Habeas Blogus

Is This an Apt Metaphor?

2008-09-30T06:29:00.000-07:00

I love to gamble. I'd be an addict if I didn't live 6 hours from a major gambling center. I love it so much that I once took up a part-time job dealing blackjack, poker, craps, and roulette for a company that did "casino night" parties. It didn't pay well and there was no "real" money in it, but at least I was around all those shiny chips and all the intricate formality surrounding the games.

My favorite was craps... you know, dice. You can bet money on the next roll, on some theoretical roll in the future, or on a specific sequence of rolls. You can hedge one bet with another. You can decide whether you want to risk more money to get "true odds", or you can pay the casino a little more and make a bet that's more likely to win. As a dealer I just liked being around all the screaming; it was pretty close to the thrill of being a player.

People start to play. They put money on the line. They put money behind the line. They put money on the Field, the Come, the Place, the Buy, the Big 6/8, the Big Red, the Horn, the Lay, the C&E, all the good Don'ts, and if they're feeling charitable, they can holler "Two-Way Yo For the Boys!" and everyone cheers. They can play their money in a round: by throwing money out on every roll, they can start new meta-games of their very own that have nothing to do with the main event, which they're probably also betting on.

As a dealer, you have to keep up with all of this. You have to know how each of these bets pay out, you have to keep an eye on the dice as well as the drunk people around the table. You have to match each bet with the person who placed it. You have to encourage people who don't bet much, to increase their stake. You have to do all this with a smile, while representing the company and making sure you aren't getting in the way of their having a good time. I've been involved in games where there are at least a hundred chips on the table I have to keep track of, because I know for sure there are 8 people watching me who know exactly what they've put down and how it's supposed to pay. I have to pay out 5-6 bets for every roll, and I only have about 30 seconds before the next one.

Sometimes I look down at that littered table and watch the dice slam into the chips. They go scattering, off the table sometimes. I have to remember where they were and get them back before the next roll, making sure busy hands don't steal chips from the table while I'm rooting for the lost ones on the floor. I've seen 60 year old men in Vegas screaming and threatening violence when the 22 year old dealer behind the table didn't get this right.

In this situation the dealer wants what I call "a deep-cleansing seven". When the seven comes, don't make eye contact with the people around the table. You drop your chin, not in sorrow or in shame, but to hide your smile. Your relief. You reach down and scoop every chip off the felt, sort them out, and stack them up. They belong to you now. You look up and express false sympathy to those who have lost everything. They didn't have to put those chips down in the first place now, did they? The money they had been accumulating, parlaying one bet into another and increasing their odds payouts... it was never actually theirs. It didn't ever even exist. It was fiction.

Seven is the hand of justice, punishing greed and arrogance, righting wrongs, and wiping out all the mess. Things are simpler after a seven. You look down and see green, with yellow and red lines criss-crossing. Everyone at the table knows that the odds are better of a seven coming than any other single number. Every side of the six-sided die can be used in making a seven, and that is true for no other number from 2 to 12. You know it's coming. No casino in the history of mankind has instituted a bail-out plan, even for gamblers who were "too rich to fail". Without hell, there can be no heaven.

When will it be time to push for the "Seven Plan" and just get it over with?

People I Miss

2008-08-25T22:03:00.000-07:00

Jessica

Marta

Emily

Megan

Shyamali

Meredith
Rita

I guess I just didn't know how good I had it.

I don't know about you, but

2008-08-13T14:19:00.000-07:00

Why in the world would I care that a 9-year old lip-synched what a 7-year old was singing? Was it rude? Yes. Were the reasons stupid? Yes.

My goodness, though... can't we find other, more important points of contention about what the Chinese cover up and how they justify it? Can't we do the same for our own country?

MOVE ON!!!

An interesting book list

2008-06-03T06:04:00.000-07:00

I got this meme from my dear friend incandragon, and I think there's a lot in it for me. Maybe it will get me into reading again. Maybe it will get me into blogging again. Maybe what I've been needing is a good challenge... the last book I spent any quality time with was The Web Application Hacker's Handbook. Oy.

I'm going to do bold for the ones I've read, and italics for the ones I don't own and haven't read (and, what the hell, bold italics for the ones I've read but don't own).

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo - in French, thankyouverymuch
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

I've got a lot of work to do. Amazing how many of these I own, but haven't read... and here I've been thinking I didn't have anything left worth reading!

btw, I don't like to quibble with lists, because I could go on all day about it... but... um... what the hell is Angels & Demons doing on there?

Langdon shook his head, "[...]I seriously doubt I'm the kind of man who could ever have a religious experience." Vittoria slipped off her robe. "You've never been to bed with a yoga master, have you?"

Hey Jess, Zen, Anne U, TAG!!!

Something to get me out of hiding

2008-01-17T06:42:00.000-08:00

This story is just too awesome.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/94543/

"I can imagine frustrated and horny readers cursing the ferrets and skipping ahead in search of the next nipple."

Please enjoy. I'll try to start posting more soon.

Wom Kim's Peach Pudding

2007-08-25T14:06:00.001-07:00

Incandragon will disagree with me, but not by very much I think. I've long considered Wom Kim's Peach Pudding, served at Hyde Park Bar & Grille in Austin, to be the best dessert in the city. It's a light, spongy sweet cake, light and springy and pourous, with thinly sliced peaches at the bottom. It's served floating in a pool of cream, and they give you a ramekin full of cream to pour over the top.

This cake is amazing because it stays right there and absorbs the cream, holding it, ready like a tres leches to release it all when you start to chew. I've never been able to duplicate it. The recipe in the magazine says to use "sweetened whipped cream", but that would forego the best part, and in my opinion, obscure the delicate texture.

I've been casually glancing through their RSVP section for years, thinking to myself "I wonder if they'll have the recipe for Wom Kim's this time... nah, they wouldn't write that up. It'd be too lucky. Maybe I should write them one day and ask them..." Well this time, someone in Dallas did just that. It's in the August 2007 issue (page 38). They don't sell the virtues of the cake like they should. They should put it on the damn cover as far as I'm concerned. It's really that good. I called my wife over because I was too weak to stand. I think I may have muttered in tongues for several minutes, trying to calculate whether or not I had all the ingredients. I had always thought it was a corn cake of some sort, but no... it's just buttermilk (and lots and lots of butter).

Incandragon, you must bring this to Seattle!

Wom Kim's Peach Pudding

As this bakes, the fruit will sink to the bottom of the pan.

Nonstick vegetable oil spray
1 3/4 cups plus 2 T all purpose flour
2 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cups (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs
3/4 cups buttermilk

4 c peeled sliced peaches (from about 3 pounds)

Whipping cream (sweetened as you prefer)

Preheat over to 350F. Spray 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish with vegetable oil spray. Whisk flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl until smooth. Gradually beat in sugar. Beat in vanilla, then eggs, 1 at a time, incorporating well after each addition. Using low speed, beat in flour mixture alternately with buttermilk in 3 additions each, beating well between additions.

Transfer batter to baking dish, spreading evenly. Arrange peach slices over batter, overlapping slightly as needed. Spray sheet of foil with vegetable oil spray; cover cake with foil, spray side down, and seal at edges.

Bake 45 minutes. Remove foil (some cake may stick). Bake until top is golden brown, edges are crusty, and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 40 minutes longer. Cool 1 hour. Serve warm with cream.

Enjoy!

Watch for Cowboys on Segways

2007-08-08T03:13:00.000-07:00

I think I am the first person in the history of the world to hit a cowboy on a Segway with my car.

No injuries, no lawsuits, everyone's ok. I just got a few scuff's on my wife's car and one hell of a story to tell.

Any graphic artists out there want to mock me up a "Cowboys on Segways X-ing" sign? Maybe "Cowboy on a Segway" should be my patronus...

What is Your Patronus?

2007-08-04T13:51:00.000-07:00

A few friends were talking about love for lost pets a few days ago. I recalled Zeus, my beloved canary, who sang so beautifully the memory still brings tears to my eyes. It occurred to me that Zeus would be my patronus.

What's yours?

Full Circle - an Anthology from ARS Concordia

2007-08-02T09:08:00.000-07:00

Long story short: if you go download this anthology, you'll find my short story "The Calligrapher" on page 203. There were several errors I found long after the last deadline, so I apologize for all of them here (particularly the part where I put furniture inside a mosque--my thinking was that since it was still under construction, that was okay... evidently I was wrong).

It's not "being published" like dear incandragon, but it's nice that I found acceptance and received compliments during this process. Now if I could just finish the rest of the story...

01/08/2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Colin Galbraith

07786 157270

press@colingalbraith.co.uk

Online Writing Group Publishes First Anthology In Memory Of Its Founder

Full Circle

An ARS Concordia Anthology

The ARS Concordia online writing group has published its first ever anthology in memory of the man who founded their organisation.

Full Circle was penned by the writers of ARS Concordia, a world-wide collection of writers, in testament to Roy Abrahams, who died last year.

The 285-page book, which contains a number of poems, stories, articles, and novel extracts, was a long time in gestation, and as editor, Colin Galbraith, explains, it was Mr Abrahams’ death that proved to be the final catalyst.

“We had talked about doing an anthology as a group before,” he explains, “but it never really took off until Roy died. When that happened it gave everyone a bit of a jolt, I think, and the project seemed to take on a life of its own. It’s been a long time coming this book, but I think it has been worth every bit of the wait.”

One of the groups longest serving members and contributor to the book, Devon Ellington, said of the anthology: “It seemed like a fun project for our writing group. I hope it dispels the myth that a writers’ group must be made up of people writing in the same genre.”

Full Circle has been written by 23 writers of various nationalities, religions, backgrounds and persuasions, and it is this that Ellington believes gives the book its strength. “I think it can set a positive example for writers’ groups – a positive environment inspires good work, and the point of ARS’s creation was to provide a positive environment to stimulate growth and creativity.”

Full Circle is available to purchase from 1st August 2007 from Smashing Press for cost price only. No profits are being made from the sale of the book.

CONTACT DETAILS

For further information about FULL CIRCLE,
please contact the editor via any of the
following methods:
w: http://www.colingalbraith.co.uk/
e: press@colingalbraith.co.uk
t: +44 (0) 7786 157270
Full Circle Website:
http://www.lulu.com/smashingpress

BOOK DETAILS

Full Circle –An ARS Concordia Anthology
Printed: 285 pages, 6" x 9", perfect binding,
cream interior paper (60# weight), black and
white interior ink, white exterior paper (100#
weight), full-colour exterior ink
Publisher: Smashing Press
License: Standard Copyright License
Copyright: © 2007 ARS Concordia
Language: English
Edition: First Edition
Price: Print Edition - £6 (UK) / $12 (US) approx.
(cost price) E-Book – FREE TO DOWNLOAD

The Book of Three, by Lloyd Alexander

2007-07-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

Started 6/13, Finished 6/16

This was a bit of a lark. Well, departure is more like it. My wife checked this out from the library to see if Alex would be interested at all, and because she recalled having read something by Alexander in the past.

She couldn't even get 4 pages into it. What she hadn't known when she checked it out was that this book, this series of Prydain books (the second of which became the animated Disney film The Black Cauldron) was both the beginning and end of my fascination with all things fantasy. I consumed these books when I was about 11-12 - probably the ideal age for them. I was almost obsessed. I wanted to live in this world and be confronted by such torments and joys. I reached the tipping point, way back then, where I had just had too much. Like when you eat peanut butter or ramen for three weeks solid because you don't have a penny in the bank. You never want to see any of it again... that's exactly what happened to me. I can't read Lord of the Rings, I can't even get near the long-running D&D novels, and I can't really stand much science fiction.

But since I loved these so much as a kid I thought I'd pick it up and rekindle some of the magic. What the heck, right? It's only about 180 pages. I could read that during the commercial breaks of 30 Rock.

Well, I probably shouldn't have bothered. The writing is okay, not great. A few of the characters are reasonably well-developed. Others annoyed the shit out of me. When I came across an archetype (like Geydion the hero or Eilonwy the princess), I suspect that I was supposed to smile instead of groan. I was intended to recognize the character as such and appreciate that it was easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys. It just wasn't for me. Eilonwy of the beauteously wispy blond hair and oh-so-talkative nature. Gurgi of the crunchings and munchings. Yawn. The only interesting characters were Taran, the main character, and his mentor Dallben (who meditates constantly, "an occupation so exhausting he could accomplish it only by lying down and closing his eyes").

These two characters are interesting because they are the only ones who possess shades of gray amidst the black and white. Here comes a slight spoiler if you care. When Taran complains about his inexplicable survival near the end, Dallben basically tells him "look, you got a little bit lucky. Of course you didn't save the day. Of course you didn't really do anything but watch while the events unfolded around you. But that's just what happens sometimes - you lead them there, and that was your real role."

So, for the hero of the story to be relagated to a witness isn't necessarily interesting--it happens to Harry Potter all the time. But for it to be acknowledged and worked into the moral of the story--that was interesting. That's also something that never would have occurred to my 12-year-old self, and since I read these in a void I never had the benefit of a guiding wisdom to help me understand it. All I cared about was "good guys won, bad guys lost, and there were magic swords and shit".

I'm not sure I'll pick up the rest... it was such an easy read there's no reason not to cover the rest, but on the other hand... eh... the silliness and ill-treatment of the only major female character in the book might be bad enough to set me off. I don't know if I can handle more of it. I'll read it if it falls into my lap like this one did. Maybe.

Books #18 and #19 will be Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, respectively, by JK Rowling

Done and Done

2007-07-23T09:33:00.000-07:00

Finished book 7 at 10:34am at the Green Muse coffee shop on Oltorf... and I played a little hookie to do it.

Don't know what else to say here. I may or may not write more about good ol' Harry... It's not like there's a lack of words spent on him. I think the Internet was originally created (by Al Gore) as a giant repository of hard drive space just to store opinions and theories about Harry Potter.

I'm just glad of a terrific tale, told skillfully, and I'm a little bit relieved to get back to my normal reading. These stories will be a joy to reread forever, and particularly when my children discover them.

Wine & War, by Don & Petie Kladstrup

2007-07-19T10:53:00.000-07:00

Started 6/10, Finished 6/15

This was another of the "3 for 2" books I can't help buying over at the local Borders. I haven't blogged much about it, but I'm a bit of a wine guy, and seeing this book about protecting French wine during World War II was irresistable. Now, as my fellow writer Emily noted, "hey, I thought non-fiction made your ass twitch!!? What's up with that book?"

I can't explain it. I believe I have read, not counting schoolbooks, 5 non-fiction books in my life, and off the top of my head I can only think of 3. I didn't expect to finish this one at all, but hey... something really clicked with me and I couldn't stop.

January 1st of this year I had a bit of a brainwave: I've spent more money taking classes to learn about wine than I've spent on the wine itself. K and I took a 13-week course from the Grape Vine Market here in town, and neither of us can remember anything about it. I took a UT informal class abou wine tasting. I've been to Central Market tastings, Whole Foods tastings, and even friends' houses for tastings. When I go to someone's house, people invariably ask me, "hey, you've taken all those wine classes... what should I serve with dinner tonight?" or "how do you like that Cabernet? Doesn't it remind you of the ocean, with hints of blackberry and peach pie--no, vanilla peach pie?"

I don't know. I don't know I don't know I don't know. I've never tasted or smelled blackberry in a wine. I've never found a wine to be "coquettish" or "arrogant". I couldn't even tell you what it means for a wine to be "very tannic". I think I was too busy drinking too much of the wine at these tastings.

But January 1st of this year people were talking about resolutions. I don't make resolutions. I say I'm gonna try to do something, then I try to see if I can do it. In 2003 I wrote a novel. In 2006 I read 25 books. In 2007 I decided I was fed up with trying to learn about wine in the same old way. I was going to apply the study techniques I learned in my degree program to the problem of understanding wine: drill, drill, drill. Spend all the time you think you need on one single subject, until you believe you understand it well enough to move on.

I decided to spend the entirity of 2007 studying one single winemaking region, preferable of France. Usually a wine tasting will give you 2 hours and 3 wines from, say the Loire Valley or the Cote du Rhone. That just wasn't enough. Rather than an evening, I'm taking a year.

I settled upon the Burgundy region because of no other reason than because on January 2nd, the daily wine calendar I got for Christmas last year (see the expectations I've set?) recommended a 2003 Louis Jadot Chambolle-Musigny Premier Cru "Les Charmes".

Now that's a mouthful. I had heard of Louis Jadot and I had lived through 2003. Other than that, that was a bunch of words I could pronounce just fine, but which baffled me utterly. The description explained that it was a Pinot Noir from the Burgundy region.

So I started Googling.

And Wikipedia-ing.

And finally, Burghounding.

I know enough about Burgundy at this point to fill up several blog posts, and I probably will at some point. I've only had a few, though, because the good ones are so darned expensive. Reading books about wine has been the closest I've been able to come to some of the magnificent things that have come out of this tiny and very beloved area of France.

So we get back to Wine & War, which is as much about Burgundy as it is about Bordeaux, Beaujolais, Alsace, the Loire valley, and the Cote du Rhône. Since I'll probably be studying French wine for the next 5 years, it was right up my alley.

Now to the ethical question: Jess brought up an objection to the very premise of this book, one that I admit I had thought about the moment I read the jacket pitch: how the hell can you think about saving your precious, silly little bottles of bubbled-up grape juice while six million Jews are roasting in Krakow? Not to mention the other atrocities going on all around you?!

The answer is never overt, in fact the question is never posed. Nothing of this sort of objection or query is ever made, and it's becomes easy to understand why: these people were doing everything they could to protect the people, to save as many lives as they could. Several were hiding Jewish families somewhere in their chateaux. Some were helping downed American pilots cross the border into France, where they would hide in the cities and countryside, escaping from the Gestapo on punishment of death. Nearly every winemaker was a member of the French resistance. What I came to understand, which to our educational system's eternal shame I never learned in school, was that the devastation of the French army was so quick, so total, and so unexpected, that the citizenry found themselves under the thumb of martial law within weeks of the first bullet. They were expected--no, directed at gunpoint--to go about their normal lives, particularly so that they could supply the Third Reich with the supplies and even some of the luxuries of the French lifestyle that were demanded. The Germans were determined to sap the country completely dry, forcing it into a state of dependence on their conquerors.

These people did save every blessed human life they could, well before they even thought to save their wine. And the stories about the lives being saved have been told and retold, so the authors believed it was time to tell the story of the bubbled-up grape juice. At length I was convinced enough to doubt the moral dubiousness of choosing this as an important tale to tell.

That question put to rest, this is one hell of a yarn. It made me want to pull a Da Vinci Code and write a novel from their non-fiction premise and hope the judgment goes as well for me as it did for ole Dan Brown.

It reads like fiction, which is probably why I could get through it. They don't go into detail about winemaking, but they do spend some time discussing the fears of being a winemaker and of some of the things the Germans did to manipulate the process.

The story that stuck with me the most was about one winemaker, I believe Joseph Drouhin (whose wines are available right now at the Austin Wine Merchant), from Burgundy. He had large casks of some grand cru wine, some of the most valuable fluid in the world, sitting in his cellar. Some Germans came by to demand their weekly ration of industrial alcohol, but he had none to give them. They looked at these large oak casks and said, "that's okay, we'll just take this and boil it down".

Horrified, he tried to explain, this wine is worth 100 times what you want. Please, let me sell it and I will give you the alcohol next week. It will be no trouble at all...

The soldiers went down the row of casks, pouring one cup of heating oil into each. Decaliters of wine, not to mention the ancient casks themselves, were spoiled instantly.

After that, the winemaker buried what little stock he had left and increased his Resistance activities considerably.

They are small stories, less important than most of the others we have heard hundreds of times, but I found that even in this microcosm, the realities were the same as in the larger world: heroes and villains, good and evil, courage and insecurity. All the same lessons of the greater war on display even in the smallest encounters. I'm glad they chose to tell this story, and I'm certain that it's still only half-told.

If I were to fictionalize this, I can't imagine the amount of research I'd have to do. Fortunately, the subject of French wine isn't altogether unpleasant to study, both in the academic and in the practical senses.

Book #17 will be The Book of Three, by Lloyd Alexander

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

2007-07-12T20:43:00.000-07:00

Started 6/6, Finished 6/9

Words strewn like black ash over the pulpy compost of tree sediment. Pages that flip by before you can shield your mind from the blood and pus. Dappled letters like crisped blades of grass, crunching under your feet as you troll the wasted countryside, never more immersed than at the moment you read it. I look up, and the boy is sitting at my feet. Modernity and ancient history, living and breathing, surround me.

"Deedah? What we going have for dinner tonight?"

"We're having sandwiches."

"Can we have soup? Is there soup? Can we have soup? I hungry."

"Yes. We can have soup."

"Can we have fizzy water?"

"Yes."

"Are you going have wine?"

"Yes, I'll probably have a glass."

"Mommy going have wine too."

"Okay."

"Okay."

I look back down. The words tumble over my head again, pushing against my brain and boring their way inside. You don't even notice the crozzled bones after a while. You used to notice them, back in the beginning, when you were naive about the world, when it was all new. Then you just wanted it to stop. Now you hardly notice them except as grisly breadcrumbs, marking your path, preventing a desparate walk in circles.

How many bullets are left in the gun? Where will you sleep tonight? When your muscles are stretched like guitar strings and your feet crack with each step? One wheel on the shopping cart wobbles and you count the ball bearing clicks, humming a song that will never be sung again.

"Deedah? Are you going make dinner soon?"

"Come here for a second."

The boy trots over, hair gleaming like fire and looking at me like I have every answer. I look at him for three or four seconds, then pull him to me. He wraps his arms around my shoulders and makes a sound like groaning, to mimic whatever despairing utterance escapes my throat.

"I love you, boy."

"Oh! I love you sooooooooo much," he says, and smiles, his lips glossy with saliva. He runs off to the kitchen to bang on the pots and pans. Our evening ritual.

I put down the book and make dinner, the heat on the stove lower than usual. Today, nothing in my suddenly palatial estate will be crozzled.

Book #16 will be Wine & War, by Don & Petie Kladstrup

Beneath a Marble Sky, by John Shors

2007-07-11T11:24:00.000-07:00

Started 5/30, finished 6/5

This book caught my eye in BookPeople a few weeks ago. I liked the typeface used on the cover, and as soon as I read the title I knew it had to be about the Taj Mahal. The picture on the cover confirmed it. I picked it up with some apprehension, then curiosity, then sadness: someone got to this story before I could.

Evidently this is the first novelization of the Taj's construction written originally in English. That's a little bit hard to believe, considering it came out in early 2006, and it really upsets me that it was just sitting there all my life like that, ready to be written.

Oh well. That was never the project I wanted to undertake anyway... what I want to do would be more something you'd consider capital-A Art. You know, the kind of thing that doesn't earn a dime but which might be held in esteem by who appreciate a novel with a less traditional structure. I'm working on it now, in fact, about 10,000 words into it, and I think it's the kind of thing I'll hack on for a few years in between projects. It'd fun to write, and the story canvas is as blank as they come. The options are limitless. There's no chance of my forgetting that building or its story any time soon, so I can be patient.

This book is very traditional in terms of structure. It's a 3rd person closed narrative, told from the POV of Mumtaz Mahal's favorite daughter. The novel is as much the story of her life as it is of her parents'.

Shah Jahan ruled the Mughal Dynasty in 16th century Northern India. By all accounts, he was a fair, reasonable man, who attempted to integrate the lives of the Muslims with those of the majority Hindus. He built the most magnificent buildings that the world had seen. He allowed his wife to speak at court. She was the light of his life, until she giving birth to their 14th child. His spirit deserted him that day. The daughter Jahanara witnesses the love they share, which leaves a lasting impression. She helps manage the construction of the Taj Mahal in her mother's memory. With Isa, the lead architect, she seeks the love she saw so tangible in her mother and father.

As the construction of the monument begins, Jahanara finds herself increasingly taking control of her father's affairs. At the same time, her two elder brothers are fighting over succession and how best to rule the country. The story is as much a chronicle of their political downfall as it is about the raising of one of the greatest buildings in the world's history.

The writing is good enough, and the characters are generally believable. What I was left with, though, is a real sense of how American everything sounded. That would probably shock the author, who obviously went to great pains to work out the formalized dialog and the constant references to Allah, the evils of the West, etc., but I stand by it. The whole exercise is viewed through our sort of lens: who is free, who is not free, who is given equality, who can make their own life, their own decisions, etc. I can't buy that this mindset could have existed in the culture Shors is describing. The caste system is so deeply entrenched that barely anyone notices it, let alone stops to wonder what they're missing out on by their obligation to serve others. The rule of law places the Emperor at an almost god-like status, and people don't dare to hold themselves at his level. These issues are discussed throughout the novel, and at the end of it I felt like I had been attending a symposium on human rights violations.

Maybe people did wonder "why must a woman stay in her house all day long while a man can wander wherever he likes," but the poetry and historical accounts I've read on the subject simply don't address these issues. Could it be because the question never arose? My bet is that, were this novel to come over to us in translation from an Indian author, the tone of it would be radically different. That's my biggest criticism of the novel: it pandered to a Western audience.

Less of a problem was that I wanted more detail on the actual construction of the Taj, but I guess I'll have to cover that in my own project. My bet has been that Shors had a lot more in his initial drafts, but eventually cut it out when someone advised him that it wasn't interesting. That may be a downfall for me too, but I'm holding out hope that I can pull it off. Umberto Eco has done it, as has Orhan Pamuk. It is possible.

Overall this turned out to be slightly more of a so-called "beach read" than I would have liked, but it was still enjoyable and informative. I want so much to believe the story of Jahanara's independence, her eventual love story, and the simplicity of the Mughal dynasty's downfall, but I think it was largely invented. I think the story was more complicated than Shors makes it out to be, and by a factor of ten, but that's just not what his audience wanted. I'm definitely willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he had ten times the material to put in there, but that he boiled it down to a more palatable form. Good for him. I still had fun with it. I guess it'll be up to me to try to put some more meat on these bones... I just hope people will be half as willing to read it.

Book #15 will be The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie

2007-06-06T13:21:00.000-07:00

Started December 15th, 2006, finished May 29th, 2007.

I have read the Satanic Verses.

Book #14 will be Beneath a Marble Sky, by John Shors

The Cement Garden, by Ian McEwan

2007-06-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

Started 5/17, finished 5/18

I'm not going to say much about this one. Nothing was said to me before I started it, and that's all that should be said. You should pick it up and let it happen to you. Finish it in one day, one sitting preferably.

All I'll say is that it's about children in a situation no children should be in.

McEwan is a genius. This book is a cross between J. D. Salinger and John Steinbeck, so powerful and mournful that you wonder how we as a species ever made it past the first generation. I've now read three by him, and I hope I can eventually read everything. I think every one of them inspires me to write better and to think differently. I can't wait to read his new work, On Chesil Beach.

Read it.

Book #13 will be The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie

Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut

2007-05-31T12:10:00.000-07:00

Started 4/14, Finished 4/19

I'm not a Vonnegut scholar. If you had a look at my pitiful take on Cat's Cradle, you remember. I find him perplexing, because I don't want to take anything he says at face value, and because I am not a product of the times or political philosophies he lived in. That said, I find his work charming, occasionally transcendent, and almost always out of reach. That may be because it's so very within reach that I miss the trees trying to explain the forest.

Breakfast of Champions is "about" several characters' journey toward a science fiction convention, at which point the world is forever changed by a violent outburst, an unpublished novel, and Vonnegut's God narrator. I say "about", because what he's going for throughout much of the novel is an attempt to "call out" the novel form for its oversights, its shortcomings, and its inadequacies. I had just finished Michener's The Novel, so I was somewhat prepared for this kind of thinking: that the "novel" as it is is dead, that a new form must take its place, one where (for example) the point of view isn't just of one or three or ten characters, but where all characters have equal weight. The God-like narrator gets his share of potshots, as well as the particularities (and uselessness) of "description" (penis size is often listed when he describes a male characters, given as naturally as hair color). He plays with timelines, gives you hints that he's not being honest, and then tells you that none of it matters because he, Vonnegut, is just sitting in a bar making the whole thing up on his Big Chief tablet.

All that said, none of it occurred to me until just now, when I sat down to write this review. This book took its sweet time to get going, as did Cat's Cradle. The beginning sections didn't work for me, though I'm sure I'd find meaning in them if I reread them. Processing the myriad images, trying to dig meaning out of it, all of that was overwhelming. It's been only long after the fact that I could process them, make them coherent in my own memories. The statements, diatribes, and rage against all things establishment, they're all obvious, but they seem simplistic at first glance, like they don't fit in anywhere. Upon reflection, however, the images and characters and storyline don't make sense without the rage. It's as though his anger at the world has compelled him to create a world of such disorder that it both rejects and reflects the real one he sees when he looks up to sip his beer and have a toke.

There are a lot more people commenting a lot more intelligently about Vonnegut than I think I will ever be able to, but it's become apparent to me just what we've lost with his passing. I can't pretend to feel as much sentimentality as those who have been reading him for years, who grew up with him and let him help them define their generations (2 or 3 generations, probably), but I think his work will outlive me and my generation, that's for sure. I'm looking forward to reading his other works, and to possibly looking into some Real Literary Criticism of Vonnegut, to see how the experts break him down. It'll either be interesting or stupid, which is exactly how I believe Vonnegut saw the world entire.

Book #12 will be The Cement Garden, by Ian McEwan

True Evil, by Greg Iles

2007-05-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

Started 4/11, finished 4/13

Sorry, Mr. Iles, this one isn't up to your usual standard. Now if you'd made the snake-wrestler into the good guy, then we might have something...

Book #11 will be Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut.

I Am Officially an Adult

2007-05-16T09:03:00.000-07:00

These events apparently didn't count:

Paying for my own car insurance
Getting a discount on car insurance just for being 25 years old
When I started earning Real Money
Earning my bachelor's degree
Getting married
Buying a house
Having a child
Saying to said child, "What did I just tell you??!!" (that only officially made me a parent, not an adult)
Having a second child

What was the event, that final straw that made me into a full-fledged adult? Short answer is the picture below, now hanging in my bedroom. Long answer is below that...

Za Maestra, Claud Labes

I'm walking around the Montmartre area of Paris, fighting jetlag and enjoying my little stopover, when I see her in this gallery.

It feels as though sharp rocks are not just in my shoes, but under the skin of my in-step, like the ground is striking the soles of my feet with a ball-peen hammer. I'm not walking; the cobblestones are being thrown at my feet, propelling me along in directions I'm only barely choosing.

As soon as I see her I stop. My feet thank me. I stare at her for about half a minute, then take one, five, eight tortuous steps into the gallery. An older gentleman is on the phone, complaining about a slow day. He gestures me to a little blue chair near his desk.

I'm sitting there, trying to see how much of his conversation I can make out (not much), hoping he'll stay on the phone another ten minutes. I'm looking at the painting, and my feet are screaming at me.

"How can I help you, Monsieur?" he asks me in English.

"I wanted to see about this lady," I answer in French.

"French or English," he says, with as little interest as if I had started reading the phone book.

"Comme vous voulez," I answer. We switch back and forth throughout the conversation.

"I wanted to see about this lady with the cello," I repeat.

"Are you a serious buyer?" he asks.

"I don't know. I won't know until I find out what the price is, because I don't know if I'm even in the right league."

He takes another look at me. I'm carrying a $4 umbrella, purchased at a souvenir shop. I'm wearing a tattered and pilled sweatshirt that I intend to leave in Paris when I depart, and my hair is a complete mess. Think about a blonde Einstein with a bushy pony tail, minus sufficient IQ points.

"I can't let it go for less than 350 Euros."

I reach into my pockets. I have about 60 Euros. And credit cards.

"Do you take credit cards?"

"Yes, but I don't like to."

We look at each other for a few more minutes. I'm looking him in the eyes, not fidgeting, not shifting my weight, consciously suppressing all instincts of bodily motion, like I try to do when, say, playing poker.

"If you have cash I can let it go for 300 Euros."

"I don't have that much cash," I say.

"If you go to the Champs Elysées, you won't find this quality for under a thousand. It's exquisite. Claud Labes, you know, from Montmartre."

"Is he still alive?" I ask.

He laughs. "Yes, very much so?"

"Are you Mr. Labes?"

"No, but he is a good friend of mine. No, I am a painter, but my art is different." He gestures around. The small room is decorated floor-to-ceiling with the kinds of, what, post-impressionist? paintings that I can appreciate, but am ultimately not interested in.

There are at least eight more Labes paintings, mostly of young women playing instruments, and I try to see if I can get as excited about the smaller, no doubt less expensive ones. I can't. Something about the lady's hand holding the bow... well, I found it intoxicating.

"Monsieur? What shall it be? This painting is exquisite. You won't find quality like this for such a price anywhere else in Paris."

Oh how I would come to know this combination of words over the next month in India...

"I can't get that much cash today. My bank has a maximum amount it will allow, and I've already withdrawn some."

Now, this is a true statement, but it's meant to put the ball in his court. If I want to incur deadly transaction and finance charges, I can always to a cash advance on a credit card, but that's a very last resort. I already know I'm going to buy it, one way or the other.

"Two hundred in cash, one hundred on credit card," he says. "Shall I wrap it up?"

"I don't have that much cash on me."

He shrugs. "I paid 250 for it. I can't sell it for less."

I nod. "Is there an ATM around here?"

"No," he says. "Nowhere in Montmartre. Nowhere on the hill. You can go to one, right down here, to the left, then down the stairs, then by a little bistro. An old man like me, I couldn't do it in two hours, but you're a young man. You can do it in fifteen minutes."

My feet look up and me and threaten me with curses and shaking fists.

I ask again how to get to this ATM, but the directions are useless. I don't know how to get directions in this country. I'm an American, and therefore need street names and distances. It's a severe limitation, this need for such specificity.

I tell him I'll be back, then I leave, clearly walking in the opposite direction from what he told me. I'm not even sure I'll be back at this point. I go up the street and see Sacre Coeur, then walk around it, trying to get to the apocryphal Funiculaire de Montmartre. What are the odds that the same thing can happen?

Well, it's out of order. So I look at the stairs. My left foot has changed its name to Fidel Castro and my right foot is now Fletcher Christian. I put down the uprising and begin to walk down the stairs. If you've ever seen Amélie, you've seen the stairs in the elaborate path down which she leads her amant to retrieve his notebook. They're daunting. They're painful. They're not easy even if you're in perfect health.

Once I go down these stairs, that's it. No painting for me.

So I go down. I stop in a few bookstores and a bakery. I make it back to the hotel and sit down for a few minutes. I turn on the TV. I grab a snack from the bar area. I walk back outside, up Pigalle, to Clichy, and consider returning to the Cimetière to see her. Again.

None of this is taking my mind off of the painting.

I go to a hair salon, thinking that if I go in, I can officially say that, for a three year period in my life, I would only get my hair cut in Paris.

They're full, and can't take anyone at the moment. As I walk out, I see like a shining beacon, an ATM. I walk over and withdraw 140 Euros. I now have 200.

I look toward the hotel and realize that it's a bit downhill. I look the other way, and it's uphill. Sacre Coeur is in that direction. I begin to walk. I walk slowly, lecturing my feet the whole time on the need for discipline and the rewards of hard labor. I reach a very steep staircase and just stare at it for half a minute.

I start up the stairs, letting several (much) older people go ahead of me.

I turn up one street, then another, then I recognize the youth hostel I always wanted to stay at, but which is always always full. Then I turn up another street, and somehow my feet have stopped hurting. I think their spirit has been broken. Or they've fallen off and my shins haven't started to complain yet.

Once I make it to the galarie I see the proprietor leaning back in a chair, hands clasped behind his head, just watching the people walk by. For a moment the thought occurs to me: forget the painting, just buy the whole damn gallery and change your life!

When he sees me he stands up. "I didn't think you were going to come back," he says.

It's been over two hours.

"Can I offer you 180 in cash and 120 on credit card?"

He doesn't hesitate for a moment. "Yes, yes. I can, yes sure yes."

I give him the money. He compliments my French. I give him the credit card. He compliments the design on the card (it's the Wells Fargo wagon). He is all smiles and friendliness, and says he's going to close early after this. I feel good about myself, and I also hope I did a good enough job of talking down the price. From what he said, he's not making much margin, but it's starting to sound like... like I need to forget about it and start appreciating what I've purchased.

He invites me to sit at the cafe next door and have coffee while I wait for him to take it off the frame and roll it up.

I have a strong Cafe Crème and a lovely apple tart while I wait. When the old man gestures me back in, I see what I've obligated myself to. The painting is 30 inches wide, 3 inches in diameter when rolled up, wrapped in a double-thickness of paper and a big plastic shopping bag. I'm going to carry this tube, which won't fit into any suitcase, all around Paris, then onto the plane to India, then all around Bangalore, then all the way back home. I'm going to be asked questions about it at security checkpoints. I'm going to have to fit it into the overhead bins of the airplanes, hoping nobody sets anything on it or insists on seeing it.

But so far none of this bothers me. I search deep within my core for traces of buyer's remorse. None.

Let's skip ahead. It's May 16th. It's nearly 8 weeks since I bought the painting. My father is a professional framer, and even after my 45% discount it cost more to have the picture framed than I paid for it.

It's oil on canvas, framed with three different kinds of moulding, including one which is upholstered with a suede which matches one of the shades of olive green taken from the painting.

With the blessing of my wife, I hung it on my wall last night. I'm working from my home office today, and every time I turn around I catch a glimpse of it, I feel like it might be the best purchase of my adult life. My wife and I stood looking at it last night, arms around each other, and we both arrived at this thought at the same time: Adults buy fine art. We are living adult lives now.

But enough about us. What do y'all think about the painting? I didn't intend this post to be an actual narrative; I intended only to get Claud Labes into a better Google position than he has now. Searching for him seems to yield nothing, and I want it to yield the image I posted above. I want to share my great find with the billions of people who will never see my bedroom.

The Novel, by James A. Michener

2007-05-15T21:09:00.000-07:00

Started 4/6, finished 4/11

This was a lovely read. I've only read one other by Michener, The Source, a brilliant history of monotheism and the "big three" religions. I'd recommend that one to anyone.

I'd recommend The Novel to fans of Michener. I'd do more than recommend it to writers, though. I'd probably assign it as required reading if I were teaching a class on "The Novel", both for its examination of the business of writing, and for its nontraditional structure and points-of-view.

It takes place over a year-long period, between the completion of a novel and the beginning of the promotional phase of the final product. Along the way, we get insight into a writer's process, the publishing business, and the different people involved in the production of the written word.

The Novel is divided into four parts, roughly equal in length, and each narrated by a different first-person voice:

The Author
The Editor
The Critic
The Reader

And you would think that each section would slip into an easy-way-out "day in the life" account of the dreariness and self-importance of each personality. Michener never gets lazy. Each narrative section builds upon the previous section, but each section is wholly contained in that person's point of view. There is no narrative omniscience or mugging by the characters who appear in other characters' sections. The interests of the different characters are segregated, compartmentalized--and understandable.

With the Author, Lukas Yoder, you see a man whose rise from obscurity to worldwide fame was arduous and inspiring, and owes a great deal to the Editor. You're then surprised to find that the Editor who stuck with Yoder through four books that didn't sell 5,000 copies between them, doesn't particularly like his books. She's his champion, the editor of all our dreams, the cheerleader who will never let him down. And she's doing it (gasp) because it's good business.

The Editor, in fact, doesn't really talk about Yoder, except in terms of the baksheesh his eventual success gave her in her own career. Her section is more of a biography, a history of a career in a business that (even in the late 80s) was moving from a mid-list, many-talented group of publishers to what we have today: about 5 giant bohemoths who run the whole damn thing.

The Critic dislikes Yoder's work, but greatly respects the man. As he does his own fascinating and often tragic work as a professor of literature, he comes to understand the difference between Yoder, whom he sees as a hack, and some of the newer authors (I suspect he is either modeled upon or loosely inspired by Vonnegut) who are transforming the fundamental nature of the novel. The beauty of this section is seeing the inner-workings of a mind that refuses to accept a straight narrative. It's a mind that I would disagree with to a great extent, but without whom Vonnegut and the like never would have existed. My response was "well, at least Yoder probably wasn't as bad as Dan Brown".

The Reader is a wealthy widow whose grandson is a brilliant young mind in the literary world. She is devoted to him and, as a result, forces herself to understand his work, his life, and the works of the writers he admires so much. She is fierce and confident, and works against all instinct to pry open her own mind enough to accept the new generation of writers.

Not only does it come together beautifully in the end, but you can't help but wonder that this is James A. Michener. As I read it it became obvious that Michener thought himself the Lukas Yoder character. He felt trapped in his own style, his own genre, and at the same time he was contemplating retirement, he was asking himself whether or not he could add something to the canon of the "new works". Michener wrote so many novels I don't even know if you can count them all. I'm not joking when I say that every single time I've looked for a Michener book at a bookstore or Amazon, I've come across one I've never heard of. The Novel was the same way. I had never heard of it when I saw it on top of a stack of Michener books at an outdoor book market in New Delhi.

But most Michener follows a pattern: let's describe the foundations and eventual evolution of a society in a way that is interesting, sympathetic, and truthful (at least as I see it). I thought the Source was brilliant, but I couldn't even get a hundred pages into The Covenant (there was this one sentence near the beginning that I can't get out of my mind for its clumsiness: "Like a swarm of beautifully colored birds, the black-and-white animals scrambled up the dusty bank on the lake and headed for safety"). My father tells me that after a while, Spain and South Africa and Hawaii and Texas and the South Pacific all sound like the same place. That you should space out your Michener reading, so you have a chance of keeping it separate in your mind.

I think the Novel is Michener's grand departure from Michener. I can't say it's the best book I've ever read or even in the top 20 or 40 or 100, but structurally, it's fascinating. Michener's commitment to each character's persona is quite a technical feat. At the end you feel like you've learned something, and if you're a writer this can be a lot like reading Miss Snark: you need the information, but you don't want the information. The information can help you, but the information can also help you quit. That's where it's up to you, or me, or whoever is trying to make it in this business.

Book #10 will be True Evil, by Greg Iles

The Nature of Service

2007-04-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

I've got to put a disclaimer here, as much as I hate them. I am talking purely about my personal opinions here, and about my reaction to these events. It is not at all my intent to impugn or judge any culture, particularly one as old and venerated as that of India. This essay is my own natural reaction to the treatment I received, and let me preamble all of it by saying, I would rather have the experience I describe below visited upon me a thousand times, than to have a hostile culture reject me through isolation, expulsion, or any sort of violence.

If there's any great life lesson I've learned in India, it's that I am no good at being served.

It was impossible for me to imagine the nature of the service I received in India, even though it was explained to me several times. It was explained as a luxury by Americans, and as a fact of life for Indians. For me, it was a nightmare, and a nightmare that was repeated over and over, in every place I visited and every situation in which I found myself.

Housekeeping

At my company's Bangalore office, there were 4 women whose jobs were "housekeeping". In America, this position would mean that you never see them, because they only come in the office at night, to empty garbage and sweep floors. In India, "housekeeping" means keeping the workers (the developers, the software testers) at their desks by doing absolutely everything for them. Housekeeping brings water to the meeting rooms, they straighten out the break room area after people have finished lunch, and they dust the stairs clean several times a day.

The first day I was there, a cold bottle of mineral water materialized on my desk. My coworker asked me if I would like a masala dosa, and I said that I would. He said a few words to someone, and twenty minutes later, I had one. When they weren't actively working, they would sit in the stairwell landings and talk quietly. Every time I walked up or down the stairs, they stopped talking instantly and stood up, smiled, and nodded to me.

On the first day this was exotic and new for me, and like I said, completely familiar to everyone else. Not even worth a mention.

However.

On the fifth day I was parched. I needed water. I got up, I looked around. I went upstairs to the break area. Nothing but the tap and a water cooler, neither of which was safe for us foreigners. I opened a few cabinets. Nothing. Someone found me wandering and asked what I needed.

"Some bottled water. Do you know where it is?"

"Oh, don't worry. We'll get you some."

"Well, if you could just show me where--"

"We'll have 'that' go get you some, and bring it straight-away."

"I--well, okay. But I'd like to know for the future so I can get some myself."

"But it's their job. They're here to do that."

It was nearly an hour before I got my water. I never found out where they kept it, or whether they had to run to a convenience store every time I got thirsty. Toward the end I just brought the damn water from my hotel room, where I received 2 new ones every day in the mini-bar. Like magic.

I finally learned how to operate the space-aged coffee machine, but nearly every time I tried, someone would stop me, summon "that" over, and have them prepare it for me. They prepared a lovely cup-and-saucer arrangement with a napkin, a spoon, two sugars, and two crunchy caramel biscuits. I just wanted coffee, and I don't take sugar, but my only choice was to be gracious.

Every time I wanted to do something or get something or do anything at all, there was someone there to do it for me. The message was clear: your talents at your job is the reason you are here. Let us take your focus away from these meager concerns so you can concentrate.

That's flattering, it really is. The problem is, they didn't do it as quickly as I would if I could just do it on my own, and sometimes they would do it wrong. Once I asked for water, and in 30 minutes I had a Diet Coke in front of me. I'd rather drink motor oil or bong water. 45 minutes after that I had my water. If I knew where the blasted stuff was the whole thing would be over in 3 minutes or less.

But I feel guilty complaining about the service. Since I didn't ask for it and it's provided to me at no overt charge, how could I complain about it? The simple fact is, I didn't want it. It wasn't good for me. And I wonder how many others, Indian, American, British, have met up with the same experience.

The Taj in the Moonlight
This was it, yaknow. This was probably the only chance I'll ever get to see the Taj Mahal. Considering the harrowing journey that went along with it (which I'll write about one day), the cost that was near double what had been quoted to me, and the low likelihood of my ever returning to India, I doubt the chances of it ever being possible again.

When I chose the dates for this trip, I did it based on the fact that one of the full weekends I was here would fall on a full moon. Our company admin in India emailed me to ask about any special travel arrangements she could help me make, and I let her know about the dates as well as about the moon.

A few days later I emailed her and asked if she had any suggestions about what sites to go to or who to call to ask about these arrangements, and she informed me that it was all taken care of: the flight from Bangalore to Delhi on Friday night, the overnight stay in Delhi, a half-day's tour of Delhi on Saturday, a drive to Agra, overnight stay in Agra, half-day's tour of Agra on Sunday, drive back to Delhi, then flight back to Bangalore Sunday night. Oh, and including rides to and from the Bangalore airport.

It was beautiful, and so efficient... what was there to argue about? So, fast-forward six weeks and I'm in Delhi, meeting the hotel Tour Services people Saturday morning.

"And you were told I wanted to see the Taj in the moonlight, right?"

"Yes, this has been mentioned to us."

"Great."

I meet my tour guide and we're off. We go to see Qutub Minar, and along the way I'm looking it up in my Delhi book. Flipping some pages, I note in a sidebar about the Taj Mahal that the moonlight tours are of limited availability, and need to be arranged 24 hours in advance.

"Say," I ask the tour guide, "are we sure we got a moonlight viewing booked for the Taj?"

"When, for tonight?" he said.

"Yeah."

"Oh, no sir. That would have to have been arranged last night. They need a 24-hours advanced booking. You want to see it tomorrow night?"

I'm trying to choke through the red bile spewing from my gut, and say, "no, I'm on a plane tomorrow night. I need to see it tonight."

"We'll see what we can do, sir."

He and the driver talk for a while in Hindi. They ask for my passport to make the reservations, which makes me VERY nervous. They make a detour, and the guide runs in to some travel agency. When he comes back, he's on the phone. He hands me my passport. Whoever he's talking to, he's very animated.

He hangs up. "It's impossible, sir. I've done everything I can, but they never informed me that you wanted to go in the moonlight."

"FUCK, man! I told them six weeks ago that that was the primary reason for my choosing to come this weekend, otherwise I would have come next weekend when I have Friday as a holiday!"

"Yes, sir. I'm very sorry. There is nothing I can do. Let me show you the email."

"What email."

"The email you sent to us when you booked this arrangement."

He produces a folder with papers in it, then hands me one. It's written from my company admin to the hotel that arranged the whole thing. It says "Marcus is very excited to see the Taj in the sunset!"

At this point I know it's over. The moonlight viewings have to be made to a government agency, M-F 0930-1730, and I know I don't have enough baksheesh to change anyone's mind. Since there's no document trail, nobody but my admin is to blame.

Or are they?

"Your agency knows about these moonlight viewings. Why didn't they suggest it? It says 'sunset' here. Wouldn't it be a natural fit to just ask about the moonlight?"

"I'm sorry sir, yes sir. That would have been a good suggestion." And his phone rings.

I keep talking anyway.

"When you got this gig, did it occur to you that maybe I would want to see it in the moonlight? Would it ever occur to just make an arrangement like that without even asking, knowing I'm going to stay close to the Taj and wouldn't have anything better to do that evening anyway?"

"I'm sorry sir, no sir. That would have been a good suggestion." He answers his phone, says two words, and hangs up, then stares back at me wide-eyed. The car is not moving. The driver is staring at me in the rear-view-mirror. We sit like this. It takes a while to dawn on me that I'm supposed to give them a signal that, yes, I'm finished berating them and we should get back to the tour.

I'll admit it. I was sulky as hell for the rest of the tour. After two or three hours and a few more monuments, we let the tour guide out and the driver went on to Agra. Still, I'm just brooding the whole time. I fucking KNEW I wanted to see it in the moonlight. I've known that since I was very young and studied the legends of the structure, and how it glows almost like silver under the full moon. And because someone writes "sunset" instead of "moonlight", this dream is denied to me forever. F-O-R-E-V-E-R. Six letters instead of nine. Sun-not-moon.

My ass has not been covered, or even looked after. Of the 15 things she had to arrange on this trip, she forgot only one. But if I had made the arrangements, despite the pain of the time difference and slight language barrier, I would have made certain of that one detail. When you give your "servant" a medium-sized task, there are lots of hidden subtasks, of which they prioritize some higher than others. Doing it on my own, I never would have left that one out, because the only reason I was going to Delhi was to see the Taj in as many colors of light as possible. She couldn't read my mind, so she didn't know that. She just thought I wanted to see a little of everything. When I got back, she met me at the door of the office with, "I didn't know it had to be booked in advance, or I would have specified moonlight." What can I say at that point? It's over. There's certainly nothing to be done about it now.

So, I can't blame my admin, and I can't blame the booking agency, and I can't blame the hotel, and I can't blame the tour guy. I fucking well blame them all. The only completely faultless person in this whole affair, unfortunately, is me. I would feel much better about it if I had some culpability in the matter. Some sense that there was something I could have done to fix it.

And that's the bitch of it: I'm the one who got screwed. I'm the only one who got screwed. Everyone else in this little chain of events "got theirs". The tour agency wouldn't lower their price because they weren't properly informed. The tour guides still expected (and got) tips because they showed me what the hotel told them I wanted to see. The hotels got their ~9500 INR each night for 7 hours of sleeping and no advantage taken of their amenities, because they were told I was going to stay there. I certainly don't expect the admin to get in any trouble because this stuff was all "above and beyond", i.e. non-company business she wasn't even obligated to do.

And that's the problem with me being served. These tasks that others see as mundane or "beneath me", I take pleasure in. I am the chef de cuisine in my home. My wife refuses even to hire people to mow the lawn. When we don't ask other people to do things, we have only ourselves to blame if they're messed up. We enjoy that responsibility. We do the research in advance for the things that matter to us. We don't rely on other people, only to end up disappointed at their failure.

There are a couple other incidents, but they'll better serve as asides in a travelogue. Besides, you get the point: I don't like having every little thing done for me, because nobody cares about every little thing the way I do. They don't have a vested interest in making sure it gets done. They have a job to do, and every component is treated with the same level of detachment as the next. I can't imagine living my life with so little hands-on involvement in the little things. It wouldn't be luxurious... it would be hell.

I am no good at being served. I wonder how many people really are.

The General's Daughter, by Nelson DeMille

2007-04-19T21:20:00.000-07:00

Started 4/1, finished 4/6

I bought this book from an outdoor bookstand in Delhi, en route to the airport. I had just seen the Taj Mahal and finished Roth's Everyman, so I was in the mood for a more forgettable experience. See, that's what Nelson DeMille is for me: always fun, always entertaining, always forgettable. If all I ever do is write books like he does, I'll be pretty happy.

The General's Daughter was made into a movie (which I've not seen) with John Travolta in the lead, so I couldn't quite make up my own face and voice for the Paul Brenner. The good news is, the smartasserie and wit that I love so much about the John Corey novels is all here. The love story is as predictable and shallow as you'd want it to be, and DeMille is always good at twisting the suspense out of anything.

Not much of a review here, because there really isn't much to say. If you like Nelson DeMille, you probably don't think this is the book they should have made a movie out of, but it was still a good yarn to be read on a plane from Delhi to Bangalore. Good old DeMille, just like good old Greg Iles (more of whom, coming soon).

Book #9 will by the Novel, by James A. Michener

Everyman, by Philip Roth

2007-04-18T14:17:00.000-07:00

Started 3/30, finished 4/1

Fear of Death. White Noise was about fear of death. So was The Old Man and the Sea. Hell, nearly every book I've ever read contains at least a component of fear of death. Everyman is nothing but a meditation on this topic, by a writer who's getting up there in years.

I've wondered since I read it, was his purpose just in creating a story about a man who fears death and let the character spring from that, or to create a living, breathing human being first, then force him to confront death?

What I do know is that the effect is quite amazing: the man in question is despicable. In my book they don't get much worse. He's a son-of-a-bitch philanderer who leaves his wife and two kids, then leaves his next wife and one kid, then whines that he's lonely all the time. He follows every stereotype you can imagine about a bastard businessman in the 60s: skirt-chaser, workaholic, dullard, etc.

Yet when it comes to his confrontation with his parents' deaths, the misery rings so true that you have no choice but to sympathise. It's like Jess said about another Roth book: this character, "superficially very different from me...was, by the end of the book, completely known and understandable in my alien brain". This privileged bastard had to throw dirt on his own father's coffin, and while doing it had the hallucination that his father was not in a coffin at all but just lying there, and the dirt was covering his face, getting in his eyes...

...and I don't care who you are or were or hope to be, but that's an image that will stay with me forever. I'm sure when I'm in a similar position, the memory of having read this book will serve as a comfort, that I'm not alone, that... oh my god I can't even finish typing it. Roth dove right in on this, the most terrifying and lonely event in a person's life, and looked it in the face. Jesus Christ I don't think I could ever do that. I wept real tears while reading this book. I can't remember the last time I did that.

By the end you're so exhausted and conflicted you want to read John Steinbeck just to bring some levity to your life. I chose differently, I chose Nelson DeMille.

Book #8 will be the General's Daughter, by Nelson DeMille

Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

2007-04-17T17:03:00.000-07:00

Started 3/17, finished 4/7

Book #6 was supposed to be the Satanic Verses, but I didn't want to bring a banned book into a new foreign country. I figured the worst they could do was confiscate it, but I just didn't want to deal with even the smallest hassle. I brought the Maestro instead.

If you'll recall, I've read the Maestro before. At the time I commented that the man uses words like knives to cut through the boring bullshit of what other writers (including myself) consider important. That is still true in Cholera. When most writers would take pains to explain to you "the problems of river navigation" that his main character is solving, Marquez just tells you he was solving them brilliantly. Why leave it out? Because it doesn't matter. These characters have rich lives in parallel to the plot of this story, but Marquez doesn't care about them. He's giving you a single viewpoint into his perspective on this story, and only shows you enough of it to get across the main point.

This story is about two young lovers who meet and fall in love very early in life. When the opportunity arises for them to become serious and reveal their love to the world, the woman suddenly decides that the whole affair was silly, and chalks it up to youth. Unbeknownst to her, he spends the next 51 years waiting for her husband to die, so that he can restate his lifelong vow of love to her, and they can stage an epic courtship at a time when most couples are retiring and dying together.

Along the way, we catch glimpses of their lives, love affairs, children, jobs, travels, and sicknesses. At certain points we're convinced that neither party has given the other a moment's thought in years. But there is always a lingering memory waiting around a corner, something that will trigger one or the other to rediscover the longing they shared in their youth.

It's told beautifully. We come to know these people, even though it's through this one window of perception, as well as we would know a fellow schoolmate, a co-worker, a boss, a grandparent. All the stages of their lives are described so vividly that we feel they must have existed, that we are reading a textbook instead of literature. The best-written textbook ever, by the way.

And yet sometimes I was frustrated. Frustrated because he will describe the process the man uses, for example, to formulate a love letter. He spends pages on how it will be crafted, how the thoughts will pile upon each other until the pen flows as freely as a river. How others are in awe of the emotional power his words can produce. And then? We never get to read the frickin' letter!

Sometimes, when I take off my rose-colored glasses, when I make myself forget the words of Crawford Kilian, who said, "any aspiring writer who doesn't read the master [Marquez] is stumbling around in a dark blind alley.", I think to myself "wasn't that easy?"

Isn't it great that I can tell about a guy who writes a beautiful letter, a letter so woeful and amazing that women melt into puddles reading it...and then I don't need to actually write it?

I mean, Ayn Rand had a character who invented a machine which would take the static electricity out of the air and turn it into DC current. She didn't explain how it worked. Is that the same thing? Well, kind of yes, kind of no. This fiction thing is all about invention and imagination, but the medium of exchange is the written word. When you say that a man wrote some amazing words, isn't it kind of cheating to then playfully skip over those words? It reminds me of Tenacious D, who once played the greatest song in the world, but have now forgotten it, and must instead sing a tribute to the greatest song in the world.

I've read novels about best-selling novelists where the novels themselves are never revealed. But said novels usually aren't the main focus of the story, either. I believe Marquez is capable of writing love letters that great, so why didn't he?

I once wrote an outline of a story, which I may still use, where the long lost footage from Orson Welles' Magnificent Ambersons is found. Upon hearing about this, a friend asked, "well, aren't you going to need to make with the footage, especially if this turns into something?" I guess the answer is, "no, not if I'm considered untouchable."

Anyway, this was just a niggling little criticism, borne more out of disappointment than real ire. In the ~180 page Of Love and Other Demons, it was a rarely but effectively used tool for skipping details. In Cholera, I felt like he just got tired of writing, and started glossing. The first sections of Cholera are told in a more traditional "show" manner, where the scene paints itself and we are led around by the description, rather than just reading an account of the actions and motivations of the various characters. It was beautiful. Then around page 80 he lapses into this "tell" mode, particularly when it comes to his characters' writing, where I start to long for the colors and textures (and specificity, most importantly) of what had come before. It was still good, but it didn't make me dream.

It's just that if you know you're reading one of the greatest writers of all time, and he's talking about truly great writing, it's a jarring thing to be denied the opportunity to see at least one example.

None of this will deter me from agreeing that Marquez is one of the greatest writers out there, nor will it keep me from reading a Hundred Years of Solitude, hopefully later this year.

Book #7 will be Everyman, by Philip Roth

Open Letter to My Future Self

2007-04-16T09:44:00.000-07:00

Remember that time you went to India?

Remember the three-day weekend where you were supposed to stay in a treehouse suite on Nilgiri, on the wildlife preserve in Tamilnadu?

Remember the table-runners, the area rugs, the saris, the tea sets you were going to buy, using the bargaining techniques learned in Hawaii and Morocco?

Remember the culture you were going to dive into, the words and phrases you were going to pick up in all the languages, Kannada, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telegu, even Urdu or Syndh?

Yeah, you remember all that. So what did you do instead?

None of it. Not one stinkin' thing.

Well, to your credit, you did go to the Taj Mahal, you still have the detailed photographs and that vial of water from the reflecting pool. You didn't get to see the Taj in the moonlight because of the most idiotic stupid fucking beaurocratic bullshit that you're probably still not over, but you did get to see it.

But as to missing out on the rest of it, you need to remember the full context, the story behind the "why". You need to have compassion for yourself as a result of this, because at the time you didn't really have any choices to make. Anyone would do the same thing given the circumstances.

This trip was for you some sort of culminating event, a test of character, an adventure. You set out with an open mind. People told you that, of all the people they knew, you were the one who would appreciate this opportunity the most, take the most advantage of it. You'd take in all the surprises like an infant, laughing and giggling and waiting for the next one before the first was even processed.

You'd eat every kind of curry and chutney and exotic Indian fruit, veggie, and spice they could throw at you. You usually say you won't go into any fast food restaurants, this time you'd carry it several steps further: you wouldn't visit any Western-food restaurants. You'd eat Indian food, goddamnit, because you're in India. Maybe you'd have some Chinese, Korean, Japanese, food because you're awfully close by and maybe it's different enough from what you get in America to warrant a slight detour.

Three weeks of glorious culture-diving, nothing but new discoveries, a choir of angels singing your acceptance of everything new and foreign, and culinary delights you'd learn how to make and feed to your family.

And for the first 4-5 days, everything went as planned. You worked, you went to the hotel, then did the same thing the next day. You didn't want to do anything on those nights because you'd have 2 more full weeks to explore as much as you wanted. Work went well, you communicated regularly with K, got into webcam sessions with the kids, and wrote post cards. You ate everything you had wanted to eat, all Indian food, just as spicy as the Indians you hung out with liked it, and it was all just great.

Then Friday came, and you had to get on a plane that afternoon to visit the Taj Mahal. Early in the morning your stomach became extremely upset, cramping, sweating, churning. At around noon you became so sleepy you could barely keep your eyes open. It was like those dreams you have occasionally where you're driving or flying a plane but in that dream the feeling of sleep is so heavy that your eyes only open halfway and you can't see the road or the horizon. You know you need to push on, to keep going, but you physically can't open your eyes through the fatigue. You begged a few hours of sleep from your coworkers, who thought it was a good idea.

You slept the sleep of the damned. In the room there was a horrible buzzer, a doorbell that lets you know when someone is at the door for you. This buzzer sounded several times during your sleep, but you only incorporated it into your dreams, and never realized until probably the next day that someone was trying to get your attention.

You thought you had beaten jetlag, but you hadn't. You'd just pushed yourself into feeling its effects all at once, rather than the slow regimen that may have worked out better.

The sickness continued. Through Delhi and Agra, through the whole weekend and the next work week. Around Wednesday it became clear that you couldn't go to the treehouse feeling the way you did. The cramping and nausea were merciless, attacking nearly every hour without letup and with some other very unpleasant symptoms.

So you had Good Friday off. You had the opportunity to go to Hyderabad to see an old friend, but she wasn't available. Coworkers urged you to take day trips, but instinct told you not to go too far from the hotel and the familiar surroundings. The stomach aches were slightly less frequent, but they were still there. Being on a coach, air-conditioned or no, would not be the best place to sit and churn for 12 hours.

No, you hadn't taken many pictures except in Agra. Bangalore is a beautiful city, with thick, tall trees the likes of which you'd never seen before. But at no point during the three-day weekend did you venture out. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt kept you inside. You read 4 books, watched at least 7 movies, and stayed forever at the mercy of the cramping. You tried to see a movie but they were all sold out.

You don't know shit about India. You haven't done anything worth a damn in India. The Taj barely counts because it doesn't have much to do with present-day people or the culture... in fact you were either surrounded by Germans and Americans the whole time there, or the Indian guides who continue to relate "facts" about the Taj Mahal that have long been proven false.

As far as you should be concerned, this was a lousy business trip, filled with discomfort, sickness, and one fine opportunity to see something you'd always wanted to see. Your Judas body prevented you from turning this into what you had wanted it to be.

You have to understand just how bad, how unpredictable, how deeply unpleasant this was. There was no way to anticipate it, and when it hit you were sidelined, barely able to keep working. The opportunity to explore India really wasn't there once the sickness started.

It appears that the sickness is related to the anti-malarial pill you were taking at the time, but you weren't about to risk catching malaria just so you could get out and take some pictures. Even if you couldn't enjoy it, at least you didn't catch malaria.

If you had arrived in Paris the first time and gotten sick, I'm certain you would have stayed right where you were too. One day you'll be back to India. K is in awe of the Taj, so the possibility exists.

Just keep all of this in mind whenever you look back with regret. The purpose of the trip, after all, was to do work with the team in Bangalore, and that you were able to do. In those terms this trip was extremely successful. If you need refuge from the regret and guilt, take refuge in that.

My Forever Love Note to My Wife

2007-04-07T00:58:00.000-07:00

I like to believe I've left my own personal love note on the Greatest Monument Ever Built For Love (the Taj Mahal). I didn't scratch it into the marble as a discouraging number of people have. I didn't leave any paper or film behind. I only left fingerprints on various sections as I traced the semi-precious inlaid stones, trying to study their borders.

When I walked around the mausoleum, where they don't let you take pictures, a little man came up to me. There were several other dressed like him, all in a simple off-white sherwani, unadorned but pressed. They showed people around, explaining the inlay process, telling little facts and legends about the crypt, and expecting very modest tips in return.

The little man came up and started explaining all the things I'd heard and read a hundred times before. I wanted to tell him to go away and let me look in peace, to let me lean against the back wall and take in the scene I will likely never see again, but before I started to say it, he asked me my name. I told him.

"Maaaaaaaarrrrrrrruukiiiiisssshhhhhh" he almost sang the name. It didn't echo in the chamber as much as it became amplified, extended, and faded slowly, after about twenty seconds. You could almost see where the sound was coming from and where it was going next.

"What's the name of your special lady?" I told him.

He sang K's name in the same drawn out, deep voice, and the effect may have been more profound. The short vowels didn't sound short... they sounded round and open, unapologetic, let's say, and as they moved around I wondered if maybe she could hear them back at home.

So I wonder if, in theory, those sounds could be still there, fading away far more than any machine could ever pick them up, but still alive and mingling with millions of vibrations from the calls of millions of lovers, and mixed in with the occasional "Allahu Akbar", set to last forever.

In theory, if I'm right, and the same could be said for my naughty grade school friends who would whisper cuss words at the dome of the capital building in Texas, to see if the person on the other side could hear the whisper. Those are no doubt floating around too. Maybe K and I need to visit the capital and tell each other repeatedly, in whispers, how much we love each other, while walking all around the circle. Maybe we can class the joint up a bit.

La Douleur

2007-04-06T12:44:00.000-07:00

Before I post more pictures from India, I thought I'd put up a few from my stopover in Paris. I didn't take all that many pictures, because mostly I saw the same parts of the city I saw last time. What I focused on the most was my favorite statue in the world. I think the flash burned her out a bit, but I believe I catalogued her from most of the important angles.

Here they are, as well as a link to all the pictures I took in Paris. The captions tell the important parts of the story.

I must have taken nearly 30 pictures of her by now, and yet I still can't seem to convey her smallness, or the right color of green, or just how real she looks when you're standing next to her.

The Rashtrapati Bhavan

2007-04-02T21:43:00.000-07:00

This is the Presidential Palace of India, the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Have a look at the picture on Wikipedia, then look at mine. I saw a picture very much like this of the White House when I went to DC, and I wish I had a better camera there so I could have duplicated it.

I don't collect much, and I hate souvenirs. The only things I take from places I travel are little vials of water, which I keep on a shelf... a bunch of little vials with masking tape on them marked "Loch Ness", "DC Reflecting Pool", etc. Now I can add "The Seine" and "Taj Mahal Fountain" to the shelf.

But I'm starting to think that, whenever I visit a country's capital, I'll try to get a picture like this. In my mind, there's a lot of meaning here, not apparent at first glance. See if you agree.

From India...

2007-03-26T03:22:00.000-07:00

I'm writing from Bangalore, India right now. I got in about 12 hours ago and went into the office about 6 hours later. I'm trying to wrap up some stuff here before I go back, then have a little nap, then just do nothing at all until it's time to go to bed.

I've got lots to say about just this past 12 hours as well as the bonus stopover I had in Paris (I know, I still haven't finished the story about the last one), but it'll have to come out a little at a time, just like everything else around here.

So farI've had two meals here, and both were lovely. I tried to make mutton biryani once and, yeah... it sucked. Today's was beautiful. The rice was perfectly cooked, the mutton fell off the bone... yeah, I sure as hell ain't going to McDonalds or Pizza Hut while I'm here.

I'm going to try to post some pictures, but I have to find a card reader first.

On Saturday I'm going to see the Taj Mahal, which is on the list of things that I have to see before I die. There are thousands of things I want to see, but the Taj is one of the biggies, one of the ones where I'd have myself put on a palanquin and carried by coolies and we can just call it my deathbed if I'm dying and haven't seen it.

Thinking about it now I can't really think of what the others are. Let me just name the first few that come to mind:

The Kremlin and Red Square
Gaudí's Sagrada Familia
The Basque region (Euskal Herria) in France/Spain, particularly Gernika
The Burgundy region of France

I can't decide whether I should put Mecca on the list. For a variety of reasons it's unlikely that I'll ever be able to go there. Most of the above list is doable, even within a single month, and I'm sure I'll be fortunate enough to have such a month... but Mecca, as amazing as it would be, is just too far out of my family's comfort zone... maybe too far outside of my own.

I just realized I've spent 15 minutes typing up places I want to go, when in fact I'm in one of the most interesting places on the planet. As a species, we're just never ever satisfied with what is in front of our faces, are we?

More soon...

Day 5, Hemingway in Earnest

2007-03-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

I walk along r. de l’Arbalete until I’m about to reach r. Mouffetard. Michael Palin wrote the tour I’m following (pretty cool!), and he says this street has an outdoor market every morning. He’s right. There’s a produce stand with apples, pears, mangoes, and all sorts of vegetables. The prices are extraordinary (about 4E for a kilo of apples), but the quality is higher than any place I know of in America except Central Market or Whole Foods. The mangoes look like what my Indian friend Bharathi described: about eight inches from top to bottom, and nearly as big around as my head. That’s my physical head, you understand, not my ego. I look everything over and fantasize about having a normal vacation budget. Then I turn right. The street is patterned cobblestones, arranged in semi-circles that point up the hill like a guide. The street is narrow but there are no cars or trucks parked here, and people are walking on every square foot. It’s a pedestrian mall, of sorts. Up the hill a few hundred feet I see a barricade and cars turning onto the street after it. Between that barricade and me are dozens of shops, the usual suspects. Just up and to my right is a little coffee shop called “Café Marc”. I go in because I’m silly.

I order a Café Crème, just like “the Man”, and it comes with a small piece of chocolate. I stand at the bar and open my notebook and see if I can't write something that kinda sounds like Hem.

The coffee is good and smooth and I pay for it in cash.
It is good to stand and write and watch people go by as I drink, and I decide to buy some Normandy honey from off the shelf. I write about the day before and the meals Nima and I shared, and I think about how I could not have written about it last night. Today I am set apart from that, as though I can view it from a different set of eyes and yet still capture just one moment of it as though I were there. I was there. But I could only write about it today. Perhaps tomorrow I will be able to write about today. Perhaps tomorrow I will die or have some good wine and coffee and talk to my wife on the phone.

Everywhere I go in this country the chocolate is smooth and perfect. I haven’t dared to ask for Milk Chocolate because I fear being barked at. People are coming in and out; they give me a glance or two then set off, and I wish I could stay here forever. But even as I think that I realize I’m ready to leave. It’s getting to be 11a.m. and I’ve barely begun this walk. I have to be back at the hostel at 6:30 to try to get to the bike tour, so I need to move. I open the tour book again and discover that I’ve missed something: at the bottom of the hill is a very unusual painted façade. Indeed it is.

Going back up Mouffetard, I see so many places I’d go if I had more time. I’d go to all of them if I lived here. The wine shop shelves spill out into the street, offering straw-lined crates of bottles from places and years that will never see Texas. The butcher shops have every kind of meat I can only find at specialty shops in Texas. The fromageries have cheeses it’s illegal to buy in Texas. It’s difficult to think about Texas in this place. How can people live here? How can this be a real place, except one that you read about in travelogues?

But I keep walking up the hill. The restaurants turn from distinctly French to distinctly Greek, and I hit the barricade. An open square with a fountain lays before me, but behind me are the umbrellas and people and worlds I’ll never know. I read some more: this is Place Contrescarpe. I remember the name from A Moveable Feast, which I read on the plane. His apartment was near here.

The smell of roasting lamb and braised beef recedes as I veer off to the right onto r. de Cardinal-Lemoine. I’m looking for number 74, and it’s there on my left. The Man lived on the third floor with his first wife and their kid and their cat. I stand there for a few seconds, trying to visualize, trying to see some movement inside. If someone lives there now, I’m sure they know about the history, but is there electricity in the air? Do you think in concise sentences and sparse adjectives when you stand in that space? Do you have an urge to cheat on your wife and abandon her and your kid and marry someone much richer? Or is that just something that comes from being in France (nyuk nyuk)?

I think people might be staring at me while I stare at the third floor, so I move on. A quick left at the corner, then a right on r. Descartes, and I see a restaurant with a formule I like: 15E for Entrée, Plat, Dessert.

One old man sits at a table near mine. He’s eating very small bites of lamb and rice in a red sauce of some sort. I don’t get a menu, so I look around for the chalkboard. I didn’t write down my choices, but I know what I wanted.

Entrée - Paté de Poulet (chicken paté) with a small salad
Plat - Whatever the guy to my right is having
Dessert - Apricot Tarte

I asked the host to borrow a pen, and I start to write. I notice that the host and two waiters are standing at their stations, hardly moving at all, staring out the front windows. I think back to all the above-average restaurants I’ve visited here, and realize that I’ve seen this a lot. People who work in restaurants provide a level of service I’ve not seen in the states for less than $40 per person, but they never seem to do anything. I wish I had more time here just so I could study this phenomenon. The waitress approaches.

The entrée was a little salty, but I think it usually is. They served baguette slices with the paté, and I spread one on the other. I try to eat it slowly, but it’s difficult. I must teach Alex to savor naturally, rather than with as much conscious energy as I have to summon. The salad is about six leaves of arugula and spinach with a few drops of olive oil. It’s meant to clear and prepare the palate, not to give me folic acid and vitamin A.

When I finish, I sigh and lean back in my chair, and the plate disappears. The Plat is delivered within two minutes, and I just want to look at it.

Two lamb shanks sit next to another piece, probably something around the shoulder. There are bones, but I don’t think I’m going to care. There are two scoops of white rice, and the whole production swims in a quarter inch of a paprika-butter sauce. It doesn’t have the intense flavor I imagine, but the more I eat the more I’m able to appreciate its subtlety. To my everlasting shame I look on my table, then on the one next to me, for the salt shaker. I don’t see one, so my honor is somewhat preserved.

The meat separates from the bone as soon as my knife touches it. I have the bone in my left hand. With the fork, I put no more pressure than it would take to turn a car’s ignition, and the meat comes off in chunks. I prepare several morsels, and then cut them smaller, promising myself I’ll chew each one until the flavor is expended. The first bite is intense, like lamb should be: salty and rich and explosive. The rice is flavorless but for the sauce it swims in.

I can’t finish the lamb. I’m content after the two shanks and a very small portion of the larger piece.

As soon as I sigh, again the plate disappears and a slice of tarte is in front of me. I ask for a café crème. The tarte is a custard filling inside a golden dough shell, with slices of apricot on top. The whole slice is covered with a gelatinous glaze, about an eighth of an inch thick and perfectly clear. It’s served with an enormous spoon, one that would be used to stir soup where I come from. I’m so full I'm tempted to skip it, but that’s just crazy.

The custard is so smooth I can’t imagine an egg yolk ever curdled anywhere near it. The pieces of apricot are tart, and the contrast against the custard and the glaze makes a good balance. I don’t like the huge spoon, though. Somehow I find it distracting. Oh shit, am I starting to become like these people? Living in the richest culinary tradition in the world and finding petty faults with it? No, the spoon’s just too big.

As the last of the crust disappears and I eat the two raspberries on the side, the plate disappears. “l’addition” appears. It’s about 18E with my coffee. I pay and give the pen back, then I walk outside.

Back on the street, I read in the book that I’m about to go to the Man’s office nearby. He rented it when he wanted many consecutive hours uninterrupted. I’m on a walk to follow the early life and career of Earnest Hemingway, and I don’t have a pen. Across the street from the restaurant, there’s a small newsstand. I can buy a pen there. And there occurs one of my favorite events of the whole trip.

Keep The Secret Away From Me

2007-02-26T19:47:00.000-08:00

Nobody had better bring me this shit. No email forwards, no suggestions over lunch, no "hey, I just thought you maybe wanted to, I don't know, improve your life or something..."

The Secret just smells like something I'm going to hear about far more than I want to.

But let me impart the thing that makes this dangerous and evil. It's from a Newsweek interview with the author, Rhonda Byrne:

"The law of attraction is that each one of us is determining the frequency that we're on by what we're thinking and feeling."

Ok, so far so good.

"If we are in fear, if we're feeling in our lives that we're victims and feeling powerless, then we are on a frequency of attracting those things to us ... totally unconsciously, totally innocently, totally all of those words that are so important."

Again, this doesn't sound bad. Here's the thing: Rhonda Byrne said this in response to a question about how villagers could have avoided being massacred in Rwanda.

Oh yeah she did. She just said that fifty children barricaded into a school then burned alive could have avoided their fate through positive thinking. She just said that half a million people who were shot and chopped up by machetes, often killed by their own neighbors, could have avoided death by thinking their way out of it.

She has seen evidence of this in her own life, she says, where "many tough things" happened to her. "The Secret" devotes several pages to the weight she gained after her pregnancies. Unaware of the law of attraction, she mistakenly believed that eating made her fat. She now recognizes her error: "Food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your thought that food is responsible for putting on weight that actually has food put on weight."

From Rwandan genocide to the solution to the American waistline. I love the "many tough things" in quotes up there.

Normally this bullshit wouldn't even be on my radar. It would be a little blip that I would listen to politely while my folks drone on about it. Well I'm not taking it if it ever does come. This lady is now on My List, along with Paulo Coelho and, to a much lesser extent, Richard Ford: the List of people who not only mean well, who not only think that they're doing good, but who have legions of followers and apologists surrounding them and enabling to lead them further into ignorance. You don't just cast off genocide. You don't compare trying to get down to 116 pounds to hacking off the arms of small children whose "ethnic classification" is slightly different from your own.

And, aside from that madness, here's why Marcus doesn't want to hear about yet another pat answer to everything, another simple solution to all of life's problems:

Life is complicated. I like it that way. Leave me the hell alone about it, because even though you may all be right and it would actually make my life better, I love my life the way it is already. It'll get rid of my problems? Fuck you, I like my problems. I like my problems and I like my orneriness and I like my outlook on life. I like the way I handle my problems. Literature is my self-help. Reading about a man who sprouts horns after falling from the sky, or about a woman who becomes lost in the Saharan desert but finds herself in better company than when she was back home, or about the 16th president of the United States who had his own problems: all of these things help me to look at the world from a lens other than my own. This fresh hell is the same garbage we've been getting since phrenology, since bloodletting, or more recently, since What the $#*! Do We Know?

Quantum physics my ass. Believe, don't believe, just keep it the hell away from me. No debates, no contradictions, no "but don't you think--". None of it.

Read a fucking book written by someone who actually has something to say. Then we can talk.

The Poet, A Hero of Our Time, White Noise, Saturday, Waiting for Birdy, and Interpreter of Maladies

2007-02-20T17:44:00.000-08:00

The Poet, by Michael Connelly

What the hell was that book about, anyway? I read it two months ago!

Ah yes... a zinger of a first line:

"Death is my beat."

Good stuff. All I can remember about the novel past that first line is that it's like a lot of others that I've read, with perhaps a notch higher prose styling. I didn't buy the love story and consider that more of an artifact of when the book was written (mid-90s) than a knock against Michael Connelly.

And that was book #26 for 2006... I did it!! YEA!!!

I don't think I read anything in the last half of December. Instead I had the most complicated, annoying series of days-that-felt-like-months surrounding Christmas... between Dec 23 and Jan 2, I had 8 (EIGHT!!!) family gift-giving celebrations. That's not to say I don't love my family. It's not to say I don't feel like the luckiest guy in the world that I have so much family.

But let me ask you: what would someone in any culture say about a kid who receives close to FIFTY presents for Christmas?

F I F T Y

We counted.

He was opening presents, sometimes for 3-hour stretches, one after the other, barely able to appreciate or understand the one he just opened before handed the next shiny box. His squeals of delight only lasted a day or so. By the eighth day he was more like "aw, mama, do I hafta open ANOTHER present??!! Can't I go out and play?!" "No, Alex, this one is from your father's real father's mother (not your father's stepfather's mother, who is no longer with us but bought you a gift before she passed away). She wants to see your face as you open a Christmas tree ornament we won't let you play with because it's glass!"

By the end of the West Texas Tour of Grandmothers, we were exhausted past any ability to do things like read, or eat, or breathe. We just wanted the four of us to sit at home and stare mindlessly at the fire. We're still waiting, btw.

Starting in January, I took Meredith's long-standing recommendation and read...

A Hero of Our Time, by Mikhail Lermontov

A lot of it went past me. A lot of it was me trying to figure out "what is great about this?". After reading all sorts of online information about it, I finally decided I needed to let it cool for a while, then read it again in a few years. It's definitely interesting and funny and sad and structurally intriguing. Truthfully I don't even know enough about it to discuss it intelligently, because just after I finished it I started...

White Noise, by Don DeLillo

... and that was an awesome book to read when you've got 2 children and live in suburbia, wondering in the back of your mind whether your whole life is a series of carefully orchestrated purchases, planned by someone else, rotting out whatever soul you once had from the inside. It seemed like an exercise in calculated literary spontaneity... like Rushdie's work, you marvel at the chaotic nature of the prose and of the story itself, and in the end you can't help but come to the conclusion that every move was precisely mapped out. The spontaneity is a ruse: it takes a lot of hard work to appear to carefree. It was brilliant.

I flew to Boston the day after I finished White Noise, and on the plane I started ...

Saturday, by Ian McEwan

...and I still think McEwan has to be one of the best writers working today. It's his subject matter, his characters, his locations, and my god the prose. Once in a while you feel like you're being hit with a research bomb, but for the most part his stuff is pure pleasure. This one deals with McEwan's seeming favorite topic: the long-term repercussions of a decision made very quickly, and usually under a lot of stress. It's fascinating how he's able to pick apart the minutiae of human relationships in this little petri dish called London... between family members, between friends, and between strangers, hostile and friendly. One imagines that he's not only captured a bit of our modern society, but that he is telling us: this is the nature of civilization, and it likely hasn't changed in millennia.

After Saturday, my wife wanted me to read...

Waiting for Birdy, by Catherine Newman

...which I was glad to do. She's an awesome writer. She can fling metaphors like few writers I've encountered. It's difficult to write about the love you feel for a child... it's like, you can't put it into words, yet you want to write and write... and nobody ever seems to get it right. Well, Newman comes pretty damn close. It was a great read, and something I'd recommend to anyone who wants kids. It gets a lot of stuff right where normal parenting books get it wrong: there isn't always a solution for everything. You cannot, in fact, always keep things straight and organized. You will absolutely feel love and dejection and comfort and terror, all at the same time. She has ways of putting all of this into words through examples, and it's as close as I've come to seeing my own emotions in print.

Around the time I was finishing up Birdy, I found out that I'm going to India in March. Instantly I rearranged all the books in my stack so that I could start reading things by Indian writers, hopefully without buying anything new, and hopefully something instructive, not about how to travel or how to behave, but about the people themselves.

Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri

...was a great start on this. It's a collection of short stories, each of which at least involves an Indian character in a major capacity. Some stories are told from American points of view, some are Indian, and they're set in India (usually Calcutta), America (usually Boston), or the UK (usually London). Most involve students who are on a long-term assignment.

I can't pretend to know whether she gets it right or not, and I don't know whether her stories are close enough to the Continent or not, given that most of the stories are about immigrants to America or the UK. All that said, I'm inclined to believe her. Even if she's wrong on some accounts (I like to pretend that the boorish depictions of most Americans was wrong, but at heart I know they weren't), the stories are lovely and very well written. I've considered picking up her follow-up novel, The Namesake, but I'm going to see first whether there are any Indian writers, preferably from the state of Karnataka, who are both writing in English and writing about Indian people living in India. What are my odds? If anyone has suggestions, I'm all eyes.

So, 6 books in one post, none of them quite done justice. Well, here's hoping the next few months slow down a little bit so I can frickin' breathe, because this is getting too crazy. What's the point of all this running around if I can't take the time to appreciate it properly?

Book #6 will be The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie (another Indian-born writer who doesn't live there anymore... sigh...he's still a bloody genius)

Oh, wait

2007-02-15T19:56:00.000-08:00

Yes, I regret it. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said I hate Tim Hardaway or anything like that. That was my mistake.

It's Very Simple

2007-02-15T19:51:00.000-08:00

You know, I hate Tim Hardaway, so I let it be known. I don't like Tim Hardaway and I don't like to be around Tim Hardaway. I'm Hardaway-phobic. I don't like him. He shouldn't be in the world or in the United States.

First of all, I wouldn't want him on my team. And second of all, if he was on my team, I would, you know, really distance myself from him because, uh, I don't think that is right. I don't think he should be in the locker room while we are in the locker room.

Something has to give. If you have 12 other ballplayers in your locker room that's upset and can't concentrate and always worried about him in the locker room or on the court or whatever, it's going to be hard for your teammates to win and accept him as a teammate.

What fresh hell is this?

Night, by Elie Wiesel

2007-01-17T17:00:00.000-08:00

Started 12/1, finished 12/5

My God.

How can you start a review about a first-hand holocaust narrative without saying "My God"? I don't even know how to approach this, except to say that I'm not going to be objective about it. I had some quibbles with how it was structured and translated, and as I was reading it, I refused to write them down or even to remember them. Seriously, I have no idea what the flaws were anymore, because the emotional impact and the importance of the message trumped my desire to criticize the work.

The story follows a young Jewish man (something like 15 years old) as he is taken from his home and placed in labor camp after labor camp, forced to witness the suffering and death of most of the rest of his family and neighbors. Only because he is so young and strong does he survive. It's harrowing, as these things usually are, but the tone of the novel is what is so extraordinary. It blasts through you like a firehose, painting grotesque word pictures that convey the despair and moral poverty with the kind of clarity you could only get from a first-hand account.

Book #26 will be The Poet, by Michael Connelly.

Time to Get Moving

2007-01-17T14:31:00.000-08:00

I hate hate hate meta-posts, but this has gone on so long that it's required.

I finished 26 books last year. I've read 2 so far this year. I have about 8 posts' worth of Paris material, including pictures. All of it will come, but between my job and my insane family Christmas visits (none of which I have the heart to blog about), it's going to be slow. Hopefully I can pick up the pace and retain my reliable readership of 3 that I depend on so heavily...

The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway

2006-12-20T15:11:00.000-08:00

Started 11/28, finished 11/30

I think Hem is everything they say he is, both good and bad. I love him when his characters are sitting around the bistros of Paris having drinks and being silly. I love him when he laments the fate of F. Scott Fitzgerald's career. I love him when he tries to explain the "tragic figure of the bull" to people who will never understand (I may well be among them). I love him when his Cuban fisherman doesn't understand that he can't win, so he does it anyway.

We say that writers are on a quest for truth, and that what "truth" means from one to the other is as different as could be. For some authors it's difficult to tell what truth they're after, but for Hem I don't know how much clearer it could be. Every word he wrote sought out the truth of courage in the face of futility. That's how I would put it. His characters led lives that far surpassed expectations of physical limitation and endurance, and yet they faced these odds without hesitation, with absolute faith in their abilities, even overriding what their intellect told them.

In The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago knows he shouldn't go out so far. He shouldn't catch this fish, because the people who will eat it won't be deserving of its death. He shouldn't go farther than his food supply can reasonably support.

But he can't stop.

Once the fish is on the hook, only one will survive. Santiago is not Ahab. He doesn't believe the fish to be the great manifestation of evil (I'm sure a thousand essays have been written comparing the two), but his survival depends on its death. His respect for the fish outweighs his respect for most human beings, but he has no choice. He has to kill it in order to live.

This is a common theme in Hemingway's life as well as his work: Death in the Afternoon is 400 pages of non-fiction accounts of bullfights. Hem was an active hunter of big game and big fish, and he fought in every major war America was involved in, and a few that they weren't. The difference between Hemingway and Santiago, and I suspect that it's an important one, is that Hemingway volunteered for most of his quests, whereas Santiago didn't know how to live otherwise.

I've always tried to figure out what Hem is going for with all this, this death and violence. What question is he asking? He wasn't on a quest to spread truth but to discover it through tragedy, staged or not, as he went through his own adrenaline-charged life. I must admit I share his fascination with the question, even though I'm not prepared to participate to the extent that he did. Maybe he discovered it the day he sucked down a shotgun shell. Maybe it was exactly as grim as he had hinted at in this story as in many others. Maybe I need to live a bit longer before I can judge him in his decisions.

Predator vs prey, life vs death, man vs man, man vs nature, man vs himself...

All of these conflicts raged in every page Hem wrote. Except, of course, the bookends to his career... those were more like "man vs his own willie": one because he can't use it, the other because he can't stop.

Book #25 will be Night, by Elie Wiesel

Orhan Pamuk Sums It Up

2006-12-13T06:26:00.000-08:00

I wanted to post Orhan Pamuk's Nobel Prize acceptance speech because I need to keep it with me. I don't want to have to wonder where I found it or try to remember parts of it. Anyone who wants to produce a genuinely good novel should read this and fairly memorize it. Pamuk's My Name is Red is on my stack of books for next year, and I may promote it after finding this.

The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write?

I write because I have an innate need to write! I write because I can't do normal work like other people. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at all of you, angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can only partake in real life by changing it. I write because I want others, all of us, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at all of you, so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page, I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all of life's beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story, but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—just as in a dream—I can't quite get there. I write because I have never managed to be happy.
I write to be happy.

Thanks to The Elegant Variation for bringing it to my attention.

Bleachers, by John Grisham

2006-12-08T10:30:00.000-08:00

Yeah, yeah, I know. Street cred out the window. I'll hang my head in shame just after I put one more tick on the ol' book-o-meter. I won't apologize for reading it, but I will try to get to #26 instead of stopping at #25.

So, Lincoln was supposed to be next. What happened?

NaNoWriMo got in the way. Football season got in the way. The fact that its 600 pages are rather dense in content got in the way. It was a bad choice for a year in which I'm trying to read more for quantity than quality. The funny thing is that I post-dated my review of Lincoln to August 31 way back when I started it. I usually work on a review while I'm reading it, then play this little game with myself where I predict the finish date. This was my least accurate yet. By three months. I was on pace to read more like 35 or 40 for the year, but Mr. Vidal's rich prose and deep attention to detail (there I go giving away the lead) made me want to take my time and savor the experience. I'll pick it up again in January. I'm about halfway through, so it might take a while.

You read your second John Grisham ever. What was it like?

Well, given that I love football and that I HATED the other Grisham I read (The Chamber), it wasn't as excruciating as I had feared.

Any regrets?

It only took about 2.5 hours to read... it takes longer longer than that to watch three quarters of a lousy football game, so nah. Any longer and I might have.

So, reading Bleachers was better than three quarters of a lousy football game?

Did you watch that Seattle-Green Bay game Monday night? It should have been called The Old Man and the Seahawks (get it? Because Brett Favre is about to retire, and... nevermind). Any more like that and I may have to buy Grisham's entire catalogue. Thank God they haven't cancelled Studio 60 yet. Oh yeah, I read over a hundred pages of Bleachers during the 4th quarter.

Let's segue into the book, while we're talking about football. Isn't that what Bleachers is about?

I guess. It's a tender story about a man reuniting with his high school football team on the eve of their head coach's death. He hasn't been back to the school in 15 years, since the night he won the state championship and broke his hand in the locker room at halftime. The reason is a little mysterious.

Sounds intriguing.

Yeah? Well, you'd think so.

So, what was good about it?

The description of "The Game" was good. The former players gather at their high school stadium and sit in the bleachers as they await word on the old man. One of the players from the state championship team of '87 brings a tape player along and they listen to the broadcast from the winning game. The pacing is good and it's pretty easy to follow. You probably need some knowledge of football in order to get the most out of it, like the significance of the coaching team's absence--if you were a soccer fan this would be nothing. Soccer managers sit and get drunk with the fans. You'd also need to know why it's so unusual that a team wouldn't throw a single pass in two quarters.

Why is it unusual?

Here, let me help you. I could explain it, in fact I could probably have a whole blog about football, but there I see it: street cred whittling away by the word...

So, back to Bleachers, the players are sitting on bleachers listening to the game and waiting for the coach to die. What happens?

They win. He dies.

Is that it?

Well, they have a nice memorial service for him. They even get a former player of his out of prison on a 24-hour pass to attend the funeral.

Awwww, that's sweet.

Ain't it?

What was he in jail for?

Who cares?

Does it explain about the quarterback's broken hand and why the coaches aren't on the field after halftime?

Sure. It's riveting.

Seriously, though, the best part of the book was another mystery where the QB goes to see his old high school girlfriend. Why did he break up with her all those years ago? What does he hope to gain with this reunion? That was good because it afforded the main character a point of humanity--he screwed up because he was a stupid kid and he wants to apologize. And no, they don't get back together. That was handled pretty well.

Any complaints?

Have you read a Grisham before?

A couple. C'mon, they're good!

Whenever I read something that makes me turn the pages, but where I'm constantly griping about the writing style, I can't quite bring myself to call it "good". The Chamber was another example. As is anything written by Dan Brown. When people display no care or love of the language they use, they piss me off. They do it moreso when they employ cheap tactics and tricks to keep me turning pages. Yes, I bought it. Yes, he got me. Yes, I think he accomplished everything he set out to accomplish, but what I'm saying is that I can't respect him as a Good Writer.

You take Roth or Franzen or even Chuck Palahniuk. Take Rushdie or Vidal or even Greg Iles. For God's sake, take Nabokov. They write stuff that harpoons you through the soul, and they do it with "love of language" as a foundation. Not like Clancy or Brown or Grisham, who most likely regard the actual writing as a by-product. That is the trunk from which their every branch emanates. How many more metaphors can I throw at it? All the energy they have for the story they write--it's injected into a universe where every word matters. They don't rely on cliche or archetype. They assume that you don't want everything explained to you. No, they refuse to explain everything to you. That's the way I write, and that's why I don't have all that much respect Grisham, and I don't like reading him.

This is not to say people shouldn't read Grisham. What the hell do I care what you bring on an airplane? What I'm saying is, it's not for me. I dip into this pool once or twice a year, and I never regret it. It gives me a chance to see "what's selling", it clarifies my own views on the kind of writing I want to do, and it gives me something to talk about over lunch with my father. I once recommended The Alienist by Caleb Carr and I still haven't heard the end of it. Imagine if I recommended Atonement!

Well, nice to know you're not a snob or anything, your highness.

Cheeky.

What's next?

Book #23 will be The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway.

Oh, wow. I could never get into Hemingway.

And *scene*.

How Stressed Are You?

2006-11-28T10:23:00.000-08:00

This article over at MSN has me asking a simple question: how fucking stupid can we be?

I'm sure I've been caught up in this... I haven't wanted to give the impression that I'm less stressed out than people around me because that would result in a net increase in my workload. But really... my career has been job after job of 8-hour nights' sleep, ~8-hour work days, and lunch breaks that afford me a nice outing. Sure, when I worked in the game industry I was putting in mandatory 12-hour days and never getting a chance to go home, but c'mon! I was 23 years old! No family! I do remember, though, that my boss at the time seemed rather proud that his team was putting in 60- and 80-hour weeks. Always seemed like a fucked-up thing to do.

I'm nearing the end of a year-long rewrite of our complete software product, a complex web application with hundreds of pages and thousands of different inputs. People around me are screaming and freaking out because we'll never make it out on time and the quality will be lower than it should be. I agree with all of that. But I'm still getting my sleep and taking the time that I need to take in order to recharge, because I would be a worthless employee if I didn't. I have way more to do than I could possibly do before the deadline, but what would I do if I stayed here all those hours? I'll tell you: I would get the same amount of work done as if I didn't, and so would you. There's a well-established body of literature that says it's all bullshit, this notion that working more equals more work.

So why do we get caught up in all of it? I'm certain that my co-workers, at every job I've had, have considered me a slacker. I'm certain that's true at my current job. I'm even certain that I've been laid off as a result of it. But I'm also certain that my quality of work is consistent, and that I get my job done the best I possibly can. More hours would change nothing. A Blackberry would change nothing. Skipping lunch would make things considerably worse.

We must stop this nonsense, and allow me to be the first: I generally get 8 hours of sleep at night. I arrive at work at 7am, I leave at 4pm. Some people have a problem with this because they work until 8 and 9 every night. It is they who should stop, not me. I want to work with people who have lives on the outside, who remain fresh and ready every day. Your stress is bringing down the quality of work we produce, and you've got to stop!

How's that for the beginning of a revolution! Shut up and relax!! We should be one-upping each other on how much time we get to spend with our families, and how many books we read last year, and how little vacation time we have left, and how much sleep we get!

Who's with me?!

I'm not going to win NaNo

2006-11-27T06:53:00.000-08:00

This has the ring of the familiar... every time I try to do NaNo, I get a little farther before I reach this point. I keep thinking that if I keep trying, one day I'll be able to extend it out until he end of November.

But I don't want to think that anymore. Before I get into this, I want everyone to realize that this monologue only only relates to how NaNo affects me personally. Most of my best writerly friends have participated in NaNo, and a surprising number have won it. I have nothing against it, except that I've reached the firm conclusion that, for me, it is a bad idea.

Now, it gets me writing, which is never a bad thing. I've done some good stuff this month, stuff I can be proud of. The problem for me is the word count requirements. If it were just ever so slightly less aggressive I could do it. But 1667 words a day is, for me, not only unmaintainable, but I find that it's damaging. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I refuse to take the quality of my writing below a certain point. Wouldn't you agree that the joy of putting semi-graceful sentences together is one of the best things about writing? When I write something that I know is bad and I know I'll have to weed out later... well, I feel like I need to take a shower. I also refuse to write long swaths of words that have nothing to do with the story and that I know will be deleted anyway. Call me lazy, but I don't want to do that much work.

So, here I am, after 25 days and 35,000 words into a story which I enjoy, and which I hope may turn into something.

I don't want to write anymore. I don't even want to think about it. I want to stick it in a drawer and never look at it again. I'm completely burned out. I don't blame the writing every day: I blame the aggressiveness of the goal. When I wrote Red Beret and the Paris memoir, I did them in 1,000-word chunks every night starting at 9 p.m. I was able to maintain this pace for 3-4 months in both cases. When I looked over the previous night's work, I was happy with what I had done and I was ready to do more. With this project I don't care if I never write another word.

And that, my friends, is not, or at least should not be, the culminating point of NaNo. You don't want to work on something for a month and then drop it like a Columbia House subscription. You don't want to see a good idea whiff right past you while you're too caught up in the numbers and word count to see where you're going wrong.

I'm still planning to participate. I like the community, I like the energy and the good vibes, and I like the fact that someone is holding me accountable (by someone I mean that little number counter thingy) to be productive and write every day. But this 50,000 word goal is for the birds. If it was 35,000 or even 40,000, I could support it. So with that in mind, I'm still going to participate, and either spot myself 10-15k words, or just decide that not winning is acceptable.

Here's an idea, one I've bandied about and received no support on: NaNoWriQuo - National Novel Writing Quarter.

In my experience and in talking to people, the habit doesn't fully sink in after a month. People get burned out like me and stop writing. Not only that, but 50,000 words is too few for a novel, for all but a couple of genres (it's certainly too short for fantasy-science fiction that most people seem to be writing, anyway). Why not take 90 days and write 90,000 words?

It's the idea that a little bit every day will keep you interested, keep you fresh, rather than the head-first deep-dive you get caught up in here. I mean, there's so much emphasis on so many words, and so many of the excerpts I read are such crap... can't we all just slow down a little bit and give ourselves a chance at building something of lasting quality?

Well, that's what I'll be doing anyway. I'm taking a week or two off to get back on track with reading (still have 3 books to go this year), then I'm going to start the real process of trying to write a novel. In my heart I'm still jazzed by L'Esprit s'en fuit, no matter what my tired mind is saying. I need to do research, I need to start to do some in-fill of plot details, and I need to rethink one of the major character arcs.

I still may report word count here, because it's kind of a nice thing to see as it goes along, slow and steady, just as it should...

An Almost Love Scene

2006-11-14T00:03:00.000-08:00

I like how this scene came out, and consider it high validation regarding my decision to do NaNoWriMo this year. I don't pretend that it's great or that it's the way it will be after a final edit. I just liked it and wanted to share, that's all. Nyah.

The only things you should need as set up are these:

I'm working with a style that's unfamiliar to me. It's much more dramatic and fun, but also a little strange. I'm using fragments and stream-of-consciousness blocks to convey more narrative emotion than I'm used to... all grammatical infractions are therefore intentional.
The narrator is Marc, younger brother (around 15 years old) of the main character, a French gentleman (a Vicomte) named Remy
When Marc sees white, it usually triggers fantasies about a girl named Charlotte
Remy is in love with Genevieve, but Marc has barely so much as looked at her before this scene

>>>
Remy stood in the doorway wearing his second skin, the blue jacket that had worn thin at the armpits and buttonholes. It was not quite six in the morning, and his face showed anger such as he never showed before at least 3 in the afternoon. It would be a long day.

“That cow can’t milk herself. We need milk, the butter is long gone, and you are the one who volunteered to—“

“I know, I know. You’ve told me every morning for the last...” I think I drifted off to sleep.

He jerked my legs out of the bed and threw my shirt at me, the one I’d been wearing for two solid months with only a few washings.

Stool, bucket, udders, squeezing, whiteness, milky, creamy... my Charlotte was my only thought. My Charlotte, my Goddess, her ankle and her slip. Her black eyes in the middle of white perfection. The crimson on her lips, the crimson [from the cut] on the back of her hand, the crimson of my cheeks when she looked at me.

Squeeze, crimp, pull, grip, grope, fondle, knead. Hands on skin, hands on white. Charlotte! Hands in white liquid, drinking her, spilling her out of my mouth, consuming her, every drop infusing my soul with her scent.

I imagined things I didn't fully understand. What do I do with my hands? What do I do with my mouth? How do I hold her? How does she lay? Am I supposed to be on top of her? Are we supposed to take our clothes off first? I might enjoy that well enough to prolong it for hours. Shoulder straps and lace. Pins in her hair, removed one by one, pulled out without a tug. Maybe a slight tug... I watch her eyes as they wince in pain. Then she looks at me, smiling and biting her lower lip. I pull another pin and this time I’m not careful. She gasps, her sweet breath hitting me like honey. I put my fingers on the back of her head, then run them up up up, weaving my fingers into her mane, pulling her head to me, gripping her roughly. She smiles, mouth open, and looks over my shoulder, looking in a daze as though her mind is elsewhere. But I know it’s not. I feel the skin of her breasts on my chest. I run my hand from her breast down her side, to her waist, to the curve that becomes her hip. I feel the bone there, sharp and perfect. Then my hand runs inward, down down down.

I run my hands under the milk as it comes out in spurts.The inhabitants of my father's estate, both permanent and temporary, will drink the milk of my fantasies.

Hands on my shoulders, soft hands. I’m not startled, in fact I expected it. My Charlotte has come for me, hearing me across the—

“Marc. I said, are you okay? Can you not hear me? Are you well?”

Genevieve stood in her peasant gown, a single layer protecting her from the world, from Remy’s hungry eyes. If only my white fantasies could be separated by a single layer, rather than an ocean. How I needed my living Goddess then!

Imagining Charlotte standing where Genevieve stood, concentrating all my desires in the world in that tiny woman, I could see how Remy could burn for her. I began to wonder if she was actually Charlotte, here in the flesh. I leaned in to her.

“Marc? What are you? What has gotten into—“

I kissed her full on the lips, I took her in my arms and felt—or did I just imagine it?—felt her slacken, give in, give me a fraction of a second of a glimpse into the world of sensual pleasure. Her lips were hot and alive, and as they parted I felt moisture, the essence of another human being, alive as my own and giving me energy. My cheeks flushed, my loins tingled, and my heart swelled with the certainty that she needed me as badly as I did her.

A fraction of a second is all it lasted. She pushed me away, teeth gritted and struggling.

“Marc! Let me go! Have you lost your mind?”

The room was black with night, lit only by a tiny lamp. The barn, broken down and half-burned, materialized in front of me. I realized that Genevieve’s softness, her yielding to my fantasies for the briefest flash, was a gift to me. She gave me this because she knew I was a man who couldn’t make it much longer alone. The offense she took now wasn’t sincere. It was her obligation. I had always considered her to be a saint, a helper of those in need, but I had never known just to what extent she understood the suffering of others in non-material terms. Had I not been so lost in love with my white Charlotte, I might have fallen for Genevieve as deeply as Remy had.

“I—I’m so sorry, Genevieve. I don’t know what came over me.”

She rubbed her shoulder, which I'm sure I bruised.

“I think we’re all on the point of starvation. You couldn’t help yourself.” She looked down. “Sometimes I’m surprised other members of the household haven’t taken more liberties.”

She said nothing for a moment. Something in the back of my neck burned. “Has someone violated you?”

Her lower lip trembled for a moment, then she looked at me.

“No, it was nothing. I shouldn’t have said a word.”

My fists clenched. I was angrier than I had any right to be.

“Who was it? Was it Remy? I’ll kill him, the—“

“Non!” her eyes were wide. “No, it wasn’t your brother. You must know that he would never do something like that to anyone. It was someone... else.”

“Tell me now. Tell me so I can make it right, so I can make him pay.”

She looked up at me for several seconds. Her lip trembled and the saintly gloss normally in her eyes was replaced by anguish and tears.

I can’t tell you. You mustn’t tell anyone else, either. You can’t—“

“I’ll kill him! What did he do to you? Who—what have you had to endure?”

“It was just another man desperate for the touch of a woman. There are many such men in this part of the country, even in this house. The people have been so miserable for so long. Don’t you remember what life was like before they took the Bastille?” She looked toward the barn door behind me, as though through it she could re-enter the past.

“How can you talk this way? You are telling me that you’ve been raped, and you’re prepared to give your attacker the excuse of the revolution?”

“It’s over and there’s nothing I can do about it now. Bringing the accused party to some violent end wouldn’t help me any more than it would help him. I’ve locked it away in my heart forever, and I beg of you, do the same. For the good of this house, do the same.”

I said nothing. I felt more rage than I could describe. Rage, built from the day I bit the stranger’s finger off, to the pools of blood outside the Bastille, to months and years of near-death existence. I knew that I had to either fight somebody or, or do something I could never bring myself to say out loud. With the rush of emotions I had lived through just since I began to milk the cow, I deduced that I would rather kill a man than do the same as had been done to Genevieve. That is a flower I could never pluck.

“Genevieve.”

Her eyes regained the look of the Saint as she looked back at me.

“You know that I don’t have it in me to do what—what he did to you,” I said.

“I know.”

“I don’t need the physical sensations. I need the warmth and human connection.”

She put her arms around me in a motherly embrace.

“You will have all of that which you could require. Don’t mistake my refusal as anything but an honor to my wedding vows. If you need to know you are loved, know that I love you like a--like a sister.”

My throat tightened and tears began to fall from my eyes. I let out a sob, then another one followed. Within a minute I had soaked her gown with my tears.

All the while, my sister, Remy’s Genevieve, stroked my hair and whispered to me in a language without words, the one I had heard her use so many times with her infant son.

Day 5, The Bookend to My Attempted Sensual Experience

2006-11-13T07:03:00.000-08:00

I get out in a square that gives me the Times Square feeling again, just like Place Clichy, only oriented differently. Four separate roads intersect here, but rather than be crossed orthogonally, they run in seemingly random directions creating wide spaces and narrow buildings that grow wider down the street.

I take out my map and my other map. I’m trying to orient myself, but I can’t see any street signs. I’m standing in what seems like a little median strip, like an island in the middle of heavy traffic. I take a turn around the little shops and offices on the island, and come across an Asian lady, probably mid-40s. I ask her for directions in French, and I have trouble following her accent. She looks behind me and I immediately think she sees someone she knows, but she's actually looking at my hair. She grabs my ponytail and makes a few clucks with her tongue.

“You need haircut!”

“Well, I was...”

“You need haircut!”

“What, do you have availability? Can you take me in right now?” I look into the shop and see one other hairdresser with a customer. It doesn’t take me long to realize that the time is now. I’ve been talking about it for four years. I’m in Paris where, rumor has it, they know a thing or two about hair.

“How much is it?”

“Shampoo zenmassageof head an blowjry thirty Euros.”

“Wait, thirty Euros?”

“Yeah, no style. Massage head cut blowjry. Thirty.”

Unlike the earlier transaction at Frou-Frou, I think I can consummate this relationship.

She takes me by the hand and leads me back behind a black curtain. She helps me remove my jacket. She puts her arms around me to tie an apron around my neck. She sits me down in a chair and walks behind me. She gently pulls my head down, and I hear water running. I can watch from a mirror they’ve put on the ceiling. Warm water smoothes out over my scalp and the rhythm of it makes me feel warm in my toes. Her hands caress me behind the ears and in the back of my head, and I can feel the water-wetness cause her hands to slip around.The flip of the shampoo-bottle cap, the sound of a good squeeze, and her palms are slickery sliding over my crown and at the base of my skull. She stops and I open my eyes. She starts speaking, not French. She leaves me, I can see her leaving in the mirror.

I feel pressure in my chest, like I’ve been spurned. I decide to relax and close my eyes again. She won’t leave me here.

I may have fallen asleep before the hands touched me again, much more gently this time. She’s running her fingernails over my scalp, digging in a little, causing rivulets of pleasure to radiate between my ears and down my back. I have to fight from saying, “harder!” I open my eyes to find a different girl. She’s probably in her early twenties, and it occurs to me that she probably has less experience but more skill. She rubs behind my ears for longer than it would take to lather, then her hands go away. I almost moan.

The warmth spreads over my head again as she rinses. She cascades her hands and her fingernails up and down the top of my head all the way to the back. I’m praying that she’ll follow the third step of shampoo etiquette: repeat.

She turns off the water and says, “Okay.”

I stand up and move to the chair. I impress myself by being able to negotiate the style I want in French. I even try to switch to English once to explain the part where “I still want to be able to put it in a ponytail,” but she doesn’t understand a word. After she’s finished cutting she blowdries my hair and combs with her fingers. Using an actual brush to style it costs an extra 8E.I stand up, feeling about seven pounds lighter, and pay. The ladies tell me how much better I look and give me about thirty pieces of hard candy. I pay the 30E on my credit card and bid them farewell, after I ask them how to get to r. Mouffetard. They point behind the building we’re in and say “au revoir” about twenty times.

I'm off, and ready, finally, for Hemingway.

Stop reading this! You have no need for it!

2006-11-13T05:52:00.000-08:00

This makes me want to cry. And yes, I am aware of the irony of posting a ~50 word post in order to complain that people can't absorb more than 100 words in a sitting.

So allow me to further complicate the message by reporting that I'm 18,942 words into my ultra-complex NaNo novel...
MM

So it turns out I'm writing fanfiction...

2006-11-07T09:40:00.000-08:00

I am no fan of fanfic. I don't have a lot of respect for it or for those who hold it as a credential. Now, I'm starting to come around to the concept because of incandragon. When someone of such talent, intellectual curiosity, and insight into the business of writing tells me I need to start paying attention, I know she's probably right. That's the only reason the first two sentences of this entry aren't the relentless screed you would have seen had I written this post six months ago.

I once quit a writer's group over fanfic. The de facto leader introduced herself to me as a published, award-winning author, and the proceeded to give me the most worthless, ignorant, and contemptable criticism I've ever received. If you don't know me, you should know that I love receiving good criticism from people I respect. The notes from Jill were just stupid. I kept her notes on a draft of my "Door Carver" story just so I could have a good laugh when I felt down about its progress. In that story, the main character has an active imagination, to the point that there is barely a separation between his play world and his real world. In her criticism, she told me that if I didn't specify "in his imagination" every single time he was making something up, nobody would understand.

"Treat your audience like they're first-graders," she told me. "That's how I'm able to come across so well in my work."

She and I seek different audiences.

I quit that group when I found out that "published" meant "posted a story to a web site", and "award-winning" meant "won a popularity contest on a Buffy fan forum". That was enough for me and I haven't been back. I've always wanted to write stories in the Twin Peaks universe, maybe even the X-Files, but it never occurred to me to cite any of that as a credential, or even tell anyone I had done it.

All that said, though, I do see how it could be a fantastic writing exercise: you're given the opportunity to work on your chops in description, plot, set pieces, etc., without all the responsibility of coming up with the background universe. It's a pretty cool idea, like a paint-by-numbers border around a centrally blank canvas.

Which brings me to the point...

My NaNo novel is a soap opera set in the French Revolution. It's going pretty well, because I get to narrate a scene from the point of view of a couple minor aristocrats caught up in the mob storming the Bastille on July 14, 1789. Eventually the guillotine will make an appearance.

But last night as I was inventing surnames, I couldn't think of one for the mysterious femme fatale, "La Marquise". I have a very clear picture of her, even down to the kind of jewelry she wears and the timbre of her voice. But as I went over the list of names, it occured to me that I didn't need it yet: my characters were running down an alleyway to escape the mob when they happened across La Marquise's driver, wearing peasant clothing and waiting near a small apartment in the wrong wrong wrong part of town. I realized that the name on the door wouldn't be her name at all: it would be the name of a lover she stays with occasionally when she feels like slumming.

My fingers started typing the name before I understood fully what I was doing. When I was finished I sat back and thought about all the implications, not of just using the name, but of inserting a small set of characters from a classic of French literature into my own. I don't know if I'm going to keep it this way if I ever do anything with the novel, but right now it's fun, it's subtle, and it allows me to play in a universe I've wanted to play in since I discovered the source material in 1988.

The name on the placard? Danceny.

Now here's the first ever Habeas Blogus "Internet Research" contest:

What story am I borrowing from?

The prize: you will receive some bragging rights, a digital pat on the back from me, and the right to be asked to help me do internet research should I ever need it. Good luck!

Day 5, The Morning After

2006-11-06T07:14:00.000-08:00

My bed shakes. I hear something four inches from my ear and jerk my head up. A foot sits on my headboard. Then the other one lands. The calves are shaven, increasing the chances it’s a girl.

I'm too tired for an introduction, so I close my eyes and play possum. Zip, zip, shuffle, shuffle, and she’s out the door. I go right back to sleep.

I wake up with the bells chiming 9 a.m. again, but I look at my watch and it’s 9:20. I get up, throw on the day’s clothes, and head down the hall to check in on Our Gang in room 20.
The door is ajar, and Justin is dressing. Paul is asleep, and Nima is nowhere to be found.

“She didn’t come in last night.”

For a Stanislawski moment, I picture looking at my computer at work. I point at my face, neutral as Switzerland, and say, “this is the look of my surprise.”

“Where was she?”

“Dunno, some guy I think.”

“Hmm.” He looks down and doesn’t move for a few seconds.

“What are you doing today?” he asks.

“I’m doing the Hemingway walk.”

“Hmm.” He looks around and grabs his gloves. “Well, as much fun as that sounds like, I think I’m gonna go to the Musee d’Orsay. Look at some impersonators.”

“I think you mean Impressionists.”

He looks at me like I’m an idiot.

“Sorry, man, it’s too early for my sense of humor. Haven’t had breakfast yet.”

We go downstairs and there are young people everywhere. We make some joke about growing old, and suddenly I wonder if any of these girls could be my new roommate... but there’s really no way to know. Well, there’s one girl who definitely isn’t her, but it’s probably rude to say more.

The South Africans are here, as are the Brazilians and the Argentineans. And a few Aussies. I get my baguette and shitty coffee and sit with my tour book and a map.

Today will be difficult, but I’m determined to read the whole walk before I start. I didn’t do that on the first day and I think I missed some things as a result. Start at a metro station in the 5th, end up at another one in the 14th. They’re pretty close to each other if you’re walking directly, but the round I have to make is shaped like a large balloon stretching through the 5th, 6th, and 7th before ending up there. It says it’s a 5-mile walk.

After I finish breakfast I head back upstairs to collect everything. Nima is awake and getting ready. Paul is in there with her.

You have to really try to imagine Australian accents in order for this to work right.

“So do I smell like sex?” she asks.

“I don’t know, I haven’t been that close to you yet.”

She runs up to him and pushes his head between her breasts.

“Ew, my God girl! Get the hell away from me with that sex smell. You’re turning me off! It doesn’t smell like you, it smells like him!”

“Fuck you, ya fuckin’ wanker! I’m gonna get my new boyfriend to kick your ass.”

“I hope he can kick ass better than he can serve drinks.”

“I’m gonna tell my new boyfriend that you said that, that you impugned his job skills.”

“Tell him he can kiss my ass.”

“Roight, I’ll tell him he can kick your ass.”

“Kiss!”

“Kick!”

“Get outta here ya fuckin’ skank. I’ll tell your new boyfriend to kick your ass while he’s at it. You’d probably like that, roight?”

“I don’t know, never tried it. But with my new boyfriend I’ll bet we’ll discover all sorts of new things togevah.”

“Did you ask your new boyfriend how many girls he has in a week? I’ll bet the bugger needs a snorkel to keep his head above all your fluids.”

“I didn’t ask him but how does he know I don’t lay just as many girls in a week?”

“You could have a competition!”

“You could be a judge!”

“You could kiss my ass!”

Paul gets up and runs toward her, arms out and hands grabbing.

“Get away from me fucko! I’ll get my new boyfriend to kick your ass!”

...and so forth.

Eventually Paul goes running. He’s going to England later in the evening after an extended stay in Paris, so he bids farewells, assuming he won’t see us again. Nima and I are left alone. We haven’t spoken since well before her evening with Peter.

“You remember what I told you about the Sun Also Rises? About the two main characters?”

“Yeah. Listen, mate. Could you help me here? I have to eat something but I think I’ve missed breaky. Do you think you could score me something?”

“I don’t think so, they’ve all gone. I may have something in my room or in the fridge, but I’m not sure.”

“Anything would be good. Goodonya, mate.”

I go downstairs to the refrigerator and take out the cheese I left there before. I don’t have any bread, but she’ll have to make do.

“Thanks. I’m a bit surprised I’m even up this early. Did you have a good time last night? I didn’t see you.”

“Well, I wouldn’t expect that you would! I gathered you were up to something.”

She looks at me, grinning out the side of her mouth. “Well, I wasn’t intending to. He wasn’t either, it was kind of a spontaneous thing, yaknow? Last minute.”

I laugh.

“What’s that?” She punctuates “that” with a near-S sound at the end, like “ts”. It’s something I’ve heard from a few Aussies when they’re really emphasizing something.

“Last minute? You’re kidding, right? It looked like you had been planning it all evening.”

“Nope. Paul and I were in there with Peter, then Paul left, and we were alone. I didn’t sleep much at all.”

“Have you ever heard the term cock-block?”

“Sure.”

“I thought Paul was being a bit of a cock-block last night. I actually tried to divert his attention a bit to get him out of the way, even.” I neglect to mention Peter’s involvement. Something in the “guy” code of honor prohibits me.

“No, not at all. I was just in there having fun and knocking one back. I didn’t think he was being a cock-block. Jesus, considering the experience I could’ve used a good cock-block.”

Oh, shit.

My John Wayne American stereotype stands an inch taller. “Was he mean to you?” I ask.

“No, not at all, he just wasn’t very, well, nice to me. I’ve had worse, but I think I’m old enough now to know when I could have had better. I mean, he took care of me, he was just a bit of a, well, blah.”

“Interesting. Well, next time you need a cock-block, you let me know. I thought you were in all-out seduction mode.”

“God, no. I’m never in seduction mode. I don’t know how to seduce anyone, they usually, well...”

“They usually come to you. That’s what’s so attractive about you. You don’t understand... you. You’re like a sun that shines on people when you’re interested in them. It doesn’t take much, but any guy would be drawn in. I’m glad you don’t know your power, ‘cause this way you can still use it for good.”

“Well, I don’t know about all that. But you can certainly be my cock-block anytime. Any time."
I look at my watch.

“Are you going? Do you have to be somewhere?”

“Today is Hemingway day. No more excuses. I’m actually going this time.”

“Well, don’t let me keep you.”

I start to walk out.

“Hey, Marcus.”

“Yeah?”

“What was it you wanted to say, about Hem and the Sun Also Rises?”

“Well," I pause. There's really nothing I can say and stay safe inside my cozy life. "It’s a pretty interesting story, don’t you think?”

“I will have to read it.”

I go out the door.

I take the Metro to the station at Censier-Daubenton, the first stop on Michael Palin's Hemingway tour. During the train ride, three Spaniards get on the bus and begin to play guitars and sing. It's beautiful and I consider missing a few stop to hear more, but they get off at my station. When I reach the street, the mood is perfect for Hemingway.

Day 4, Night-night and Some Company for Nima

2006-11-03T07:02:00.000-08:00

12:45 a.m.

Good story, everyone agrees. That’s when I notice the bartender is different. It’s Peter, the tall American who’s nice to people. He chooses good music too, at least for someone of my generation. Nima is leaning against the wall next to the cash register. She and Peter and Malcolm are deep in conversation and I can’t hear anything.

We order another round, and I start to complain about how little French I’ve used on this trip so far. Angie points out two guys sitting at a nearby table and says they’re locals. One has a buzz cut and glasses, the other looks like the lead singer of a rock band, with long black hair and a crooked mouth.

Before I turn back to face my table I call to them, “Excusez! Je vous invite de nous joindre!”
They look at each other and shrug that half-shrug that should be immortalized in sculpture as the most French of gestures. They barely speak English, and I’m the only one at my table who speaks any French, except one little guy from Argentina. The four of us shuffle our chairs around and split off from the main group. We introduce ourselves and talk about where we came from, etc. The little guy from Argentina can’t understand anything, and I can’t understand him. Eventually he sits back and half listens. He doesn’t speak English either. I feel bad for him, but I think there’s very little I can do. I hope he can pick up enough of one conversation or another to at least stay here. I buy him a beer.

The two Frenchman are interesting. I have trouble understanding the clean-shaven one; he’s more than three feet away and the music is loud. The long-haired one is very patient with me, repeating himself when I need it and bearing with me when I start to talk where my vocabulary doesn’t support me. After a while I recount the story about the brothel.

“So,” the long-haired guy asks, “you didn’t do anything there? Have you not since you’ve been here?”

“Nope, I’m married.” I show them Alex and K.

They look at each other with closed-lipped smiles. They shrug again in unison.

“Mais,” the clean-shaven one starts, “mais, il faut profiter quand on peut. N’est-ce pas?”

It’s my turn to shrug. “Ce n’est qu’une semaine. Je peux attendre.”

They act like I’m speaking a foreign language. Is this the way these people really think? My first real conversation with real French people, and they throw out this bomb!

Nima’s calling me over. She wants to buy me a drink. Malcolm wants to tell me about all the editing that my novel needs. I hate to say it, I don’t even admit it to them, but I’m kinda tired of speaking French. Nima wants to go upstairs and get a bottle of wine. Paul and I accompany her, and we stay in that room for a while. Paul is talking about the Simpsons, and Justin wants to talk about my Moorish carver. I show them my book on calligraphy, and they seem interested, despite the alcohol.

Back downstairs, the Frenchmen are gone and it’s about to be last call. Malcolm is gone too. I still have a paper cup full of Nima’s bootlegged wine, and Peter pulls me aside to tell me to throw it out.

I order a bottle of cheap shit red swill for 8 Euros. It’s an Australian Shiraz, and I’ll probably regret that for the rest of my life. My only other choice was a white not much better than Yellow Tail. Nevertheless I start pouring around the table and Nima disappears to talk to Peter again. Paul and I start in on Simpsons quotes again, and we all sing with Janis Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee” comes on. Every person in that bar knew most of the words, even the little Argentinean.

Paul’s favorite episode is the “Whacking Day” episode. For him it explores the most interesting elements of crowd psychology: normally reasonable people getting caught up in a barbaric ritual with dubious origins, and then following the leader in denouncing it the moment Barry White shows up. I tell him my current favorite is the Burlesque House episode and, aside from its timeliness tonight, it has great crowd scenes as well.

* * *
“Wait, people!”
Everyone stops.
“Sure, we could knock down the burlesque house--“
Immediately the crowd begins smashing and burning again.
“Wait!! I said, we could knock down the burlesque house, but then...”
Everyone stops.
* * *

And of course, Sideshow Mel acts as the voice of the mob in both cases. As I’m talking, a rain of warm liquid splashes on my hands and clothes and Paul jumps up. I’ve knocked over a wine glass, but it doesn’t break.

“Oh, shit, I’ve made a faux pas!” I run to get napkins.

This is only interesting because Paul then tells me the pants he’s wearing are his only pair. He’s been wearing them for three months and will wear them for six more if they last.

I say, “I find it hard to believe this is the first time you’ve spilled alcohol on them in three months.”

“It sure is. What an honor for ya, mate!’

Wow.

The lights go out. It’s five minutes until two. Nima is behind the bar now, talking to Peter, just inches from his face. We shuffle out of the bar and into the courtyard. There are three South Africans out there I’ve seen a few times. I’m not tired at all, so I grab a chair. I’ve still got some more wine. I don’t think Peter was supposed to let me take it out, but I think Peter’s got other things on his mind than following these rules.

The South Africans talk about American Football and the Simpsons, then one of them starts being a little sheepish. I swear he’s almost turning his toes in the dirt as he looks down.

“So, what’s up with your little friend in there?

“Huh?” I say, knowing full well who he’s referring to.

“Lakkebaude,” another guy says.

“What about her?” I ask.

“Well, you know she’s trouble, right? I mean... chhhhhhhhaaaat!” This sounds like the word “hot”, but with a sound like the “ch” in Scottish “loch” or Hebrew “challah”. A hard “h”. He continues, “You know, I spotted it wivin five minutes of seein ‘er. Maintenance like a bugger, but... chaaaaat!”

“Hot? Yeah she’s hot, but I don’t know much about her. What, were you thinking about tagging 'er?” Men talk like this. I’m not proud of it, just bear with me.

“Lakkebaude,” the other guy says again. The ‘d’ sounds like the ‘th’ in ‘that’. I know because they spelled it for me later.

“Lakketita,” the third chimes in.

They all laugh. My laugh is pretty hollow because I don’t know what they’re saying.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Afrikaans. Lakke is kind of like, well when you’ve gone out gettin pissed, you’ve had lakke beer. This chick is lakkebaude, ‘cause baude, means ass. She’s lakke ass!”

The third guy, a clean-cut prep-school type, says, “I suppose you can guess what lakketita means.”

“Yeah, got it.”

“Anyway mate, you’ve been hangin ‘round her a lot, and I just wanted to make sure you know she’s trouble.”

“Lucky me.”

“Yeah, wivin five minutes, mate.”

“Well, I don’t think she’s aiming to be my problem anymore, if she ever was. She didn’t say much to me tonight at all. I don’t think I’m her type, you know, married and all.”

All three of them laugh. The second guy, tall rugby type, says, “Fuck difference that make in a place like this? Why your wife let you come ‘ere, knowin’ what kind a place it is?”

“I don’t think she knew. I don’t think I knew. Doesn’t make a difference though. I’m only here one more night after tonight.”

I see a flicker to my right. It’s coming from the bar, through the glass-paned door. Paul’s still in there, lighting a cigarette, with Nima and Peter behind the bar.

“What’s this?” the little South African says. “When’s the bar close?”

“Two o’clock,” I say.

“Fuck, it’s two-thirty now!”

He walks up to the door and taps on it.

Peter throws open a different door, one I hadn’t noticed before. He must have been on his way out here already; he was through it before the little guy finished knocking.

“What time you guys close in there?”

“Two o’clock. We’re already closed.”

“So what you doin’ inside?”

Peter closes the door behind him and surveys the four of us, eyeing me more than the rest.

“It’s just me, the girl, and the cock-block in there.”

I burst out laughing. I can’t help it; I’ve never heard the term used in context before. I don't think I knew what it meant.

Peter and the little guy start to talk in low tones while the rest of us tell cock-block stories. I don’t remember any of them.

The little guy comes over and starts whispering orders. He points to us, giving us each assignments. For some reason the words come back to me, “If given the right atmosphere, this young man could go far”. We’re going to heard Paul out of there, and for our services Peter is buying one more round. I do the math on my own: Peter is going to spend 12E and risk going to jail so he can get laid. Am I betraying some friendship with Nima to help in this?

Well, another beer sounds good.

While we wait for Peter to open the door, the tallest South African laughs. He speaks to me in a low voice.

“You know what’s so funny about this is how we’re all so true to our cultures: it’s the American who’s willing to buy his way to getting laid, while the Aussies try to sit around and tell stories. All the South Africans are into it for is to get fuckin’ pissed!”

I wonder where that leaves me.

The four of us crowd around Paul as I get my treasured 1664. We glance at each other from time to time and inch toward the back door. Nima and Peter are getting closer together as Peter counts the till.

Within five minutes Paul is out the door and he starts to complain about the cold.

I finish my beer and throw out the empty. Suddenly my feet feel four days’ worth of intense walking and my eyes hurt. And I realize that tomorrow is my last full day. I nod to the other South Africans and bid Paul a good night. I’ve done my job and been a good soldier. Up the stairs, through the open door, I see there’s someone new on the top bunk. I think it’s a girl.
I take two Tylenol and drink a half-liter of water. I fall asleep within ten minutes, snickering about the cock-block and hoping my upstairs neighbor can sleep through it.

Day 4, Queues, the Hooker, and Having The Floor

2006-11-01T07:08:00.000-08:00

As the lovely British girl was saying...

“When a British person sees a queue, he automatically thinks, ‘gee, there must be something interesting over there. Got to get in the queue!’ and they do. That’s why British love traffic, yasee, because it’s one giant queue.”

I tell Angie and Nima and Paul and Justin and the Brazilians that I’m forming a queue. Nima tells me she’s not going anywhere, she’s too tired. The Brits are staying in. Paul and Justin are going to do whatever Nima does. My stomach is turning; I almost feel a personal insult. What caused all this to change so quickly?

Twenty minutes later I turn to Angie. “Well, do you want to go somewhere? You need to eat, don’t you?”

She looks at the floor. “I guess I’m just going to follow the crowd. But don’t let that stop you, by all means!”

I’m not going to. I have two nights left in Paris and I’m going to do something fun with both of them.

I leave my camera in the safe-deposit box and grab another metro map. I make sure I have my tickets and that my cash is all in the money-belt thing. I go out the door, and I can’t help but turn to see if anyone came out behind me, or if anyone even looked. It’s starting to get cold and I put my jacket on.

Down Felix Faure, I plan to go see Notre Dame and the other buildings lit up like they say they all are at night. I have less than two hours before the metro stops running, so I’d better make my choice fast.

Wait, I don’t have my camera. And Nima and some others said they’d like to see these things at night, and if we do the bike tour tomorrow night we’ll see them anyway. I think I’ll do something else.

Well, I guess I could go see the Moulin Rouge. That’s probably something special. I take the Métro to Place de Clichy. I’ve been there before, so it should be easy to find everything again.

Wrong.

I get up to street level, and there’s that Times Square feeling again, but it’s not lit up like I expected. The buildings are dark and the street isn’t very crowded. I see a very skinny man in skin-tight black jeans walking chewing-gum style up the street, carrying a large duffel bag. He’s got one hand out to the side, palm down, and he swings it in exaggerated arcs with each step. Okay, that’s probably what I should have expected. Keep walking and hope he doesn’t turn around.

I duck in a doorway at a peep show entrance, without going behind the curtain. I check the map, hoping this is the last time I have to do it. The Moulin is just up and to the right, but I can’t see it. I come out from the doorway, and see the entrance not twenty feet away. I don’t know what’s wrong with my eyes tonight.

I cross Clichy to get a better look. It’s red, sure enough. The blades are spinning, and I contemplate the concept of a windmill for a few seconds before moving on. I decide to walk up Clichy a bit, I guess because I’m feeling a bit adventurous. I pass r. Pigalle, and I’m about to cross Clichy again to get to the metro, when--

Note: I’ve told this story several times to several people, and I think it always changes a little bit. I do that because it’s a bit involved, and I usually don’t want to spend many words or minutes on it. What follows is the definitive version, the one that actually happened, as best I can remember.

“Hey, buddy!”

It’s a man’s voice. I don’t look.

“Do you like girls?”

I look. Why did I look?

“Do you speak English?”

“Yeah.”

Why the fuck did I say that?

“Come check out my club, called Frou-Frou. It’s just down there.”

I look down the street (appropriately enough, it’s Pigalle) to see a little black sign hanging from an eave, with “Frou-Frou” in pink neon.

“No,” I say. “I have to go meet some friends.”

“Come on, it will just take a few minutes. Quality, good, nice girls for you. Frou-Frou.”

I think about my mother and about my wife and about Nima and about all the nice people in the world who would wonder just what the hell I’m doing down here.

“No!” I say, a bit more forcefully than I intended.

“Oh, I see. You don’t like girls. Men, then?”

“NO!” I say, far more forcefully than I intend. “I really need to get going, because I need to meet some friends.” I start walking, ignoring him and not paying attention to my direction. He keeps talking, but stays on his corner.

I turn right, on to r. Frochot, and see more peep shows and restaurants. I notice that the restaurants seem blindingly normal even though they have names like “le resto sex” and “Horny Toad’s”. I turn right again, hoping to at least run the gauntlet and see this famous r. Pigalle. I’ll at least be able to say I’ve done that, possibly the only American ever to walk here and not get laid. I pass the Frou-Frou, its double glass-door entrance blacked out with what looks like garbage bags. I cross to the other side, hoping to avoid the barker, but I see him again before I even reach the intersection.

“Did you not find them?”

I can’t think of anything. I freeze up. I think about George Costanza, The Great Liar. What would Costanza do?

“Nope, didn’t find them.”

“Come on, sir. You like girls, you can go in and go out and still have time to get back to your wife at the hotel. The metros run until 2 tonight.”

Well that last part is bullshit. I know for a fact they don't run past about 11:30. But suddenly a part of me kinda wants to see what a French strip club is like. While I’m in Paris, of all places, maybe I should see something racy. Why not? If it’s anything like America I should be able to get in and out for less than 20E and still get to mentally evaluate the talent they keep in these places. Listen to me. Being snubbed by people I barely know has turned me into an asshole.

He walks me through the doors. I should remember that he pulls the doors open from the outside, but I don’t.

The bar is about as big as a hotel bathroom, with the bar on the left and two small tables on the right. Large men sit at the tables, and a large man sits by the door. A young woman approaches me. She’s dark-skinned and dark-haired, and sounds like she’s from north Africa. Her lips form a natural pout, and I suspect that is what men notice first. She speaks French to me, telling me her name is Algerienne or Tunisienne. I can’t hear very well with lousy techno music in the background. I’ll call her Algerienne.

“What do you want to drink?”

“Nothing.”

“No, really. What can I get you?”

“Do you have water?” I can be such a cheapskate.

She looks at me, then at the lady behind the bar. The lady behind the bar is much better looking, very thin and French. Her black hair is plastered to her head in a bun.
She pulls some water for me.

“Ten Euros.”

Well, that’s cover charge, I guess. I hand her the money. Algerienne takes my hand and leads me through a black curtain to another room about the same size. On my right and left as I enter are two rows of small tables, and men seated in each chair behind them. In the back right corner is a stage no bigger than a phone booth. The fireman’s pole just doesn’t seem practical, but it’s the only thing in this building that looks clean. The back left corner is another black curtain, and light shines from underneath it.

Algerienne sits down next to me in a chair. Her red one-piece dress looks like exactly the thing I’ve seen at the Yellow Rose in Austin. Probably two pieces of cheap material stitched up each side and bought off the stripper rack. Maybe I should ask her if it comes from a place called “the Stripper’s Rack”. That’s funny. Wait, she’s talking.

“The show will begin in a few minutes. Now, would you like to buy me a drink?”

I look around. Every man in this club has gray hair, and most are wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Their coats are high quality and they look well-groomed. It’s not exactly seedy, but something about it isn’t right. They look very comfortable in this place, and I stick out, well, like I’d stick out at the RNC convention. They look a bit like Mafia, but what would Mafia be doing at a place like this?

“Well?” she asks.

“What?”

“Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”

“Sure,” I look at the stage again. “What are you drinking?”

“That depends. What would you like to buy me?”

There aren’t any other girls around here. I guess Algie here is going to be putting on the show herself, unless the others are getting ready backstage. I miss the DJ guy, calling out the girls to the main stage and running down the list of strip-club clichés.

“Well, I don’t know. Do you like wine?”

“I like champagne. Would you like to buy me a glass of champagne?”

“Sure. What does that cost?”

“Fifty Euros.”

I look her in the eyes for the first time. Her eyes have a transparent quality that only comes with colored contacts. She has a half-smile, and she’s looking at me deeply, like I hold the key to her future.

“That’s got to me some high-quality champagne.”

“It’s for the show.”

“Well, what kind of show is that?”

“It’s, you know, a strip-tease. I dance for you, and zenamassageandzen I drink my drink. I love champagne.”

I can barely hear in this place, I barely understood any of that. “Hmm, well I don’t have fifty Euros. You can be sure of that. I have about fifteen after the ten I paid for this water.”

“Haven’t you been in a place like this before?”

I look around. Pathetic men, a small stage with a pole. Sure, it’s a bit small. “Sure, I’ve been places like this.”

She furrows her eyebrows. “I can drop for you, I can go to thirty Euros. Dance, drink, zenamassage.”

What was that last word? I don’t want to speak English, I’ll just let it go.

I make a big show of looking at my watch. “I have about twenty minutes until the metros stop running and I have to be back, otherwise I’m locked out.”

She stands up without a word and charges the black curtain. I follow quickly and meet the skinny French woman at the curtain.

“Sit down,” she says. “I want to talk to you. Finish your drink.”

I look back at the water. It’s very far away.

I keep walking to the front room.

She goes behind the bar and produces a laminated piece of paper. A menu.

Champagne 50E
Cognac 120E
Hennessey 150E
Combination 500E

Click!

I switch to English. “I’ve got to go.”

I turn around. Algie is already on to the next customer. The French woman grabs my elbow and pulls me toward the curtain. She speaks English too.

“You’re going to finish your drink. I want to talk to you. Two minutes.”

“No, I’ve got to go, you’ve got your ten bucks and you didn’t even have to give me alcohol. I’m getting the hell out of here.”

She tightens her grip. “Look, you get dance, you get massage,” she lets go of my elbow to open the curtain.

I take four quick steps toward the exit. The large men don’t move. I expect to hear a voice bark some command from behind me. I pull the door. Shit! Locked! I expect my life to pass before my eyes, but it doesn’t. I’m going to die. I pull on the door again.

The man behind the bar makes a pushing motion and starts to laugh at me.

I push the door and the fresh air of Pigalle hits me in the face. I practically run to Clichy.
A very beautiful girl comes up to me as I walk past. She’s wearing all black, a sweatsuit and windbreaker, and her blonde hair is tucked under a baseball cap. When she opens her mouth I know she’s American.

“Do you like girls?”

“I’ve got to get to a metro station,” I feel nearly drunk. "They close soon.”

“Come check out my club, called Frou-Frou. It’s just down there.”

I don’t know why, but I turn my head and look.

“I just came from there,” I said. She takes a step back and looks me up and down. “I didn’t like it that much.”

“Oh, I--I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. You didn’t, what was wrong with it?”

“I’ve got to go.”

I make it to Felix Faure before the metros stop running. I’ve been gone less than two hours, and I’ve got the story of a lifetime. How do I tell it? Will they appreciate it? It’s a good enough story, but something seems to be missing...

I arrive at the hostel and to my delight, people notice that I’ve been gone.

“Wheredya go, mate?” Paul asks.

“I just had to turn down a hooker, and I’m pissed because I had to use English to do it!”

Heads turn. I guess I have the floor again.

Day 4, Sauced Up For The Evening

2006-10-31T07:05:00.000-08:00

6:45 p.m.

The hostel is already pretty busy, more than usual for this early in the evening. Paul is just inside, drinking a beer and smiling at me. I start to tell him about the day and lead him toward the door. Nima is standing in front of the doorway, motionless, her eyes focused on the bartender. I look at the tables, each populated by a small group of silent young people. They’re all staring at the bartender.

“What’s going on?” I ask Nima. “Should we go? Should we get ready?”

She nods in the bartender’s direction.

“Well, I need to go up. I’d like to change clothes and--“

“We can’t go in. The door’s locked.”

“But it’s after four o’clock. We shouldn’t--“

She cuts me off with a teacher's glare, then nods toward the bartender.

It’s the one who’s so skinny he has to take some medical supplement to stay alive. He’s 6’5’’ and doesn’t weigh more than 120 lbs. He’s difficult to look at, because you can see his ribs through his shirt. I’ve seen this man speak to one person at the bar in English and one person on the phone in French, both at the same time. He switches languages like Jennifer Lopez switches husbands. Zing! He’s talking to a girl at the bar, and neither looks happy.

“I don’t get it,” I say, “why would he lock the--“

“Fuck YOU,” the girl at the bar says. I turn to look at her. She leaned in to say it, and was no more than ten inches from his face. She has a large nose, the kind that distracts from her eyes, and I imagine the bartender is staring at it. She said it with a low, even tone, and it sounded a lot like the tone you use when you say “I love you.” We felt the sincerity of her hatred from where we were standing...

Skinny guy spits his words at her. “I make fucking 7,50E per hour in this place. I don’t have to take--I DO NOT HAVE TO TAKE THIS KIND OF SHIT FROM YOU ASSHOLES! They give me nothing to work with, the staff is crap and nobody knows how to do their jobs, and on top of that is you fucking people. What’s the matter with you you want to come in here and tell me how to run this place? I should throw you the fuck out--go to another hostel. Now, I’m not opening the door until you apologize.”

“Fuck YOU!” now she sounds more excited. The bar is silent. I decide I’ve had enough. As a child of divorce, I want the conflict to end a) without causing it to escalate, and b) without dealing with any issues head-on. My weapon of choice is humor or distraction, today I will try both.

I ask Paul (and not quietly), “Remember that Simpsons when Homer kept trying to get Grand Funk Railroad to sing “Taking Care of Business,” then when they sang it, he yelled for them to get to the chorus?”

“Yeah, and then when they hit the chorus, he shouted, ‘working overtime’, ‘working overtime!’. Sure I remember. Why?”

“That’s what the Louvre was like today. I stood in front of the Mona Lisa and that’s what I kept thinking about. ‘Okay, now you’ve smiled, and you’re eyes are following me around the room. And you’re a little bit mysterious and you’re in this fancy room of your own. Well, I guess it’s time for the Venus! I was Homer today, telling the Louvre to get on with it. That’s the reason I didn’t want to do anything touristy. Now that I’ve done it I feel like I wasted my time.”

“You went to the Louvre today?” Nima asked.

“Yeah, I didn’t find my friend, so I decided to go check out the Islamic Art.”

“Ah yeah, that would be great for you, wouldn’t it?”

“It was. How’d you like it?”

“Honestly it was a bit overwhelming. I don’t think classical art really does it for me. I want to go to the Musee d’Orsay and see the Impressionists.”

I like her honesty. Most people I know (probably including myself) would just pretend to feel sad that they don't "get it".

“Yeah, me too. I think me starting with the Louvre to learn to appreciate art is like asking a three-year-old to do complex calculus. But I don’t think I’ll have time to go to the Orsay. Tomorrow I’m doing Hemingway and the Luxembourg gardens.”

She nods.

From behind her, the door opens. Skinny bastard opened it up. I guess they settled their differences, because the girl he was arguing with shoves past us and into the courtyard. Another girl follows her out there and they embrace. The girl’s shoulders are shaking as she sobs.

“I wanna go home, I wanna see my family!” she cries. Her friend rubs her back and whispers in her ear. I detest rubbernecking, so I guide Nima by the shoulders toward the staircase. She stops anyway.

“You saw the whole thing, didn’t you?” the consoling girl asks Nima.

“Yeah, and I’ve seen him do that several times to other customers. There’s no call to be that rude, not to anyone.”

“Will you complain about him?”

“Sure, mate. Definitely. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

We go upstairs. Justin is in the room already. Paul follows us in.

I suggest we get dinner, and everyone agrees. I want Moroccan, and everyone agrees. Our friend Erin shows up with the three Brazilians, and we discuss the plan.

Erin, Nima and I decide to get Moroccan after the rest of the men bail out in favor of drinking. We head up the street to r. des Entrepreneurs, not even a block away, and there’s a place. They sell it by weight. Nima and Erin order vegetarian plates, I order lamb over couscous. We eat it back at the hostel, and it’s good-but-not-great. The lamb is good enough, but it’s difficult to eat. It doesn’t fall off the bone like at Grains de Sel. No dessert. I’m starting to write off the idea that I’m here mainly to eat (four days into it). It’s a bit sad, but I'll do as much as I can in the next 48 hours to make up for it.

When we rejoin the group, there’s a new face. Angie. She’s a young American, and she wants to go dancing. She has a few French friends and they intend to meet in the Latin Quarter at 9:30p.m. I’m game, but I may not have the clothes for it. Everyone is excited, and we order another round. I’m on my fourth or fifth, and nothing is happening yet. Is it possible to develop a high tolerance in four days?

More talk of the Simpsons, American football, and avoiding politics. Angie starts to wonder if they should get dinner before they go. All the men are hungry now. They decide to get dinner. For thirty minutes and another round, they keep talking. Now it’s almost 9 o’clock and I’m talking to a charming British couple about my age. The girl is telling me that if I want to get people to get up and go, I should form a queue. Britons love to get in a queue!

Day 4, Le Louvre Before Sunset

2006-10-30T07:04:00.000-08:00

12:30 p.m.

I labor back down the 284 steps and take the Métro to the Tuileries stop (close to the Louvre). They told us there was a super-secret entrance near here, where you can bypass all the lines and go right in. I walk right by the restaurant we visited during the bike tour and wave to the waiter who served us. He gives a little French smile that's hard to read. Further up, past the tourists, the tulips, and the tuileries, the green turns brown and the gravel pavement leads up to the Louvre Pyramid. The building itself probably covers as much ground as a stadium, shaped like a croquet wicket, with each leg several stories and very wide. The pyramid stands in the middle, looming over the crowd like an anachronism, and my opinion of it is not charitable. I don’t think it would be possible to have built something less appropriate to the surroundings, and it makes me even more sad that it cost more than a big “B” billion Euros to build.

As the building starts to wrap around me, a lithe young man, probably from the Middle East, asks me if I would sit for a caricature. “Your ponytail, I want to capture it". After some convincing, I agree, thinking it might be fun for me to suck it up and realize I’m pretty scary looking. When I agree, he goes and gets a much older gentleman, also Middle-Eastern-looking, squat and narrow-eyed. He talks to me for a few minutes as he draws me, switching from French to English indifferently. Some nearby French schoolgirls keep sneaking behind him and sneaking peeks. They grimace when they look at me. The man keeps talking about my hair and my American features, and I want more than anything to get out of here, into the museum, and to the antiquities that form this man’s heritage. I wonder if he knows anything about it.

He finishes and shows me a charcoal desert scene, with a triangular alien standing in the middle like Munch’s Scream. The alien has a ponytail. I want to pay for it just so I can destroy it. I look away and look at the French girls, and we exchange a shrug. I look back, hoping it will get better. It doesn’t. He lowers the price from 5E to 3E. I say no. He doesn’t look the least bit disappointed, so I guess this happens often. I’ve seen caricatures of me before, but that’s not what that was. That was an unfortunate man deluding himself about his skill level. But for the grace of some deity, there go I.

He walks off, and I say something that makes the French girls laugh. Behind the pyramid I see an enormous queue, and I look around. Just to my right is a statue of a man on a horse, and behind it is a small marble stairway leading underground. I go down, and immediately want to send the people at Fat Tire Bike Tours a thank-you note. There are people everywhere here, but a short way away is an entrance reserved for people with a Carte d’Orange, and nobody is there. I show them my card, and they wave me past, right into the Descartes wing of the Louvre. The line outside the Pyramid (the main entrance) looked like a good thirty minutes.

I'm heading to the Islamic Art section.

3:30 p.m.

After about three hours of cataloguing and study I leave the Islamic Art place to search for the Big Three.

In front of the Mona Lisa stands the longest queue I will wait in all week. I am not awe-struck by it, even after looking away and looking back. Mostly I’m stunned by the disco-strobe frequency of cameras popping off all around me.
Directly across from Mona Lisa is the Wedding Feast of Cana, as large as a badminton court. It’s much more impressive to me than la Joconde (the French name for the Mona Lisa), but you should enlist Sister Wendy to describe it for you.
The Venus de Milo was more impressive for its history than for its actuality. I did enjoy her curves.

It’s when I see the Winged Victory of Samothrace that I realize that I’m lost. The maps don’t seem to make sense. I walk up and down stairs, trying to find a sign that says “Sortie,” but can’t. I go back into the mall area below the museum, and something about this scene reminds me of what I heard about Sept. 11th, about the large mall below it and the subway station that was destroyed. That helps to motivate me beyond the fatigue. I circle around several times, trying to find the metro station. My eyes are still not accustomed to searching the little M with the circle around it. I pass a children’s shop, where they sell mobiles for far too much money (34E for one that looks a little like a Miro, but too small for the price). I see clothing boutiques, parfumeries, restaurants, and an upside-down pyramid that mirrors the one above (a village idiot once told me there's a Holy Grail down there!). At a bookshop I browse the section about Middle-Eastern art, hoping to find more detail about the craftsmanship, but I can’t find it. After searching through Spanish, French, and Arabic books, I settle on a small book of Arabic calligraphy examples. It’s too expensive (13E), but I buy it anyway.

I ask directions to the Métro station and get on board, after walking what feels like a mile underground.

4:30 p.m.

I take manage to get to the Varenne station, which is supposed to get me right outside the Rodin Museum. I should have time to stroll through the garden and drop by Napoleon’s tomb before 6.

I walk down the same street we passed on the bike tour (Bd. Des Invalides), but I can’t find the entrance to the Rodin garden. After making a full circle around it, I find what seems to be the least likely place for an entrance: it looks like a loading dock, and it’s under heavy construction. And the gate is closed. I look closely at the literature that came with my Carte d’Orange, and there it is in black & white (and English): the Musee Rodin is closed on Tuesdays.

Well, more time for Napoleon.

I cross the Boulevard and enter via the same side-gate Nima and I used the day before. The guard waves me in. to my right is the infirmary, and several young men sit outside, some in wheelchairs, some with crutches. One is smoking. They are sitting in the sun and staring, motionless, at the people in the garden. Injured or well, these French love to sit and act like statues.

I circle around to the front of the domed building and go up. My Carte d’Orange doesn’t list Napoleon’s tomb, but it still works.

Napoleon’s tomb is a coffin about twenty feet high, fifteen feet across, and about six feet wide. It’s made of a beautiful light-brown wood, polished to a mirror-like sheen. It’s not very ornate, but it has sleigh-bed like flourished on the ends and carved wreaths in the middle. To see it, you must stand against a railing on the floor above and look down. You bend at the waist and bow about 30 degrees, which was evidently Napoleon’s full intention, and all that that implies. Several other people are buried in this building, but none with this much grandeur. There’s probably nobody in Europe buried with more grandeur. Maybe the world.

Between trying to find the entrance to the Rodin museum and walking around les Invalides, it’s after 6:15. I was supposed to meet for dinner and the bike tour. I walk to the back of les Invalides to the garden, hoping to find a metro station. To get there I must walk through the war museum: battered tanks, 30mm guns on turrets, and bullet-pocked pith helmets lay about the corridors. I put my fingers in the bullet hole on a helmet and feel a little queasy.

The garden is full of people reading, strolling, and sitting in the grass. I hear French all around. The metro is to the left, la Tour Marbourg, conveniently on the Balard line. It’s only four stops to my old friend Felix Faure.

Day 4, l’Arc de Trimphe, le Louvre, et le Tombeau Napoleon

2006-10-27T08:49:00.000-07:00

The church bells sound nine times and I lay there, staring at the ceiling. My roommates are already up, gathering their stuff. They tell me they are leaving today, so the first thing I do is plan to get the bottom bunk the moment they’re out the door. They take their time, and I lay in bed listening to suitcase zippers and the sounds of clothes being shuffled. Finally they leave and I fall asleep again.

When the church sounds ten a.m., I get up and nearly fall to the floor. The bottom bunk is clear, so I begin to move my stuff to it. I lock the door and take off my clothes. Then I waltz. Push, wash, scrub. Lather, lather, push. Push, scrub rinse. Anne-Marie’s towel seems to have suffered no ill effects from hanging off the top bunk frame for 36 hours.

Down at the bar, Nima is talking to Paul, Justin and Erin. They’re going to go to the Louvre in the morning, and we’ll meet for dinner at about six, hopefully then we can go on the night-time bike tour, maybe even go to the top of the Eiffel tower beforehand. I don’t invite anyone to go with me, partly because I don’t think they’ll want to, and partly because this is the morning where I’ll try to meet my parents’ friend on the Champs-Elysée. While I’m there I’ll check out the Arc de Triomphe.

I take the Metro to the George V. station, which puts me on the street right next to Lido, a cabaret near the gentleman’s office.

The fellow I’m trying to find is an exporter of French goods to America, and all-around well-connected guy. Evidently he’s quite wealthy (you’d have to be to have an office on the Champs-Elysée), and I’m hoping he’ll buy me a nice lunch or put me up in a fabulous hotel or something. Hey, it doesn’t hurt to hope.

I find Lido before I’m on the street level: it’s visible as I walk up the stairs to the street-level. I stand outside it, trying to observe whether or not it’s open. The buildings to the right and left look like modest office properties, and there are car dealerships and cafes not much further up and down the street. I enter the Lido and ask whether the doorman has heard of the man I'm looking for. He waves me past, to a set of double-doors leading to what turns out to be the auditorium. This is a world-famous cabaret after all. So, I’m excited now about two things: this guy should be able to get good deals on tickets to a world-famous cabaret, and the fact that I was waved right by means I definitely have the right place. Right?

Through the double-doors I approach a long desk with two people, a man and a woman, sitting in front of an enormous aquarium. I ask the woman if she knows the man, and she’s never heard of him. I explain that he’s a friend of my parents, that I have sketchy directions to find him at or near the Lido cabaret, and that my parents haven’t spoken to him in over 10 years, so this may well not turn out well. She has worked at Lido for well more than 10 years, and if she hasn’t heard of him, he’s neither an employee nor a regular customer. To humor me, she asks the gentleman next to her, after he’s off the phone, if he’s ever heard of the man. He hasn’t.

I thank them and walk back out to the street. The building on the left has no doorman but a placard with names on it. I scrutinize each of them, trying to find the name. On the other side of the cabaret the building does have a doorman (doorlady, I might say). There’s no name placard, and the doorlady is no help either. I'm going to call this project finished. I can’t call my parents now (it’s 4 a.m. in America). I should try to find a directory, but I’m kinda eager to be done with the whole thing. Truth be told, I feel weird about dropping in on him anyway.

Back on the Champs-Elysée, I approach l’Arc de Triomphe. You have to go underground to get to it, as the Arc itself is at the center of a roundabout where twelve streets meet. Jeremy from the bike tour told us there’s an accident there every 45 minutes or so, and seeing it now, I can believe it. I go under, through a long tunnel, and reach the ticket office. I calculate that at 18E, a Carte d’Orange for the day will pay for itself if I go to three attractions (the average price is 6,50E). A plan starts to form for the rest of the day.

After I have my ticket, I begin the stairs. 284 steps, most of which are in the narrowest spiral staircase I’ve been in. I count to 100 and take a rest, my hamstrings burning and my calves stretched. My blisters are somehow not terribly painful, but I think this is mind over matter. I walk some more, singing songs and counting as I go until I’m finally in a trance-like state, clomping my feet over and over again, up and up, trying to imagine my angle to the street or to the Eiffel Tower. When I hit a landing I figure I’m done. I enter a museum inside the Arc, a permanent exhibition of World War I photography and video. The pictures are in color. Never in my life have I imagined The Great War in color. I look at picture after picture, fascinated, until the burn starts to go away and I realize I still have a few steps to go. I approach the staircase a little frightened, but once I reach the top I’m inspired. I’ve never been to the top of the UT tower, but I’ll bet it’s hard to see the Eiffel Tower from it. There’s nothing quite like that. There’s a mistiness, a fog, hanging over the city, but I can see the dome of Napoleon’s tomb, the Louvre, and Notre Dame. Over on a hill, I can see the blinding whiteness of Sacre Coeur.

A young lady approaches me. She can’t be older than eighteen, with a beautiful face, and what is becoming a typical heroine in my fiction: olive skin and long black curly hair. She’s a foot shorter than I am. As she walks up I smile, and she asks me if I speak English. I don’t say anything and I look at her hands. She has the same exact Bosnian sob story as the woman near the Eiffel tower, handwritten on a small piece of paper.

I say, “Non, je ne parle pas anglais. Je suis désolé.”

If fire could shoot from her eyes I’d be going home in a crate marked “carbon sample”. She knows I’m lying as easily as she knows I’m human. She backs off and walks away, turning twice to glare at me. I want to apologize for some reason, but I know it will cost me money. There are a lot of rich Americans on this street. Let them pay her for my apology.

To my right there’s a young couple. They embrace and kiss each other. A little further down there’s a much older couple doing the same thing. I look out again across the swath of Paris on all sides, and suddenly it’s an empty experience. I’ve been going down the list of landmarks I can identify by sight, mentally checking them off, then moving on to the next. Not sharing it with anyone turns out to be a drag. I stay up long enough to get some pictures and study some things with my binoculars, and then I go down the 284 steps, not stopping again in the museum.
At street level I walk around the bottom of the Arc until I see the tomb of the unknown soldier. I always find these moving. The flame burns, hopefully eternally, just like it does in Westminster Abbey in London and at Arlington cemetery in the States. I stand for a few moments and watch the flame, trying to imagine what the body underneath looks like now. Is he wearing a uniform still? Was he decorated? Was he married? Did he have a little Alex at home?

After taking a few more pictures of the statues and garlands, I go down the steps again to cross over to the Champs-Elysee.

There’s a large, glass-fronted bookstore. I go in and try to find something to replace my copy of Madame Bovary, but the best I can manage is a mass-market edition (finally!) of the Da Vinci Code. I wish I could find it translated into French. I might learn a word or two, and I wouldn’t be distracted by Dan Brown’s dogshit prose. It’s 12E. I remember one of my teachers at UT telling me what a rip-off books are in the US. Yet another stereotype destroyed.

I walk downhill, mindful of the time and of my aching calf muscles. I need to decide what to do next, and soon. I don’t care too much about being on the Champs-Elysées, because I’ve been on Rodeo in L.A., I’ve been on 5th avenue in New York City, and I’ve been on Michigan Ave in Chicago. This may want to be different, but it’s not, and suddenly I feel like I’ve got to get out of here.

On the way to the Franklin D. Roosevelt station, I see across the street a Luis Vuitton shop, with a handbag, as big as my house, covering the facade. I take a picture for my friend Theresa, the youngest person I’ve ever met who has three (real) LV handbags.

Car dealerships, more cafés, more Americans wandering around. It’s getting to be lunchtime, so I start to look at menu prices. Everything is more than 15E for a fixed menu. I turn off the main boulevard and immediately run into a Lebanese café. Nothing is over 10E. I order a chicken shawarma and a beef kebab, served with rice on the side and a Coke. It's awesome. I eat it standing up, watching the plasma-screen show MTV-2. Very good-looking people. The food is fantastic, subtly seasoned and not over-salted. The chicken is tender and there are no “disturbing parts,” as K calls them. I pay and thank the man, and he complements my French. I thank him again.

Okay, so I'm doing it too...

2006-10-26T21:30:00.000-07:00

I make no promises, nor do I obligate myself to anything. This is just an attempt to get some discipline back into my writing.

1,667 words a day is achievable, and I've held that pace before, but not for 30 days straight. When I wrote the Paris travelogue it was in 2,500-3,500 word bursts for several weeks, but I took a few nights off.

But my main problem with this, with all of NaNoWriMo, is that it takes place in November. For anyone who just sees this blog, the literary side of me, it may come as a surprise that I'm a bit of a sports fan. College and professional football play their best, most important games during November. So, my proposal (to myself) is this: Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights, I can only watch football during and after I've finished my word count for the day. That will mean I miss a lot of the action, but I'll still be able to look up when Al Michaels gets really fired up. My outline and characters are pretty much done, so I should be able to just rip on through.

Research is a big problem and a priority, but once the gates open up I'm going to make up everything I don't already know. This will be exceedingly difficult for me, since for the Basque novel I spent hundreds of hours researching everything from agricultural yields in Gernika circa 1937 to the chemical composition of the dynamite used to assassinate Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco in 1973. I wouldn't go on until I had the facts right. I can't do that here. I'll just have to use Word's highlighter feature to mark areas where, if I do anything with it after November, I'll have to revisit something.

In thinking about what research problems I'm going to hit, I've already come up with a thousand questions I won't even begin to have the time to answer in the next few days: exactly what would be the title of a Marquis' son in France circa 1788? What do they call the slip, or petticoat, or undergarment worn by ladies of the period? What exactly is the procedure for getting dressed in the morning? And what are the differences between the procedures for men vs. women? If a French aristocrat owns land far away from Paris, but still involves himself heavily in the management of such an estate, what would be the likelihood of his being treated fairly by his "subjects" when the Revolution comes?

And many, many more. Expect a very fractured rough draft in terms of research. I don't intend to do much to fix it before the deadline.

Anywho, wish me luck! It'll be very nice to be writing again. It's been over a year and I miss it like I miss, well, Paris...

Fascinating - Paris Syndrome

2006-10-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

This article, from MSN travel, got me thinking. I experienced a completely different kind of delirium in the City of Lights...
MM

Day 3, Napoleon's Tomb and Back to the Hostel

2006-10-24T08:51:00.000-07:00

5:30 p.m.

We leave, the mime spinning a tray on his finger and waving with the other hand. We cross r. de l’universite and Bd St-Germain and turn right on Grenelle. We can see the golden dome of Napoleon's tomb over the skyline. We turn again, left, then right on r. Varenne, and pass the gardens of the Musee Rodin. It’s difficult to see in, but we catch odd angles of bronze and marble. Wrought-iron fence and green hedges tower ten feet from street level, so we cross Bd des Invalides to see if we can get a better look. There’s the Thinker, but that’s all we can see. The museum is closed this late in the day anyway.

We walk parallel with the gardens of les Invalides until we reach a gate. The guard tells us we have ten minutes, and that it’s too late for the tomb, but we can knock ourselves out in the gardens.

We walk through it, admiring the bullet-shaped hedges and fountains. Tulips spring up in rows underneath thin trees, and benches sit in the shade and in the sun. People are reading in the little squares. We walk straight to the exit and look back at the dome. Through the binoculars I see angels and gargoyles, and I wonder if it’s easier to fashion gold or marble. I first decide it’s gold, because you can always fix your errors. But then I realize it’s got to be marble, because you have to get it right the first time--you can't ever know you're finished when you can forever change it.

We walk over the moat and leave the complex, trying to decide where to go exactly. We cross the front of the building and head down Ave de Tourville. On the other side of the street we realize that six different streets lead away from les Invalides. An older couple asks us if we’re lost. I start to answer in French, but Nima says, “Yes.” We’re looking for a street called Lowendal, and they point us in the right direction. We follow along behind l’Ecole Militaire and get back into a residential area. We pass a Moroccan restaurant with an elaborately carved door, and I take a picture.

We turn on Grenelle and see a tiny garden. We go in for a stroll and sit on the bench for a few minutes. I ask for my notebook and start to write. Nima does the same thing. I write about the lunch and try to finish a paragraph I’d started on the previous day, only I've lost my pen. I have to write in a different color ink.

We turn onto r. Commerce and see the church that has become my landmark for "the hostel is nearby". We stop in a small boulangerie and buy a baguette. We get back to the hostel and go to our rooms.

I take off my shoes and lay down for a few minutes, rubbing my feet and my calves the whole time. Nima’s in the next room and I can hear her, talking to Paul and Justin and making her apologies about missing them for "the run at 5".

I get up and join them. Justin has cheese he bought earlier that day and we all smear it on the baguette and drink wine Nima smuggled in. We drink it from paper cups and it seems very appropriate. After a few minutes I head down to the bar and order a beer.

Malcolm is there and tells me my story needs severe editing. I don’t want to hear it, so I invite myself to sit with the Aussie girls I’d been speaking to the night before.

10:30 p.m.

I’m very tipsy. I have the tolerance of a canary. I’ve had about half a bottle of wine and four or five beers over the past 4 hours, and my throat hurts from talking. Paul wants to write a Masters thesis on the Simpsons and their treatment of mob mentality (in particular Sideshow Mel's role in this). Justin wants to read my book (the one about the door carver, not the one about the Basques. Nobody cares about the Basques, dammit). Several more people are stacked up in the bar and I’ve gotten to know them all by name. There are Brazilians, Argentineans, Chileans, Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and I think I’m the only Texan.

“We need to go to the Eiffel Tower,” I say. Nobody reacts. Nobody fucking does anything.
An hour later. “We need to go to the Eiffel Tower and see it lit up and stand under it while we’re drunk.”

30 minutes later. “I’m going to the Eiffel Tower. Who’s going with me?”

Three Brazilians, Paul, Justin, Nima, an American girl named Erin stand up. We set out up Commerce. Following the route that’s starting to seem familiar, I turn on Grenelle. French people are walking with their children and their dogs and they barely look at us as they cross to the opposite side of the street and back again after we’ve passed. The Aussies are singing and Justin and I are talking about geek stuff. We all grab a crèpe from a little stand at Grenelle and Av de Suffren. Mine is called “Trois Fromages + jambon”, and it’s wonderful.

We cross the outer gardens and onto the gravel walkway. People are jogging, and Nima can’t believe anyone would exercise so late. I don’t think she appreciates that we’ve walked nearly 3 km from the hostel to where we’re at now.

There’s a group of French people trying to figure out their digital cameras nearby. Paul asks one of them to take his picture with his camera, and the man has trouble with the controls. I manage to do a fair job of translator, but mostly I just talk to them about the coldness and about whether or not there will be any more shows tonight from the tower. We were all told they would go on until 1 a.m., so until then we’ll have to believe it.

The tower is bright, its normal brown bathed in mercury-vapor-orange lamps. Erin steps over a small chain to walk on the grass, and I follow. We sit together lined up perfectly with the tower. We’re told that the sparkling happens every hour, on the hour, until 1am. We have a few minutes. She tells me about Spain and I tell her about Spain, and it’s cold and I offer her my gloves. She’s adorable in her youth and in how she refers to her boyfriend every fifth word. I hope I’m adorable as I mention my little boy Alex every tenth. Nima, Paul, and Justin are in a tight circle back on the gravel road, talking loudly and singing what sound like rugby songs.

The tower goes black, and people gasp. After fifteen seconds people start to grumble and mutter, when it erupts in a starburst. White speckles that look like they’re inches apart are going off all over the tower. They twinkle, like a thousand-foot Christmas tree. The light reflects off buildings and off the glass war monument behind us. I concentrate on one point on the tower, but it seems like the same light is never in the same place twice. Are they projected? No, they’re too precise. Are they physically moving? I may never know. It’s a completely silent show, put on for the world every hour, and once again I realize what an empty experience it is to see this show without K or the boy. Erin pulls her sweater around her and wonders aloud what it would be like to have an apartment that faces this.

“I’ll bet it’d be horrible,” she says.

“Not for a kid,” I say.

After a few minutes of this we see the Paul-Justin-Nima group start to head back, so we turn around. We have to go 3km in less than 50 minutes, so it’s a good time to start. My buzz is wearing off, but I’m not cold. Erin offers my gloves back but I say I don’t need them. We rejoin the group and walk back. The French people are still walking their children and their dogs. I see a thousand places I want to visit in the daytime when they’re open. Lingerie shops (Erin and Nima tease me about buying at least one nice piece for K), children’s toy shops, and culinary shops display beautiful scenes in their windows. We walk slower to get back than we did setting out.

We make it in plenty of time for curfew and I again wake the Italians as I climb into the damned bunk. I’m 32 years old. There should be a hostel rule that says anyone over 27 should get to sleep in the bottom bunk. We’re in the real land of égalité, fraternité here, right? Make me equal to this my-brother-the-whippersnapper by kicking him the hell out of my bottom bunk!

I take Tylenol, drink a lot of water, and I’m asleep within 5 minutes.

Day 3, Nôtre Dame et Le Cathedral Ste. Chapelle

2006-10-23T08:58:00.000-07:00

We circle around, in and out from under the columns. Woodwork is everywhere. Two priests walk around in the clerestory, looking at the ceiling. I look up, and pull out the binoculars. I can’t remember the details, but what I do remember is the cherubs. In the twelfth century, little boys were every bit as adorable as Alex. Maybe I should carve Alex in marble--

“Hey, pass those over!”

I pass the glasses. Nearby the chairs are still out, leftover from the morning mass. I sit. Nima studies the ceiling for several more minutes while I look back down, at the alter, at the cross-bar section of the nave, and at the people milling about. I want to talk to these people, find out why they would come all the way inside the church, unlike most people who just want to go to the top.

We walk around to the back, where there’s a roped off section, reserved for “silent prayer and reflection”. Nima goes behind the rope and takes a seat. I sit beside her. She closes her eyes. I close mine. After several seconds she taps me.

“What are those?” She points to funny-shaped chairs in front of us. The “seat” is low to the ground, and there are armrests where the back would normally go. The chairs face us, as if the are meant to point you away from the chapel.

“They’re kneelers,” I answer. As if to answer her question, a woman in her 40s approaches, teenage daughter in tow, and kneels.

We sit for a few more seconds, Nima with her eyes closed and me watching the people, trying to guess at what they’re praying for. There’s a flyer on the chair next to me and I pick it up. It’s from a prayer Pope John Paul II gave in the late 1990s when he visited the cathedral to canonize a saint. It made me think of the people in Vatican City shouting “santo subito, santo subito” during his funeral a few days before. I translate it for her. She decides to keep it in her bag.

After a few more minutes she says she’s ready. We walk back to the front, trying to decide whether we should climb to the top or not. We rationalize that a) it costs more money, b) there are better high places to climb, c) the line is too long, and d) we have a long way to walk before the day is over. We go out the front door.

Outside someone bumps me and I suddenly remember that there are pickpockets in the city, so I whisper something to Nima and we both tighten our grip on things. I do a quick check around my person and everything seems okay.

Near the hedges that separate Notre Dame from Ste Chappelle, a swarm of birds appears to be attacking an old man. He has a piece of bread, and dozens of sparrows hover and pick at it like hummingbirds. Near him several kids, sitting, start to hold up bread. For them, pidgeons show up instead of sparrows (630, 11A). We walk toward Ste. Chappelle, and Nima starts to talk about being tired and wanting to rest. There’s an open-air market nearby and we wander over. It’s a pet market--canaries, spice-finches, rosellas, and several Amazons chirp in cages too small for mice. Nima wants to buy one and so do I, but we figure we can’t get them back to our respective countries very easily. We walk through stalls of hamsters, chinchillas, small dogs, ladders, bells, and cedar shavings. The musk of the animal market is carried away by the breeze as we approach the Ministry building in front of Ste. Chappelle.

We go up Boulevard du Palais and follow the island street around to the back, to get into a queue in front of the smaller chapel. The admission price is 6,10E, and I give the ticket-counter lady 11,10E, hoping to get a 5E note back. She doesn’t give it to me, and I momentarily forget. When she’s finished with Nima, I tell her I gave her the 11,10E to get a 5 back, but I never got the 5. She questions me two times about exactly what I did, never switching to English, then calls her manager over. Then she pauses, her face changing expression. She starts nodding slowly, never breaking eye contact. Before her manager shows up, she reaches in front of her register drawer and picks up a 10E note. She holds it and looks at Nima, then at me.

“Je vous crois. Je crois que c’est correct.” She opens her drawer and gives me a 5, explaining that she thinks she remembers it, and that otherwise she’d have to have her boss count her drawer right now. Her smile is pleasant, and it seems genuine. I thank her and leave, glad to have slightly more battle-tested French credentials.

We go into the chapel, and Nima seems let down. It’s a long, narrow room, somewhat ornate but mostly just red and brown. I’m not particularly amazed by it, but then I know something about what’s upstairs. I guide Nima to the right and we go up the tiny spiral staircase. As we enter the upstairs area I hear the gasp again. Blue, red, yellow and green cover the floor in glows, like embers from a rainbow on fire. The source is a series of fifteen-foot tall stained-glass panels from one end of the room to the other, about 100 feet away from us in all. It’s a sunny day, just like Melissa’s mother told me it should be. I walk from the front to the back, studying the panels and the lead-work in between the panes. One pane is gone and it makes me want to cry. The figures are like cartoons, outlines in black and filled in with strong primary colors. I get out the binoculars and study the facial expressions, painted on in brownish paint over the flesh-toned glass. Nima finds a couple of seats and calls me over. As she’s calling, a loud “SHHHHHHH” comes from one corner of the room. She puts her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. I sit next to her and hand her the glasses. She sighs long and heavy as she moves from one pane to the next. I watch the reactions on people’s faces and they come out of the stairway and see the place for the first time. We’re facing West, watching the sun as it moves slowly down from behind the glass. The pamphlet says there are over 6,300 square feet of stained glass in this chapel, and I have trouble believing that could be possible. I’ve attempted stained glass. How could a square mile of stained glass exist in the whole world? Especially when they didn’t have rotary sanders?!

They used to store holy relics here, including the crown of thorns, but they were all dispersed after the Revolution. No matter how unlikely I think it could be that they had the actual crown of thorns, it makes me sad. I look at the depictions of cruelty, of kindness, of the whole human experience played out in colored glass, and I’m amazed that we could be here. From two sides of the world, this girl and I are in a place somewhere in the middle, sitting in a building that’s 600 years old, and we’re about the same physically and mentally as those humans were then.

Amazing.

I look over at Nima and she’s no longer studying the glass. Her eyes closed and her lip is trembling. A tear falls and she sniffles, then wipes her cheek. Her eyes snap open.

“You ready?” she asks.

“Yeah. I’m ready.”

She hesitates. “I just don’t know when I’m ever going to see anything like this ever again.”

“Yeah, me too.” I touch her shoulder and we walk out, this time to our right.

On the street, she wants to know what we should do next.

“Napoleon’s tomb?” I ask.

“Sure. Do you think we could pass the Musee d’Orsay on the way?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think we’d have time to do it justice.”

“Right. Offyago then, mate.”

We cross back to the left bank side of the Seine, to the Quai Malaquais. Book vendors are out now, with large metal boxes mounted onto the railing over the Seine, and we stop to browse. I look up the Seine, at the buildings that line her and the boats going under the Pont du Carrousel (630-10A). The books are almost all classics, Voltaire, Moliere, and Sartre, in what look like early editions. I don’t have any cash, however, and I probably have enough books.

We continue to walk, passing the Hotel des Monnaies, and several smart boutiques. Up ahead is the Musee d’Orsay, but we decide to turn left on r. de Beaune to follow the smell of crepes. The waiter is a bald young man, round-faced and my height. He motions us in without a word and acts like a mime with a gun to his head when I speak French to him. He sits us down and asks Nima what she wants. She wants champagne. I order a cafe au lait and a chocolate crepe with whipped creme. The waiter is clearly annoyed that I speak French and my lovely companion doesn’t. I weep for him.

The drinks come, and I clink my cafe au lait to her champagne. We toast to being in Paris, and to not really being alone. The crepe comes, and for someone who doesn’t like sweets, this girl goes a bit nuts. She doesn’t eat much overall, but she does enjoy it.

“Where did the chocolate come from?” she asks.

He looks at me, then back at her. I say nothing, suspecting he does speak enough English to have understood that.

“C’est le chocolat maison.”

“It’s the chocolate of the house,” I say. She smiles big at him. He points at his chin, and she begins to wipe. She gives me a dirty look for not having told her.

“There was nothing there,” I said. “He was fucking with you!”

She laughs.

When we ask for l’addition, he brings one for her and one for me. Hers says 0.00E. Mine says 17E. I hold out my Citibank card and he backs off, hands in the air. Again, mime in a stickup. Shit.

“That was a very nice thing he did,” I say. “But I’m afraid I don’t have any cash. I meant to stop at the--”

“No worries. I got it.” She throws the bills on the table. She's not the slightest bit annoyed. I attribute this to Australia, not to her being one-in-a-million, but I’ll probably never know.

Overlooked Fiction (from Slate)

2006-10-22T10:50:00.000-07:00

Check this out if you're looking for some good winter-time reading. I intend to add most of these to my wish list :) I especially love that they included my fave lit blogger, Moorishgirl.

Just one more reason to love Slate...
MM

Day 3, Lunch

2006-10-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

12:30 p.m.

We leave the church and we're hungry. We walk up and down streets with names like “r Huchette”, “r Danton”, and “r. St Andre des Arts”. One place offers two formulas: a 10E and a 15E, each with entree, plat, and dessert. We agree, and are seated inside near a spiral stairway leading up and down. Our waiter tries to flirt with Nima, but he can’t seem to understand her accent and she doesn’t speak a word of French. I have to translate their flirtations, and I don’t do a great job of it.

For entrees, I order French Onion soup, Nima orders a simple salad. The soup is amazing, but really only in texture. I don’t know what it is about the texture, but it just seems smooth... doux is the best word for it, even if you don’t know the French. The taste isn’t even quite as good as my mother’s, but then again I’d probably say that about the lasagne in Italy and the cheesecake in New York.

For Plat, I order a filet of salmon with bearnaise sauce. It’s served with very plain pasta and a simple tomato confit. The texture of the salmon is soft and the taste is not at all fishy, but I’m not very hungry so I don’t finish. The sauce is too strong and too thick for the mood I’m in, and the pasta is completely lost on me. Nima has a sandwich.

For Dessert, Nima orders Chocolate Mousse and I order the chef’s surprise. I ask the waiter whether I should order the Profiterole or the chef’s surprise, and he urges me on the surprise. Now I can’t remember what it was, but I definitely remember it wasn’t as good as Nima’s mousse. I think it was a simple fruit tart with custard.

Over lunch Nima starts an interesting conversation.

“So, how was dinner with your friend last night?”

“Well, I guess it was--“

“Did you get… amorous with her?”

“Well, no,” I say, as I clasp my hands together, rubbing them in a way that puts my ring about seven inches from her nose.

“Have you been… amorous with anyone since you’ve been here?”

“Well, no.”

“Interesting. Do you normally travel alone, or are there people you usually go around with? You said you went to Spain, who were you with?”

“Well, let’s see, several friends, or… my spouse.” I’m not looking at her when I say this and I’ll regret it later. I have no idea what her reaction was.

“Well, that sounds like fun. Do you have any children? Are you still with your, was it, spouse?”
I show her Alex and K.

She calls Alex “a little person!” and tells me how gorgeous my wife is. Suddenly I start missing them, feeling as though I’m betraying them somehow, not by being at lunch with this girl, but by being four thousand miles away with no better reason than “I wanna go”.

Nima then tells me of her recent twelve-year relationship and how it ended. She’s in Paris, and in Europe, spending all the money she had saved for a wedding. She’s 32, trying to find meaning in her life, and looking to find herself in the Old World. Sounds familiar, only she’s not limited. Oh well. She’s a middle-school teacher with a stalker. One of her students, a girl, gave her a travel-journal that looks very nice. Nima reads me the note that came with it, a lot of poetic nonsense about how she’s the only friend the girl has ever had. I comment about how it sounds like the girl said the same thing over and over again.

“That’s not the worst of it,” she says, and hands me the book open to the first entry. It’s from the girl, and it’s more of the same.

“What do you teach?” I ask.

“Writing and literature.”

The writing is flat and cliché, moreso even than what I can remember from middle school. “I take it she’s not one of your best students?”

She smiles like a sister plotting revenge against her brother. I’ll get to know that smile well, too. It symbolizes our relationship, and all that that implies.

I tell her the plots to my two novels, and when I get to the “mystery of the lines” and how it works out, she says she’s got shivers. I believe her, too, though I don’t expect the subject to interest her at all outside of this context. I’m just flattered to have an audience--everyone at home is sick of my stories.

We get to talking about literary influences, and she confesses she’s never read Hemingway, and that it’s not on the program for middle school in Australia. I definitely agree with that decision. I read The Sun Also Rises when I was in my early twenties and didn’t get hardly any of it. I think you should only read that when you’re past thirty and have been married for several years.

“It’s an interesting story,” I say. “Tragic, really. It’s something I never understood when I read it the first time. There’s a man, the main character, and he’s injured. Hem’s pretty vague about the specifics of the injury, but it seems the man is unable to, well, ‘perform’, yasee. He and Brett, that’s a beautiful lady friend of his, are hopelessly in love. Literally without hope. They kiss, they refer to the times in the past when they’ve wanted to be together, they’ve tried everything, but they only end up in frustration. So you have the contrast between the love that can’t be consummated, then the woman, Brett, who can’t love anyone but Jake. She has affairs with nearly every man in the novel, but she doesn’t love any of them, doesn’t even feel pleasure with them. You get the sense that if she could truly love Jake, she’d probably treat him just like everyone else, and she’d get the hell out of there. It makes me want to cry to think about it.”

“Definitely. I’ll have to read it now, you know?”

“I’m sure you can get a copy of it here.”

We get l’addition, and for the second meal in a row I’m tempted to grab the check and change my mind. I changed my mind with Heather because I knew her company would pay for her part. Does that make me a bad man? With Nima, I just didn’t feel like it was necessary, and that something would be implied (implode) if I did.

We walk back onto the busy street and look up and down. People are everywhere, in every class of clothes, walking in every direction. The smells of the roasting chestnuts and fresh crepes make me wonder whether or not I ate enough, but I decide to ignore it for now.

Somehow, probably via r. St Andre des Arts, we end up on the Quai des Grands Augustins. As we approach the Seine, Nima yelps. She’s just seen Notre Dame. She waves her hands again and starts to walk faster. I’m still feeling heavy from the meal, but I manage to keep her in sight. She fumbles for her camera without looking for it, approaching the grand facade. I pull out my binoculars and study the thousands of details around the entrance (630, 9A, 11A, 12A): the Gothic arch towering over the main doorway, with the central carved-stone bas relief sculptures, the telescoping arches of figures lined up head-to-toe and side-to-side. The two innermost arches are angels, an audience for the Christ on the central throne. The four outermost arches line the Saints up, each with his or her own face, body shape, and pose. I want to touch each one, to find out how they were done, what they were thinking about when their artist formed them, and at what point did they become living things carved from a rock. The imagery is so dense I imagine a series of graduate students trying, and failing, to catalog all of it.
The line to get in is short and moving quickly. A woman approaches us in a headscarf and asks us if we speak English. I say nothing, but Nima says “yes.” The lady hands her the same note the lady from the Eiffel tower showed me Friday morning, and Nima reads it before giving her some change. Then we file into the line and shuffle in, drinking in the details, discussing the handiwork, in awe at the grandeur. The statues greeting us at eye level are probably 1/3-scale figures, old men nodding at us with their eyes closed. They all have beards and simple robes. As I pass under the arch, I notice that one figure, directly beneath Christ, is a devil figure, standing next to a child. He holds a scale, a small person in each side. The lines holding the cups are fully articulated, and I start to imagine the carver, working behind the marble ropes, smoothing over the devil’s belly. How fragile is that marble? How long did it take to release it from the rest of the stone? What if you cut it too deeply?

By this time I’m well past it and into the nave. Nima stops and several people mutter under their breath. I walk up beside her... she looks like a five-year old walking into a Disney Store.
“I’ve never seen anything like this, certainly nothing like this in Australia.”

I feel guilty that I’m not as awe-struck. I’ve seen Westminster Abbey, and I seem to remember a similar entrance and similar details around the inside. I read a 1200 page book about how one of these would be constructed (The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett). I’m only able to enjoy this so much because I’m with someone who can still marvel.

“Yeah, not in Texas, either,” I say.

Day 3, On the Way to l'Ile de Paris with Nima

2006-10-05T09:13:00.000-07:00

I wake up when I hear the church ring nine times. My roommates are still asleep and groan when the bells won't shut up, but I tell myself I can only feel so bad for them. They made a hell of a ruckus when they left and came back last night, so my sympathy is gone. As I dress and pack my stuff, I hear snoring. Today I want to pack light, so I only have my jacket, my camera, and my notebook & tour guide. As I open the door I have to pull back the blackout curtain. I look back to my roommate on the bottom bunk and he’s wincing like a vampire at the light. I apologize in French and close the door after I’ve made sure the key is on the sink.

Down the stairs I realize it’s too warm for my jacket, so I take it off. It’s too cold to be without it. I enter the bar area.

An early 40s French woman with long dirty-blonde hair asks me if I want jus d’orange or coffee. I take both. She hands me half a foot of baguette, split open with butter smothered inside, more than I’ve ever seen an Englishman put on. I smother at least that much more orange marmalade over it and begin to eat. I can’t believe the lightness of the bread, the crispiness of the crust. Even in a pedestrian place like this they get bread that would be called “superb” in the US. Amazing. The coffee, however, is horrible. I sit at a table and get out my tour book. I grab a Galeries-Lafayette map from the display and open the book. I look for rue Mouffetard and the Censier-Daubenton stop on line 7. Nima appears in a black sweater, wide headband, and black jeans, looking fresh as the baguettes. She grabs breakfast from the lady and sits at my table.

“So what’s it to be today? I’d rather like to see Notre Dame.”

“I can do that. I was planning the Hemingway walk, but I’d really rather do that on a day when everything is open.”

“Good, then. I think I’ll come with you.”

Just then two guys come in, an Aussie and an American, Paul and Justin. They say they’re leaving as though they expected her to jump up after them, then look genuinely sad when she tells them about what was evidently a change in their plans. I can’t help but feel a small victory, like the one I got I won a bet with a bunch of guys from my youth group--we were in Colorado and wanted to see who could get one girl’s phone number. This victory is much more hollow. Nima tells them she’ll meet them under the Eiffel tower at 5 and they’ll have a run.

“Do you run, Marcus?” She pronounces it, “Maa-kis”.

I decide to dust off an old chestnut, “Only when I'm being chased.”

She laughs.

I don’t let her laugh long, “that’s not original... it’s from a movie a long time ago.”

“Well I don’t care, you could have put anything by me I think.”

We eat and drink and finish breakfast. She offers to carry my notebook in her little backpack and I let her, with vague trepidation, but ultimately deciding it’s worth the slight risk of my bad memory.

We walk up Commerce to the Commerce station, get on the Métro, and get off at Cluny-La Sorbonne. At street level we’re completely disoriented. We stand for a while in a large square, trying to find the streets and the metros and the monuments. Our maps aren’t good enough. We see a dome nearby and this turns out to be the Panthéon. The streets here feel more metropolitan than homely. In the 15th arrondissement, near the hostel, it has the feel of a neighborhood, but this feels more like London near Big Ben. The buildings are taller and more formidable, each one looking like it’s under armed guards and surveillance cameras. One building is a little more gray than the others, and I’m able to confirm it’s the Sorbonne. Nima has no idea why I want to see this building. It’s at least 4 stories, with small windows and thoroughly locked doors. We’re on the Boulevard St-Jacques, and if we go around to the other side (I don't find out until the next day), we probably won’t want to leave the area at all.

Anyway, we walk around r. Soufflot to the Place du Panthéon, and we see the dome. Nima can’t believe the size of it. Like St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, it stretches impossibly high, supported by columns and perfectly straight stones, capped off in stone that’s almost black. I offer Nima my binoculars so she can see the detail: around the rim of the dome there are carved vines like laurels and wreaths, probably no more than several inches across but lovingly detailed. The craftsmen obviously didn’t care that the audience for these touches would be more than a hundred feet away, unable to appreciate the craftsmanship.

Nima is fumbling with her digital camera--she just bought it and has no idea how to use it. She begins to explore the features like black & white exposure, sepia tone, and shallow vs deep focus. I look around me to confirm that yes, of all the people near the Panthéon, only the two of us are looking down at a camera instead of up at the dome. I have a sudden fear that I’ve chosen the wrong travelling companion for the day, but I decide I need to give her another chance. If it goes on much longer this is probably a fine place to split up, and I already know she's fine travelling alone.

We move to the church right behind the Panthéon--l’Eglise de St-Etienne-du-Mont--and she’s never seen anything like it. It is a Gothic church, but it doesn’t have the flying buttresses like Notre Dame, so I tell her she hasn’t seen anything yet. This seems to excite her. We take a few more pictures, then head up r. St. Jacques again, passing the Sorbonne on our left this time. We still don’t have a great idea of where we are in relation to Notre Dame, so I ask a random passer-by, one of a group of French schoolboys.

“Excusez-moi, c’est probablement une question stupide, mais... où est la Seine?”

The kid smiles, I think without irony, and points down r. St. Jacques, in the direction we’re heading.

“Et voilà, monsieur,” he adds, “Notre Dame--elle est là!”

“Merci,” I say as he bounds off to join his friends.

“What was that?” Nima asks.

I explain, and we head toward the river. I don’t know why, but I actually expected to see water. I expected a bank like the Mississippi, and boats and a small church sitting on a small island. As we got closer it started to feel like something you’d call the Latin Quarter. Restaurants are popping up everywhere, the buildings are demonstrably shorter, and the smells of a thousand cuisines saturate the air. Nima starts shaking her hands up and down rapidly, a habit I would get to know well when she was excited about a new find. She charged ahead of me and went around l’Eglise de Saint-Severin. It’s another Gothic cathedral, slightly larger than the last one, and I'm really starting to appreciate her enthusiasm. If this is "excitement", what will her reaction be when she sees the two main churches? Her energy could power the lights of a large suburban village!

We walk in to Saint-Severin, and already she can’t believe the columns, the capitals, the ceiling lines, the small chapels that line the outer edges of the nave. She wants to read every plaque and photograph every statue. I'm not going to use any film here, and I don't have an agenda, so I tell her to go nuts. She does. When a crowd begins to form in front of the alter, she wants to go have a sit and find out what’s going on. It’s 11:00am and I’m in a Catholic Church. I’m about to attend my first mass!

We take our seats and the priest begins. Nima wants me to translate, but I can’t... he’s going too fast. They've left hymn lyrics all over the place, however, so I can translate the words to the songs. As a kid, I never sang in church, to the chagrin of my family. I couldn't do it. They're all singers. I have an okay voice, but I always felt self-conscious. I've sung maybe a half-a-dozen church songs out loud in all my life. But somehow here it's different. We both sing them with the crowd. It's inspiring. I begin to feel that electricity I felt when I was a child and my faith was, well, like that of a child. It’s almost an endorphin high. Nima wants to leave after about ten minutes of the mass, and I confess to her that I enjoyed that a lot more than I would have had I been alone.

Day 2, Dinner, then Back to the Ducks

2006-10-04T23:09:00.000-07:00

In the restaurant we both speak French to the servers and to each other, at least for a while. I order a Pastis (I think it was Pernod), and she orders something more complicated. We decide to do the 25E formula each, and we’ll split each dish, finishing half and passing it over.

I have some trouble understanding the menu and Heather has to help me. I try not to let this be humiliating. I’m having exactly the same problem with this menu as I was with the one from the night before. Finally, we settle on Entrée, Plat, Dessert, and a bottle of provincial red wine.

The Entrées are amazing, one a duck confit (basically a duck loaf with bits of duck meat, duck fat, and carrot, bound with an amazing sauce). The other is a similar concoction with lamb. I like mine better than hers, but that may be because my duck was hot and her lamb was cold. I’m not quite used to cold meat, though it’s something I know I need to work on.

The Plats are mixed: mine was whitefish on a bed of rice with sauce, and honestly I could have made better myself without much trouble. Hers though... my god... hers was rare lamb shanks sliced 3/4’’ thick, and I wanted to eat that for the rest of the week. You could pull the meat from the bone with your lips and chew with your tongue. You never wanted it to be finished. I don’t even remember the sauce, because who needs it?

At this point Heather and I have covered the following in conversation: the pros and cons of marriage for both the man and the woman, the pros and cons of children and how she doesn’t want any, career vs travel and vacation, what we really want to do when we grow up, what we like in a partner, and how amazing it is to be an educated American, which allows one to appreciate good times like this. We toast, and I’m afraid I’m getting toasted.

Dessert is again mixed: my fondant au chocolat avec la creme anglaise is a bit much. The chocolate isn’t the quality or texture that I would imagine, though the crème anglaise is perfect. Heather has the calvados apple tart in phyllo pastry, and it blows my mind. It comes with handmade ice cream, and it crumples in your mouth as you taste the combination of brandy and cinnamon. There’s ginger in there too. And nutmeg. I like it more than Heather does.

At this point I think I’m babbling. Holy shit, alcohol just doesn’t work well for me. I’m not hammered, exactly, which is why I'm aware of the period where my level of conversation heads down. I start gossiping about some mutual friends and other folks. I go on about how Hemingway was the greatest American author ever and Heather strongly disagrees, bringing out the arguments much better than I can because she’s read a lot more. I can’t believe I never knew how smart she is, and I'll say that both drunk and sober. Suddenly, as she tells me she had wanted to go out but is feeling too tired now, I realize that I’ve let a real opportunity slip. She probably could have been a real friend to me had I not labeled her as “drunk make-out girl” nearly seven years ago. I’m an idiot. She’s got her whole life ahead of her and I’m, well--I need to walk her back to the hotel. She agrees to one drink in the hotel bar.

As we walk in the cold night I begin to sober up. We walk down streets between tall steel buildings and I feel like I’m in Chicago. There’s a highway in front of us, eight lanes with frontage roads, and I feel like I’m in Houston. Looming ahead of me is the Hotel Sofitel, dozens of stories high, and I feel like I’m in Dallas. We tear across the highway and the frontage roads and she asks if I’m okay getting back to Balard. She’s not even going to stop for a drink. That’s it, I’m not drinking any more on this trip. We hug goodbye and I walk back to Balard depressed. My head actually hangs low. I desparately need water.

Balard to Félix Faure is very quick, and the walk from Félix Faure, past the Citroen dealership, is even shorter. I enter the hostel and throw my notebook on the only remaining empty table. It’s 11:00.

Nima is still sitting at the bar. She’s making marks on a map. I leave my jacket and notebook on the table and head to her table.

“What are you still doing here?” I ask.

“Just trying to plan the day.”

“Hemingway tomorrow?”

“Yeah, sure. I’m just trying to see what else there is to do in Paris. I’m going to go up to bed now, mate. Did you have a good dinner?”

“Well, yeah, I guess. Dinner was good, I mean I think I may have--wait, you just wanted to hear it went fine, didn’t you?”

She smiles and winks. “I’m gonna head up to bed. Brecky tomorrow? We’ll meet?”

“Yeah.”

I sit back at my table and write:

Je suis un homme ennuyeux. I’m in the most romantic city in the world, and I’m alone. Je suis seul. Ban, voilà.

Such profundity. This is going nowhere quickly. Then I write down the details of the dinner, thinking I'm on to something interesting. That only lasts about a minute and a half. Then I feel morose again

Nobody here wants to listen to my bullshit unless I’m sober. I guess that makes sense, but it’s depressing. I thought I would be adopted by a bunch of Austrailians, but so far it’s only happened with a bitter old man whose young marriage is obviously falling apart.

I feel as if everything happening is something I predicted. And that somehow that means something, like when I’m confronted by disappointment, at least I can say I knew it was going to happen. Like it had to, otherwise the alternative is much worse.

I’m too serious... always have been. At least K knows she’s too serious and only rarely puts herself in a position where it’s an inconvenience.

It’s 11:15 pm and I feel like I’m at the Draught Horse [back in Austin]. Everyone around me speaking English and I’m drinking German beer.

I plan to pressure Alex to come here and do the things I can’t do--take a year off from college, travel here, get drunk under the Eiffel tower, hang out with French girls, work some ridiculous touristy job, and learn to enjoy life before it becomes routine.

I’m the libertine who doesn’t know how to live, the amant who doesn’t know how to seduce, the gourmand who doesn't know how to indulge. I...

The moment I begin the next paragraph three American girls walk in, looking confused. They get their room key and I invite them to my table. They come over and I get up, trying to let them have it so I can sit at the bar, but they insist I stay seated. We talk about our days and I tell them about La Douleur. I end up showing them Alex’s picture. Soon they talk about their fourth roommate--an old man (“No! He’s wayyy older than you!!”) who won’t stop talking about his mouse. "Where's my mouse? Have you seen my mouse? Non-living mouse?". Evidently he started to go through all their bags before they finally asked him to stop. They still don’t entirely know what he’s looking for, but they locked their stuff up in the common storage room. He also snores. Then we end up talking about Texas vs the world and George W, and that lasts far too long. I’m dying to hear the end of the story about their roommate, but the cutest one, the one in the middle, has to go to bed. They leave me with a smile.

I start to write again:

I’m surrounded by youth, and rather than be refreshing, it’s depressing. I have missed my chance, and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s all my fault, because I didn’t know who I was, nor did I understand just how big the world is.

I’m morose and in Paris. [My Nine-Inch-Nails-loving friend] Sean would be so proud. It’s like I live two lives: the life where I don’t care about politics and I wish I could be a citizen of the world, and I think Americans are ignorant and fat. Then there’s the other, where I belong in America and I believe 100% in its goodness, and I do my job and appreciate it and want more out of life.

A Marcus divided against himself will opt for stability. Every time.

Then two lovely Australian girls need a place to sit. Again, I start to stand up, intending (really) to go upstairs and turn in. Again, my new friends insist I stay. We talk about our days and I tell them about La Douleur. I end up showing them Alex’s picture. They want to talk about Texas vs. the rest of the world and George W, and that lasts far too long. At 2am the bartender rings the bell for last call and I head upstairs. My roommates are all in bed, and I take my shoes off very carefully, massaging my feet and promising them more, much more abuse in the coming days. I’m asleep within three minutes.

Day 2, The Funiculaire and My Old New Friend Heather

2006-10-02T11:40:00.000-07:00

Everyone is speaking their native tongue, including me. What is going on? What’s happening to us? Are we about to fall? Can I put some people in between me and the downward wall if we go plummeting down the 45-degree angle? Next to me is the emergency call button. I push it. People are cussing all around me. I understand the French words, but I only know the Arabic speakers are cussing because the littlest kid has his hands over his ears. Looking back up the hill, I see a small figure in uniform climbing down toward us. Slowly. She’s holding a key. Step, step, step. I begin to count out loud in French, and that gets a laugh. The guy next to me, one of the Frenchmen, is muttering obscenities I’ve never heard before.

After two full minutes of stale air the lady arrives and puts her key in some slot outside. Nothing happens. The people inside start barking instructions at her but she doesn’t pay attention. After a while she goes step, step, step all the way to the bottom. I don’t count this time. After several minutes of thoughts in my own head I hear a banging on the outside of the tram. The lady has returned with a younger lady and a ladder. They are standing on the stairs that run parallel with the tram, and the ladder has two legs that are meant to rest on the same lever. They’re putting the ladder on the tram even though the doors aren’t open yet.

“Ouvrez la porte, MAINTENANT!” shouts one of the Greeks.

The younger lady bangs on the glass and shouts something about working as fast as she can. I wipe the sweat from my forehead.

Across the park, we see groups gathering and pointing. Flashbulbs twinkle.

“Salope de putain de coup de merde,” says one Frenchman, “ils prennent des photos comme si c’est une plaisanterie!”

They stick their keys in the outside slot again and the doors open a tiny bit. Between all the men near the door, it slides open. Before it’s open all the way, the Frenchman and the Greeks are all yelling at the two Metro workers, blaming them for everything, explaining that it’s not just tourists who are hurt by this, but longtime residents as well. The ladies won’t have any of it and continue to ignore them. They tell us to start going down. I stand back to let some women go first, but the man next to me pushes everyone aside and goes down. Then another man. Chivalry--alive and well in the country that invented it.

I wait until everyone is off but one of the Greek men, and he waves me down. When I hit terra firma I’m sorely tempted to kiss it to get a laugh out of the onlookers. I also consider whether or not I should stick around for a Metro refund. Yes I should, but no I won’t. I’m on Place St. Pierre, and I eventually make it to rue Turgot and the Anvers Metro station (line 2-Etoile). I take it back to the hostel, this time getting out at Felix Faure (line 8-Belard)

5:15pm

I'm supposed to meet Heather, a friend from America, for dinner tonight. She just happens to be over on business.

As I enter the hostel I see a young woman with black hair, a pink headband, and a beige sweater. She has light brown eyes and clear olive skin. I immediately think she’s Moroccan.

I fumble for a Euro and head over to the terminal. I haven’t used this thing yet, so it takes some getting used to. Yes, Heather has written me back, leaving phone and room numbers again. I have to try to be at her hotel by 7:30 because that was the plan, and she doesn’t think she’ll be able to check email again before then.

I go upstairs to shower. I take off my clothes, constantly paranoid because of the relative lack of privacy; I have the room key, but that means I’m not supposed to lock the door. I reach in the shower and feel for faucets, but I can’t find any. I take a look, and I don’t see anything. I put on my shower shoes and step in. I can't see a bloody thing. Then I find it: it’s a button embedded in the wall. I push it and, well, the best thing I can say is that at least the water isn’t freezing right out of the faucet. After 10 seconds, the water shuts off. I push the button again. Again 10 seconds. I begin to formulate my strategy.

It’s hard to explain, but after a short while you get used to the pattern. Push, wash, scrub. Lather, lather, push. Push, scrub rinse. It’s like a waltz. Done with that, I begin to use Anne-Marie’s towel, which is more like a chamois for a car than terrycloth, but it sure does pack small. I dress and brush my hair, then go back down to the bar.

The Moroccan-looking girl is still there. The bartender, a man about my age, brings her a beer.
“Goodonya, mate!” she says as he delivers it. Evidently she’s an Aussie...

I sit at the bar and begin to write things down, recording whatever comes to mind. This brand of beer Malcolm introduced me to, 1664, sounds good. As I drink my third, I start to wonder if I’ll have wine for dinner and whether or not that will--Oh, shit! I have to go!

It’s 6:45 now, so I have plenty of time to find this hotel Sofitel. I look in the phone book, can’t find any numbers because there’s more than one hotel Sofitel. When I do finally reconcile the location with Heather’s email I try to call the number, but the three phones in the bar only accept phone cards. Where can I get a phone card? The tabac down the street. Are they open now? Of course not. Julie at the bar lends me her phone card (she keeps it for emergencies like this--she uses a cell phone) and I call the hotel. Of course Heather is out, and of course the guy doesn’t route me to voicemail. Of course that wouldn’t do me any good anyway.

Now it’s 7:00 and I have to leave. I stand up from the phone and head toward the door, stopping when I realize I’m still carrying my notebook, and I’m a bit warm with my jacket on. I put my notebook on a table next to the Aussie girl and begin to rearrange everything. She invites me to sit down. I look at her more closely: wide round eyes and thin lips. Lots of white teeth and a bit of a smirk that I will get to know well, not just as hers, but as that of an entire continent. I look up at the clock and figure I can spare 10 minutes.

I introduce myself. Her name is Nima. She’s starting her first of six days in Paris, and she hasn’t slept since she got off the plane. She asks what I’m doing tomorrow, and what she should do in general. This is the first day she’s ever been off her island, and she’s asking a Yank what she should be doing. Well, of all people I guess I’m not the worst choice. I tell her about the Hemingway walk and show her the map. She seems interested and I invite her to tag along.
As I walk out the door and head toward Félix Faure, it dawns on me: she won’t be going with me on the Hemingway walk tomorrow. From the first instant I could tell she’s the unstoppable type, move move move, wouldn’t want to stop and admire all the details I’d be interested in. I decide to change my tactic a little bit. I’m here for four more days, and I could probably use some company. If I see her, I’ll let her decide what to do. If it’s something I was planning to do anyway, I’ll be game.

I arrive at Félix Faure at exactly 7:25, figuring I’ll be in pretty big trouble if I can’t reach her. I buy a local phone card. 7,50E for 50 minutes. I call the hotel again and I get Heather. We agree to meet above ground at the Balard station at the end of line 8. In 10 minutes. I’m still a bit fuzzy on the metro at this point, so I put in my ticket and find the direction I’m going. Funny enough, it’s line 8-Balard. I hop the train and get out when two train lanes go down to one and people are entering and exiting both sides.

Construction is everywhere as I reach the street. I can’t cross without going back underground. The corner I’m at is dead storefronts with papers slapped over every inch of glass and concrete. Concerts, political rallies, museum exhibitions, ballet, theater, and television shows run in both directions as I look down. Across the wide avenue I see a small parfumerie and a newsstand, both of which appear to be in business. I cross underground and somehow feel safer. I put my hands in my pockets and look on the ground as something about this situation makes me feel like a fool.

“Hey, Marcus!”

Of course it’s her. She’s smiling brightly under her burgundy beret and locks of red-brown hair. She looks a lot better than I remember, but maybe Paris can do that to you. She’s adorable in her khaki trenchcoat and black boots. She’s also never been this happy to see me before.

Heather and I go back a bit, but in several strange ways (Heather, if you ever happen across this, please keep reading. In the end I'm the drunken fool). She worked at some dot-com at the same time I did, when they used to have a party every week and they’d serve beer to all their employees, no ID check required. It looked like a mixer for young models and pharmaceutical reps of the future. I think it was used as a recruiting tool for visiting college seniors, to convince them that yes, they can essentially stay in college after they graduate.

My wife and I attended several of these, but on one occasion she pointed out this small blonde girl who was making out with a guy, in a way that looked spontaneous and first-time and definitely induced by chemicals. This continued for at least two hours. Forever after that we referred to her as “drunk make-out girl”. The moniker stuck, and it seemed a little more respectful than Elaine Benes’ “office skank” (Seinfeld reference), anyway. I never worked close with Heather, but I was familiar with her, and she was familiar with some shitty work I did on one particularly bad project. It never affected her directly, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t get the cold shoulder, but I’d say we would only have smiled politely to each other if passing on the street.

Fast forward three years to 2002, and I was far more successful, having been brought in as the fresh young mind dedicated to test automation for another dot-com. My boss met Heather at a party and they began dating shortly afterwards. It seemed highly appropriate that I be more polite than I had been, and then one night I learned she spoke French. That changed everything, and I immediately began to seek out her company. Her American accent is strong, but it’s obvious from talking to her for one minute that her accent doesn’t matter. She has it all over me in vocabulary and common usage. After she and Mark broke up I heard vague references to her now and then from my friend Ryan’s camping group. Then one day I told Ryan I was going to Paris. He told me she was too. I knew it would be awkward, but I thought there was a chance it could be lovely. So far, it looks like I'm going to be right.

Back above the Balard Metro station, I try to think of something interesting to throw out there. “You know,” I say as we walk a block to the restaurant, “I can truly say that I never in my wildest dreams imagined I’d be in Paris--with you... It’s a pleasure.”

She laughs.

Day 2, I Should Have Taken the Stairs

2006-09-29T08:15:00.000-07:00

Back on Ave Rachel, I head back to Cafe Maestro and ask them if it’s too late for lunch. It is. I turn left to get back on Clichy and turn left again just after the Moulin Rouge.

Up Rue Lépic, a slight hill, I pass 1- and 2-star hotels on both sides. Rue Lépic becomes rue Tholoze III, and people begin to bustle as I reach the end of the street near the top of the hill. At the top of the hill there’s another windmill, called the Moulin du Radet, looking ancient and broken down, though I learn from the book that it’s a recreation of an original. Bookstores and cafes are all around, and there are tables on a grassy field in front of the old-looking moulin. Their lunch is closed as well, though people still sit in most of the tables.

I turn right at the moulin and head down rue Lépic (I’ve rejoined it), then take a left and a quick right onto rue Norvins. Here there’s a great little sculpture called Le Passe-Muraille, where a man in bronze appears to be walking out from the wall in the square. It’s taken from a short story written by the square’s namesake, Marcel Ayme. Further up rue Norvins I re-enter the tourist haven, with souvenir shops and expensive cafes everywhere. I spot a small-looking boulangerie where I pick up a sandwich with my remaining cash, but can’t afford a drink or a sweet. I choose tuna and I eat it as I walk. The mayonnaise in this country is the best I’ve ever had, and I don’t think that should be surprising.

Near here I see a small sign for an Internet Cafe. It also appears to be a Lebanese restaurant. Too bad I just ate. I buy a Euro’s worth of time and catch up on emails. My interaction with the proprietor goes smoothly and I am feeling more confident in my French, even though my best interactions have come with speaking to those whose native language is neither French nor English.

On rue Norvins, I can see Sacre Coeur, and I walk toward it. But another glance tells me I’ve missed a turn: there’s a vineyard nearby, in the middle of the city, and I decide I must see it. Back onto rue des Saules. I see the Maison Rose the book refers to, but I’ve already had my lunch, as it were. Down a rather steep hill, there it is on my right: a vineyard. Steppes of green grass and wire surround and separate little brown stumps of grapevines, separated from me by chain-link fences. I try to take pictures from several angles but I can’t get much. I look around, and am surprised that the only people anywhere nearby are French. One block away there are a thousand Americans and Germans looking at a church, but nobody seems to care about a lovingly tended vineyard in the least likely of places.

Down at the corner, I turn around and look back up. It can’t be more than an acre, this magical little place; I begin to look for any hint of a way to get some of this wine. I see no obvious doorways or signage denoting opening hours. In the book they imply that they only make this once per year and they throw a big gala to celebrate it. I guess they drink it all at once during that.

Turning right one street earlier than the book says (one street before St Vincent), I go around the vineyard to rejoin the quest for Sacre Coeur. On the right near the corner of rue DuMont III, there’s a jardin sauvage, a natural growth area that looks like a small jungle in the middle of the city. I’m tempted to go into it and hang around, but it’s getting to be 3:30 now, and I need to get moving. As I walk up the hill to rejoin the tourists I wonder not only how two small pockets of vegetation could live, not only so close to the center of this city, but so close to each other. The lovingly tended vineyard seems to suffer no ill effects from being so close to the savage garden.

Amazing.

3:30pm

A quick left and right, and I see it: Sacre Coeur. Impossibly white. The book says this building secretes calcium whenever it rains, bleaching itself naturally to ensure the color lasts forever, or until it dissolves from the secretion. The basilica appears out from behind a building, towering over me as it’s towered over Paris since the late 19th century. To me there’s something vaguely Russian about it somehow, I think because there is the one enormous dome, surrounded by many smaller ones, like a mother surrounded by her children. The domes are all ringed in what looks like tulip petals pointed down, all white and very small. Using my binoculars, I can see every scratch of stone up at the top, each line curved exactly as the last, perfect in its symmetry.

There’s a park next to me, and a toilette. It looks like I’d have to go through a bit to use it, so I decide to wait. Walking around the left side of the church, I begin to see what kind of view this hill affords. I think about the scene in Amélie, where she leads him on a scavenger hunt of sorts to give him back his photo-album. Did that scene take place here? I would find out later that I was right. Children are everywhere, and I hear English, German, Dutch, Arabic, Hindu, and yes, French. Men are holding their children in place to look through the telescopes at the view of Paris. I go down to where the railing overlooks the city, and I turn around. The basilica faces me now, and its whiteness makes me forget to breathe. With the binoculars I examine every detail of the dome, and try to see what colors the tourists are wearing in that middle ring. Then I turn to face the city. Montparnasse tower, Notre Dame, a minaret, the dome at Les Invalides, but I can’t see the Eiffel tower. I ask a young woman next to me where the tower is, and she points to it, all the way to my right behind a building. I thank her and study it.

I walk around to the other side of the church, trying to orient myself in order to continue the walk. Do I want to go up the dome? It costs money, even though the book says it won't. I don’t know if they take credit cards. I’m tired as hell, because this walk has taken much longer than I anticipated. There’s a statue on the wall to my right, whiter than the dome, probably whiter than anything I’ve seen in Paris. There’s a box with a slot in the top at the statue’s feet. My Paris Las Vegas experience kicks in: this is a performer. I look around and people are walking by this man with barely even a glance. I put seventy-five American cents into his box and turn around. As I do, I see about two dozen people stop and stare. I hear gasps. I turn around and, as expected, the statue is smiling and waving to me. I smile and wave back. Other people approach him and I hear the tinkling of coins as I head back down the hill.

To the left and to the right people are going down what appear to be three hundred steps. Blisters are forming on my feet and my calf muscles are screaming at me. Two large machines full of people move up and down, allowing lazy people like me to circumvent the stairs. It's called the Funiculaire de Montmartre. All it costs is a single Metro ticket? Sold!

I look on the tour book map and realize it has me going back onto the streets to finish up at Place des Abbesses, and I immediately decide to abandon the walk. I’ve seen some amazing stuff already. As I get onto the Funiculaire, I see a family of people who look Middle-Eastern, a few Frenchmen, and 3 men speaking Greek.

The lumbering machine begins its descent and I’m afforded a view of the park nearby. Children run around and climb all over their parents. Women take pictures of their families as--SHIT! I’m nearly thrown to the floor as the tram stops dead. People gasp as most of us tumble to the floor. After it's stopped I look around, recovering from the shock and trying to figure out why this would have happened. Across the square, the other tram is running just fine.

Photos of Le Cimetière Montmartre, without commentary

2006-09-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

The entrance to the cemetary

A couple of longer shots

The grandson of author Alexandre Dumas

The comedian Vaslav Nijinsky

This one might be my personal favorite

Something about this one bothers me. It shouldn't be too hard to guess, but I'd like to see what people come up with

The face in that marble is reversed, so that it's always looking at you. It's really cool, but the effect is lost here. What's the name of that effect, anyway?

Day 2, Le Cimetière Montmartre, continued

2006-09-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

I consider heading back to the beginning of where the tour book indicates; maybe if I start over again and follow the route exactly I'll have a better chance of finding her. Then I catch a glimpse of green to my left. I check the street signs and note that I’m near the 22nd division. On the map, only #2 is labeled in the 22nd division, but #2 is not listed in the index for that map (the list goes from #1 to #3... I found a bug in the tour book!).

As I head to the left, I begin to know it’s her. I think of the scene in the Seven Samurai where we first see the daughter of farmer Manzo as she prays that he not cut her hair. We are looking at her from behind, as she washes her long, beautiful hair. As I approach, I can’t believe how small she is. But that’s her.

I reach out my hand and run it along her upper arm, squeezing to make sure she isn’t flesh. Her peasant dress is cinched in the back and her hair is tied up loosely, falling on the ground below her. Her fingers are interlocked, so well defined that I can make out her cuticles.

Toward the back, the curve of her hips as her legs curl up under her and her knees are bent, I want to touch her waist, again to see if it’s really made of metal. Her bare feet show lines and calluses, her nightgown strewn beside them. Water is collecting behind her knees and I want to soak it up, to clean off the black dirt accumulating in the folds of her dress and on her face.

I don’t want to leave. I take several pictures, and finally decide that I’m going to come back before I leave Paris to look at her some more.

I criss-cross the cemetery, finding the court-jester Nijinsky, Foucault “of pendulum fame,” and one tomb with a staircase going down at least twenty feet. The door was locked or I would have followed it.

Some new graves have actual photographs on them, which somehow seems less important than a sculpture. Accuracy of detail makes me appreciate the death less I think. You don’t plan a photograph to show you in your death-pose; photographs show a particular context, a situational emotion. The sculpture is meant to cry out against the heavens and denounce the Creator who takes everything He gives.

The tour book shows a “superb bronze of a violated young woman, her eyes closed, face tense, lips forming a silent cry against the Heavens”, and I spend nearly as much time with her as I did with the prostrate girl. But somehow she doesn’t provoke the same emotional reaction in me. With the Violated Young Woman, I more appreciate the sculpture than pity the person. I’m not even so sure how violated she looks; I’d sooner call it sadness or sincerity.

I follow a good amount of the tour from the book and take pictures until I decide it’s time for lunch. My watch says 2:30pm. I’ve been in this cemetery for more than three hours, most of which time was spent look at the supine girl. Later I will find her on the Internet, referenced as La Douleur; she seems to represent nobody specific.

On the way out I remember Truffaut. I check several maps and manage to find his jet-black marble grave, saying only “Francois Truffaut, 1932-1984” (635-16A).

There is a pink 3-ring binder laying on the grave. Without touching it I read the front cover. It’s from a documentary filmmaker, gathering remembrances from people who visit Truffaut’s grave. He wants people to write notes telling Truffaut what they appreciate about him, so I do.

I told him about how striking it was that his boy ran for 10 minutes solid, without cutting, to the beach. He lost his freedom but gained his life. I hope the note is appreciated. Frankly I think there’s something great about leaving something like that in Paris. I normally don’t like to pull pages or tear things out of my notebook, but this is special, and I’ll always think about it when I pull out Leo IV and see it missing.

I take a different way out from how I came in and this allows me to have a word or two with some mourners. They’re charming people and they’re very polite. One grave I pass is covered with fresh-cut flowers and plants. They haven’t even been there for more than a couple hours, I think. A couple approaches, probably mid-40s, maybe younger. They are carrying a basket with purple flowers and greenery, bearing a ribbon that says “à mon fils”. The other flowers on the grave say “à mon neveu” or “à mon petit fils”. The couple move past me and place the flowers on the ground in front of the grave, then they stand motionless. I get the idea to take a picture, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

As I walk to the front of the cemetery my feet move slowly. I turn back every few minutes to see the couple standing there. They don’t look like they’re breathing. The man is holding the woman’s purse in his right hand. I near the front and before they are out of sight I turn again. They haven’t moved. They are almost difficult to spot next to the bust of Berlioz, the cherub dancing next to the gated and broken tomb, and the memory of La Douleur. I feel a tear in my eye.

Then I head back to civilization, to continue the tour of the Sacred and the Profane.

Day 2, The Sacred and the Profane

2006-09-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

I awake to the bells of l’Eglise Saint Etienne, sounding 9am. I stay in bed another 45 minutes staring at the ceiling (two feet away), then get up. My roommates are all snoring.

I put on the same jeans as the night before and select a new shirt. I pack my backpack with the camera, the guide book, and anything I think I’ll need for the day, then I go downstairs. I missed breakfast by about 15 minutes, and I’ve already read reviews of the 3 Ducks that say, “if you miss breakfast, don’t bother talking them into making an exception.”

I don’t talk to anyone on the way out. I put my jacket on and walk up commerce, now becoming somewhat familiar with the sequence of shops. I wave to the cheeseshop owner I met the day before, but he doesn’t seem to recognize me. The trucks unload, people walk their dogs, and I still can’t hear any evidence that announces the enormity of this metropolis.

I reach the corner of La Motte-Picquet and Grenelle and find a little cafe called “Le Paris”, which offers Prix Fixe breakfast menus for under 10E. I sit at a table and order the “petit dejeuner a l’anglaise”, which means orange juice, a baguette with butter and strawberry jam, two eggs sunny-side up over a nice piece of ham, and a croissant. Very good. As I eat I noticed many Frenchmen who come in and stood at the bar to have their breakfast. They order only the baguettes with butter and coffee, and they eat very fast. They sugar their coffee with two or three packs, then throw the packs onto the floor. Bits of paper and bread leave no floor exposed, and I wondered why they don’t sweep it up. I order a cafe au lait and as I drink it I see the list of prices for drinks. The cafe au lait I’m drinking (probably 4-6 ounces) is 3,50E. If I had ordered it at the bar it would have been 1,70E.

At the metro station I buy a “Carnet”, which means rather than 1,40E for a single ride, I pay 10,40 for 10 rides. Quite a discount. I take line 6-Etoile to Etoile, then get on the 2-Nation, and exit at Pigalle.

It always takes a few minutes to get oriented when I hit the street level. It’s taken me the whole time since I’ve been here to remember to look on the side of the building for the name of the street, not to some pole on the corner like in America. After I find Rue Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, I head up Clichy. This street reminds me of Broadway as it runs through Times Square, except with shorter buildings and fewer lights. Something in the density of the buildings and big-city atmosphere make me think of it. Restaurants, one after another, lay on the right-hand side of the street. Across the multi-lane boulevard are the sex shops. Little theaters, peep shows, DVD outlets, and clubs. They’re all dark at the moment, though occasionally people move in and out of the curtained doorways. On my right is the Moulin Rouge, so large I can’t see it. I walk into the red-draped lobby and check out the posters behind the glass. Pictures of dancing girls from the past 100+ years decorate the entrance, as does the price. It’s about 400E to have the full experience, and about 70E to just have dinner and a show. I don’t look into what the difference was between the two.

Walking further up Clichy, I decide to cross the street so I could get a better view of the Moulin. I can see the sex shops up close now, and I’m surprised at how similar they are to the ones here. They’re seedy, low-budget, and all the signs are in English. All of them. I pass a lingerie shop and a club. That’s when I notice that, since I left the metro, I haven’t seen a boulangerie, a cave, a fromagerie, a chocolatier, or a boucherie. There also aren’t any restaurants on this side of the street. Oh wait, there’s a cafe Americaine. I get my picture and cross back to where Clichy meets Avenue Rachel. That’s where you go to enter the Cimetiere Montmartre. At the corner is a place called Cafe Maestro. I take a picture because I’m silly (Maestro is my handle on a lot of sites, though I'm trying more and more to divorce myself from it).

I turn right onto Ave Rachel and there’s the entrance to the cemetery. It’s an open gateway surrounded by little cafes and a fruit stand. Above it all is rue Caulaincourt, a green metal bridge running over a diagonal of the cemetery. From the map this makes it look like the cemetery is divided into two parts, one larger one the left, smaller on the right. Walking toward it I start to see mausoleums and graves, and people milling about in front of the map.

From my guide book I know I’m supposed to go to the back and work my way forward, but of course I don’t do that. I go to the right, to enter the small area on the right side of the Caulaincourt bridge. On the map this looks like a small area, but it stretches on, row after row of graves. Several are gothic, standing eight to fifteen feet high, most including a small chapel area inside where flowers or candles rest inside. Some have locked doors, but most are open.

Where the doors are open the smell of urine seeps through as I pass, so I turn to have a closer look. Coke bottles, beer bottles, and papers from sandwich wraps and crisps litter the floors under the iron cross hanging on the back wall. I haven’t seen the name of the grave, but the oval stained glass image of Jesus stretching his arms out over the cross below give me an idea of what the family intended this tomb to represent. I back out of the sepulchre.

Midway between the southeast corner to the point under the Caulaincourt bridge, I am stopped by a grave I can’t believe. A pure-white marble statue stands under the name Dalida--a modern woman wearing what looks like an evening gown. Black marble pedestals with perfectly manicured shrubs lay about, like an audience. Her face shows determination, confidence, and under the beams of a golden sun on a black monolith behind her, she looks as though she is seconds from singing Opera or reciting Moliere. I stand for two or three minutes, trying to capture her best angle, to guess at her history, but I’m unable to derive anything from what is written on the grave.
Two American girls come by from behind me. They say “That’s cool!” and move on. Their feet don’t stop.

Descending to the left and back toward the bridge, I try to discern a pattern of where the old graves and the new graves are separate, but I can’t find any. It looks as though the intent all along has been to mix the old and the new, with simple gray stone sepulchres and elaborate pink granite tombs within feet of another. “Stick-figure Christ” is another example of the modernity. It’s on the back of a grave, a thin black cross, with the extra crossbar at the top, hanging from which is a slumped over stick figure, round head descending to a lightning-bolt shape, leafed in gold. I can’t at all decide how I feel about this.

Crossing under the bridge, I find that the graves underneath do tend to be older. Several sculptures adorn the graves of French nobility. I don’t know the names, but their importance is etched into their resting-places, usually with other people standing around weeping or dropping flower petals around. So far, except for Dalida, this cemetery seems to me much more interesting than the ones in New Orleans, except that I expected the graves here to be much older. The earliest death I’ve seen so far dates after the mid XIX century, whereas in New Orleans we saw from from the early XVI.

Then I turn and see a Weeping Widow, one of those mentioned in the tour book, on the grave of Henri Meilhac. She’s made of some kind of stone, not marble, sitting over the grave and holding a wreath. She is naked save for the hooded cape drawn over her, sitting up straight as though strapped to a board. She cradles her face in her left hand. Looking closely at her face, I see large lips and a strong chin, and I begin to wonder if she’s not modeled after an Algerian or a someone from the Code d’Ivoire, but there is no way to know.

I wander around for a time, finding various sculpture and stopping occasionally to record an observation or take a picture. In the roundabout that used to mark the cemetery’s main entrance, tombs from every conceivable European origin lay around. One looks like a European influenced Mosque, with a pink minaret sitting atop a bulbous mausoleum, fronted by an elaborate wrought-iron gate. The name definitely does not look French.

Walking toward the back, where the tour says to begin, I’m on the lookout for a picture I saw in the tour book, that of a young woman laying supine over a grave in grief. I haven’t seen her yet, and I don’t want to miss her, so I have an eye out always. Several greened-copper statues lay about, and I spend a little time with each one.

Truffaut is also buried here somewhere. The only film of his I’ve seen is the 400 Blows, but that's one of those films that lingers and takes over and crawls around in my head. I can’t leave without seeing him.

I see a gardener and ask him about the statue of the girl from the book. He says he doesn’t know her, and he doesn’t know many of the graves around here. He looks like many of the charming old French men I’ve seen: tweed jacket, a small gray cap, a white beard, and a sunken, freckled face. He looks like someone who has spent his life studying people and living well. He seems to have no problem understanding my French or giving me directions to where I can look for a map. For some reason I don’t want a map, I want to find everything by directions or by feel (in the cemetary, that is, not in all of Paris!). I will come to regret this after I’m back home.

Where is she??

The second proves the first, I guess....

2006-09-25T12:57:00.000-07:00

I checked the IMDB news today, like I normally do, and saw these two headlines

Box Office Flunks Intelligence Test
'Da Vinci Code' Year's Most Profitable Movie

The stories are here.

Day 1, 5:30 pm

2006-09-21T20:12:00.000-07:00

I take the metro back to the Commerce stop and walk back to the hostel. I don’t immediately go to my room, though. I stop in the bar area and talk to Julie, the bartender/concierge (there’s something funny about that--I don’t know if it was funny that they combined the positions into one person, or the idea that you could call what they do concierge in any way).
I write a few notes about the day in my notebook, then have a beer.

“Est-ce que vous recommanderiez un bon résto pour ce soir?”

She hesitates and narrows her eyes. “Français ou anglais?”

“Quoi?”

“Pour parler, français ou anglais?”

“Oh, uh... français.”

“Bien.”

I can feel that she wants to roll her eyes. She tells me about a great restaurant serving “Southwest”-style cuisine, not knowing what a loaded term that is for someone from Texas. It’s called Chez Papa. I go outside, then pass the church façade, then go down Rue Mademoiselle. I pass a crèperie and make a mental note of it. Two more restaurants, a chocolate shop, and several boutiques. There it is, Chez Papa, on the corner of the street. I go in and asked for a non-smoking table.

The waiter offers me French or English menus, and I take the French. As soon as I get to my table I know it was a mistake.

The problem is that I know the French words for duck (canard), veal (veau), lamb (l’agneau), beef (le boeuf or la viande), fish (poisson), snails (escargots), oysters (huitres), foie gras (foie gras), and a bunch of other meats. What I don’t know are the modifying words terrine, magrets, escalope, or aiguillettes. Tail between my legs, I ask for the English menu. I note that piment d’espellette is listed on nearly every menu item. Cool! If I hadn’t been awake for 30 consecutive hours I might notice that this is a Basque restaurant, and that I could use my half-dozen Basque phrases, or that I could have a gateau basque or salt cod al pil-pil. I could even ask the guys here what they think about the plot of my first novel. I didn't even think about it.

But that disgust doesn’t come until the next day.

I finally settled on a plat only, with no entrée and no dessert. I still spend too much money. I ordered escalopes de canard auvergnate, which is potatoes au gratin (using gruyère instead of whatever the hell cheese we use here), covered with scalloped duck breasts and another layer of gruyère. It’s served in a largish orange cast-iron dutch oven with the lid off. The waiter tries to tell me in English that the pot is extremely hot, but my French is better than his English, so he ends up telling me in French. He recommends a wine called Gaillac, a light red, something I love but can’t describe.

I eat slowly, stopping occasionally to write, to drink wine, or to listen in to the conversation between the waiters and cooks. Soon two very lovely young ladies come in and sit with the waiters. One is short and olive-skinned and speaks French with an accent I can’t place. She resembles my ideal for the female lead in Red Beret. The other is tall and slender and seems to be from Paris. The short girl works there already, the tall one is interviewing for a serving position, recommended by the short girl. The waiters show the tall girl around while the short girl gripes about her love life. Occasionally they look over at me and ask, “ça va?” and I say “oui.”

Roasted duck breast atop perfectly browned gruyère potatoes au gratin is about the best meal you could start with in Paris. It’ll be guaranteed to put me to sleep, and it’ll taste good the whole time.

As I eat I notice that every few minutes I come very close to falling asleep in my food. My eyes flutter and my head fades, as though I’m starting to dream already. It’s been happening for quite a while.

I order coffee--the short girl is surprised I want coffee with no dessert--and take l’addition. Walking back toward the hostel I decide I would like dessert after all.

I stop at a place about a block away from the hostel, at the corner of r des Entrepreneurs, called à la tour eiffel and ordered a crème caramel and a café au lait.

The owner of this place is a squat man, with a Gaullic large nose and small eyes. He moves very little the whole time I’m sitting at the bar, but he’s clearly in charge of every aspect of the cafe. He gives quick one- or two-word orders every time someone walks in or someone finishes their drink, and he may have to point occasionally. Otherwise, he yacks in stilted conversation with what seem to be regular customers.

He asks me where I’m from.

“Would it be rude of me to see if you can guess?” I say in French.

“No, it’s not rude, but no, I can’t guess.”

"I’m from Texas.”

I’m disappointed that he shows no surprise, but then again he’s French.

We talk for a while and he complements in a way I’ll hear a lot over the week, “vous écoutez bien français!” Look closely: he just said I listen well, and offers no opinion on the spoken part... I just hope it’s kind of a fixed expression or something. I think listening is what I do the least well... in any language!

I pay the bill and walk back to the hostel. I still have my notebook, so I decide I’m going to write for a little while. I sit at the bar and write a little, then an older Aussie approaches me. His name is Malcolm, and he lives in Paris with his French wife and 10-month old baby. We exchange baby pictures and eventually find out that we're both writers. We exchange email address and I send him a copy of my novel from the internet terminal in the bar. He buys me a beer and offers me a joint. I politely decline, but he keeps pressing, telling me it’ll help me sleep and that I won’t get in trouble. Finally I tell him I’m not here to do that stuff and I don’t want it, at which point he says he’s "not trying to twist my arm or anything”. I feel Indian-burned.

Finally I ask for the key to room 22. I get my bags and went out the door. The courtyard is small, with enough room for three tables and a few chairs. The outhouse bathrooms are on the left, the stairway up is straight ahead. The landing turns you back to where you face the bar. The old wooden stairs are warped and worn brown with footfalls and water damage. From the stairs I turn left to get to room 22. It’s a metal blue door, and it’s wide open.

Three of the four beds have bags on them, leaving me with only a top bunk. I undress carefully and consolidate my stuff on the floor at the foot of the bed. I take Bovary and climb to the top bunk, my back and shoulders feeling the strain of packing too heavily. I roll up my clothes and put them next to my pillow, then open up Bovary. I can't even recognize what I'm looking at as words; they just look like squiggles and dots thrown on a pulpy canvas. I put it down, put the pillow over my head, and fall asleep within 60 seconds.

Sometime during the night my roommates come in. Before I know what I'm doing I tell them the key is on the sink if they need it and that I can move my stuff if they want me to. I say all this in English, then in French, and they don't understand a word of either. I find out the next day that they're Italian.

Later, probably after the bar closed, I heard a loud frat-party sounding ruckus from the courtyard, but it didn’t keep me awake for long. One guy was moaning like a hormonal cat for what seemed like hours in my half-sleep, half-wake delirium.

Day 1, 10:30 am

2006-09-19T21:27:00.000-07:00

I decide not to bring my camera, because it's not going to be easy to carry on the bicycle. I leave the hostel and begin to walk up Commerce. My steps echo in the narrow street. Tiny cars are parallel parked on either side, all facing the direction I’m headed. Tall trees lean with the wind, but where I am the wind doesn’t disturb even the bits of paper on the sidewalk. The street is silent but for the clop of footsteps and the jingle of dog collars. I’m in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world and I can’t hear any evidence of it.

Things start to move a block further up. People are walking their dogs and trucks are unloading their goods in front of stores. A car comes by every few minutes, squeezing through the cars. All the streets I pass are one-way, and I wonder how people can remember how to navigate when the streets never hit each other at right angles. As I cross Rue Létellier I catch my first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, just the top of it.

Commerce becomes l’Avenue de la Motte-Picquet and things pick up. The first McDonalds I’ve seen is at the corner when I hit Grenelle. It’s nearly packed, and I don’t see any obvious tourists. I turn left near the metro station (La Motte-Picquet-Grenelle)and see a repetition of everything I’ve already seen: bakery, cheese-shop, wine shop, clothing boutiques, newsstand, and several cafes.

I cross Place Dupleix and head up Rue Violet, cross Avenue de Suffren, and the world opens up and turns green. On my right is l’Ecole Militaire, and on the left is the Eiffel Tower. I can see all of it this time. I turn left and start walking.

What the tour guidebooks say about dogshit is 100% true. little bombs lay everywhere: in the grass, on the gravel, and on the pavement. I imagine some French people love to make tourists look at the ground the whole time they’re walking toward the tower; locals never look up in any city.

Dodging landmines, I glance up from time to time, and the tower grows taller and taller. When I reach the base I realize I’ve forgotten to watch for pickpockets, and I adjust my belt to make sure everything is still there. There’s a huge crowd under the tower. Children spin around and get dizzy, adults stand in line waiting for tickets, and a woman with a headcover approaches me.
“Excuse me sir,” she says in a thick accent--I can’t identify it at all. “Do you speak English?”

“Yes.”

She holds out her hands, revealing a piece of paper written in English. It says she’s from Bosnia and she needs money to buy meals and to get her family out of Bosnia before it’s too late.
I hand her about a Euro, turn around, and there’s a tall man with tight brown curls running a little past his shoulders. He’s standing on a Segway.

It turns out he’s a tour group guide waiting for the Segway tour to begin. It covers the same route I’m on but costs twice as much. After his group leaves my tour guide shows up. A Bosnian woman (a different one) asks him if he speaks English.

“No,” he says, taking no pains to invent an accent. She scowls and walks off.

Several other people, couples mostly, join us. They’re all American or British, and just there for a few days. None of them speak French, including Jeremy, the tour guide. Jeremy tells a brief history of the tower, then we follow him on foot while he rides.

We follow Jeremy back to the Fat Tire offices, crossing the Champs de Mars, down Rue de la Federation, onto Edgar Faure, and into the office park. The building is flat and black, with windows going several stories up and unadorned white columns supporting corridors between buildings. It looks like it could be in any city in the world. Graffiti covers the walls and pillars, tags put up by gangs in the past week or so. Some of the tags look vaguely Arabic. We pay for our tours. We each get a bike, then we head off. I feel very strange, I haven’t been on a bike in about 10 years. I’m finally able to get the hang of the hand-grip mounted gear shift, and we begin the tour.

L’Ecole Militaire lines up exactly with the Eiffel Tower, as does the Peace Monument. These three structures line up with the Montparnasse tower back to the southeast. This is a theme which presents itself several times throughout the tour. Jeremy keeps using the word “symmetry” to describe the French penchant for lining things up, but I don’t think it means what he thinks it means.

Napoleon had a room at l’Ecole Militaire, and one of his teachers made a favorable remark in one of his gradebooks: “If given the right atmosphere, this young man could go far.”

Next is up Avenue de Tourville, and to Les Invalides. We park in front of the Dome of Napoleon’s Tomb. The dome we see is not the dome you see when you’re inside the building. An inner dome was constructed so that the visitors would have a better view of the dome itself, and the clerestory of the outer dome was sealed up. American WWII pilots were smuggled in and out of Paris, using this outer Dome as a safehouse. Evidently Hitler visited this dome shortly after occupying Paris in 1941, and American pilots were in the outer dome at that very moment.
“If only one of them had had a brick, eh?”

When you go inside the tomb, you’ll notice that the round upper floor (where you enter) has a waist-high railing over which you must bow to see Napoleon’s coffin. This is not unintentional.
Counterclockwise around Les Invalides, Jeremy tells us we’re going to get a crack of nudity. To the right, across Boulevard des Invalides, we stop and look to the right: Rodin’s the Thinker shows us the crack of his ass.

“Ever wonder what he’s thinking? I’ll bet he’s thinking, ‘hey, where the hell are my clothes?’”

HI-larious.

Continuing around Les Invalides, we stop in front of it, where the moat is being ripped up for what seem like minor repairs. The bushes are shaped like bullets or artillery shells. This is not unintentional.

We ride up Rue Galland toward the Seine, and stop at the Pont Alexandre III. The four corners of the bridge are decorated by tall pillars, each set atop by a golden statue of an angel. One has a sword drawn, one is blowing a pipe. I have no idea what the other two are doing.

We cross the bridge to see the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais, then we head to the right, to Place de la Concorde. The Obelisk is here, as is the place where the main guillotine was in place during the Revolution. Jeremy gives us a graphic account of how Louis XVI was murdered, without a shroud, face up, with a very very dull guillotine blade. It took 5 drops to kill him, 4 of which he was awake for.

From the Place de la Concorde, we goEast to the Tuileries, in the shadow of the Louvre. There’s a small cafe in the sun here, where we sit down for lunch. I ordered Croque Monsieur and a cafe au lait. [JB has a one word reply to this: "tourist!"]

After lunch we goback to the office with few stops and little information. I stay for a while there to send some emails and take a peek at how Conclave is going (this is a few days after Pope John Paul II died).

On the way to the metro stop I find a book shop, a very small one like they have all over the city. I have a lovely conversation with the owner about whether it would be easier to read l’Etranger or Madame Bovary, or whether I should get something more modern. She strongly recommended Bovary for the reading level and overall value of the story. I buy it.

During the walk back to the hostel I start to get a sense of how tired I am. Nearly six hours have passed since I left the hostel, and I can't remember them very well. My legs are numb, and I can't believe I can still conjugate verbs in English, let alone French. At least I still have the presence of mind to dodge the dogshit.

Day 1, 9:45 am

2006-09-17T20:58:00.000-07:00

Avenue de la Motte Picquet runs under the train. It’s a wide, flat street probably three lanes across. Boulevard Grenelle runs parallel with the rails, and as turns out to be the case all over Paris, several smaller streets sneak in and out of the intersection. I remember one of my French teachers telling me how Parisians love the four-way stop signs all over America; they love them the way a grandparent loves a finger painting masterpiece by a four-year old. Streets that run perpendicular to each other are anal, artless. The origins of this viewpoint are everywhere I look. [My friend JD tells me I've just recited a complete falsehood about the French attitudes--that many hate the way the streets are laid out in Paris. Oh well, I'm sure it won't be my last falsehood recited.]

It’s difficult to get my bearings. I look for street signs and can’t see any. Little shops and bakeries are everywhere, but there are hardly any people about. I finally spot a sign for rue Commerce, which is a continuation of Avenue de la Motte Picquet. That’s another thing that happens all over Paris, just like in Edinburgh and, if I’m honest with myself, in Austin, too: streets don’t tend to keep their name for more than a block or two.

Commerce is narrower, and I begin to feel more secure, enclosed. A green and white neon cross hangs outside a window, next to the word Pharmacie. A few blocks up is another one, on the other side of the street. To my right is a wine shop, a boutique, a children’s boutique, a cheese shop, and a bakery. I’m not kidding. On the other side of the street the same pattern repeats itself. I walk by the cheese shop and look in the open doorway. Two older women with scarves on their heads are arguing about something and I can’t make out a single word. I told people the first thing I was going to do when I set foot in Paris would be to buy cheese I can’t get in the states. I don’t like the looks of this place, and I have three blocks to go. What are my odds of hitting another cheese shop between here and there?

And there’s a Fromagerie, right next to the wine shop at the intersection of Commerce and Rue du Théatre. The door is open and an older gentleman stands there reminding me of Hal Holbrook. But I can’t decide if it’s the Our Town Holbrook or the Deep Throat (from All the President’s Men) Holbrook. I decide to take my chances. I see a church right ahead and assume that’s the one near the hostel. I doubt my luck is good enough to hit another cheese shop in this close a distance. I walk in, trying my best not to look confused.

“Eh bien, bonjour monsieur,” the man says to me. “May I help you?”

“Bonjour,” I say. I’m not letting you speak English, pal! “Je cherche un fromage que je ne peux pas acheter aux Etats-Unis.”

Sans batted eyelash, he begins to explain to me what the differences are in production standards, regulations, etc. I follow about 80% of it and I’m feeling pretty good about myself. In the end I buy two cheeses, both unpasteurized. One is a bleu cheese, called brebis. The other is a kind of Brie, but I don’t remember what it’s called. I pay about 8E for both, and my chin is up.
Two doors down is a bakery. I’m not kidding. I walk in and can’t believe it. There are things in here I’ve never heard of: tarte tatin, quince tarte, seven different kinds of croissants, at least four loaves of bread that look like baguettes. I can’t even fathom what the differences are between them. I settle on a single plain croissant. I want to start simple. It’s 0.85E, and it’s better than any baked flour and butter I’ve ever had. La Madeleine is on par, but they charge $1.69. But La Mad isn’t every ten feet on the streets of Austin, and being in La Mad isn’t being in Paris.

I don’t have enough change for a second, but that’s probably for the best. On to the hostel.
Outside the bakery is the intersection of Commerce and Rue de St. Etienne. This street makes a square around a large church, appropriately enough the Eglise St. Etienne. It’s a smallish Catholic church, not cross-shaped and not buttressed externally. Elegant and simple, it sits in the middle of the road, tied up with scaffolding and well cared for.

To the right of the church is a Post, a small newsstand, and a squarish green façade with gold block letters above it, “3 Ducks Hostel”. My bags seem heavier than ever as I cross over to it. The single glass front door is open to the inside, and I’m hit with the smell of cigarette smoke as I walk into the bar.

Nirvana is playing, or I should say it’s blasting. I guess that’s not bad. A pretty thirty-ish woman stands behind the bar and she welcomes me in accented English. I can’t tell the accent. Several other people are hanging out, Americans from the look of them. They’re smoking and writing and talking.

The lady up front talks to me in English, so I talk to her in French. She seems to struggle with it for a few phrases, so I go ahead and start over in English. I think she's Spanish but I don’t know for sure. She wants me to pay for all five days in advance but she leaves me the option of only paying for two, so I take it. I haven’t seen the place yet and I don’t know whether or not I can find a better place. She offers for me to take a bit of a nap before the noon lockout, but I have a bike tour to get to, so I decline. She offers me to drop my bags in the holding room, so I do.

I walk to the back of the bar and into the little courtyard. Two metal outdoor tables sit on a tile-covered ground. The hostel is three stories, and from here I can see all the windows as they open onto it. Two outdoor bathrooms sit next to where she pointed me, next to the holding area and the kitchen. I go into the kitchen and drop my cheese in the dorm-room refrigerator.
The right-hand wall of the holding room is dozens of two-foot deep cubbyholes stuffed with backpacks. In the back of the room is a bed, and a young man is sleeping as deeply as a two-year-old above the sheets. I leave everything but my jacket and money-belt and go back to the bar. I don’t want my camera just yet.

Back in the bar I have a look at the map. I draw an X where I am. The Eiffel Tower doesn’t need an X, it’s ginormous.

Paris: Day 1, Friday, April 15, 2005

2006-09-17T19:28:00.000-07:00

7:30am

The plane lands and I’m nervous. My French hasn’t been stress-tested yet, so I’m running over random irregular verb conjugations like mourir and découvrir. For some reason this is the first thing that comes to mind, rather than the things I might need (customs vocabulary and phrases useful to, say, acquiring transportation).

From the gate I start down a two-way moving sidewalk that goes down a slope, then enters a narrow tunnel, probably fifteen feet wide and ten feet tall. The sides and ceiling of the tunnel are air-blasted foam insulation, all white. I feel like I’m sliding through a cannoli. The tunnel continues for hundreds of feet, before it begins to go up again, and something in me turns. I look around, and nobody else seems nervous. Of course, I’ve been awake for about 20 hours now... these people were probably smart enough to sleep on the plane.

We are led to a set of booths and we break up into a dozen or so lines. I stand in front of the agent who can’t be older than 25, and I show him my passport. This is it, the first opportunity I’ve had to speak French to a French person on French soil.

I am two classes, 6 hours, short of a degree in French language and literature from the University of Texas at Austin. I've been seeing French tutors for over six years, and I can speak and listen to them at what they say is their "normal rate of speech". Before I even bought the plane ticket I declared that I would not speak a word of English to any French speakers. So here's my first chance.

“Je n’ai rien à déclarer!” I'm awesome. I even omit the “n” sound when I say it, just like the French. As I beam at the man, he looks at my passport, then me, and says, “Okay.” He wayyyy over-pronounces the “ay” (like he imagines an American would). I don't know why, but this jackass is mocking me!

I walk past the booth and see the sign for “la douane”--customs. What I just did was pass through immigration, but I treated it like it was customs. Son of a bitch! Uh, I mean, salope!

I don’t say anything when I approach la douane. I just hand them the little form that lets them know I don’t have anything to declare.

I quickly find signs to get to the RER-B (commuter train), and take an inter-terminal bus, then an inter-terminal shuttle, then an inter-terminal tram to get to the right place. Once inside, I try to figure out how to buy an RER ticket. The lines for the ticket agents are very long and full of Americans. I speak French, right? I don't need to go through that nonsense when there's an automated kiosk nearby!

The machine looks like an ATM. I stand in line for about three minutes, trying to remember not to smile at people when they look at me. Several people in flannel sit on a bench nearby, seemingly offering commentary on everything going on, but I don’t understand everything they say. When it gets to my turn, the kiosk asks what language I want. I snort and click “Français.”

Three clicks into it I realize I’ve made a huge mistake. I click whatever the hell the button for “cancel” is and back away from the machine. People behind me look puzzled, but I just wave them on and say, “s’il vous plaît.” I watch a few people buy tickets, but they go so fast through the menu that I don’t learn anything. I’m tempted to stand in line to speak to a human, but I'm driven to figure this out without resorting to English. By God I’m going to have that notion beaten out of me or I’m going to be successful, but I’m certainly not giving up thirty minutes into the trip.

I walk around the wood-paneled ticket office. The station reminds me of an aircraft hangar, with fifty-foot ceilings and dark gray concrete floors. Crowd-control barriers surround several open areas, and people move along interlocking figure-eights to get around. I don’t see any trains at all. There’s a restaurant nearby and I’m tempted to go in for some breakfast, but I decide against it when I see the prices. My budget for the whole trip is $400, including lodging, so I can't waste a dime.

I’m trying to find one of those ATM kiosks away from the crowds, so I can take my time. I spot one on the other side of the ticket office, and I figure this is the one the smart commuters use. I click English (it’s written, not spoken, so I don't have to break my little rule). I navigate through what I’ve figured out is the French “Zone” system.

The Parisian train system charges people less for staying within one zone than for traveling over many zones. Charles de Gaulle airport is in Zone 5, the bulk of the Paris métro system is in Zone 1. It costs about 8 Euros to go from Zone 5 to Zone 1, whereas it would cost only 1E to stay within a single zone. I don’t want to worry about other métro rides at the moment, so I decide on just one rail ticket into the city. This ticket will get me all the way to the hostel. Not bad.
My credit card is declined. I’m suddenly terrified. Is this how it’s going to be the whole trip? I try again with a different card. Nothing.

I wait in line at the original kiosk I started with, and this time I know exactly what to click through, and I’m able to get to the Moment of Truth much faster. This time my card is accepted. I wipe my brow and look for the train.

Escalators are carefully hidden behind the crowd-control barriers, and they lead me down to a big train station, like the ones I’ve seen in London and Chicago.

I slide my ticket into the turnstile slot and barely remember to gather the stub as it’s loudly spit out at the other end. Thank goodness I went to Chicago recently! Once on the train I set my bags down and take out my book. I’m trying (again) to read The Stranger in French, and it didn’t go well on the plane. The train starts to move, and for a minute or two we’re in dark tunnels. The light is bad so I look out the window. I can barely make out graffiti in the darkness, covering every inch of the tunnel walls.

Light blasts my eyes as we come out of the tunnel. Immediately I jerk my head around as a loud “whoomp” hits me like the concussion from a nearby bomb. A train, coming from the other direction, passes with no more than three feet between us. I lift my arms like I’ve just been shot at, and several people look at me. We pass what looks like an amphitheater, with row after row of large benches arranged in semicircles. Poles stick out of the benches, and I see smoke pouring out of the poles. Then I take a closer look. The benches are sectional, separated by color in a random array of reds and blues, and each one appears to be covered by newspapers or magazine pages.

It’s a shantytown, and it must cover five acres. For a moment I try to imagine anything I can that would come close to that life, and it comes up blank. I know nothing about that life, and I shouldn't pretend I can imagine the slightest detail.

I get out my métro map and study where I should get off. Agathe (my most recent French tutor) recommended I get off at the line 8 Commerce stop two blocks from the hostel, but I need to stay awake. I’m going to get off one stop early and walk a mile or two.

Another train blows by in the other direction, and I can’t believe I’m the only one bothered by it. If I did nothing but ride trains all day long I think it would still bother me.

The RER ride from Charles de Gaulle airport to my stop covers about 15 miles, and I’ll be damned if every inch of the concrete retaining wall isn’t covered with graffiti. The wall is about five feet high in most places, and it’s meticulously covered. This isn’t outlined and skeletal gang tags, this is art, filled in and shaded and composed as well as any modern art I know of. Most designs are words that meld into lions or bears or multi-colored birds. I don’t understand the words at all. They’re not French, or not any French I know. I think most are proper names. I don’t think to write any down or take a picture, but suddenly I have a fantasy where I spend a year or so trying to find the people responsible. I make a documentary about them or write a series of articles or a book. I’m sure it’s been done before, but I’m sure it could be done again.

On the way to my stop (La Motte Picquet-Grenelle), I see the Eiffel Tower. It pops into view, and the first thing I realize is that it’s actually brown, like the one in Las Vegas. I always imagined it would be black like iron, and that the one in Vegas was supposed to represent what it looked like when it was first built. Nope. I can see it, even from the train. It’s brown and looks like it’s constantly being repainted. I thought I would have some idea of just how tall it would be based on the one in Vegas, but I definitely under-imagined it. I can’t help but grin.

This stop is above ground, and reminds me of State street in Chicago. I have to walk down some stairs to get to street-level, and then I’m in Paris. No bullshit down-on-the-ground Paris. I should pee on the street or something.

Let's take a break and talk about Paris

2006-09-17T15:01:00.000-07:00

In March of 2005 I got a phone call from one of my best friends.

"Go to bestfares.com RIGHT NOW!! Flights from Dallas to Paris for $249! We have to go! Let's take the kids and go to PARIS! for A WEEK!"

Several phone calls to my wife, several phone calls to our group of friends, and we had it set. Nearly 7 people (including 2 infants) were on board. The special was only going to last another 36 hours, and we had to fly before the end of April.

Then the single girl dropped out. Then the DINKs (Dual-Income-No-Kids, another favorite couple). Then my wife decided not to go, and to keep Alex while I went with my friends.

I called and got reservations for April 15-20 for myself. Then the other couple dropped out. SuddenlyI was going to Paris all alone... it was as weird a feeling as I could imagine; I'd not spent the night away from my kid yet.

The total came to something like $340 for 5 days in Paris. If I hadn't left my wife at home alone with a 10-month-old child, I would have quit my job and probably not come back. That's a guarantee.

So I went. On the plane back, I thought I'd outline the days' activities. I jotted down some notes, including a timeline and a meal schedule. Then I started to write prose. My pen barely stopped moving for the 11-hour flight. Then, for 3 or 4 weeks I wrote and wrote, thousands of words a night, until I had every minute recorded from the time I touched down until the moment I lifted off. I would have won NaNoWriMo in May of 2005.

What I'm left with is over 30,000 words of a travelogue and six rolls of film (yes, film). Now (18 months later) that I've had the film digitized, I can post the pictures people have asked about all along. So, for a couple of months I'll be posting rather more regularly. Since the Black Evil (that would be "football season") seems to have eaten my reading time, I probably won't finish Lincoln until mid-October.

Now, what I'm going to post is about 97% true. I forgot very little, and what I did forget I tried to "imagine a realistic chronicle". Of course the dialog is cleaned up, and I'm skipping the annoying thing I did in the original where I detailed my metro routes exhaustively. That kind of record is great for me to have, but there's no reason in the world you should have to put up with it. If you need to know something about the routes, send me a note.

Quote from Lincoln (book #22)

2006-09-06T11:08:00.000-07:00

"What is habeas corpus?" asked the governor of Rhode Island.

The Sportswriter, by Richard Ford

2006-08-25T13:41:00.000-07:00

Started 8/13, Finished 8/29

This review should be subtitled "America: Okay By Me!" or "Worshipping the Midwestern Mediocrity".

I hated it... nearly every stinkin' page. There's your review.

The Good

Sometimes the Mark Twain comparisons played out and he delivered a witticism or bromide that worked. It probably happened every twenty pages or so. I'm not going to go find one.

I definitely enjoyed his analysis of atheletes and of sports in general... I just wish he had spent more than ~10 pages talking about sports or being a sportswriter. That's kind of the expectation I had, not unfairly I think, given the title.

The Bad

Time has this in their top 100 list, and I don't think I'll ever be able to understand why. I know I'm way off compared to what most critics thought. I tried so hard to "get" it, going through the list of ways I can build empathy... if my kid were dead... if I were divorced... if I had trouble fitting into society because of the transient nature of the sportswriter's life... But in the end I only felt more and more contempt, for new and varied reasons with each page, until the epilogue (which was windy and FAR too long). I only finished it because I can't imagine really writing a thoughtful review of a book I didn't finish. I want to believe I have more respect for literature than that. If I hadn't finished it, I just wouldn't have mentioned it.

Nothing worked for me. I read the book because I knew the protagonist's son Ralph had died before the beginning, and I wanted to see if I could handle such a gut-wrenching, horrid affair. Well it turns out I had nothing to worry about, because the writer doesn't spend much time on it. Doesn't seem like all that big an event in the main character's life. Neither does anything else. What drives this guy? What is interesting about him? What is supposed to drive me to care? Do hijinks ensue? I couldn't tell, because I couldn't see through the bullshit.

You get nothing. Just a bunch of wry observations about life, each of which is boldly declared and then backpedaled from. It was a predictable enough pattern, a consistent enough rhythm, that it must be intentional. I have a feeling that if he or one of the sycophants who voted this thing a Faulkner award (!) read my review, s/he would say I just didn't get it. Guilty. Here's my attempt to illustrate the fundamental problem with this book. Call it satire if you will.

The grief you feel after you've lost in love is a lot like the pain of stubbing your toe. You sit, staring at the open window, wondering which tree you should stare at, how you would be judged by your family if they could see you wondering which tree deserves the attention, feeling the pain of your toe and trying to feel something like the love it reminds you of. The best parts of life can be felt through pain. It reminds us of who we are and how we live. We need our love like we need our toes to give us stability, and stubbing love is like stubbing a toe: cutting it short or banging it into a large piece of furniture. It's all the same pain. It can be the worst pain in the world. But right now in the light of a dull morning, I'm realizing for the first time that stubbing your toe, like abandoning your dream of a youthful affair, just isn't all that bad. At least it never affected me in that way.

Yep. 375 pages. Three hundred seventy five pages. How's that sound?

Another thing I couldn't get past is that old saw: "I wouldn't want to write about a man who isn't at the end of his rope." (I can't remember who said it). Frank was at the end of his rope... two years before the novel started. Four years earlier, his eldest son died from Reye's syndrome. He became dreamy and listless, and in his grief he "self-medicated" (oh, there'll be more on that later) by sleeping with approximately "18 women", most of whom were students at a small community college where he taught literature for a term. Within two years of his son's death, he is divorced. That sounds to me like a man at the end of his rope. That story might be about something. But this story isn't about that guy. There's no conflict aside from the drama Frank stretches to contrive for himself. You get a detached commentary on the facts, with some aw shucks observations on how the pain can be bearable and chin up and so forth. Maybe I don't have enough years under my belt, but I didn't feel the slightest bit of emotion toward those events. It just didn't work for me.

Here's something interesting: excerpt of a New York Times review from when the novel came out:

"In fiction, the loss of a child is by definition an exploration of a loss of faith. For the novelist, it generates a mysterious, perhaps impossible equation with which to struggle: how much does such a death contribute to upsetting the precarious balance of a faltering marriage?"

Yasee, that's not what this book was about. Those questions were generated, avoided, and tucked away long before the start of this story. They're never addressed here. This is a man whose detachment has become a badge of honor. Now, I know full well that was the intent of developing such a character. My question is, why do so many reviewers give this book more credit than it deserves? They treat it as though subtext abounds like it does in Roth and Franzen. I think they've plainly got it wrong: this is 375 pages about a man (the author, not the protagonist) whose self-loathing has given him hope of selling a lot of copies. He's hoping against hope that subtext will be gleaned by New York literary types who don't understand the midwest, and are willing to take Ford's word for it. The fucked up thing about it is that it worked. This book sold so well he wrote a sequel, and a third is coming out in October of this year.

Clearly I'm not the target audience. According to incandragon's rules of writing reviews I am officially not allowed to write a review of the Independence Day (unless I like it, of course). I doubt I will, but many reviewers on Amazon say they hated this one but loved the second. You never know.

The other thing that bothered the CRAP out of me was the dialogue. If Pat Holt were to have a #11 on her wonderful Top 10 list of mistakes that mark you as an amateur, it would probably be this: People don't address each other by name during most conversations. People only address each other, in my experience, when angry or when in a crowd.

The conversation below drove me so crazy I almost threw the book across the room (well, I almost did that about 30 times, but this was bad enough that I yelled at the author. Out loud. In bed. At 1:30am while my wife slept in the rocking chair, infant at her breast. I woke them both up.)

"What do you worry about, Frank, if you don't mind my
asking?" Walter is still ghost-solemn.
"Really not that much, Walter. Sometimes at night my heard pounds. But it goes back to normal when I turn on the light."
"You're a man with rules, Frank. You don't mind, do you, if I say that? You have ethics about a lot of important things."
"I don't mind, Walter, but I don't think I have anythics at all, really. I just do as little harm as I can. Anything else seems too hard." I smile at Walter in a bland way.
"Do you think I've done harm, Frank? Do you think you're better than I am?"
"I think it doesn't matter, Walter, to tell you the truth. We're all the same."
"That's evading me, Frank, because I admire codes, myself. In everything." ...
"Good, Walter." ...
"But let me ask you, Frank, what do you do when something worries you and you can't make it stop. You try and try and it won't." ...
"I usually don't get get in such a bad state, Walter."
"You know what I think, Frank?"
"What, Walter[?]"
"You don't seem to be somebody who knows he's going to die, that's what."

That last sentence is, no kidding, the first one in that whole section that doesn't have one addressing the other... and after that one line, the pattern resumes again. Could this be a "device"? A sort of "technique"? A severe lack of "editing", perhaps? I can't give him that much credit.

My wife suggested that they were playing a game with each other, setting a rhythm to their conversation. I can accept that. I could accept that, rather, if he didn't have exactly the same conversation with his girlfriend's father Wade. Or exactly the same conversation with every other man in the book. Not the women, strangely. Somehow the female characters don't merit being called by name. Probably because this man thinks so little of the women in his life I'm surprised he can remember their names.

Which brings me to...

The Ugly

What I find most contemptible (and here is where I've buried the lead) is how entrenched this man's privilege has dictated every move he's made. It's nice to be alive in the 80s!

Especially if you're white. Oh, and

male
protestant
middle-class

He calls his ex-wife "X". He doesn't remember the names of many of the 18 women he slept with during his... whatever you want to call it period-of-grief. When he meets the intern he's trying to seduce (he's 38, she's 20, and this is the closing pages of the book where his success here means a happy ending), he thinks of her as Melissa/Kate until he finds out her name is Catherine. Every female character in this book (his own age and younger) is assessed in terms of her sexual relationship with the narrator. There's even a reference to his daughter's white cotton panties that disturbed the hell out of me. Sure he'll "tell" you they're smart or wise or wide-eyed or something. But his character is only in the search for body parts.

To an extent, I am a believer in Harold Bloom's idea that you should keep politics and political views out of literary criticism... but I can't give this guy a pass. It's not that these views are at the forefront, or that they're used to expose character. They're every bit a part of the prose as the letters in the words. It is entirely unaware. Since the 1980s produced such films as Porky's and The Eiger "By the way, how's that black stuff?" Sanction, it should come as no surprise to our descendants to know that in the 1980s, white men were very honest about their sense of privilege: so much so that they failed to address it as it was. This book shall be our ambassador to posterity.

The racial attitudes were just as entrenched, they just didn't come up as much. Here's the best I could find just by flipping through. It's about Frank's boarder, an seminary student from Africa named Bosobolo:

"Two times lately, from my car window, I've seen him arm-in-arm with a dumpy white seminary girl half his age... What a piece of exoticism it must be! A savage old prince, old enough to be her father, whonking away on her like a frat boy."

This next quote was great. Very telling, and on multiple levels. It's from a New York Times review of another Ford book (A Multitude of Sins, a collection of short stories that I shan't read):

When asked last year by The Kenyon Review what kind of relationship he has with his characters, Ford replied: ''Master to slave. Sometimes I hear them at night singing over in their cabins.'' Singing. So that's what that was. It sounded like whining.

There's a lot more to be said on this subject, but this has gone on long enough.

I'll close with a little gem I just discovered. Here's a pull-quote from the back of the book, referencing the same NYT review I found earlier:

Richard Ford is a daring and intelligent novelist [with an] extraordinary ear for dialogue and the ability to create the particulars of everyday life with stunning accuracy

Here's the full quote (this is AWESOME):

If there are layers of irony and perception, they are too subtle and diffuse. Mr. Ford's admirable talents, which include an extraordinary ear for dialogue and the ability to create the particulars of everyday life with stunning accuracy...are not well served in a novel given to abstract analysis.

And here's a nice clunker from near the end, for those who believe Mr. Ford to be such the distinguished stylist:

"If I could write a short story, I would. But I don't think I could, and do not plan to try, which doesn't worry me."

Almost sounds like Dr. Seuss, doesn't it?

Book #22 will be Lincoln, by Gore Vidal. I already started it last weekend when I left this tripe at a friend's house. Let me tell you it was difficult to come back to this.

The Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles

2006-08-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

Started 7/30, Finished 8/12

Boy, would it ever be easy to read this and toss it out of your mind. These people wander in the desert, do nothing, learn nothing, and then it ends. That's what terrifies you in the first 20 pages. You think you've stumbled across a lesser account of idiots from Stein's génération perdue, drinking their way across sand instead of Old Europe. Then you start to feel a bit uneasy, like maybe there's something deeper going on (just like in all those other Lost Generation stories...). By the end you're practically terrified, of the desert, but more importantly, of what we as Americans have become. And this was 60 years ago.

I want to cover three separate aspects of this book, and I'll say right now that I'm not thinking much about authorial intent. I have very little idea what Bowles' attitude was toward the topics I'm going to discuss. From the speculation I've come across, I wouldn't like it if I knew it. So, I'm going to evaluate this purely based on what I'm able to gleam from the manuscript.

The Sheltering Sky opens a lot like Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, where a small group of American expats are throwing their money around a foreign culture in an attempt to numb the pain of their existence. Port and Kit Moresby, a couple whose marriage has been as barren as the Sahara for years, embark on an expedition throughout northern Africa. With fellow expat Tunner in tow, they start in Algeria and move ever inward across the desert, ending up in a central Sudanese village. As their journey takes them into less and less "civilized" areas, into the chaos of a life out of control, their adventure follows the pattern of their lifeless marriage. Hijinks are self-abusive, ugly, and very very American.

Through recent world events, as well as my own curiousity about the history of Western colonialization in the past 4 centuries, I've begun to notice a trend. No doubt it's one that's been around as long as races have attempted to integrate, but it's a relatively new concept to me. So bear with me if what I'm describing is repeated in some 9th grade socialogy textbook. The trend is this: Misunderstanding a culture is the first step toward destroying it. Simple enough. White people enter a world with brown people who speak a foreign language. They don't have running water. Instantly the white people get the idea that the brown people need their lives "improved". Within a few years, half the population of brown people is either enslaved or in prison. The majority of the other half is serving the oppressors, losing their language to the foreign tongue, losing their houses to the foreign rich people, and losing their culture to trousers, chamber music, and pétanque. Yeah, I'm looking at you, France. Don't sit there all innocent-looking. You were arguably the worst. Don't worry: now we've taken the honors. You're welcome.

How does that relate? The Arabs in this book are landscape. Purely 2-dimensional walking stereotypes. Now, many have criticized Bowles harshly for this, but I choose to believe it was not what it appears at face value. What comes across to me is not Bowles' attitude, but his characters'. Their observations and trite speculations about the intellectual capacity of any given "native" ends up painting and solidifying an ugly portrait of those making the observations--the Arabs themselves are only landscape in these self-indulgent peoples' lives. They're there to be put up with, not dealt with as human beings. At one point one of the (French) colonial governors suggests locking them all up and leaving them to starve, so he can get some real civilized people in there. It's 1948 in the book, so we're only a few years from Moroccan and Algerian independence, but this state of mind serves to describe the French attitude for the previous 100 years, and shows just how seductive it is for other whites to cast these people aside like grains of sand. It turns your stomach, because it just wasn't all that long ago.

Kit and Port aren't following the archetypal patterns of the road novel. They're not searching for redemption... they're seeking oblivion. Their lives in New York's intellegentsia were meaningless, so they try to find places where they're guaranteed to feel superior to the locals. This starts in Algeria, where little by little they realize they're being had by the populace. They move inward. Again, they find themselves shrinking in comparison to the landscape. Their dollars become meaningless. Their excellent French can't save them because nobody speaks it. Along with a fleeting superiority comes a glimpse into the savage and perilous world that they can no longer control because they cannot buy it. Once it becomes impossible for them to retain their superior airs, they succomb to oblivion: alcohol, sexual temptation, disease, and insanity. In the end they are consumed by their inability to look beyond themselves into the world they are so bent on conquering.

The last thing I want to address is the part that gave me the most trouble in trying to deal with authorial intent. It also involves some spoilers, so be warned. It's the final section of the novel, where Kit willfully becomes an object for men to pass around. Bowles states it just as plainly in the Preface to the book. When she is first raped, she ends up in love with the rapist. I had a BIG problem with this when I first came across it, but that's only because I had to stop reading right at that moment. I thought, "typical, the male point of view where rape is just pleasure with an unpleasant beginning". I almost didn't want to finish. But then I got to thinking more and more about it (as I assume was the intent). Kit is finding her own oblivion, her "zero", trying to master her death in order to forget her insignificant and wasted life. The brief marriage, escaping to freedom in order to... what, exactly? One reviewer explained it as "a noose plaited from strands of nymphomania and insanity". I don't like the word nymphomania here, partly because the term itself has been disavowed (so we can forgive the guy writing in 1949), but mostly because it's not compulsive from her end. She is no longer in control of anything in her life, having been taken as a slave during the vulnerable period when her mind was destroyed by her husband's death.

I'm not going to say she, or Port, get the ending they deserve, because nobody deserves to die just for the crime of selfishness. I'm going to say they get the ending they desire, because their comfortable lives, the comfortable and unchallenged lives of most Americans, have given nothing to the world compared to their potential. They're empty in soul, so they can have no other ending but make their bodies match.

Anyway, that's what I thought when I was reading it. Like I said, Bowles seems to have been quite cagey in life. It's hard to find out, between all that has been written about him and his work, just how deep his intentions were. What we're left with is a text that can at worst be described as a great travellogue (before the unpleasantness begins), and at best a comment on colonialism of the past 400 years. That's quite a range of interpretations, eh?

Interesting.

Book #21 will be The Sportswriter, by Richard Ford.