Cultural Problems

Things are actually going better with the language. I feel like I am understanding more, and everything is easier. For the first time today, I began speaking with someone in French, and he, a frenchman, replied in English, which was very annoying. Actually it was one of my few examples of French people being rude to me. I didn't have the price already on the potatos I was buying for thanksgiving tomorrow.
Me: Le machine ne marche pas.
Him: Les deux?
Well, I didn't know that there were 2 machines, so I looked at him blankly (and not because I did not understand what he was saying, as he thought).
Him: Both machines are not working?
Me: I don't know.
He went to check/use the machine. I guess he found one that worked.
Me: Merci beaucoup.
He continued to ring up my thanksgiving purchases.
Me: Your accent is excellent. (it was!)
Him, smiling: When I was younger I was completely fluent. North American....
Me: Ah, better... (it was obvious from his accent)
Him: But I prefer the English, their culture
Now, why would he feel the need to say that to me? Was it because I didn't have the right label on my potatos? Or was that just a normal thing to say to a North American? Maybe he was thinking of American politics, but he should know that I am not a part of that. Maybe no one ever told him that other people have feelings that can be hurt. Not that my feelings were really hurt, since I did not know him or anything. I was more shocked that he would say such a thing to me. Was he being intentionally rude?

Another example was mon professeur. She said (in French, she always speaks to me in French) "You haven't been speaking French much" (which isn't really true). Well, I didn't know how to reply. I said: Uhhhh. Which she took to mean that it was true, but in fact I was just surprised by her rudeness, and not sure how to give the right answer. I feel like I defend myself in class all the time too... maybe it is the culture, maybe she doesn't respect me, or maybe she is just trying to get my blood flowing to my brain to help me speak French. It doesn't really matter. She is only mon professeur, not someone I will know for the rest of my life.

So, yes, I returned to class this week (just once so far, I like my new flexibility) and despite the previous paragraph, I really enjoyed it. Two new girls have joined, one from Israel and the other Mexico. The Mexican girl seems to be really struggling. After class I had a crepe for lunch, and I shared some pleasant small talk with the delightful man who made it for me in French. A huge success!

Speaking of eating, tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I have invited myself to have the meal with my American friend Jennifer and her family because they are a real family and the rest of the Americans I know are just a bunch of young people. I am making pies and potatos and who knows what else. I will go over there at about 4, and unlike in the states, if we find we have forgotten something we can buy it because the stores will be open on this non-French holiday. I think we are substituting chicken for Turkey because it is just too difficult to get a turkey around here.

I went to the American grocery store for brown sugar and was just amazed. Everything was about 5X its price (the box of brown sugar I bought was about 5 USD. doesn't it usual cost about 1?), and all the products they had were the crappy kinds: Ocean Spray cranberries, etc. Of course the place was packed and they spoke to you in English no matter what. One woman addressed the shop girl in French (even though it was clear that both their mother tongues were English) and the shop girl brought her the wrong thing. What an odd phenominon to find in the middle of the marais!

the good news is that they have cranberry juice, so I am finally able to make cosmos (should I wish to make a second attempt). I don't think I told you about my disasterous first attempt about a month ago, but you get the idea. I couldn't even find red fruit punch, like we used at Kirstin's Stinson Beach birthday party last year. Note for future reference, orange juice does not work for cosmos, it gives you screwdrivers, which are, of course, nothing special.

I guess the real news here is that I am surviving. I amaze myself. I sometimes think about coming home early, but it helps that I have no where to go. On the other hand, I am still planning to come back in the spring. I am certain that I am here for some very important reason (you know how I always think everything is cosmic), and if it isn't true love, it has got to be something else.

Another explanation

It turns out that there are actually 15 months in Paris instead of the usual 12. In English, they are:
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
November
November
November
December

Note: this joke was originally about Vienna, but boy does it apply here. Note to self: Juliette says that the worst months are November and February to early March (to compensate for February being so short and all).

La Vie Parisienne

Last night was... I'll start with "overbooked". Mido had 5 tickets to this comedic opera, including one for me. J&G's friend Frank was throwing a going away party for them. Tina, an american friend from language school, was having her birthday party. Christian was in town, and it was Ally's last weekend in Paris. For some reason (Juliette) I got the idea that the play would end around 9:30, giving me enough time to go to Montmartre, say happy birthday to Tina (meet Christian there, and say goodbye to Ally), and then on to Frank's to help send J&G off properly.

La Vie Parisienne seemed to be a large-scale excuse for a peep-show. I haven't ever been exposed to so much t&a, except maybe at one of Tracey's parties. Also, I could not understand what was going on. I feel frustrated that my French is not coming along faster (and it seems like other people do too), and the show emphasized it. Mido said that the story was just an excuse for... "a lot of underware?" I suggested. As far as I could tell all the men were lecherous fools with bad intensions and I couldn't keep the female characters apart. While all the men were trying to get laid the whole time, the women seemed only to lap up the attention and not have any needs of their own. These kinds of stereotypes are the foundation of what is wrong with gender-relations in western society.

It ended at 11. I rushed over to Tina's, but I couldn't find it (wandering the windy street of Montmartre in the pouring rain) or get through on anyone's mobile. At midnight, I gave up (the metro stops running at 12:30) because if there was any chance of making it to Frank's before the party ended, I had to get there. At least that part worked. I made it to Frank's, and we stayed late and took a taxi home. Frank is apparently a connoisseur of high quality rum, so I had a few yummy tropical-tasting drinks. Hurray!

Today, the air is a fog-bank, which doesn't so much make me feel at home (bc it is like SF) as exacerbate my bad mood. Il fait froid. Je ne suis pas contente.

Beaujolais Nouveau

I'm here to tell you that the third Thursday in November is the day that the Beaujolais Nouveau is released, which means that we have all woken up this morning with splitting headaches. Considering that Thanksgiving is the forth Thursday in November, there is something about November and Thursdays. Today is also that day that J and G are moving out of their apartment, and to Hong Kong on Monday, which means that none of us really got any sleep anyway.

I had a very strange dream this morning, while trying to delay the inevitable of having to be verticle after they forced me to drink all that wine last night, that I was driving a car (enough said!). In the dream, I was suddenly conscious of being behind the wheel of a car that was stopped in the middle of the road, diagonally across a 2-lane roadway. I could bearly see outside partly because windshield was dirty and partly because the night was very dark and we must have been in the desert away from any settlement and lighting. Once I cleaned the windshield (automatically, not getting out of the car, but I had to fumble with the controls to get the wipers and spraw to come on) I saw that there was another car stopped opposite me on the roadway, facing me, also with its headlights on. It might have been the police. I was afraid I might have done something illegal before gaining this consciousness and they would arrest me. I didn't want to talk with them. So, I just sat there in the drivers seat until I woke up again (not long).

The best analysis wins a prize. I'm off to the museum.

Apologies Accepted

For anyone who hasn't seen this yet:
http://www.apologiesaccepted.com/index.html

on communication

So, I was walking down Daumesnil telling myself this hilarious monologue about trying to speak French, and now of course it is completely gone. I was inspired because a young man approached me speaking very quickly. I shook my head and said "parlez pas" in a quavering little voice (it could also have been "parler pas" or "parlais pas" none of which really make any more sense in this context). Now, I have know for about 20 years how to say I don't speak French in French and I have said it probably hundreds of times, but this one moment exemplifies what I am going through with the language right now.

For example, I know that "je me suis promené à chateau de vincennes" not "je m'ai promené..." (for verbs where there is motion) and "j'ai les clés à tout les appartements" not "...tout l'appartement" (2 things I said to Jean Pierre last night over dinner) but for some reason when I open my mouth, jibberish comes out. I just want to kick myself (I can see now the lovely blue tones my skin would get just thinking about it) or hide in a closet indefinitely (no, I am not in San Francisco anymore). I get so infuriated with myself.

Juliette says that this will continue to happen until I am completely fluent. But isn't it enough that I can never remember the name of anything, and if I can I have no idea if it is masculine or feminine. Then there is the small matter not trying to figure out whether to address people as "tu" or "vous" (no small matter at all, and I offend people so often in my every day existance that I really would like to avoid offending them this way). And finally, when I can remember the word, its gender, and the order they are supposed to be said, I then have to figure out which verb tense to use (keeping in mind the subject, time, whether my sentence is a situation or an event, etc.). Well, you can imagine that by the time I am ready to speak, about 3 weeks have passed. Why is not a problem when I speak English? This reminds me of Elizabeth's famous words, "that's why we are writers and not DJs." Except I am not sure what this makes me in French. un escargot?

Enough! I am actually quite pleased with myself today despite my inability to turn the French equivelent of one year old. I finally did a watercolor. It's true -- I have been lugging not one but 2 drawing pads around with me for 4 months, and finally, today, the muse spoke to me and I did a little picture. (Don't get excited; I don't paint because I am good at it. I paint as a sort of visual mediation; I am not sure why.)

Le Louvre etc.

I've been in Paris for something like 2 months, and I am ashamed to admit that I have visited absolutely no museums until today. Sure, there were a couple art exhibitions, but this did not include any of the serious museums for which the city is famous (among a few other things, I guess).

This morning Mido and I attempted to see the Turner, Whistler, and Monet exhibition, but the line was long and we decided to try another day. Instead we went to the Lourve, where they had several temporary exhibits that we had not seen and only a short line.
*L'Italie à la Cour de France, if I understood correctly (always up for question), was about the Renaissance in France and how it influenced the great Italian Renaissance artists (de Vinci, Rosso, Primatrice, etc.).
*Then there was an exhibit of Islamic art on long-term loan from the Met in NYC. Mido liked this one best. I was particularly moved by a plate with a nursing goat, the mother goat appearing to respond by biting the kid's behind creating a kind of interesting circular composition, and a certain flower, which I have never seen in nature, that looks like an hour-glass shaped tulip and decorated a variety of tile instillations. The exhibition was comprised mostly of tapestries, tiles, and ceramics. I thought that Islam forbade the illustration of "God's creatures" requiring it to only depict imaginative decorations (which I like a lot), but this collection must have been before that philosophy was implemented bc it included lots of images of real living things.
*Finally, we viewed an extensive exhibition on Primatrice, maitre de Fontainebleau (a Renaissance artist as mentioned in the first bullet). This was my favorite. Primatrice's work was collected and punctuated with the work of a contemporary artist. Primatrice's work outshown the living artist's but I particularly enjoyed the interpretive video he made, and both works had a element of eroticism which spoke to me in a certain way.
At this point we were exhausted and headed home to the communist suburb of Montreuil (this city is very close to Paris and its citizens have elected a communist government since its creation).

The day was a success on another front. Mido purchased 5 Chagal prints for the living room walls (although it appears that the vision for the room is transforming by the minute).

The weather has been "cold and clear" which is actually lovely. I can't say enough good things about the light here. This apartment is also a great place to enjoy it, being on the 8th floor on a corner with no building across the street (alas, it is a parking lot -- apparently this city wants to build something there, but one land owner (an apartment building with a pharmacy on the ground floor, very pretty actually) refused to sell and the community would not support an eminant domain kind of thing here). But this gives us a wonderful view of the central square and city hall.

As usual, everyone speaks perfect English, but Jean Pierre insists that at least the French people speak French. He likes to pretend that he doesn't understand English at all. It is good for me. Unfortunately, when people speak French I generally assume that they are not speaking to me. In fact, when the day gets old, I can bearly understand the English that is spoken to me. On the other hand, out in public I feel quite annoyed when people speak to me in English, even if it is clearly their native language.

The clouds look like someone painted them there.

Democracy in America? Not anymore....

It has come to my attention that many of my friends back home have not heard about the problems with our last "election". Here are some sources of information (in English -- the French media, which I still can't actually read, has covered this extensively).

http://www.michaelmoore.com/
http://www.guerrillanews.com/articles/article.php?id=800
http://www.gregpalast.com/

Some lines from my mother

Mary Oliver is so familiar and so soothing after this terrible last week and our fears for the future of our one precious world.
You can go to the web link for the whole poem.

Right now I most love the lines:

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what  I have been doing all day,
Tell me, what else should I have done?

Here is a quote from an article on idleness in this month's Harper's:

   It is this willingness to hand over our lives that fascinates and appalls me. There's such a lovely perversity to it; it's so wonderfully counterintuitive so very Christian. You must empty your pockets, turn them inside out, and spill out your wife and your son, the pets you hardly knew, and all the days you simply missed altogether watching the sunlight fade on the bricks across the way.  You must hand over the rainy afternoons, the light on the grass, the moments of play and of simply being. You must give it up, all of it, and by your example teach your children to do the same, and then --- because even this is not enough --- you must train yourself to believe that this outsourcing of your life is both natural and good . . . .

And finally:

A poet is someone
who can pour light into a cup
and then raise it to nourish your beautiful
---perhaps parched---holy mouth

                                          Hafiz

Mushroom hunting

Some people have mentioned my neglect of the blog lately. I don't know what to tell you. I also stopped taking language classes and have been spending my days sleeping. I am not depressed. Actually, I am quite happy in a low-key sort of way. I am tired. I don't want to do anything. The days are very short and I think I am hibernating. It's cold. Humans were not meant to live in weather like this.

The last weekend in October, I spent in St Ouen de Parey (or something like that) near Vittel (where the water comes from -- does it have global distribution? I can't remember. Think Evian). It was the home of Mido's mother, Juliette's grandmother. The food was good. There was plenty of wine. The children more or less behaved themselves. Axel is totally in love with this grand livre des champinions that his great grandmother has. He is 6 and doesn't read yet, but he was doing his best to say the latin names for the mushrooms. I read the book too (I know you are wondering: it only had a small section on the magic variety and apparently there aren't many in Europe).

One afternoon Mido, Juliette, Axel and I set out to collect some mushrooms for identification. (It isn't a good season for legitimate mushroom hunting.) We collected about 25 different types, only one of which was edible. The earth was fresh and brown, the ground damp, and the light slanted amazingly across the rural landscape. There is something really special about the light in France.

I've been reading a lot, mostly about how strange the French are. I read the Poirier's copy of Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong, reseach by a Canadian couple who lived here for a few years researching the French and a memior by an Austrialian woman called Almost French. You may recall me talking months ago about Le Divorce, about Californians in Paris, as well. In fact, they say many of the same things.

[Paris] Jokes about France

I am going to pick my bottom lip off the ground for a minute now and tell you a couple jokes I recently remembered and have been offending everyone with ever since:

The French are funny.
Sex is funny.
Comedies are funny.
But French sex comedies are never funny.

Heaven is...
English popular music,
French food,
German engineering, and
Italian romance.
Hell is...
English food,
French popular music,
German romance, and
Italian engineering.

Flashback: California Got Lay'd

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=282&row=1

ESF 4, mobility management and uniting the people

So, my trip to England was very successful on lots for fronts. I found Maureen (who you will remember as my host in Norwich) and we spent a couple very pleasant days together. We successfully met up with Christian (the youngest Poirier) for the protest on Sunday. We successfully attended the protest Sunday and walked its entire route. I think about 60,000 were at each, the conference and the protest. I didn’t know there were so many... idealists out there. (But I hear the last anti-Bush protest in London was much bigger.) These protests always crack me up because they seem to be about every issue under the sun: feed the hungry, be nice, stop destroying the environment, no occupying other people’s countries, provide medical services, stop killing innocent people, hurray for peace and freedom.... I can’t help but wonder if we are more likely to get what we want if we provide a more direct and cohesive request.

A while back, I posted a question on the TDM listserv to see about networking with mobility management professionals here in Europe. I received about 25 replies, including one from a gentleman who works for VIPRE (in Holland), the European branch of VPSI (the vanpool company). He runs (or at least set up) several commuter shops in UK, Ireland, and Holland and helps businesses with various aspects of their employees commutes including predicting attrition associated with relocation. So, we met up on Sunday, and he took me for a lovely Italian dinner.

Monday, we met up again so that he could show me their commuter shops. We took the fast train to Heathrow airport (15 minutes and 15 GBP) and then his car for another half an hour to the Oracle headquarters where he runs a little commuter shop. The shop included bicycle equipment for sale, “talking books” to borrow (for carpoolers), lots of printed literature, ridematching, guarantted ride home, etc. They provide other facilities for bicyclists including bicycles to borrow during the lunch break, and the business park is connected to an adjacent park along the Thames with a path they successfully lobbied the city to install. (I won’t give away too many details since I am planning to compile them in a more official document along with other research I haven’t done yet.) We also visit a commuter store, which Mike described as following the Central Perk (Friends) model, where people can come, enjoy a coffee and read a newspaper at the same location where they receive their commuter services (in a suburban shopping mall surrounded by office parks).

In UK, the government encourages companies to implement agressive environmental programs (including commuter transportion), which they are then given points for when bidding on public contracts. In the case of the shopping center retail commuter center, the developer promised to do it for their building permit, but Mike said that many developers don’t bother and their is no recourse against them if they do not do what their promised for the permit.

The weekend was particularly throught provoking considering that I spent most of it espousing against capitalism, and the other part discussing and examining commuter programs provided by big business in auto-oriented suburban locations. It reminds me of a conversation I had with Maya at the Carfree Conference in July. I said something to the effect of “the people united will never be defeated.” She said “yeah, but do you think there is any chance of uniting the people?”

Global Sex Survey

I would have done this much better if it had been my job, but the results are interesting none the less.

http://www.durex.com/cm/GSS2004Results.asp

short film

B says, "I just discovered an amazing animated movie, that you must download
here ; it takes some time (25 MB) but it's definitely worth it."

http://www.knife-party.net/flash/barry.html

[Paris] ESF 3, babies and England

Liliapilia’s first annual ESF photography award goes to:
• Simon Norfolk for his photos of Afghanistan
Honorable mentions:
• Sebastido Salgado for his photos of Mumbai, and
• Guy Smallman’s photos of Iraq, not because they are gorgeous, but because it was the first time I had seem images like these of the occupation/war

Salgado’s photos of Mumbai included images of a pipeline for drinking water which residents use as a walkway because every other available surface is filled with people living on it. Robert Cervero showed us images of this same situation in our international transportation class at Berkeley. Another notable image was of the dairy farms (buffalo, of course, because the cow is sacred) where the workers live in the barns where they work, above the animals in hammocks.

Why are all the photographers men? Well, here’s my theory: photography is very expensive. Maybe men are more likely to feel their activity is worth spending all that money on. (Women, afterall, can make babies, which puts everything else we do into perspective. And that’s a lot for the men to compete with.)

Speaking of which, I am now in French class with two ladies, one from Norway and one from Turkey. They are both pregnant. In case you are wondering (as my teacher was), I am not.

Other things I learned/noticed/heard people say at ESF:
• The World Bank has put 11 billion GBP towards oil production activity in developing countries (that’s about 20 billion USD).
• Climate change has led to a 20 percent reduction in grain production.
• Entire forest must have been felled for the production of all the flyers handed out at ESF.
• Talks at the ESF took comments alternating by gender. Since about 10 times more men had comments, this just meant ladies first.
• Art plays a role in politics when what you have to say is particularly complicated.
• Capitalism essencially imprisons the imagination with market-driven logic (music as private property, etc.).
• Don’t look at the policies, look at how the money is spent (this applies to every entity – EU, US, the World Bank, me, you....)
• 60,000 people per year die from air-pollution-caused diseases.
• The cost of medical problem associated with air pollution: 10B euros per year
• Half of the EU budget goes towards agriculture, but none of it goes towards sustainable agricultural practices.
• We already knew it: air travel is cheaper in direct cost to the consumer than train travel. Cheap airfare mean that more of the middle class can have multiple homes; sound familiar?
• The EU needs to be the leader in environmental policies, no one else (certainly not the US), is going to do it.
• To keep the English cars on the road with biodiesel would require the entire land are of UK to produce the biodiesel, which means that that land would not be used to grow food.
• Most of the people at the transport talk spoke in Italian.
• Blair’s solution to the problem of climate change: increase emissions trading
• Roads are for freight, not for the transportation of people in private vehicles.
• The roads should be controlled democratically (yeah, right, in the US, let’s start with the government!)

Other observations:
• Double decor buses are totally fun. We should seriously use them in the US. Anyone know what the problem is?
• For all the good things I said about the London public transport system the last time, I saw 7 buses in a row in north London this time.
• In an English pub, if you ask about the beer, they’ll tell you it’s alcohol content.
• English ads are straightforward: “become what you want to be in software engineering” for example. I keep looking for the play on words, the other meaning, the joke – I never found it.

[Paris] ESF2 and the election

My teacher has me rewriting (French to French, of course) the work of Marguerite DURAS (L’Amant, 1984). I think she has decided to capitalize on that I am always too ambitious in my devoir and I throw in little bits of poetry where I can (my own). The description I wrote of my flying-for-fun dream had a lot of illiteration which reminded her of Duras. I am almost finished but needed a break... always constructive procrastination.

Touring the stalls at the ESF conference on the first day made me feel depressed. Maybe they reminded me of the oppression of growing up in Berkeley (where everyone is a hypocrit and a “genius” and you are a bad person if you question the politically correct dogma regardless of your final conclusion on the subject or how you got there) or if the aesthetics of the far left (which means what? People who care about fish and people they don’t know or would prefer that government fed the hungry and treated the sick rather they murdering them and spending tax revenues to subsidize a destructive lifestyle?) is ugly to me. I came across a group of middle-eastern-looking people who were yelling something at each other that sounded like “nuclear testing” but was probably not English. The building is beautiful but only one table is dedicated to transport issues. It was a UK organization that lobbies for public transportation, multi-modal roadways, and maintenance of the country’s rail system. (However, the gentleman manning the table was administrative staff and didn’t know much of the intricacies of the issues.) I needed a mood elevater (coffee).

The first talk I attended was on oil addiction. The speakers seemed more interested in pointing their fingers at government than examining what they called consumer behavior. Sure, policy is designed to foster “oil addiction”, but we do have some choice in where and how we live and work. I refuse to think of myself as the victom of public policy, while I will be the first to admit inconsistency. I live a car-free lifestyle but I still fly in airplanes all over creation and, yes, I shop at Old Navy. I will try to be better, and I hope you will too. But I am just as complicit in the mess of the world as our government officials and their desctructive policies. OK, I know, chances are I am preaching to the choir on this one....

I am in Europe as a political refuge (says Juliette and I agree), trying to avoid exposure to the election, the war, and the many other autricities committed by the US government in- and outside of its land. That said, I have read some of the coverage of the debates. Did anyone else notice that in every picture of Bush, he is facing the camera and smiling pleasantly, and in every picture of Kerry, he is looking away or you can only see the side of his face? In one photo of Kerry looking away you could even see Bush facing the camera and smiling pleasantly. Meanwhile, you still read about the “swing voters” saying they just aren’t sure they know what Kerry is all about.... If anyone ever beleived we had an impartial media, this should be enough to convince them otherwise. (It is a matter of the Associated Press, since even UK’s the Guardian had these photos.) So, if the media is reporting a close race, that means to me that Kerry has a clear majority. However, this also means that the folks who run the elections (ie, the Republicans owning the voting machines) will see to it that we have a repeat of 2000.

In fact, I read an entire newspaper on Saturday (the Guardian, UK) for the first time in several years (yes, I hate the news; it’s depressing). Get this kids, they did a poll of 10 countries and how they would vote in the US election (France, Spain, Mexico, Japan, S. Korea, Canada, UK, Australia, Israel and Russia). Now, maybe they should be allowed to vote, since US imperialism is so prevasive. Eight of these countries would elect Kerry. Those that would elect Bush were Israel (by a large margin) and Russia (by a very small margin). Likewise, I heard in a talk on US imperialism (during which I cried my eyes out twice, and yes, I think they got pictures of me doing it), I heard that if Europe were to elect the next US president (again, maybe they should), only 4.5 percent would vote for Bush. This seems high.

I also read that the world’s frog population is on the decline – a canary in our coal mine? So, yes, I read the paper, and strangely, I didn’t want to kill myself afterwards.

[London] European Social Forum

I arrived by eurostar this afternoon back to the land where everyone speaks English but the shops and even the dumps still have funny names. The queue to register for the conference went all the way around Red Lion Square, but it moved relatively quickly. On either side of me were people speaking other languages (just French and Spanish -- nothing too exotic) and while the proportion of "stinking hippies" (forgive me) was high, it was not overwhelming. I collected my arm band, transit pass, and conference program with no trouble and headed north to Kirsty's.

The problem turned out to be the conference program, which has about 100 different sessions at any given hour throughout the City of London (hence our transit passes). With Kirsty's help, I have managed to narrow my obligations for tomorrow down to being in only a few places at any given moment. Topics range from palestine/bangladesh/ireland/cuba to sustainability to feminism to war prevention to democracy to racism to housing to goddess only knows what else because I can't keep that many issues in my simple little brain. To be completely honest with you, I am most looking forward to the cuban and irish music performances.

Hanging here with Kirsty and the family, we have watched the final episode of Friends twice, not to mention some Engish soap opera and the Simpsoms. The dog is whining and the children and fighting and trying to avoid doing their homework. This is a family. It's nice.

[La Vienne] La douceur et la lumiere

The question was "Quelle est la chose la plus importante du mode?" Of course, we all agreed it is "l'amour" mais I also have to be true to my own stated philosophy. Hence, the subject line of this blog (as translated to French by my teacher).

My mother's dog Bella, who I loved dearly and knew best when she was a puppy in California, was killed by a car this week in St. Pierre. We are all devistated, especially little dog. On the one hand, I keep seeing the movie-style flash backs of when she was small (she grew up to be a huge yellow lab), but on the other hand, she is just gone. It is an almost palpable absence.

Alogny is breaktakingly beautiful, but I feel like I am going to lose my credibility for saying that about everything. I stayed in the tower room, painfully romantic for a lone occupant. The air has gone cold, but the flowers are still in bloom and the trees not quite turned to fall colors. The fields are mostly reaped and brown exposted earth in clean gently curving lines.

Here, we walk, eat, sleep, drink, and talk all the while enjoying the views in all directions. If it were a little warmer we would probably also swim in the pool. Nothing about this life is hard. But we discuss the homeless in San Francisco, American politics (when we can stand to), racism, substance abuse and mental illness, not to mention the various interpersonal betrayals and heartbreaks that each of us has endured.

My teacher in Paris sings in clubs. I have enjoyed having some contact with the alternative music scene there (which I am sure is very well developed but I might not have otherwise learned about right away). I didn't understand the words, but I think it is sort of standard acoustic rock with goofy lyrics.

Last weekend was the nuit blanche when everything stays open all night and artists put installations throughout the city. After a mojito at Place des Vosges, we began to wander the streets with hundreds of other people. It reminded me of a kind of pedestrian critical mass. People flowed like water from one installation to another. First we saw a huge turning pink tea cup in the courtyard of a traditional parisien building. It glowed under the lights.

Long lines of people waited to see the other exhibits, and finally we waited in one. The courtyard had steel drummers playing classical music, a quote shown in light on the pavement, and two different exhibits to enter. One was a little movie, with Parisiens being asked to say various silly things mostly in English. The second was about a dozen TVs set up to play video montages in loops. One was a cartoon, a guy morphing into other things and back to a guy again. In another, someone (anyone who wanted to) moved around a city with a mouse, through the streets, up and down the buildings, etc. Yet another clipped together images from TV commericals of flowers blooming, women eating, whatever (by activity). It made me feel all sorts of strange things including hungry. The Metro stopped running at 1, so we caught it and got a good nights sleep despite the exciting alternatives (that is, to stay up all night and see more art).

Last Sunday, we saw an exhibit of clothes made out of bread. There was also a bakery, and the designer had designed the clothes for people working there -- ladies had exposed midrifts and exterior corsettes made of basket reeds. We were most excited by the window blinds made out of baguettes.

Monday, we went to the Cite Universitaire, where dozens of buildings each representing a different country (US, Holland, Cuba, Greece, Cambodia were a few) gather around a central pedestrian roadway, each with a unique architectural style. There was an exhibit on Le Corbusier... buildings designed like bottle racks for apartments to be inserted according to the needs of its residents. Of course, he designed the units to be inserted, which included loft beds for the parents above the common space, and we argued about the desirability of that arrangement (I think lofts are silly and impractical unless they can be made completely private, though I admit they seem fun). The common space has huge glass doors that open onto a large balcony so that in summer the family can feel like they are living out of doors. The children's bedrooms were long and narrow. Each unit had 2 floors and overlapped in the middle.

I return to Paris tonight, arriving around midnight. I am sorry to be leaving here already. I am sorry that the summer is gone and the leaves are falling off. I am sorry for the chill in the air and that everyone is going back to the states. In San Francisco, I love the fall, but here it makes me a feel a little sad. Maybe I just don't know what's going to happen next.

[La Vienne] Switzerland 3

The spa in Suisse was quite something. The night before last I stayed in (I am now living alone in Muriel’s apartment in Paris while she is in Venezuela on vacation windsurfing) and organized my postcard collection gathered so far this trip. I came across the images of the spa: it is simple, clean modern lines, organic imprints (the lines that water leaves on the wall from continual flow, wet foot prints), skylights design to let the sunlight in in rays like the hand of God. Squares, rectangles, water, light… The stone is dark gray with horizontal lines. Well, it is better if you look at pictures of it (there are lots of photos online, but these images were biggest that I found after a brief search. I know the spa has its own web site with photos, but I will have to tell you it later. For now, here are someone’s photos): http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/global/scrapbook.html.

There was a warm indoor central bath, an outdoor pool with fantastic views and water pouring down so that you can give yourself a back massage with it and places to sunbath, a hot pool (not quite big enough or hot enough in my opinion, but very nice), a warm pool with flower petals in it, numerous other warm, cool, and cold pools, steam rooms, showers that started several meters above you, a place to drink the water, a quiet room for a rest, etc.

We were there for several hours, and finally left to return to the hotel (which was completely adorable and on the town square). That night all of us were famished and exhausted. It was Isabelle’s birthday. We had a nice meal of hunting game in another restaurant on the square. They brought us cakes with sparklers for Isabelle’s birthday, but getting people to sing was a challenge. The (maybe) Italian migrant workers at the next table were more excited about singing than my group. It must be cultural.

The next day we hiked the nearby mountains. They were unbelievably beautiful, but I already described them to you in an earlier posting. I would like to add a few highlights… Along the path, we stopped to pick wild blueberries. That has never happened to me before, and it was the best thing ever. Wild blueberries. We enjoyed this activity for a very long time, and then we noticed huge frogs (about the size of my fist) hopping through the blueberry patch. (Anyone know where there are big impressive frogs in the states?). I thought I saw a row of bicycles available for free or hire (? but we were dedicated to walking).

We reached a huge, cold-looking lake which reflected the pristine blue sky and green mountainsides, and crossed a damn to the other side where we stopped for a beer. Other activities in Vals are skiing in winter and mountain biking. I could easily be persuaded to return there any time (it might be amazing in winter for skiing with the spa and everything). The walk back to the village and car was an old roadway with long creepy tunnels through the rock. Their air was cool and water dripped through the rock. I’ve read a few books lately where the main character goes into another world (death or drug induced) and relives moments in their lives, and, well, if that had to happen to me and I could choose, I would certainly pick this day.

We drove back to France from there, stopping briefly for a dinner of pumpkin soup and chocolate cake. I think I slept most of the way.