All trains are going to Paris

First, I will need to get used to this French keyboard. That said, we have a lot to catch up on....

It took no fewer than 7 different transportation modes, and many hours, to return the short distance from Mallorca to Paris:
• Jean Pierre (father Bousseau) drove me to the airport
• 2 planes (change in Zurich, tho that doesn’t really make sense)
• bus from the departure area to the RER
• 2 RER trains
• walk from Nation in order to avoid having to take the Metro too
• TOTAL: 7
Why do I keep arranging this kind of travel for myself? (I know you are already crying with boredom, or you have skipped this part to a hopefully more interesting part that I am going to write. Hopefully, I will write something interesting tonight....) Yes, I paid too much for my ticket and both planes were late, but more importantly the RER did not come to Roissy for one hour. No RER train came for one hour. (OK, I feel better now. I have some rosé to help too.)

“All trains are going to Paris” that’s what it said on the RER platform. It reminds me of the BART train announcers who say “This train is destined for Daly City”. As if a train has a destiny. Maybe they do. Maybe we, all of us, are trains in different systems, passing each other at various speeds and times of day (night?) towards the station of our “destiny”, um, I mean, destination. ...Has it been too long since I had a real conversation? If so, I am getting very high maintence because Jean Pierre and I had a lovely time this morning at the beach, etc.

I finished reading Brick Lane (by Monica Ali) yesterday, and I must say, I was impressed. It’s a new favorite. (I will need to change my tribe.net profile.) In some way, this book is so deep and wide and clear (yes, like a river or maybe more like an ocean) that is seems to encompass everything, to address every love and fear and conflict, personal and global, everywhere. I have always wanted to write (and, for that matter, read) a book like that.

When I took my first City Planning class, in 1996 (Intro to City Planning, CP100 summer session at Berkeley), I could see that our TA (Asha) felt this way about planning. She was not yet discouraged by the NIMBYs, and the car-addicts, and people that feel they need a backyard for status or something even if they never use or maintain it. I was already discouraged by these things, but it was clear that Asha was too in love with the field to see them, or maybe she just didn’t care (like a lover who’s put on a few kilos?). She’d talk about what planning was and could be (in general) and get starry eyed, eyes uplifted. Was I supposed to ever feel like that about my profession? Or about anything/one? (This is actually something I am working on!)

Oh, I never gave you a clue about the transition... The book is about a young Bangladeshi woman who comes to London for an arranged marriage, always leaving everything to “fate” like her mother taught her she should, and eventually learns to take control of her life to the backdrop of anti-Moslem sentiments in response to Sept 11. Having wrestled with the idea of fate throughout my life, I love the quotes at the beginning of the book:
“Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides each of us; only at the beginning, when we are absorbed in details, in sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand.” -Ivan Turgenev
“A man’s character is his fate.” –Heraclitus; or Personality is fate.

I have a couple other favorite quotes from the book that are actually by the author to share with you:
“’Anything is possible so everything I wanted was possible,’ Chanu went on. ‘But what about all the other possibilities? The ones we never see when we are young, but are there all along. One day you wake up and say to yourself, I didn’t choose this. And then you spend a long time thinking, but I did?’” (pg. 374) Chanu (the husband), while brilliantly created, is not a character I particularly connected with, but these words, in a way, continue my conversation (with myself) from Le Divorce. What do we choose? What don’t we? What about all the other things? Do we really know what we are choosing (good and bad)? ...When I went to grad school I felt overwhelming uncertainly, but I also knew that doing something is better than being paralysed by my own potential and doing nothing at all. I still don’t know if I went for the right thing, but I am grateful (to my former self?) that I went.

Maybe this is not such a great quote, but it moved me deeply:
“’What is all this Big Man?’ She whispered in his ear. Sadness crushed her chest. It pressed everything out of her and filled the hollows of her bones. ‘What is all this Strong Man? Do you think that is why I love you? Is that what there is in you to be loved?” (pg; 477-8) Even typing it now, my eyes fill with tears. This is a driving force in the book and in my reality as well (balanced with the need to be understood and the need to be oneself, whatever that is.) If loved is what we want, why do we spend so much time alone trying to make ourselves lovable in artificial ways (Big, Strong, independant, smart, whatever)? Maybe outside the book, Chanu is my favorite character... as long as I don’t have to spend too much time with him.

All that having been said, I have still told you almost nothing about Mallorca. Hopefully, I will do it tomorrow.