ones are hard to come by—especially in my small circle of writers and expats who are forever coming… and going; And love is elusive, especially, to put it bluntly, when you’re someone’s bitch—at turns and in all senses of the word.

Next week, Filou, the cats and I are headed for Los Angeles. I will attend my twenty-year class reunion and spend a lot of time with family and friends. I do have a return ticket and fully intend to use it, but having been shut down yet one more time by French government clerks, I don’t know quite how I'll go forward in this inhospitable land of far-fetched dreams and close quarters. Something's got to give, and I may very well end up back in California teaching for the spring semester. This season of turning leaves is bittersweet, to say the least.

For now, I have a few months of reflection and reminiscing to look forward to, so I will try to be more religious about my blogging. For the past year, I’ve had nothing but time. Not needing or wanting to chase down under-the-table tutoring gigs left me free to do so many things, but it always felt like there would be another endless lot of days to use wisely. Now, pondering the potentially numbered days I may have left here, I can only hope that the old “emotion recollected in tranquility” will lead to some fruitful writing, if not on this blog, then on some page somewhere.

Grace Kelly

2008-08-01T03:59:00.000-07:00

at the Hotel de Ville

I think it was the hottest day (so far) this summer, and I was feeling anything but graceful... all sweaty and exhausted from Wednesday's running around. But I had been meaning for weeks to visit the much publicized Grace Kelly exhibit at the Hotel de Ville, so I took a break from my errands and joined the cue in the afternoon shadow of the impressive building. The wait was about 45 minutes followed by a quick pass though the metal detector, my small purse through the x-ray machine.

Now I don't pretend to be a great fan... Until Wednesday, all I knew about the princess was that she was one--and that Madonna names her in "Vogue." Since visiting the exhibit, I know only a little more, but enough... for now. These photos come from the Taschen book I bought on my way out. Admission to the exhibit is free, so the book seemed requisite, especially since no photos are allowed.

As an American film star, she made 10 movies in the 3 1/2 years (before she met His Serene Highness Prince Albert Rainier III of Monaco in 1956,) three of which were Alfred Hitchcock films. The exhibit had letters and telegrams on display spanning the length of her whirlwind career, many from Hitchcock himself who seems to have been one of her biggest fans. These photos come from her work on Dial M for Murder in which her character's husband hires someone to kill her.

What I find most fascinating about these photos is Francois Truffaut's observation that "Hitchcock filmed scenes of love as if they were scenes of murder and scenes of murder as if they were scenes of love." Though fascinating, this is not exactly groundbreaking art... I observed the same thing at the Musee D'Orsay and wrote a poem about it, "An Hour with Madame Sabatier:" "How death can look like pleasure/on a woman..."

Film footage projected on the walls of the salon shows segments from her movies and her life. But my favorite aspect of the exhibit was the generous spattering of costumes and dresses placed around the rooms. This one is platinum colored satin with a matching shawl. She wore it to the Oscars in 1955 where she won Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for her roll in The Country Girl. Of course, there's nothing country girl about the dress!

She wore another gorgeous dress on screen in a film I might have seen while channel surfing back in California--Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. I love to see the designers' sketches... what a production to dress such an icon!

At the far end of the salon is her royal wedding dress, silk, I think. I have no pictures of her in that lovely gown, but I love this pre-wedding photo of her with Louis Armstrong, taken more to show off her giant rock-of-a-ring than to prove her interest in jazz!

After seeing her invitations, seating plans, and photographs from the big event, you climb a few steps to a long corridor lined with some of the ball gowns she wore as Her Serene Highness, Princess of Monaco. I wonder if my mother and grandmother thought of Princess Grace as I did/do Princess Di... My grandma even shared her name, though she always used her middle name instead.

The couple were married twenty-six years before she died after a car crash due to a stroke. She was almost fifty-three. She lived a charmed life which ended tragically as do so many charmed lives... Reportedly, Princess Di was the only funeral attendee from the English Royal Palace.

Grace Kelly once said that her success came too easily for her to truly appreciate it. Isn't this the case for so many beauties? She has been remembered as a vixen dressed as an angel... at once expressive and repressed... but these easy juxtapositions are too typically feminine.

In any case, I think that her legacy is her passionate spirit outfitted in pure grace.

Paris Plages

2008-07-24T08:11:00.000-07:00

The last time I wrote, the spring leaves were just opening, waxy and bright green. Now they are beginning to fall. But the gay mayor of gay Paris has a grand way to celebrate these dog days of summer... From July 21 to August 21 the city of Paris closes the right-bank access road stretching the length of the two isles and installs beach style amusements. It's (not quite) like we have a beachfront apartment! This is a little recount of my morning walk...

Pss) I will have to look into formatting options for future posts as the quality of this one leaves a lot to be desired.

I love Pink Martini's affinity for parody... despite the festive tone of this song, it's about a woman burnt out on her scene: "My bedroom is like a cage... the sun reaches in the windows... I've known the smell of love... now, a single flower among my entourage makes me sick." And the repeated chorus translates to, "I don't want to work, I don't want to lunch, I only want to forget... so I smoke..."

You might also like to check out their crazy rendition of "Que Sera, Sera!" It should make a girl think twice about that old adage!

De Ma Fenêtre II

2008-03-06T08:52:00.000-08:00

(From My Window II)

He forgot his cell phone this morning when he left for work. I knew it as soon as he shut the door. He slipped out so quietly. So he hasn’t called today, and it’s either because our home phone isn’t working and he doesn’t have my cell phone number memorized OR he just needed an excuse not to call me today.

I spent the morning taking Filou to the vet. It was raining and he just had a bath two days ago, so he didn’t get to run free, and he’s gotten so big—5.7kg—that he’s heavy in his cage. (I wonder how much of it is hair.) But we braved the metro and he howled in the trains. All the Frenchies were scowling at me.

Filou likes Dr. Payancé, probably because he plucks the hair from his ears. Turns out he has an infection—Filou, not Dr. Payancé—too gross to get into here, so he has some antibiotics and other treatments to tolerate for the next two weeks. I guess so do I. Dr. Payancé says that as soon as Filou starts lifting his leg to piddle like a big boy, I should bring him in for the ol’ snip snip.

I like Dr. Payancé, too. We met him at Porte de Clignancourt where we bought a couple of storage pieces from his space at the flea market—his weekend hobby, though I don’t know if hobby is the right word. When he was delivering our furniture, he met Filou, so he gave us his Dr. card. He says he has been stocking up on decorative objects, carafes and crystal. Maybe we’ll go to the flea market this weekend.

I just got back from lunch at the crêperie downstairs and will probably do some phase of the laundry and the dishes before the man gets home. I don’t know what we’ll do for dinner tonight. It’s my sister’s birthday… sure do miss her.

The parking patrol officers are combing the streets… One man argues, or tries to, but she just goes on writing the ticket. A delivery man—parked on the sidewalk on Avenue Victoria—just lets her write it and leave, takes it from the window and slips it into his jacket pocket, goes on loading his hatchback.

Police on horseback clatter up the street, and the clamor of recess creeps around the corner, gets tangled in the tree branches. I can’t believe it’s taken me until now to realize that THIS is the tree lined street Shaun saw in my cards last summer… signifying happiness. Where are the mirrors, the man with the gold-framed glasses?

Le Renard

2008-03-02T06:43:00.000-08:00

A man’s hand smoothing a dead girl’s eyes shut, a wedding ring gleaming. An exotic dancer still costumed, dead in her bathtub only half full of water, her wrists scarred, no blood…

A wife reports her husband missing, two days and Gerd, the detective, tells the wife that no news is good news and she should call him if she hears any. When the husband finally calls his wife, he asks her to meet him in their usual place…

Now someone else is in the dead girl’s house, someone who knows where the safe is, in the stairwell behind the innocuous art…

Phone booths and gloves, people following people in cars, lurking in shrubs, money changing hands at the men’s club…

She was asking too much of him, wanted him to divorce his wife. He tried to make it look like suicide.

“Make it look like:” Maquiller—to make up, as with make-up… invent… but I digress.

It’s called Le Renard, or The Fox. France 2, a public television station, runs two episodes back to back each afternoon. The series is German voiced over in French, and the last line of every show is “Monsieur so-and-so or Madame/Mademoiselle, you’re under arrest for the murder of M. so-and-so.” Then the camera stops rolling on a final image, usually the accused being led away or handcuffed—the background for the closing credits with good German names like Helmut, Eberhard, Rolf (at least two,) Johannes, Jutta, Gunter, Helga, Hermann, and Claus (again, at least two of them.)

The main character is never addressed as Renard. His name is Leo Kress, Commissioner Kress. He’s balding, with sparse, white hair and thick, almost round wire-rimmed glasses that make his blue eyes look just a little too close together, or maybe they are. He has a sturdy nose with one of those short, narrow moustaches, not wider than his lip, and three inspectors in his équipe: Werner—the young, efficient evidence collector… his glasses are like mini versions of le Renard’s; Axel Richter—an awkward, lightly black man who has a lot to learn from the Renard. Axel does most of the driving and usually works in tandem with the third—Gerd, whose name I was able to hear only after I had seen it in the credits, a younger Renard, no moustache, usually tan. If I pay very close attention, I can almost grasp their witty banter. There’s also the coroner who arrives first on the scene—ready, when the detectives arrive, with his preliminary estimates of time and cause of death. He emphasizes their inexactitude.

Most of the stories involve a love triangle, or other polygon, older men and younger women, drugs and cash, and family businesses with feuding spouses, parents and siblings vying for control. Often there is a pair of murders, or a second one—always one of the suspects. Everyone is a suspect. Consequently, the list of standard alibis is long: “I was drunk, passed out, I don’t remember anything.” “I was in my car.” “I was at home, alone,” or they say they were with a spouse who may or may not agree to confirm the lie. This alone rarely indicates the murderer.

The detectives uncover large amounts of cash which might equate to hired hits, drugs, or bribes—in French, faire chanter, “someone making someone else sing.” Cell phone calls are researched, fingerprints dusted, passports are confiscated, and agendas—calendars and motives—are considered, but mostly there is a lot of questioning. The usual “Last night, where were you?” features prominently in the promo and in various versions throughout the drama: “Where were you last night between ten and midnight?... Where were you this morning between three and five?” They say they are obligated to ask this question, but they never start with it. They work up to it.

Eyes shift, hands fumble, and the camera captures the inspectors catching it all, informing their instincts. They exchange knowing glances, and roll their eyes behind the backs of the liars they interrogate, and everybody lies for all sorts of reasons: secretaries claiming not to have had sexual relations with their dead bosses, husbands—or wives—claiming not to have known about their dead spouses’ affairs, parents protecting—and implicating—children. Now that I think about it, I don’t remember the Renard ever finding himself in the difficult situation of having to charge a child with murder, but the violations against them—and the ones against women—never go unpunished.

Like with many stories, it’s not so much what’s said or shown as what’s not. The answers are always in what’s missing… that is until all the pieces come together just before the arrest. A few murderers evade the Renard by committing suicide—jumping from a window, a noose, a shot to the head with the murder weapon.

The opening credits appear over a series of segments from the ensuing episode—the story’s characters—suspects or victims—each in various moments of stress, pivotal moments you will soon be able to contextualize. Thanks to these almost previews, you know from the beginning if you’ve seen the episode before, so at first it’s confusing when there is an actor who has played a character in another episode. Does s/he make a good criminal? Was s/he the culprit last time? I can never remember. On very rare occasion, they play reoccurring characters. Maybe I should try to guess from the opening scenes who the murderer is. Only sometimes is it the most obvious choice—the unidentified man smoothing the dead girl’s eyes shut, the missing husband.

De Ma Fenêtre I

2008-03-02T05:23:00.000-08:00

(From My Window I)

It’s Sunday morning and he’s sleeping late. Filou is snuggled against my left leg on the sofa and Buddy stakes out the space to my right. Sophia is, as is often the case, perched on the breakfast bar by the open kitchen window. Outside, intermittent drizzle drifts between the buildings like aspiring snow. Someone once told me that it’s always a little bit warmer just before it snows.

On the sidewalk below, people line up around the Théâtre du Châtelet for a matinee of something. The access road along the Seine is closed to traffic, but the bicyclists and pedestrians haven’t taken to it yet. A crowd of demonstrators descends upon the Hotel de Ville where a few early-bird ice skaters make their circles in the temporary rink. If there were any leaves on the trees lining Avenue Victoria, I wouldn’t even know about the demonstration; though from here, I have no idea what they’re marching for. Pigeons. Sirens.

I’d take pictures for you, but I can’t find my camera. He asked for it yesterday when he was working on the printer and he doesn’t know where it is. Anyway, I have a long list of things to do today… Laundry is waiting in the bath room, unfinished crafts are piled up on the table. I want to make a fruit salad for brunch, maybe a goat cheese omelet and some toast with orange marmalade. There will be dishes. We’re too late for the Sunday marchée, so we will certainly make the trip up rue Saint Denis—past the closed store fronts and daylight hookers—for the week’s produce and kosher meats. I want to paint my nails… and then there’s the Salon d’Agriculture at the exposition center.

I like the days he’s home. It’s nice to have someone to do things with… for. While we’re out, I gather images, keep them until they burn a (w)hole. I’ve got a few poems in the air, on my virtual desktop, but I probably won’t get to them today… unless he’s content to stay a while in bed and watch TV. (He likes the science and society documentaries, and there’s always a few worth rewatching on PersoTV—a cable channel devoted to client generated footage and films.) If not, there’s always the solitude of his work week…

A Taste for Translation

2008-02-02T01:21:00.001-08:00

I've been sick in bed all week, so I decided to recycle an article that I wrote last January for Kate Ozbirn at California Quarterly. She wanted something that discussed the pleasures and challenges of literary translation for a general audience, and so I think it might just be appropriate to share here and now.

At the time I wrote the article, I had just finished two translations for The Translator's French Quarter... one of my own poems into French, which required more than editorial assistance, and an English translation of a short story by one of my favorite contemporary French writers, Hélène Cixous. I was in Paris for the winter break thinking only of my thesis and trying to take some time off before my last semester of grad school. Much to my surprise, Kate received the article without hesitation and published it in her "Poetry Letter & Literary Review" with minimal revisions not reflected below. Thanks to her quick work, it was my first publication.

I have since had the honor of receiving a prize in their annual poetry contest this past summer and the poem has been published in their recent volume, 33.4. For a copy, send a note explaining your request, and a check for $7.50 to: Membership Chair, 21 Whitman Court, Irvine, CA 92617.

Thanks for reading!

A Taste for Translation

Tonight the Paris rain falls—not in “ropes” like the French idiom says it does and like it does in August, but in tiny droplets that would make weightless snowflakes if it were February instead of January—nothing to catch a cold over, but enough to turn the streets wet and dark like Ezra Pound’s black boughs; and so the word “rain” does not suffice. I find a heated terrace and duck in with my groceries, “command” a cup of tea, and pick up a menu waiting on the table next to me for the dinner crowd.
Montmartre is a tourist friendly quartier, so each item on the menu is translated into English: The Pave de Rumsteck becomes a “Rumpsteak Paving Stone,” the Cote de Boeuf is an “Ox Coast” instead of a “side of beef,” or “spare ribs,” or whatever it is, and under Tartine de Maison the translator has written “Pot House.” Given the context, these are amusing mistakes that a native English speaker could not make, but as a second language learner myself, I admire the restaurant owner’s courage—though some would say haste or simply inexperience—to sit down with a dictionary and put such literality to print.

Because to translate into a second language often results in such folly, most of us stick to the target languages we know best—our native ones, but levels of fluency in source languages vary widely. Many translators maintain a certain distance from the original text hoping to most naturally replicate it by working in collaboration with others who have more instinctive facility with the source language—like Pound did, and like the owner of the restaurant should have. They may not even care to learn the source language. Others prefer to go it alone, dictionaries, thesaurus, and all their own interpretations on the table like the ingredients of a family recipe to be sampled and measured together until it tastes the way it is remembered. The main difference between the two extremes is that those who do speak the languages they translate may be more obviously under the influence of the source language than those who do not. This serves to stretch the boundaries of the target language. Furthermore, the more sharply the translator’s own voice is honed, the more likely it is to infiltrate the resulting translation.

To pretend that a translation is, can or should be free of such influence is also folly, because whatever aesthetics the translator assumes, there is always collaboration in translation, even if only between the author of the original text and the translator. Sounds of the language and their effects, the breaths and lengths of the lines, and the subtle implications of word choice and order are initially lost forcing the translator into inventions and manipulations that beg permission from the original authors. The art of translations is a process, an attempt to reconstruct the images and impressions of the source text in a language that did not give birth to them to begin with. This communication with another writer is the literary translator’s driving force, the raison d’être, the passion for slowly transforming a text’s every word, and it is as tantalizing to the poet translator as a Tartine de Maison would be to someone with the munchies.

More importantly, this exchange makes the process of translation an inevitably regenerative exercise that teaches us, word by word, the possibilities and limitations of our own languages. We must decide what strangeness can be stretched and still understood and what will take our readers too far away from the original, especially those readers who cannot penetrate the text as we can by having an understanding of both languages. We revel in the multitudinous gains and losses before deciding how best to recast the text to keep meaning from being lost or even only refracted taking the reader to places never implied while the meaning and music of the poem slip and slide between languages, cultures, and epochs. For example, the French word vrai divides itself into two English ones: “true” and “real.” How the translator chooses one or the other should have as much to do with the sounds and rhythms of the surrounding words as it will with theoretical debates about the differences between the two. The translator must look forward into the minds of the readers and back into the mind of the author being channeled, and the older the source text, the more complicated the questions.

Despite all this reader-writer-text interplay, ultimately, like an archer shooting arrows at a bull’s eye, the translator pursues the target language alone word by word finding it sometimes easy to hit the mark, sometimes impossible. If, for example, a native French speaker were to read this article, the image of a duck—perhaps dunking its head into a lake after tiny bits of food—would be evoked by my ducking into the café terrace. The verb “to duck” does not translate, but the resulting image is almost appropriate. On the other hand, the menu’s implication that a choice cut of meat is a paving stone is hardly a desirable one in a town so chock full of competing restaurants.

Still, I decide not to report the menu’s miscommunications to the server, pay for my tea, and head off into the evening. Perhaps the absurd connections will inspire some non-Franglais speakers to reconsider the assumptions of their relationships with English. Besides, the slight rain has stopped and the clouds are clearing. By the time I reach my apartment, I will have a different sky above me and a whole new batch of questions to try to answer. I will be up late tonight for there is much to be said, and re-said.

Unfortunately, not all poems can be translated, but we continue to try, to search for ways of conveying what can be said in other languages. After all, the main reason we translate is to share the foreign texts we so enjoy with others who do not speak the language, and, as with any collaboration, there will be compromises, but we believe the rewards of such gifts to be greater than the costs.

Smoke Free Paris

2008-01-19T10:57:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't heard by now, on January 2 the ever-rumored no-smoking law was passed in France; and while I am generally in favor of smoking prohibition, I have discovered a few, shall we say "problems" with its Parisian application...

1. Sometimes, especially at night, the sidewalks in front of certain bars are so packed with banished smokers that it's easier to take your chances and walk past in the street...

The weather has been unseasonably mild, so this isn't as uncomfortable as it will be soon enough. This small crowd is nothing to compared to others I've pushed my way through.

2. This fact and increased outdoor smoking in general lead to other obvious problems...

... though at least one bar has created this simple solution...

"Would you please put your butts here."

3. Apparently, police officers are still free to smoke in their patrol cars and paddy wagons. This doesn't seem fair, does it? (I'd love to show you a picture of this, but I have yet to be quick enough, let alone brave enough, to capture it.)

4. Hookah bars all over town have gone out of business. C'mon! Even in California we allow hookah smoking, don't we? And if I want to get political, this fact alone could be seen as an intentional side effect aimed at Arab establishments... but no one seems to be going there over here.

5. Last but not least, the problem I see as saddest is a certain change in lifestyle that this regulation has put into motion. Smoking--more specifically the required lingering associated with it--is at the core of Parisian culture... not that all Parisians smoke, but the ones that do have always set a sort of pace, a counterbalance to the frenzied city life so many Parisians live.

As you can imagine, this has been a hot topic on the news and in cafes and bars. Some establishments are already reporting reduced profits, and interviews show smoker after smoker talking about how their coffee breaks (pause cafe) and their famous conversations have become much shorter, even less frequent.

In the long run, people will adapt. Most are glad to have smoke free meals, and most of the smokers I've ever known even like the excuse to excuse themselves from social situations at certain intervals. I'm curious to see what the regulation does to cigarette sales. The line at our neighborhood tabac doesn't seem any shorter, but you know... change takes time.

At any rate, here's hoping the weather stays agreeable.

Grey

2008-01-15T04:26:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, I make it to The Other Writers' Group held upstairs at Shakespeare and Company on Saturday afternoons. Last week the room was packed... people occupying every inch of bench that circles the room beneath the bookcases... English speakers from every corner of the globe, men, women, old, young... poetry and fiction writers with varying degrees of experience--in writing and in life. This particular Saturday started with a short story about a young man feeling glum after coming to Paris who was fascinated by another young man who seemed better acclimated to the foreign experience. One was dressed all in white, the other in mostly black... I bet you can guess which was which. This seemed to me most cliché, the black and whiteness of the characters and their attitudes, but ultimately, the scene got me thinking...

One member of the group asked why he should care about these characters. I took a more compassionate, yet still critical approach: "This is clearly YOUR story..." the young author was having trouble adjusting to what was supposed to be an idyllic experience abroad. I know this dilemma intimately. "Why don't you try drafting out more of the images and emotions in first person..." a suggestion more than a question. His desire to separate himself from his troubled protagonist by using the third person only served to elevate the tried and tired nature of the narrative. I wanted to be closer... to someone, anyone... closer than third person, closer than the unbelievability of black and white allows. I continued, of course: "For me, the grey in Paris has always been a challenge. Look outside. Nothing is black and white here. Everything is grey, and that can be depressing, but I think if you explore the greys in your story, your characters will have more depth, if this is what you want..."

Sometimes the bells of Notre Dame or a passing ambulance siren reminds me to gaze out the window of the famous bookstore. I always feel lucky to be there, even when the scene is grey and wet and chaotic along the busy quai... and I'm sure this view has its effect on my listening...

Another guy read a section from his novel in progress about gay angst and the difficulties discerning between love and sex, reality and virtuality in his evolving world, again from the safe distance allowed by the third person. The critic asked again why he should care, and another older member of the group reacted strongly to the almost graphic references to gay sex. I, on the other hand, wanted to be sitting at that table in that bar, perhaps in the Marais, with those three gay lovers, not just passing by on the street hearing some supposedly omniscient recount of their exchange: "I think your intentions are noble, but in my experience, the lines between sex and love are not so easily drawn." I returned to the idea of grey and applied it also to his search for the real in the virtual. "True and false, real and virtual are just words." He asked me if the first person might help him as well, and I had to say it probably would.

Real or virtual?

This building just off the Champs Elysees is under construction... not because it's melting. Turns out that's just a giant canvas made to trick the eyes of passers by.

Even indoors, some of my favorite scenes are in shades of grey... like this sculpture of Sappho at the Musée d'Orsay.

... and speaking of women poets, one read at our workshop, or rather she recited... a very moving poem she wrote with the new year in mind. She hadn't written it down... but she read so lyrically and went on so long that we all fell into a sort of zone, rivers and bridges and breezes taking over our thoughts. Many were bothered by her repeating images and lines, but to me, they seemed essential to the poem's trajectory... cycles and community and the dependability of movement and change. But what troubled me was a phrase that came early in the poem... something like "You can hang a bridge on a single breath if your spirit is strong and true." What is a spirit anyway? And how do I know if I have one, and if it's strong and true? These abstractions seemed terribly exclusive, making this listener feel as if her lack of understanding was some sort of spiritual defect. When I mentioned it, she was disappointed. She had, of course, chosen those words specifically. Does this make them the best words for the poem? Did my reaction to her abstractions reveal too much about me? What does it mean when "true" means nothing?

I've spent the last week waiting for perfectly grey days to photograph, but the truth is, (hehe) as grey as Paris is in January, there is always color here. The khaki Seine, the warm beige buildings like the paths in the parks, the patchy sky... especially in the morning and at at night. I think the French have done an exceptional job of working with the landscape's light.

In Color Theory, I learned that white is the absence of all color... black, the presence of all colors fully saturated. In life, I have learned that all days, even grey days are only in between. Even what we are inclined to describe as black is only some dark grey, and anyone who's painted anything ever is only vaguely familiar with the endless spectrum of whites.

Maybe all this talk of grey is a result of my visit to the colorful Pompidou Center last week. I resisted its modern exterior for so long, but have come to love it best of all the museums I've visited. Its permanent collection is already a bit text book, but on Level 4, the exhibits are always changing. This last time, I was drawn to the black and white watercolors...

I especially like the way the art is changed simply by photographing it... the reflections in the glass add another element, record the interaction.

The contours and relief of this white "cave" have all been traced in black and you can walk around inside... you don't have to take off your shoes, but flash photography is still strictly prohibited...

And there is the usual dose of black and white photography. Who doesn't love black and white photography, right? But the term seems inadequate now... BLACK AND WHITE... noir et blanc, rain or shine, right and wrong, good and evil, true and false, good and bad, happy... sad. It is possible, maybe even necessary to be both. The human "spirit," like its landscape, is not so easily divided; it is simultaneously strong and weak, for even strength can be a weakness, and weakness a strength; it is both true and false, even if only misguided. Sex is rarely either making love or simply sex; desire is friend and foe; hunger is passion and lack and too many other things to list.

I'm sure I could go on and on, but the city streets are calling...

It's rainy and windy and very grey out, but Cole Swensen is lecturing tonight in the Marais as one of her collections has just been translated into French. For me, she is the the Pompidou of poetry... a sort of theory in verse. I look forward to the brain stretch. Coincidentally, her recent publication, The Glass Age, works out connections between art, life, and industry... especially the meaning of reflections, fragility and transparency. I may have to pick up later where I left off... thanks for listening.

Chats Means Cats

2007-12-31T01:13:00.001-08:00

In case you didn't know...

Chats means cats, too/two... so I named my blog for my cats. I liked the word play of "chat" meaning "talk" in English--especially on-line, and "cat" in French. And then there's "quatre"--"four" in French, but it's pronounced like cat... especially if you have trouble with the elusive French "R" ...like I do! But I only have two, cats that is... for now!

Here's a little video of them in a rare affectionate moment... "sharing" the space heater. I guess a minute and a half is all we can ask of Sophia!

By the way, the French "chats" is pronounced a bit like "sha" with an almost "ch" pronunciation of the "sh," and a sharp emphasis on the A for the missing T--the same A as in "as" and "cat," but sharper. The French are famous for "swallowing" letters... and you never pronounce the plural S... ugh.

Enough with the quotation marks... apart from getting a handle on the language, probably the most difficult thing about relocating to Paris was getting my two ten-year-old cats here, and it was well anticipated, what with all the vet visits and documentation it required... Being an expat, even an expat cat, requires lots of documentation. You've probably heard that the French are famous for their endless red-tape. Vive la bureaucracy! But more on that later! ;)

I wish I had a picture of the three of us standing at the curb at the airport where my friend Merryl dropped us off last month, but the moment was too stressful, or so I thought, to stop for pictures. Buddy--my cowardly lion--was howling, and I was dreading the eleven hour flight with him next to me in the cabin. A reservations agent had told me that he would travel in the cabin due to winter weather conditions in Paris. Fortunately, after all, this turned out to be yet another dose of misinformation, and he ended up having to be "checked" to travel in cargo. I can't know how happy or unhappy he was. I only know he didn't eat or relieve himself for about fifteen hours... door to door travel time.

Sophia, on the other hand, was small enough to travel in the cabin, and she DID relieve herself, twice. I think the turbulence we experienced during the second half of the flight over the frigid north Atlantic put her over the edge. And the second time, I couldn't even leave my seat to take her to the lavatory. Ewww... If I had it to do over, I would probably check them both.

We arrived in the evening at Charles De Gaulle... I found the first restroom, even before customs, and cleaned-up Sophia's cramped cage. When the customs agent asked for her passport, he thought he was being funny. I was confused... after all, I had a file full of documents that no one ever asked for, and European pets DO have passports... my Belgian Filou has one... and instead of a photo, he has a barcode for his electronic ID chip. Buddy was waiting for us in baggage claim with the skis and other awkward items... silent as a mouse... that is until he saw and heard me! He screamed all the way to the car, and then some.

We were happy to be home... sort of! Here's Buddy in relocation denial...

But he was very tired and had no problem falling fast asleep in my place...

To escape any commotion in our old apartment, Buddy would simply go upstairs to the quietude of my bedroom... I certainly did the same often enough! I'd show you a picture, but the only one I have is from my predigital days, and the prints are back in Long Beach... :(

Here is where he hides from the vacuum now!

Sophia, too, has found her safe spots... she likes the window ledges, of course, and the bar that separates the kitchen from the living area... She loves to be in the kitchen...

"Safe from what?" you ask?

... Filou, of course!

When I got him, I didn't even realize how much he looked like my sweet, furry girl...

No one has officially claimed the flea market bed, yet... but I'm still hopeful... we put it by the heater...

... and the first night after we moved it, Buddy slept in it. That was also the last time. Sometimes, he and Filou "share" our bed, but he prefers the sofa since Filou can't reach...

Apart from the occasional bouts of cabin fever, he is settling in quite well. He misses his yard, and Auntie Merryl, of course! He and Soph have both tried to escape out the front door, but the first of four flights of stairs is usually enough to turn them around. Who knows what's down there? Plus, it's cold! When summer comes, we will have to find a solution for the screenless windows... otherwise, we will certainly end up with a cat or two on a hot, tin raingutter... a circumstance that could turn quickly ugly if a pigeon comes along and scares them off balance. I don't know that cats are guaranteed to land on their feet from five stories high.

Au Marchée

2007-12-30T23:18:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday in Paris and we woke up unusually early, (8 am ;) so we headed off to our favorite market... our favorite mostly because it's the one in our old neighborhood where we met three years ago. We took Metro line 1 (from Châtelet, bien sûr) to Concord and transfered to line 8 to Ecole Militaire so we could have coffee and walk past the Tour Eiffel and my old apartment on Avenue de la Motte Piquet. People were out jogging and walking their dogs, but we left Filou at home.

When you go, take either line 6, 8, or 10. The market stretches all the way between two stations on line 6... La Motte Piquet and Bir Hakim. The view from Bir Hakim is worth a stop on the stairs...

There are markets all over Paris on Sundays, and on every other day also. This one is also open on Wednesdays. You can find just about everything you need here.

... shopping baskets and bags, quilts, tablecloths and linens, rugs, furniture--old and new, scarves, gloves, clothing, jewelery, handbags, shoes, souveniers, kitchenware, wine, milk, fresh eggs, cheeses...

...we bought my favorite camembert, La Vache Normande, and some fresh chèvre--goat cheese, which I like to put in omelettes with shallots and fines herbs. He loves my omelettes.

... fois gras, dried fruit, tarts and cookies, bread, spices--dried and fresh...

... garlic...

... fish...
we bought two hands full of scallops--at least I think that's what the giant Noix St Jacques are called in English--that I will attempt to cook for New Years...

... roasted pig, cow's tongue, whole chickens, roasted and raw, rabbit, duck, organs and body parts of all sorts... I'll spare you the visuals!

... paella and potatoes ready to eat... fruits and vegetables, of course!

... cherries from Chili,

and mushrooms...

... litchis must be in season... they're everywhere! A screen saver for Eric... thinking of you! xOO!

Some of the merchants will let you select your own produce, but many prefer that you let them pick it for you... a sort of hands off policy. We've been scolded more than once!

And you can see why...

... this vendor even took the time to line up his haricots verts... so French!

The displays are very often artistic, especially first thing in the morning. There's nothing like arriving before dawn to see them all arrive and set up their stands in the dark...

... some provide samples or cut their goods open so you can see what's inside...

Two, please... s'il vous plait!

The flowers are always tempting, but he bought me a lovely bouquet of red tulips and lillies the other night on his way home from work... it has been a trying week. ;)

When we got home, the streets were still fairly empty...

... and the cats were very happy to see us!

So what exactly do we do with all these vegetables?!?!

Couscous, of course!

... which reminds me, my poem "Couscous" is due out in the spring in Pearl ... for a copy, go to Pearl Magazine and send in an order for issue number 39.

In the meantime, here's a poem I wrote this past May while I was visiting Paris to study with Cecilia Woloch... I read it at Shakespeare and Company. It may be a bit sentimental, but it's a very telling way to top off a very expat day... untitled because it is, perhaps, forever unfinished.

I love him for his
mother’s paprika—smokey
like his lips, spicy as a spanking.
His smart derrière is softly firm
like camembert. I love his big
ears, how they hear further
than sound, even across the
Atlantic and North America.
His eyes—demanding blue—
can sing the notes missing
from his broken English.
His teeth—the imperfect
tiles of an ancient mosaic—
embellish his smile like
a picket fence on a country
hillside. His kisses— meticulously
messy, relentless—are too many
too early in the morning, and his
faithful beard—too prickly.
He has the hands of a carpenter
of love, smooth as purple,
hospitable as ladyfingers with tea
under the bending birch trees
that are his arms. He reprograms
my hardrive when he eats
his words, never too proud
to dance naked.

Bistro des Lavandieres

2007-12-13T01:28:00.000-08:00

The day we moved into our new apartment, we ate lunch at this bistro just a few doors down from our building... well, I ate lunch. He was "celebrating" Ramadan, so he couldn't even have a glass of water! At the server's recommendation, I ordered the Estouffade, the house specialty, a dish very much like pot roast, my favorite! I soon became a regular here and passed many delicious afternoons chatting with Beatrice, the server/owner, about the guests, her life and mine, and the challenges of owning a restaurant in Paris... she had been in advertising until the birth of her first child, and her husband was a pastry chef...

Mmmmmmm... steak frites! I never orderd this here, but everything I tasted was de-lish...

Unfortunately, they had to commute from the west outskirts of Paris for several years because the rent for an apartment above the restaurant was too high, and the geographically opposed responsibilities of parenting and running a business had proved too taxing... now they were in the process of closing the restaurant. Her husband would return to his pastry cheffing, and she was looking forward to where life would take her next.

At the end of October, her kids were on vacation and accompanying them to work. Their daughter Eponine wants to be a vet, so I promised to stop by with Filou.

Cute, no? I love her tie! The American couple sitting behind her gave her and her brother dollar bills and took several pictures of the two, inspiring me to do the same... take pictures, that is. Aren't you glad they did? It's always an out-of-the-moment experience to get behind the camera...

... Oh, and of Napoleon, their "chat de garde."

I wonder who's fending off the mice now...

...now that the windows are all painted white, and the dishes and wine glasses and kitchenwares have all been taken away.

Filou

2007-12-10T03:56:00.001-08:00

Dear Beauregard,

Meet Filou... his name means swindler or clever thief... a name we chose from the dictionary because it sounded cute... a name he is living up to, snatching and hiding everything from the cats's toys to socks and snacks... he even pretends to "go potty" to get a treat! "Filou" sounds very similar to the French word for blurry... he IS rather hard to photograph!

We got him on October 2nd, his three-month birthday...

Our apartment is just a block from the pet stores that line the Quai de la Megisserie... "megisserie" implies that this used to be where the leather tannery was located... a dark thought, no?

We found this old iron doll bed at a flea market in Montmartre. He took a nap in it... once!

He's very well traveled... He's from Belgium and has the passport to prove it... no passport photo though. Just a microchip and his rabies vaccination. And last month he went to California.

Road trip to Santa Barbara!

A vacation with a dog is an all together different kind of vacation...

A video for you...

This happened just like this a couple of mornings ago... to this very song, so I recreated the moment for you! It's nothing you haven't seen before, but I think it's hilarious! The music makes it... doesn't it always? It's by Nouvelle Vague...

Une Bonne Addresse

2007-10-24T13:06:00.003-07:00

September 13, 2007... He met me at the airport and we took a bus into the city, then a taxi to the apartment. He had been looking for two months, which is not unusual, housing being in such short supply. We were simply lucky to get into one the very day I arrived from California.

We drove along the Seine excited about our new neighborhood/quartier, passing the Louvre before turning onto our street.

We are surrounded by one-way streets and I am happier than ever that I don't have to drive here. In fact, we are so central that I rarely even need to take the Metro...

The street/rue is very short, but the name is very long...
Rue des Lavandieres Sainte Opportune. According to Balade Historique Dans les Rues de Paris, the name Rue des Lavandieres Sainte Opportune dates back to 1244 and is due to the laundresses of the street named "Sainte Opportune" after the neighborhood convent.

This is Sainte Opportune...

...getting shit on.

And this is our building. We live on the top floor with no elevator. On most days, I don't mind the exercise, but the four flights of stairs were a challenge with two well-stuffed suitcases after fifteen hours of travel .

We couldn't have the keys until the rental agency received a fax showing proof of insurance. (The "charm" of the old building is all the reason you need.) So he made insurance arrangements on his cell phone while the agent counted the dishes and linens and noted the condition of the walls and floors and furniture.

I kept thinking, I could have decorated it myself...

...all white and wood with accents in chocolate brown and sage. It makes for good rentals! I promise better pictures once we've settled in... maybe a before and after!

This picture was taken just the other night from the window over our sofa... cold and clear. Most of our windows face south and let in lots of light, which will be most welcome this winter.

That's the Conciergerie across the river... I wonder where they kept Marie Antoinette... guess I'll have to take that tour. You can also see the rooftop and spire of Sainte Chapelle. Our bathroom window faces east and lets in all the pink and orange morning sun. Once the leaves all fall from the trees, I'll take a picture of it... the Hotel de Ville and the Tour St Jacques.

Somebody, pinch me!