...Spit and Baling Wire...

"Only A Shadow of My Former Blahg..."

2012-01-06T01:47:00.000-08:00

So, somewhere along about the end of December 2011, as New Year's Eve was drawing nigh, it just so happened that when I attempted to comment at a number of blogs that I still manage to keep up with intermittently, even though I was properly logged into both the Gmail address that corresponds to the blahg "Spit and Baling Wire" and the blahg itself, as well as when I attempted to respond to comments that had been left for me at "S&BW," I was prompted by the Blogger Comment Section gawds to "choose a profile"--WTF!--which I did, cooperatively, and redundantly, I thought.

Nevertheless, my comments did not upload and display in the comment section of the blogs of others, nor in my own, as responses to comments I had received in my last two posts... Frankly, at that time, and now, I just don't have the wherewithal to investigate why that anomaly has transpired. In addition to being unable to comment, I am also unable to "edit" my posts from the post itself using the little pencil icon prominently, no longer, displayed at the bottom right of my completed and published posts. Historically, when "viewing" my blog(s) I have been able to see my email address posted on the top right in the "nav bar" area, but, for the time being, I can no longer even see that.

Anyway, the upshot of all that mysterious and annoying crap is that for the first time in almost 3 years, through innumerable permutations of my blahg, I have no idea what's up and cannot do anything about it for the moment since I also suffered through the "white screen of death" with my trusty black MacBook back in mid-December and I need to leave the house shortly for a rather extended period. Thus, everything is back up in the air and I have no idea where the pieces will be landing when they ultimately do fall back to earth. I'll be out here gimping along, as usual, come to think of it, and I'll be checking up on you now and then, but if you don't hear from me for awhile it won't be because I didn't try...

The Shadow of Your Smile
Written by P F Webster & Johnny Mandel
performed by Marie Villion

The shadow of your smile
When you are gone
Will color all my dreams
And light the dawn
Look into my eyes, my love, and see
All the lovely things you are to me
A wistful little star
Was far too high
A teardrop kissed your lips and so did I
Now when I remember spring
All the joy that love can bring
I will be remembering
The shadow of your smile
Now when I remember spring
All the love that joy can bring
I will be remembering
The shadow of your smile...

"Happy New Year's Eve 2011"

2011-12-31T12:19:00.000-08:00

where there's a puzzle, there's a way...

I intended to post about "The Year of Living Aimlessly" tonight but that was before I stayed up until 3:45am this morning--having begun at around 5pm yesterday--working on a piece of the genealogical jigsaw puzzle that I started just about this time last year.

...ALONE

My Frencher Half had taken to the road toward points north of the Middle of Nowhere, France, on Dec 26th for a week, which gave me the opportunity to singlemindedly devote myself to my ongoing family tree project. The first 4 days of work were long and routine, however, yesterday in the late afternoon I followed a hunch, consulting Ancestry.com and Find A Grave, simultaneously, and I finally found out where my mother's father's father, who died in 1903 shortly after his two sons' birth, was buried in Tennessee.

I had nothing on which to go but my paternal great-grandfather's name, William Thomas Wright, which is listed on my grandfather's death certificate. However, I had a potential ace up my sleeve--my maternal grandfather's middle name, Perrien, is exceedingly rare in this galaxy. Consequently, using Find A Grave's database sorted by country, state, and county, I followed a hunch and entered the name of the county in which it was thought, and never known for sure, that my grandfather was born in Tennessee and...

Bingo! I found a William T Wright with the correct approximate birth and death dates whose mother was listed as being Sarah Adeline Duke. I was sure that she could not have been his mother, but rather his stepmother, because of his date of birth relative to those of her other sons. Her children's birth dates quickly turned out not to matter in the least when I read that her husband's name was Perin Wright.

If your eyes have started to glaze over, fear not. I have no intention of going on and on with this. What I want to note for the record though is that it took me the entry of 8,500+/- individual names, 16,000+ cited record links, the uploading of 500+ photos to that family tree, and a year's--2011, to be exact--grindingly tedious keyboarding for up to 10 hours a day 4-5 days a week to find the traces of those human beings.

No one could have paid me to do that work. It was a labor of love and this morning at almost 4am when I laid myself down to sleep, Chuck Yeager, as channeled by Sam Shepard, had nothin' on me.

Bursting through to Mach 2...

Happy New Year's Eve y'all. I'll see you on the other side...

My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year)
written by Peggy Lee
covered by Regina Spektor

My dear acquaintance,
it's so good to know you
For the strength of your hand
That is loving and giving
And a happy new year
With love overflowing
With joy in our hearts
For the blessed new year

Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer
For us all who are gathered here
And a happy new year to all that is living
To all that is gentle, kind, and forgiving
Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer
My dear acquaintance, a happy new year

All of those who are hither and yonder
With love in our hearts
We grow fonder and fonder
Hail to those who we hold so dear
And hail to those who are gathered here

And a happy new year to all that is living
To all that is gentle, young, and forgiving
Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer
My dear acquaintance, a happy new year
Happy New Year

"All In A Night's Scrolling..."

2011-12-12T01:54:00.001-08:00

NOTE: I have not been blahging, as anyone who was interested could see. I have been holding my peace. However, I have been reading and endeavoring to purchase material to read on my Kindle. Which explains the written utterances below. Please forgive the herky jerky nature of the actual posting. I prepared the post, published it, and ran into what appeared to be formatting problems to which I preferred not to subject any innocent reader. As it turned out, a couple of people--The Stickup Artist and my amazing cousin Sara--saw the post in one of its crappy effortful incarnations. So, I'm just going to go ahead and post it, warts and all... I am also going to try to get Sara's comment to upload properly. If it won't, I'll do a workaround.

I know. I shouldn't have even bothered. But, there are limits and I try to offer a considered alternative if my preferences are not being met...

1.
Dear Friends at Amazon/Kindle,

I have been a satisfied and delighted owner of Kindle since Feb/March 2010 and have about 180 ebooks in my Kindle library. I also recently purchased a Kindle for my French husband and began filling it up with books.

I use my Kindle when I travel, which is a lot of the time, and enjoy having the opportunity to scroll through your inventory in exactly the same way that I would stroll through a browsing library when it was more feasible. I can look at titles that catch my interest and curiosity, I can read the summaries of the books, I can read reader reviews, I can build a wish list, I can think about books that I will ultimately buy for others in paper via Amazon and have delivered. So far, it has been a win/win experience.

However, beginning last night as I spent an entire Kindle battery doing just what I've described above, I found, for the very first time, that an inordinate number of the titles/covers that I was encountering were tits 'n' ass--more ass, if you ask me--if not downright pornographic. Although, under the circumstances--the anonymous nature of what is actually being read on any Kindle--I should not be surprised, or, rather, I should have expected that it would ultimately come to this. Nevertheless, I was annoyed at having to wade through any number of tacky titles/covers in order to find a memoir of value, as defined by me.

Having no desire to resort to polemics, I would like for you to tell me how I can adjust my Kindle to avoid being exposed to those titles. It already takes enough real time to wade through the good work that is available and waiting for G-strings-up-the-buttcracks-of-headless-women book covers to upload is a huge waste of my time and energy.

I'll be waiting here beside my laptop for word from your representative at his/her earliest convenience. I'm sure that this is a question that has already gotten old for those of you in the trenches of customer representation. I'm not on The Right. I'm not a Christian. I'm not even particularly prudish. I've exchanged my share of epithelial cells with strangers and husbands (my own) of marriages of varying lengths, with greater or lesser discrimination--much to my own chagrin--but speaking of f'ing, "How f'ing tedious it was to scroll through all that trying to find, entirely by happy accident "The Hare with the Amber Eyes."

Very best regards and good luck weathering the sh*tstorm that is no doubt coming your way when Bill O'Reilly and Sarah hear about this. Ha! Ha! Ha! May I suggest that you all have a meeting to start figuring out how you are going to structure your inner-workings (no pun intended) to allow for a serious "search list" adjustment.

I'm all in favor of freedom of the virtual squiggles, but I don't want to have to wade through the porn section of Kindle anymore than I want to spend my time in an X-rated bookstore's aisles. Maybe you should offer Samuel R. Delaney's "Hogg" or Hardy Peters's (Carolyn See's father, George Newton Bowlin Laws), for ""seventy-three cheery volumes" of pornography, aimed at the paperback-reading crowd" for greater literary interest. In any event, be scrupulously honest, make a separate category called Soft- & Hard- (no pun intended) Pornography where those who are looking for it can find it without making me scroll through it on my way to "The Good Daughter," "The Memory Palace," or "Reading Lolita in Tehran..."

Sincerely,

Hello,

Thanks for writing about your experience with your new kindle.
 
I'm sorry to hear you're unhappy with some of the items that were 
recommended to you on your Kindle. Your Kindle recommendations are 
based on the items you've purchased, items you've told us you own, 
items you viewed while browsing our site, items you've liked, and 
items you've rated.

(blah, blah, blah...)

2.
Dear Friends at Amazon/Kindle,

The email below, which I sent you to give you feedback on the inefficacy
of bombarding customers with porn items in the category of biography/memoir
has nothing to do with recommendations.  My recommendations in Amazon in my
account are perfect. The problem is the ubiquity of porn titles in places
they do not belong.  They belong in a CATEGORY called PORN or, if you must
use a euphemism,"EROTICA."  They do not belong in MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY.
Thus, in this case, your response was not at all helpful, "F" for effort.

Thank you very much,

Hello,
 
I've reviewed our previous correspondence with you, and I'm sorry
about the misunderstanding.
 
When you use our search engine to look for items, our system attempts to
find the products you're most likely to be looking for based on the words you entered.
Our search methods go beyond simple keyword matching and may also be using information
not visible on the search results page,including attributes provided by the publisher
or manufacturer. 
 
However, I've forwarded this issue to our concerned department regarding
assigning the category and they will work on it. We'll consider your feedback
as we plan further improvements.
 
Customer feedback like yours really helps us continue to improve our store
and provide better service to our customers.
Thanks for taking time to offer us your thoughts.
 
We hope to see you again soon.
 
Thank you for your recent inquiry. Did I solve your problem?

3.
Dear Friends at Amazon/Kindle,

I just sent you an email regarding the endless number of porn titles that appeared in the category listing on memoir/biography that I chose to scroll last night. I was not aware that that list had anything to do with "recommendations"--which is what I received in response to my feedback on the problem--a barge of canned info on how "recommendations" are provided. I do not, and have not, scrolled any porn at your site. I have purchased psych, lit, travel, memoir, history, in abundance, however. Consequently, I do not see how your response to my email is going to allow me to totally avoid your vast new sea of suggestions for soft- and/or hard-porn.

Please advise.

Also, please create an honest title in your categories "Pornography, Soft- &/or Hard-" and keep it out of scrolling unless deliberately demanded. Your system obviously doesn't know how to "fine tune" its recommendations. Which means you have incompetent programmers, among other things.

Thank you very much,

Hello,

Thanks for writing about your experience with your new kindle.

I'm sorry to hear you're unhappy with some of the items that were
recommended to you on your Kindle. Your Kindle recommendations are
based on the items you've purchased, items you've told us you own,
items you viewed while browsing our site, items you’ve liked, and items
you've rated.

If you believe that you were recommended inappropriate content
unrelated to products or content you’ve purchased, rated or browsed
on Amazon, please write back and we’ll be happy to follow up on your specific issue.

Customer feedback like yours is always important to us as we continue to determine ways
to improve the shopping experience for everyone who visits our website or uses their
Kindle to purchase new content. I'll be sure to pass your message along to the Kindle
Team.  The Kindle Team will carefully review your comments and suggestions.

Thanks for using Kindle.

4.
Dear Friends at Amazon/Kindle,

For the 4th time, let me say, I am not
complaining about "recommendations."
At Amazon in my account on my laptop,
all my "recommendations" are perfect.
My Kindle has never been touched by another person.
The CATEGORIES that you have listed in the KINDLE STORE
do not include PORNOGRAPHY, SOFT- &/or HARD-.
You should install such categories and
keep PORNOGRAPHY out of all other areas
including MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY; HISTORY; ART; LITERATURE; etc.
That is my message for you. I do not want to scroll
through endless listings of porn while looking for
good biography.

That is not a "recommendation" problem.
That is an inventory listing problem...
Which, as I mentioned, is ultimately a programming problem.
You have crappy programming associated with your inventory display.
Fix it and you will save your customers the trouble of sorting
fatherhood/parenting books from your new incest/anal sex-oriented
works with titles like "Daddy's This" and "Daddy's That".

Thank you very much,

"Happy Birthday, mon cher..."

2011-11-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

All grown up with lots of places to go...

Every year, just about this time, at my house we start hedging into birthday territory. If it's your birthday and you have a low tolerance for celebrating it, you'd better keep it a secret from me because I'm an equal-opportunity celebrator of birthdays, one and all.

The class of 1940...

My Frencher Half, on the other hand, born on 10 November in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, arrived shortly before the Paris labor strikes of 1936, in which his working-class, slate-roofing-installer father participated fully--which was going to mean frequent periods of interrupted employment and an economically-austere beginning for the nouveau-né.

Not to mention being right on time for the German Army's invasion of France and the occupation of Paris from 14 June 1940 to 25 August 1944, which was going to mean that his father would be way out in the woods for an extended period of his life, before his family was safely reunited with a roof over its head and no one trying to ship his father off to a work camp in Germany. All of which was going to put a serious crimp in whatever sort of celebrating might have been done under other, less dire, circumstances leaving my Frencher Half and his family with a tradition of being on the Birthday Party Austerity Plan forever after.

The serious little girl with the long dark curls
still has a protective hand on his shoulder...

What are you doing the rest of your life?
North and South and East and West of your life?
I have only one request of your life
That you spend it all with me

a cold bottle of Vouvray Brut and
a finger or two of crème de Cassis
can make you forget pricey champagne
faster than you can scrawl "Dear John,..."

"A book is a present you can open again and again..."

With a birthday in the offing, and at the risk encountering a look of total incomprehension or, worse, a cranky mini-rant along the lines of how many physical books we already own that remain, indeed, yet unread on our many wooden bookshelves, I chose to follow my impulse to gift my soon-to-be 75 year-old husband with a copy of Graham Robb's, newly translated from British English to French, history of France, "The Discovery of France: A Geographical History from the Revolution to WWI," AKA "Une histoire buissionnière de la France." However, never one to stop ~~while she's ahead~~ at the obvious, and always interested in getting the most expansive experience for my gift-giving buck, I decided to couch the book itself in context of the first commercially available AmazonKindle in France.

Consequently, one week ago today, the very day that I received this week's Télérama with the first full-page Amazon.fr Kindle ad on the inside-cover, I logged onto Amazon.fr and ordered the ebook, a cover/case with car-charger (creative bundling), and a 2-year breakage/theft insurance plan. And then, once the ordering transaction was complete and the Kindle paid for, I had a severe attack of buyer's remorse, frequently experienced chez moi as a surge of adrenaline, burning stabby pains in my body, and a voiceover shrieking assertions such as "That's the stupidest gift you ever constructed! It's all wrong! He's going to make a pained fake smile upon receiving it and not really like it at all." accompanied, naturally, by images of my sweet husband trying to read for relaxation, dozing off as he is wont to do when reading, and the new Kindle slipping from his grasp onto the floor, as often do his livres de poche, followed by a crunchy breaky sound. That was fun...

I want to see your face in every kind of light
In fields of dawn and forests of the night
And when you stand before the candles on a cake
Let me be the one to hear the silent wish you make

The day the doorbell rang signaling the arrival of the egift by courier, I was alone in the house and able to reach the front door downstairs before the deliveryman had made a complete getaway. Actually, I didn't see him when I opened the door, he saw me, although he was in the process of walking down the street, away from the house--it takes time to get to the front door from my perch up here in front of my laptop--and he came back with a smile and handed over the most recent worst mistake I was convinced I had ever made.

I had already told my husband earlier in the week that if the door rang he wasn't to answer it, I would answer it. But, as luck would have it, he was not even near the house. He was out and about at the Saturday public market which meant that I had plenty of time to open the shipping packaging, check out the merchandise, plug in the Frencher Kindle, start its battery charging, and pre-fill the little sucker with enticing reads, above and beyond the keystone work by Graham Robb. Upon investigation I found out that the Frencher Kindle came with free dictionaries in 5 languages already uploaded--French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and German.

I also discovered that it was smaller than the U.S. basic Kindle that I have been walking around with for almost 2 years. It is actually the size of a normal paperback pocketbook. What a surprise! What wasn't a surprise, compared to the offerings on Amazon.com, was the current dearth of books available in French for the FK. I already knew how little there was, but I don't for one minute believe that the situation will remain that way. It was actually the presence of Graham Robb's book in French via Kindle, simultaneously with its French publication in paperback, that convinced me to go ahead with my idea for the gift and gives me hope that the flood gates will open and waves of wonderful and varied material will become available soon. For the moment I am limiting myself to writing about a birthday gift for my Frencher Half, later I hope to write more about the seismic shifting that the whole matter of ereaders is causing in France, on general principle...

any excuse for a party will do...

By Sunday morning "The Gift" was ready for giving, never mind that the FH's birthday wasn't until the following Thursday--tomorrow. So, I asked him if he had anything against celebrating his birthday a little bit early since, in fact, we already had a movie, "Habemus Papam," planned for later the same day. (I almost always went to the movies to celebrate my birthdays.) All we needed was some semblance of a birthday cake, two champagne flutes, some kir royalesque libation, some music on the boombox, and an assortment of pastries from Mme Blasquez's patisserie across the way. She's open on Sundays, so I just put my London Foggy raincoat on over my sleeping T-shirt and beat a path to her shop before everything on display was sold off. Next time you need an early birthday party forced on you give me a holler...

I've been bangin' my glass up against his for more than
a quarter of a century and it hasn't broken yet...

Fortune smiled on me at the insta-party and my Frencher Half's eyes sparkled as he spied the contents of the little carrier that I had invented for his Frencher Kindle--until the real thing comes along. He didn't offer me a resigned expression of thanks for something that he really didn't want. Instead, he caressed his little ebook in wonder and watched with a certain respect and attention as I gave him a quick tour of its potential. And he was very pleased to find Graham Robb's history of France preloaded and ready for him to start reading at his earliest whim. Generous soul that he is, he was particularly happy when I told him that I had downloaded a Norwegian book, in English, entitled "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder that I had wanted to read for 15 years and couldn't download to my own Kindle because it is a European publication and not available to the U.S. market. Now, I'll just have to catch his FK when he turns back to a traditional delivery system for expanding his mind!

a few minutes of quiet contemplation
before the birthday movie...

"What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?"
music by Michel LeGrand
words by Alan & Marilyn Bergman

old books, new books,
my books, your books,
paper books, ebooks...

"Sometimes A Great Notion..."

2011-11-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

Just before I left the Left Coast for central France on March 6, 2010, I forked over enough money to Amazon.com to get its representatives to rush me a Kindle via UPS. It was not an impulse buy. I had been toying with the idea for quite a while and had waited until the very last week, before taking to the friendly skies of Air Tahiti Nui, to let my fingers do the online shopping.

It was, however, a panic, buy...

Even though I had what would eventually amount to about 25-30 feet long by 6 feet high's worth of books once they were all unpacked and shelved strategically throughout our humble abode, I was, unrealistically, as it turned out, afraid of finding myself without as many books as I thought I would "need." There's probably a name for that particular fear in the DSM.

And given that I was going to be living on a modest, "fixed" income, I was also afraid that I would not be able to afford to purchase books as easily and freely in France, once I got around to having to buy them in euros. French books in France are expensive and English books in France are more expensive. And at that time I had yet to be convinced that 1) I had enough books to last a lifetime and 2) that books were a dime a dozen at French brocantes, vide greniers, and Emaus.

But that's a story for another day.

Today's story concerns an incident that occurred over breakfast recently. I was eating my toast and slurping my coffee when my husband darted from the room to grab a copy of Le Canard Enchainé, his favorite newspaper. When he came back to the table and sat back down, he said something to me along the lines of "There's a book reviewed in here that you would really like."

And then he started to read to me the following article, which I have thoughtfully posted here in its entirety for your reading pleasure, ladies and gentlemen...

Of course, he only got about 5 words out of his mouth before I chimed in with "It's about damn time! That's the book by Graham Robb that I've been telling you that all of France and her distant relative Francophilia must read!" Well, it was true.

"The Discovery of France: A Geographical History from the Revolution to World War I" was one of the very first books that I read using my Kindle, lying in my bed of an evening before going to sleep, and I haven't quit talking about it since I finished it! If you only read one book about France in your life, do yourself a favor and make it Graham Robb's book. You won't regret it. The first thing I did upon completing it was to check to see if it had been translated into French so that I could buy for my Frencher Half. Before now, it hadn't, but apparently someone in a high place has as exalted an opinion of its value as I do.

This is your lucky day. It's almost Christmas. Now you have a solid lead on the perfect gift for your Anglophone francophile friend seeking enlightenment or your French-speaking history buff. It's a win/win. And for those of you who might be bilingual and looking for a challenge, you can read both versions and beef up your French and/or English vocabulary and usage.

And the book is available via Amazon.fr in Kindle format. Holy Moholy-Nagy! What next?

Graham Robb's "Victor Hugo" in Kindle?

"Ma France"
by Jean Ferrat

De plaines en forêts de vallons en collines
Du printemps qui va naître à tes mortes saisons
De ce que j'ai vécu à ce que j'imagine
Je n'en finirai pas d'écrire ta chanson
Ma France

Au grand soleil d'été qui courbe la Provence
Des genêts de Bretagne aux bruyères d'Ardèche
Quelque chose dans l'air a cette transparence
Et ce goût du bonheur qui rend ma lèvre sèche
Ma France

Cet air de liberté au-delà des frontières
Aux peuples étrangers qui donnaient le vertige
Et dont vous usurpez aujourd'hui le prestige
Elle répond toujours du nom de Robespierre
Ma France

Celle du vieil Hugo tonnant de son exil
Des enfants de cinq ans travaillant dans les mines
Celle qui construisit de ses mains vos usines
Celle dont monsieur Thiers a dit qu'on la fusille
Ma France

Picasso tient le monde au bout de sa palette
Des lèvres d'Éluard s'envolent des colombes
Ils n'en finissent pas tes artistes prophètes
De dire qu'il est temps que le malheur succombe
Ma France

Leurs voix se multiplient à n'en plus faire qu'une
Celle qui paie toujours vos crimes vos erreurs
En remplissant l'histoire et ses fosses communes
Que je chante à jamais celle des travailleurs
Ma France

Celle qui ne possède en or que ses nuits blanches
Pour la lutte obstiné de ce temps quotidien
Du journal que l'on vend le matin d'un dimanche
A l'affiche qu'on colle au mur du lendemain
Ma France

Qu'elle monte des mines descende des collines
Celle qui chante en moi la belle la rebelle
Elle tient l'avenir, serré dans ses mains fines
Celle de trente-six à soixante-huit chandelles
Ma France

"I Could Tell You More But Then I'd Have To..."

2011-09-30T01:01:00.000-07:00

"The new phonebook's here...."

"Where's Navin R.?"

"They Don't Call It Free-Association for Nothin'..."

2011-08-30T04:15:00.000-07:00

a view from as close to the roof
as it gets around here...

August is on the verge of leaving the year's calendar and the academic one is dragging the French children back to their desks with their overly heavy backpacks. I left the window open last night and woke this morning due only to the freezy feel of the sheets upon my skin . There may yet be a few more days of warmth before winter's chill sets in in earnest but one will most likely be able to count them on one's fingers.

This morning I trudged up to the attic to toss some of those ever-to-be-saved boxes for electronic equipment down into the courtyard below for restashing in the attic of the outbuildings at the back of the house and realized, as I was launching cardboard cartons from the 3rd floor window, just how beautiful the day was shaping up to be. And just how powerful was the free-association of images and remembered snatches of song...

"Up on the Roof"
performed by Laura Nyro

words and music
by Gerry Goffin & Carole King

When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space

On the roof it's peaceful as can be
And there the world below can't bother me

Let me tell you now
When I come home feelin' tired and beat
I go up where the air is fresh and sweet
I get away from the hustlin' crowds
And all that rat race noise down in the street

On the roof's the only place I know
Where you just have to wish to make it so
Oh, let's go
up on the roof

At night the stars put on a show for free
And darling, you can share it all with me

I keep on telling you
Right smack down in the middle of town
I found a paradise that's trouble proof
So if this world starts getting you down
there's room enough for two up on the roof

Up on the roof
Everything's all right
Up on the roof
Oh, come on baby
Up on the roof
Up on the roof

"There Was Something I Wanted to Tell You on December 17, 2010..."

2011-06-04T00:01:00.000-07:00

Untitled, Eve Arnold, U.S.A, 1950
postcard purchased in Los Angeles, California

"One Life"
performed by Lisa Ekdahl

You say we have nothing in common
I wouldn't say that if I were you
All of us come in through the same door
That much, if nothing else, I know is true

All of us will very soon be leaving
We were brought here, soon we will depart
Now I don't care if someone says I'm foolish
'Cause while I'm here I'm singing from my heart

There's just one life coming from that one place
There's just one face and it's your face
There's just one life going to that one place
There's just one face and it's God's face

And it's in everyone
It's in every place
It is everywhere that one face
I can see it shining through
Can't you see it shining through
Don't tell me that you don't
Just tell me that you do

I wouldn't want hurt you, I wouldn't
I wouldn't wanna to do you harm
All of us came in through the same door
Now won't you let me sleep in your arms

All of us will very soon be leaving
We were brought here, soon we will depart
Now I don't care if someone says I'm foolish
'Cause while I'm here, I'm singing from my heart

There's just one life coming from that one place
There's just one face and it's your face
There's just one life going to that one place
There's just one face and it's God's face

And it's in everyone
It's in every place
It is everywhere that one face
I can see it shining through
Can't you see it shining through
Don't tell me that you don't
Just tell me that you do

There's just one race and it's the human race
There's just one face and, babe, it's your face
I can you see it shining through
Can't you see it shining through
Don't tell me that you don't
Just tell me that you do

There's just one life

"Je Veux Vivre/I Want to Live"
"Tinted Samples of the '50s"
Tinted with Brunwell's Magic Color
postcard purchased in San Francisco, California

"Shelfari is a Bald-Faced Liar!"

2011-06-01T08:26:00.000-07:00

"The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a tellar but for want of an understanding ear."

— Stephen King (Different Seasons)

"If you don't have time to read,
you don't have the time (or the tools) to write.
Simple as that."
— Stephen King

Late last November, while rattling around in this 3-storey, circa 1760s house in small-town central France I had the idea that I would like to have a Shelfari.com widget in the sidebar of my blog.

I didn't know Shelfari from Shinola® but I had seen its virtual bookshelf embedded here and there on my travels through Blahglandia and it appealed to me at a visceral level. So, one day I clicked on someone else's pixelated library and launched myself into Shelfari where I set up an account, picked out a bookcase, uploaded it, and got to cogitating on what I was going to put on its shelves.

The principle of Shelfari is simple: one can list books--privately or publicly--that one is reading, has read, or plans to read. After that there are all sorts of other activities one can engage in such as reviewing/rating books, participating in book groups, and/or inviting other people to visit one's own book list. As is always the case in Technolandia, one can always do more than one realistically has time and attention for, if one plans to continue to buckle down and read substantively with any regularity.

Barnes & Noble "Meet the Writers"
Steve Bertrand interview
with writer, Jonathan Franzen

Without missing a beat (Shirley Brice) Heath replied: "Yes, but there's a second kind of reader. There's the social isolate---the child who from an early age felt very different from everyone around him. This is very, very difficult to uncover in an interview. People don't like to admit that they were social isolates as children. What happens is you take that sense of being different into an imaginary world. But that world, then, is a world you can't share with people around you--because it's imaginary. And so the important dialogue in your life is with the authors of the books you read. Though they aren't present, they become your community."

Simply being a "social isolate" as a child does not, however, doom you to bad breath and poor party skills as an adult. In fact, it can make you hypersocial. It's just that at some point you'll begin to feel a gnawing, almost remorseful need to be alone and do some reading---to reconnect to that community.

According to (Shirley Brice) Heath, readers of the social-isolate variety (she also calls them "resistant" readers) are much more likely to become writers than those of the modeled-habit variety. If writing was the medium of communication within the community of childhood, it makes sense that when writers grow up they continue to find writing vital to their sense of connectedness. What's perceived as the antisocial nature of "substantive" authors, whether James Joyce's exile or J. D. Salinger's reclusion, derives in large part from the social isolation that's necessary for inhabiting an imagined world.

Looking me in the eye, Heath said: "You are a socially isolated individual who desperately wants to communicate with a substantive imaginary world." I knew she was using the word "you" in its impersonal sense. Nevertheless, I felt as if she were looking straight into my soul. And the exhilaration I felt at her accidental description of me, in unpoetic polysyllables, was my confirmation of that description's truth. Simply to be recognized for what I was, simply not to be misunderstood: these had revealed themselves, suddenly, as reasons to write.

--How to Be Alone: Essays by Jonathan Franzen

I started to tell you the Shelfari book-title-disgorging story on my 58th birthday:

3 December 2010

I had not planned to blahg today.

I was hoping to be able to go down by the River Creuse and hop on one of the buses that takes people from Le Blanc to the train station in Poitiers (6 euros aller simple) or the train station in Châteauroux (2 euros aller simple). But I had so many blog friends stop by to comment on my most recent blahg posts that a post was generated in spite of my best intentions not to blahg.

Deborah at The Temptation of Words was kind enough to comment and the response that I began to make to her comment got way out of hand. Consequently, I have given it its own place here:

Deborah,

Thank you for your enthusiasm and appreciation for my book title spew! I found another one last night in my memory--Oblivion by Peter Abrahams.

Having followed through on the impulse to post that little Shelfari widget in the sidebar here has paid off in rather unexpected ways and is a perfect example of the value inherent in the admonition by Seth to "Follow your impulses!"

I would probably have been less sensitized to the act of remembering what books I had read had my mother not committed suicide. Oddly enough, the desire to record––in order to recall at a later date––those titles stems from the fact that after my mother's death I was not only furious with her for having killed herself but also for the fact that I could no longer concentrate in order to read because she had killed herself. Merde!

On the one hand, it could sound quite shallow, to be preoccupied by an inability to concentrate enough to read in the aftermath of such an event. On the other, I loved to read. I learned through reading. I taught myself through reading. I looked for answers to big questions through reading. I escaped through reading. Reading is what I did. I was a reader. I did not think of myself as a writer of more than personal journals or letters and greeting cards. I liked to speak, but one does not always have a willing audience for one's monologues. Book writers were my hero/ines.

I discovered after her death that I had taken the/my ability to concentrate totally for granted. Although I had already been alive for 38 years prior to her death, and had my share of distressing experiences in that life, I had never had an experience that made it impossible for me to concentrate enough to read books for as long as it was going to turn out to be. I realized that the ability to concentrate was not a given, but rather a capacity "on loan" that could be taken away at any time by any number of thieves.

Once I realized my ability to concentrate enough to read was gone, I was down for the count and had no idea when it might come back again. I had to wait and see. So, from March 31, 1991 until November 1993, I did not begin, and read to completion, a book. It seems hard to believe that as I count out 32 months on my fingers, but it is accurate. In fact, the first book I read after the shattering of my ability to concentrate by that .22 caliber bullet to the right temple was called Aliocha by Henri Troyat, although you will not find it sitting on Shelfari's shelves. The search for it failed. However, thanks to writing this note to you, I discovered that I had spelled the title incorrectly, and Shelfari is nothing if not literal--if you make a spelling error, you will get a "failed search" message. They should think about smartening up their search engine a little bit!

Having developed the outlook of the type of person who believes that it is the creation, institution, and maintenance, or destruction, of specific habits that determine what the experience of my most intimate life-of-the-mind, and its attendant physical appearance, is going to take, I had the idea that if I could begin, read, and finish one book, and log its title in a specific location, I could build upon that accomplishment and beat my way back into the habit of reading for all the reasons I mentioned earlier. It happened that I was taking a course in how to use Microsoft's ACCESS database software at the time, so I built an rudimentary home for my imagined future list of "Books Read." After that, I was, more or less, home free, if one does not judge too harshly my choice of reading material. One thing that Shelfari does not contain is the reading that I did in college. Unless we now add Huis Clos by Jean-Paul Satre from my Philosophy 101 course and start casting about in that general direction...

The list served me well and came to hold more than 500 titles before I fell out of the habit of entering the latest one. My confidence had grown by then and I didn't feel compelled to log every book. Time went by and I continued to go to the library and/or buy books at my favorite bookstores, used-book stores, or swap meets. We moved and the PC with the ACCESS database got boxed up for a few years. I suppose that I could be called a bibliophile. When I was packing to move to France, the easiest thing to pack was, naturally, all of our books. However, I had to be very careful to have lots of library books lying around the beater trailer or I risked feeling compelled to go out and buy more books!

Blessings and curses... If one can't concentrate to read, one doesn't have too many books piling up around one's bed or sofa. If one can't concentrate deeply when one begins to be able to concentrate again, one risks reading less demanding material. If one has experienced a devastating loss, one wants to know how other people survived similar losses. If one has always harbored an interest in the small, personal memoir, one has a ready-made reason for indulging one's curiosity...

Tuesday, as I was preparing my first blahg post in almost two months, and thinking about that old list of "Books Read" I had the impulse to go ahead and make the effort to set up the old PC that has been sitting, finally unpacked, on a shelf beside my bed since April 2010. I was afraid that I would no longer know how to set it up or retrieve the material contained therein, but I needn't have feared. It all went together without a hitch and I was excited and gratified to realize how much I had remembered on my own without the prompts from the list. I was amazed to find out how many books I had listed over about a 5 year period and also how long it had been since I actually listed anything at all in that database. There were some books that I had no memory of reading and some I genuinely wonder if I read completely, if at all. Did I ever list books that I intended to read and then not read them? I have given myself a mental "exaggeration" margin of error of about 50 books+/-. Who really knows?

What I do know is that I inadvertently stumbled upon a key memory trigger for my unique brain/mind circuitry that has allowed me to access memories of my life in areas that I normally have trouble recalling--especially memories from my adolescence. If I try to go directly to that area of recall, I run into painful feelings, usually of failure or humiliation, but if I come at the memories via the books I was reading, the rooms in which I was reading them, the towns I lived in, the houses, the people who occupied the houses with me, it all comes flooding back--the bitter and the sweet...

It was, and still is, a very good thing that I had a psychological universe of my own, anchored in books, because the blow back from a fatal gunshot wound to the head is guarandamnteed to leave a world of collateral damage in its wake. I'm happy that my younger past self had that life-line with which to drag herself back to some semblance of normalcy and with which to move into some unexpected version of the future...
So, blame this blahg post on Deborah, my inspiration for today!

That birthday post never got published, but I went on dredging my memory for titles and stopped for a few months at 1127 titles. I quit blahging with any regularity or depth because it takes time, a lot of time, and I knew that the time it was taking was time that could otherwise have been spent reading. I was also in a quandary with respect to what kind of writing I wanted to do--I can't blahg about my life in France à la Peter Mayles. It's not possible and the interview with Jonathan Franz embedded above eloquently addresses why. Thus, I am still mulling over what I can blahg about, if anything, with commitment and a modicum of intellectual and emotional satisfaction.

Nevertheless, today I can blahg about the fact that Shelfari is a bald-faced liar! I found that out entirely by accident, however.

During a Tuesday evening apéro last week with my 74 year old Frencher Half and an 84 year old uprooted Parisienne here in Boonville, France, we had occasion to discuss death, dying, dignity, and provisions for self-dispatching if ever push came to shove--inspired by the brouhaha concerning 91 year old direct-mail entrepreneuse and kevorkianette Sharlotte Hydorn. Which conversation unearthed the titles of 3 books I had forgotten that I had read--Final Exit, First You Cry, and Last Wish--all of which concern, among other things, illness and death-with-dignity.

The next day I wanted to enter those newly revealed titles in Shelfari so I logged on and was entering them when I saw something that I had never noticed before--a short sentence stating "You have no books read this year."

"Say WHAT?"

"Me? No books read this year? "

"Then what the hell have I been doing since January 1, 2011 when I was not blahging because I was reading?"

"Shelfari, you are a bald-faced liar!"

"Portrait of My Mother Reading"

by the Pliers
O'Neill's Camp, Alviso, California
circa 1972

"If You Could Read My Mind," 1970
written & performed by Gordon Lightfoot

And, for your information, Liar-Liar-Pants-on-Fire-Shelfari, this year I have read:

The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
How to Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen
I Don't Need A Baby To Be Who I Am by Joan Brady
Their Wildest Dreams by Peter Abrahams
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, 10th Anniversary Edition by Stephen King
How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton
Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher
Unwinding the Clock by Bodil Jonsson
Télérama, the French TV Guide with class

Now, I realize that 9 books in 6 months might appear to be a paltry accomplishment to Shelfari, but, in my defense, it must be noted that I also:

mounted an Ancestry.com public family tree that now contains 5,089 names--each accompanied by recorded documentation, more than 10,000 records--which translates into about 6-8 hours/5 days per week in online research and data-entry chores
made a trip to the SoCal, USA--January 18 - March 26--to visit friends and continue completing the move to France
made a trip to NoCal, USA to visit friends
made a trip to Mérida, Yucatán from March 11 - March 22 to visit friends and successfully lug educational supplies down for the newly-minted, unfunded Yucatán State Program for Teaching English to Elementary School Children
came home exhausted and spent a month recuperating
translated one of the town's cafés' menues from French to English
hosted international travelers, from within and without France, for lunch and dinner
wrote innumerable emails to friends and family, a number of whom have never deigned to respond
worked on both garden- and house-beautiful projects around our little outpost in la belle France
and took a great number of photographs of the dove who is now nesting 2 new baby doves for the 2nd time since April outside one of our bedroom windows

So, if you find yourself the victim of Shelfari's spreading of false rumors about your reading prowess, just remember this post and take heart.

Now, I have to go find my copy of Psycho-Généalogie: Mode d'Emploi, Comment transformer son héritage psychologique? and get to reading...

"I've Been Meaning To Write To You..."

2011-04-24T03:30:00.000-07:00

I hope you receive my postcard...

"You have a guardian angel
who keeps you safe and brings you home."
illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith
greeting card purchased in Santa Monica, California

a shiny pair of 3 year old Pliers...
Easter 1955, Chickasha, Oklahoma, USA

"I'm sure that there is an Easter basket
around here somewhere..."
Easter 1955, Chickasha, Oklahoma, USA

à propos of le printemps...

"Toi et moi"
by Jill Caplan

La vie sera western
Ou ne sera pas
On va de dizaine en dizaine
On n’y croyait pas
On est si enfants
On est si craquants

Nous, sur un air de banjo
Entre deux balles perdues
On refera le Balajo
S’il n’y en avait plus

On est si enfants
Juste un rêve d’enfant
On est toi et moi
Des millions de toi et moi
Des petites misères
Coincées entre deux guerres
Tu verras, un jour
On s’aimera d’amour
Il faut y croire
Chante avec moi!

La vie sera western
Ou ne sera pas
Il faudra nager à l’indienne
À la force des bras
Toi et moi, oh, oh
On saura nager à l’indienne
Je ne m’en fais pas

On est si enfant
Juste un rêve d’enfant
On est toi et moi
Des millions de toi et moi
Des petites misères
À l’âme chevalière
Tu vera un jour
La plus belle histoire d’amour
Toi et moi, toi et moi
Oui, on sera un jour
La plus belle histoire d’amour
Oh, toi et moi

Juste un rêve d’enfant
On est toi et moi
Des millions de toi et moi

On sera un jour
La plus belle histoire d’amour
Il faut y croire
Chante avec moi!

"Reading the Bullet Holes on the Wall..."

2011-01-13T00:01:00.000-08:00

It would be an embarrassment––if it were not such an insult to the victims of each act of violence perpetrated by any individual in possession of sufficient fire power, in whatever form, to settle his or her grudge with whomever s/he holds responsible for whatever offense s/he feels has been committed against him or her, regardless of political affiliation or mental health status––if anything other than the free access to weapons of mass destruction is under discussion in the aftermath of the most recent mass shooting in the Land of the Free (to be gunned down by any seething-with-anger-among-other-things co-citizen) and the Home of the Brave (enough to leave home to begin with).

It is stupefying that the American public's media's memory is so short, selective, and self-serving. Not to mention disingenuous. By all means, let's not discuss "gun control." Let's discuss 2nd-rate wannabe politicians instead.

Palin Schmalin...

"Bowling for Columbine"
Michael Moore interviews Marilyn Manson

God made him do it

Depression made him do it

Marily Manson made him do it

Erotomania made him do it

Methamphetamines made him do it

Sarah Palin made him do it

The Devil made him do it

Social isolation made him do it

Jodie Foster made him do it

Road rage made him do it

Joey Buttafuoco made her do it

Television made him do it

The U.S. Government made him do it

Divorce proceedings made him do it

"I Hung My Head"
performed by Johnny Cash

November 22, 1963 Dallas, Texas
Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed John F. Kennedy

November 24, 1963 Dallas, Texas
Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald

August 1, 1966, University of Texas, Austin
Charles Whitman killed 16 people and wounded 32 others during a shooting rampage...

April 4, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee
James Earl Ray shot and killed the Reverend Martin Luther King

June 5, 1968, Los Angeles, California
Sirhan Sirhan shot and killed Robert F. Kennedy

Monday, 8 December 1980, New York City, New York
Mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon with a handgun

Monday, March 30, 1981 Washington, DC
John Hinckley, Jr shot and injured Ronald Reagan, James Brady, a DC police officer, and a Secret Service agent

February 18, 1983, Seattle, Washington
Kwan Fai "Willie" Mak, Wai-Chiu "Tony" Ng, and Benjamin Ng shot and killed 14 people in a gambling club

July 1984, San Ysidro, California
James Oliver Huberty shot and killed 21 people and wounded 19 others at a McDonald's restaurant in San Diego before he was shot by police

1986 - 2010 Anyplace, USA
"Going Postal"

June 18 - July 25, 1987 Los Angeles, California
extreme road-rage incidents — spate of freeway shootings in 1987
death, paralysis, maiming, and, no doubt, PTSD

February 16, 1988, Sunnyvale, California
Richard Wade Farley shot and killed 7 people, and injured 3 others at his previous place of employment

March 31, 1991 San Francisco, California
Patricia Lee "Kate" Marshall shot and killed herself with one of the two small caliber handguns found near her body

October 16, 1991, Killeen, Texas
George Jo Hennard drove his pickup to Luby's cafeteria where he shot dead 23 people and himself

April 18, 1993, Sacramento Public Library, Sacramento, California
...the gunman entered the library shortly before the the closing time of 5 P.M. He man went up to the third floor, where he shot and killed 2 people--one of whom was Thomas Perry "Tom" Ballard, librarian--with a handgun....

July 1, 1993, San Francisco, California
Gian Luigi Ferri entered a law office in San Francisco and shot dead 8 people, then himself

April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Timothy McVeigh, bombed and killed 168 people and injured 450 in the federal building in OKC

Tuesday, April 20, 1999, Columbine High School, Colombine, Colorado
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot and killed 12 students and 1 teacher before committing suicide. They also shot and injured 21 other students directly, and 3 people were injured while attempting to escape

Six Week Period, August - October 2002, Washington, DC, Maryland, Virginia, Louisiana, & Alabama
John Allen Muhammad & Lee Boyd Malvo shot and killed 11 people and wounded 6 others

January 16, 2002, Grundy, Virginia
Peter Odighizuwa shot and killed 3 people and wounded 3 others with a handgun

February 24, 2005, Tyler, Texas
David Hernandez Arroyo Sr shot and killed 2 people and wounded 4 others

March 21, 2005, Red Lake, Minnesota
Jeffery Weise, student at Red Lake high school shot and killed 5 students, 1 teacher, 1 security guard, and then himself. Before school he had shot dead 2 others––his grandfather and grandfather's companion

April 2005, Los Angeles, California
4 drivers shot and killed in random sniper attacks on LA freeway
The California Highway Patrol stopped recording the number of shootings on the roads in 2002...

May 2005 -August 2006, Phoenix, Arizona
Dale Hausner and Samuel Dieteman shot and killed 8 people and wounded 17 others

November 20, 2005, Tacoma, Washington
Dominick Sergio Maldonado shot and injured 6 people at a mall

Saturday, March 25, 2006, Seattle, Washington
Kyle Aaron Huff shot and killed 6 people and wounded 2 others at party in Seattle, before killing himself

Monday, February 12, 2007, Salt Lake City, Utah
Sulejman Talović shot and killed 5 people and wounded 4 others

Monday, April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech, Virginia
Seung-Hui Cho, shot and killed 32 people and wounded many others before shooting himself

December 5, 2007, Omaha, Nebraska
Robert Hawkins opened fire with a rifle inside a mall crowded with Christmas shoppers shooting and killing 8 people and himself, 5 more people were wounded in the rampage

Tuesday, September 28, 2010, U of Texas, Austin
Colton Tooley fired a number of shots on campus before shooting himself

Saturday, January 8, 2011, Phoenix, Arizona
Jared Loughner shot and killed 6 people and wounded 14 others

...but s/he could never have done it without ammunition and a firearm...

"See That My Grave Is Kept Clean"
performed by Lou Reed

"Oooohhhh, Just What I Wanted--A Brand-Spanking New Year All My Own..."

2011-01-01T01:16:00.000-08:00

photo, Jos Lambregs, 1997
greeting card purchased in Los Angeles, California

Don't you love the idea of sitting down and writing out a few checks, a journal entry, or greeting cards today just so you can scrawl "1/1/11" with abandon all over the place? Now that is my idea of ephemeral fun!

I woke up the first time in this new year at 3:50am and, fortunately, fell back to sleep until 5:30am, at which time I toyed with getting up and at 'em. I lingered au lit too long, my Frencher Half rose to make coffee and eggs, and I'll be damned if I didn't plunge headlong into a dream of waking in another bed, in another place, only to find a big fat book of family history left on a desk for me with old torn-off addresses from the corners of envelopes stuffed between the covers. Someone wanted the book back but I was reluctant to relinquish it... It was almost 8am before I "stumbled outta my rack."

with all due credit to Jeanette Chiarini for her post of this quote in fb on 1/1/11:

“We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential.” — Ellen Goodman

A new start...
photo, Andrea Sperling, 1993
greeting card purchased in Costa Mesa, California

What would you do if you woke up one morning with a brand-spanking-new, bright and shiny year ready to unfold itself, day-by-day, before you? What if it was this year? Would it depend upon what you had not completed last year? What you had in-progress and rolling over into the new year? Or, would it depend rather upon what you had not started last year and yearned to begin? There are so many variants to what was and such untapped potential in what will be... The permutations are mind-boggling.

As a person who moved, at the age of 57, from the country of her birth and upbringing to a foreign country in 2010, I can say that the outgoing year, for me, was replete with tasks and functions to which I was required to attend in order to dismantle one life, fully fleshed out, and construct, to date, the mere skeleton of another life in which to continue living, breathing, acting upon the world, and having it act upon me. The move itself was a success, the movees have survived to tell the tale, and the adaptation and acculturation process for both of them is still ongoing.

Untitled, photo, Tina Modotti, 1925
postcard purchased in Los Angeles, California

I cannot say that I have been, nor behaved, as I expected during these past/first 9 months of gestating a transformation of myself in this new setting. Although, I can say with great certainty that I brought myself, first and foremost, along on the trip with me and that out-of-context I have recognized many of my deeply ingrained habits and survival strategies of old, and that they have served me well in this alien environment as a blueprint for recreating a viable life out of nothing, here abroad.

Given the potential for emotional destabilization inherent in, simultaneously, moving and retiring--though "retirement" at my age, and in my situation, is a complete misnomer--those habits and strategies have been invaluable and, in their own way, a tremendous comfort to me since I left the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Untitled, photo, Lynette Molnar, 1984

greeting card purchased in San Francisco, California

I return once more to W.H. Murray's apropos quote about beginning anything:

"But when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money--booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!"

––W.H. Murray, The Himalayan Expedition

Fortunately for me, I brought along more than enough incomplete projects and ruptured relationships from 57 years at home to give me plenty work to do in my spare time--between meals and data-entry duties--finishing and/or patching them up from here in la belle France. The truth of the matter is, I don't believe that there has ever been a better time in a life, in this historical moment, to be adrift on the planet.

The plethora of technologies for "keeping in touch" with one's fellow wo/man has almost made a nonstarter out of "homesickness." I guarantee you that I have been in contact with more people in the USA since the beginning of December, whom I have known, loved, and/or appreciated, at one phase in my life or another, in the past 9 months than in the 4 years prior to our move from Southern California––all thanks to blahging, the magicJack, SKYPE, the NeufBox wifi & integrated telephone service, and fb. I would probably even go so far as to say that a balance has shifted and that one now has to make a greater effort to stay out of touch with others than in. Who woulda thunk?

Paris Bathroom, photo, Jim Enfield, 1985

greeting card purchased in San Francisco, California

I'll be looking forward to hearing all about how your brand-spanking new bright and shiny year unfolds day-by-day, and I'll be easy to find...

"Wave Bye Bye to 2010..."

2010-12-31T12:01:00.000-08:00

as they say in France...

"What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?"
performed by the inimitable Nancy Wilson

as I say...

my wish for us all...

"If I'm Lucky"
Melody Gardot performing with
Charlie Haden Quartet West

Santa brought me the CD from which this song is sampled for Christmas because I'm a fan of Charlie Haden. I did not know of its existence in CDlandia, so it was a wonderful surprise and I discovered Melody Gardot, who was well-named by someone. I hope you enjoy this piece. The instrumentation is superb.

Happy, Lucky, Healthy New Year, if you are on this side of the Atlantic, or if you are in the back of beyond and have already begun living in the future!

If you aren't I'll wish you Happy New Year again tomorrow...

"Speaking of New Year's Resolutions..."

2010-12-30T00:01:00.000-08:00

"Don't Save It All for (Next) Christmas Day"
performed by, from left to right, Imua, Kamu, & Clint

"L'histoire du pot
de mayonnaise jusqu'au café "

Quand il te semble
qu'il y a "trop" de choses dans ta vie,
quand 24 heures ne te semblent pas suffisantes,
Rappelles-toi du pot de mayonnaise et du café:

Il était une fois un professeur de philosophie qui,
devant sa classe,
prit un grand pot de mayonnaise vide
et sans dire un mot,
commença à le remplir avec des balles de golf

Ensuite, il demanda à ses élèves
si le pot était plein
Les étudiants étaient
d'accord pour dire que OUI

Puis le professeur prit une boîte pleine de billes
et la versa dans le pot de mayonnaise
Les billes comblèrent les espaces vides
entre les balles de golf

Le prof redemanda aux étudiants
si le pot était plein
Ils dirent à nouveau OUI.

Après, le professeur pris un sachet rempli de sable
et le versa dans le pot de mayonnaise
Bien sûr, le sable remplit tous les espaces vides

et le prof demanda à nouveau
si le pot était plein
Les étudiants répondirent unanimement OUI

Tout de suite après le prof ajouta
deux tasses de café dans le contenu du pot de mayonnaise
et effectivement le café combla les espaces
entre les grains de sable.

Les étudiants se sont alors mis à rire
Quand ils eurent fini, le prof dit :

Je veux que vous réalisiez que
le pot de mayonnaise représente la vie

Les balles de golf sont les choses importantes
comme la famille, les enfants, la santé,
tout ce qui passionne
Nos vies seraient quand même pleines
si on perdait tout le reste
et qu'il ne nous restait qu'elles

Les billes sont les autres choses qui comptent
comme le travail, la maison, la voiture, etc...
Le sable représente tout le reste,
les petites choses de la vie

Si on avait versé le sable en premier,
il n'y aurait eu de place pour
rien d'autre, ni les billes ni les balles de golf
C'est la même chose dans la vie

Si on dépense toute notre énergie et
tout notre temps pour les petites choses,
nous n'aurons jamais de place
pour les choses vraiment importantes

Faites attention aux choses
qui sont cruciales pour votre bonheur
Jouez avec ses enfants, ou petits enfants,
prenez le temps d'aller chez le médecin,
dîner avec son conjoint,
faire du sport, ou ~~pratiquer ses loisirs favoris~~
blogger tous que vous voulez
Il restera toujours du temps pour
faire le ménage, réparer le robinet de la cuisine

Occupez-vous des balles de golf en premier,
des choses qui importent vraiment
Établissez des priorités,
le reste n'est que du sable

Un des étudiants leva alors la main
et demanda ce que représente le café

Le professeur sourit et dit :

C'est bien que tu demandes.
C'était juste pour vous démontrer
que même si vos vies
peuvent paraître bien remplies,
il y aura toujours de la place
pour une tasse de café avec un ami

--Anonymous

Tasses et coeurs en chocolate/Cups with cocoa heart,
Achim Deimling-Ostrinsky, 2009

"The Story of the Jar"

When it seems to you
that there are "too many" things to do in your life
when 27 hours appear to you insufficient,
remember the story
of the mayonnaise jar and the coffee

Once upon a time
there was a professor of Philosophy who,
standing before his class,
took a large, empty mayo jar
and, without saying a word, began
to fill it with golf balls

After which, he asked his students
if the jar was full
The students stated YES in agreement

Then, the professor took a box of marbles
and dumped it into the mayo jar
The marbles filled the empty spaces
between the golf balls

The professor asked his students
once again if
the jar was full

They said again, YES
After which, the professor took a sand-filled sack
and poured it into the mayo jar
Of course, the sand
filled all the empty spaces

And the professor asked,
once more,
if the mayo jar was full

The student responded unanimously
that YES
immediately after which
the professor added two cups of coffee
to the contents of the mayo jar
and, as a matter of fact, the coffee
filled the spaces between the grains of sand

The students began to laugh
When they had finished, the professor said:

I want you to realize that the mayo jar represents Life

the golf balls are the important things,
like family, children, health––
those things of primary importance
Our lives would still be quite full
if we lost all the rest
and were left with only them

The marbles are the other things
that count,
like work, the house, the car, etc....

The sand represents everything else,
the little things in Life

If one had poured the sand in first,
there would have been no place
for anything else,
neither the marbles, nor the golf balls

It's the same thing in Life
If one spends all of one's time on the small things,
One will never have room for
the things that are truly important

Pay attention to things
that are crucial to your happiness
Play with your children, or grandchildren
Take the time to go to the doctor
Dine with your significant other
Exercise, or ~~practice your favorite leisure activities~~
blog to your heart's content
There will still be time
to clean house, repair the kitchen faucet

Take care of the golf balls first,
the things that matter most
Establish priorities,
the remainder is only sand...

One of the students raised a hand
and asked what the coffee represented

The professor smiled and said:

It's good that you ask It was just to show you that Even if your lives might appear to be completely full, There will always be a place in it for a cup of coffee with a friend

--Anonymous
--translation by The Pliers

"The Christmas Lunch That Santa Brought..."

2010-12-26T06:00:00.000-08:00

bivalve mollusc Maître...

traditional oyster course for
French Christmas lunch,
different strokes for different folks...

venison stew with potatoes,
thanks to the local charcutier...

chestnuts cooked with garlic and oil
to ride shotgun with the venison...

Santa's mascot and his ever-present Elfess...

"I'm Easy To Please..."

2010-12-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

"Dear Santa"
performed by Judy Brown

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!
Le Blanc, Indre, France
Christmas 2010

"I Want A Boy For Christmas"
performed by the Delvetts

"Lest We Forget..."

2010-12-24T00:01:00.000-08:00

Photo by LCpl Brian D. Jones

You thought I would never post today, right?

Well, the Frencher Half surprised me and slogged it all the way home yesterday! Seven hours to go a distance that normally takes 4, may be 5 hours... Needless to say, it was lights out earlier than usual last night. He was toast after 7 hours in the car avoiding maiming and/or death on the roads with the French road warriors.

Today was my day to get the annual photo greeting of the season out. Talk about working with tweezers! So, if you get that card, don't get all bunged because 100 people were on the list with you, OK? I love you and there was no way I was springing for gob o' cards, postage priced in the stratosphere, and, then, the obligation to use my gimpy hands to write the greeting. Oh, yeah, and no way I be lickin' no 100 envelopes to send cards to my nearest and dearest. How perfectly odious! There might be cyanide or arsenic or anthrax in that glue... No, no, no, no, no. Although, come to think of it, that would have been a perfect excuse to drink an excessive amount of sparkling white wine with crème de Cassis thrown in!

Well, there's always next year. Hopefully, without a war on...

Stay safe, y'all! Santa's on his way.... Don't forget the milk and cookies... Stay safe, y'all! Merry Christmas! I'll tell you Happy New Year next week.

"Gettin' Ready"
written & performed by Paul Simon

From early in November to the last week of December
I got money matters weighing me down
Well, the music may be merry but it’s only temporary
I know Santa Claus is comin' to town

In the days I work my day job
In the nights I work my night
But it all comes down to workin' man's pay
Gettin' ready, I’m gettin' ready
Ready for Christmas day

I got a nephew in Iraq
It’s his third time back
But it's endin' up the way it began
With the luck of a beginner
He’ll be eatin' turkey dinner
On some mountaintop in Pakistan

Gettin' ready,
Oh we’re gettin' ready
For the power and the glory and the story of
Christmas day

Yes, we're gettin' ready,

If I could tell my mom and dad
That the things we never had
Never mattered, we were always OK
Gettin' ready,
Ready ready for Christmas day

Ready,
Gettin' ready
For the power and the glory and the story of
Christmas day

The Sermon, 1941

by Rev. J. M. Gates of Atlanta, upon which
Paul Simon's new song, "Gettin' Read for Christmas" is based...
Ahh... I want to give you a talk (yeah) this morning (Alright.) from this subject – gettin' ready for Christmas day, the 25th day of December, you gettin' ready now.

Some have had their garments (That’s true.) laid away, payin' some (Yes, they is.) this week, some the next week, gettin' ready for Christmas day.

Some have taken their last nickel, paid it on an automobile, gettin' ready for Christmas day. But let me tell you somethin'. Somebody is gettin' ready for you. And let me tell you, namely, the undertaker, he’s gettin' ready for your body. Not only that, the jailer he’s gettin' ready for you, Christmas day. Hmm?

And not only the jailer, but the lawyer, the police force, now gettin' ready for Christmas day. And let me tell you, they’re gettin' ready for you now, and I want you to bear it in mind that they’re gettin' ready.

You want to be ready. I wants to be ready, gettin' ready for Christmas day. Done made it up in your mind that I’m goin', New York, Philadelphia, Chicago. I am goin' on a trip, gettin' ready for Christmas day.

But when Christmas comes, nobody knows where you’ll be. You might ask me. I may be layin’ in some lonesome grave, (That’s true.) gettin' ready for Christmas day. You may live, 24 days, hmm, and then live till the midnight hour, not be able to see the mornin' sun rise, gettin' ready for Christmas day. Gettin' ready, done put in for your pass, “I’m goin' and see my relatives in a distant land.”

Gettin' ready, gettin' ready for Christmas day. Greasin’ up your gun, gettin' your dirk in order, gettin' your ice picks ready, gettin' ready for Christmas day.

Oh, I want to say to you, not only get ready, but be ready, get your heart ready, get your heart fixed. Go down to the Holy Ghost station, stay there till you get your hearts fixed, gettin' ready for Christmas day.

"My Grown-Up Christmas List"
performed by Kelly Clarkson

"Like Smoke in the Stanford Linear Accelerator..."

2010-12-23T00:22:00.000-08:00

but once should be quite enough...

worry not about how your family, or lack thereof,
stacks up to Norman Rockwell's rich inner fantasy life...

Getting Through Obligations
"Get What You Want Out of Life:...
––Richard Bandler

"As human beings, we are constantly faced with having to endure things which, in themselves, are not necessarily bad or good but for some people can seem unpleasant. Sometimes, going over to a relative's house and having Christmas dinner can seem like the most excruciating thing in the world. ...Some people make things a lot worse than they need to be. The trick to this is to have adequate preparation.

People usually think about how horrible or how unpleasant a future event is going to be. They plan for it. ...Whatever the event is, people can make things better or worse by how they think about it in advance. Events themselves are not necessarily good or bad. Our response to them is good or bad.

If you think about the things that make an excruciating event excruciating and you feel bad while you do it, and you do it over and over in preparation for the event, when you get there, it will be even worse.

I've always said that disappointment requires adequate planning. So does suffering. Suffering requires adequate planning because you have to know which bad feeling to have and when to have it. When Uncle ____ goes off on an unending story, you know it's time to pull your hair out by the roots. Instead, if you can learn to focus on only what it is that you enjoy, you can start to make the things that seem unpleasant feel silly.

You can do this through using a model like submodalities. What one person finds silly and what another finds excruciating can be identical. The truth is that it works much better when you take adequate preparation for the things that you have to go through. ...you can plan to deal with it more effectively.

In preparation for it, you go through and run the movie inside your mind, and while you're running it, you make it silly. Make it so that it doesn't bother you. It's silly that the same things, year in and year out, have driven you crazy since you know they're going to happen. You should be able to feel differently, and if you don't, then you can count on the fact that you'll suffer like you always do.

There are a couple of mental tricks that are really important to how you do this. In order to make time move faster, human beings mentally do something different. ...one of the things you do when you're driving down the road and things are moving very fast in your peripheral vision versus the center of your vision is to go into states of time distortion. That's why when people drive really fast down the road and then change speeds, they're still moving fast at about thirty or forty miles per hour, yet they feel like they are crawling because they were going seventy miles an hour beforehand. It takes a while for the brain to adjust.

When you want to go faster, you need to go inside your head and run a movie of what's going to happen so you know when to be disappointed, when to be in a state of frustration, or when to be in a state where you feel like pulling your hair out. You need to run it so that what you see in the center of the image moves very, very slowly and everything on the sides moves very fast.

...when Uncle____ is telling that same old, long boring story, you can watch everybody move around like they're Charlie Chaplin figures––so you plan in your head to make it go by quickly. It's about having adequate mental preparation so that, when it occurs, you go into a time warp and it doesn't seem like it takes hours. In fact, the trick is to run the center of the image in your mind really slowly so that Uncle____ talks at half the speed he normally does, but everything else moves really fast. Then, when the event actually occurs and he's actually talking faster than you had him talking in your head, it's going to seem easier.

Instead of wishing he would do things more quickly and imagining how fast it could be, you'll be doing the opposite. When it feels like it's slow, you imagine it going ten times slower than it normally does, so that when it occurs in reality, it feels faster. This has to do with contrast, and you can create the kind of contrast you want in your mind. Time is a very relative thing for human beings. Sometimes time appears to move very fast, and sometimes it seems to go by very slowly.

It's a mental trick to be able to shift from one event to another, from one time to another.

"What I Believe About Ghosts"
Robert Graves, Beryl & Marion, December 27, 1941
Bill Brandt 1928-1983
postcard procured in London while haunting a Brandt exposition...

Speeding Up Time Exercise

1. Think of a situation where you would like time to go by quickly.

2. Imagine the situation happening and whatever it is that is happening that makes it seem like time drags, then see the event happening in front of you going really slowly.

3. Imagine everything else around you is going really quickly and flying by like in a Charlie Chaplin movie. For, example, if it involves talking to someone, you will see them in the center of the movie talking really slowly while the rest of the background of the movie all runs around very quickly.

4. Continue to see the event go slowly while everything in your peripheral vision moves really quickly.

5. When you actually arrive and begin the event, whether it is standing in line or talking to someone or watching something, you will find it goes by far more quickly than you expected.

6. You can also go through this process while you are experiencing the event, and it works just as effectively.

Merry Christmas and Happy Time Distorting!

"Santa's On His Way"
Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys

"Driving While Under the Influence of Family History..."

2010-12-22T13:24:00.000-08:00

"Not that he had anything against paper. His inner bureaucrat reveled in the folders, ledgers, and binders.

Most of his colleagues, especially the younger ones, stored a lot of information on the computer. But not Fredericksson. He wanted to have rustling paper and binders to leaf through. The hole punch and stapler occupied a central place on his desk."

––Kjell Erickson, The Princess of Burundi

welcome to Command Central...

Admit it.

You thought I wasn't coming, correct?

Well, you were almost right.

If I had an ounce of good sense I would be on a sofa somewhere eating bonbons and clicking the NEXT PAGE button on my Kindle, but I gave myself an early Christmas present of a month's access to Ancestry.com, a massive genealogy software program, by subscription.

So, all bets on reasonableness are off. I've spent no fewer that 10 hours per day, and sometimes 12-14, over the past 3-4 days working on doing the data entry of all the family history information that I dragged over here from the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it. Besides, it dovetails so nicely with the perfectionistic tendencies of my own inner bureaucrat, to whom I have often referred as "The Cosmic Hall Monitor" with the greatest affection over my many years of being hypervigilant... It can't hurt anything but my eyes, temporarily, and it will leave one helluva crumb trail, n'est-pas?

But, it's a good thing my Frencher Half is out of town because he would be going stark raving mad at my blatant disregard for anything other than keyboarding. He is a stickler for being raisonable... Yesterday morning I got up at 4:30am, after 5 hours of sleep. Last night I went to bed this morning at 00:05. I have to admit, if I had been driving myself upstairs to bed I would have fallen asleep at the wheel, however, I did manage to sleep until 8:30am––a huge accomplishment for me!

Now it's almost midnight again and I'm 300 people richer in the ancestor worship department, so I'm gonna call it a day and fall down in bed, perchance to dream. What day is it? December 22nd, if I count back from Friday... So, all you last minute shoppers are probably gearing up for the big push. I wish you stamina in spades, mes amis.

I wish I had a river, I could skate away on...
La Creuse bordered by snow in Le Blanc
November 2010

"River"
covered by Sarah Mclachlan on her terrific
"Wintersong" Christmas season CD

"Noël Blanc en Français..."

2010-12-21T00:01:00.000-08:00

Dear Santa

Snowflakes softly falling,
upon your window they play.
Your blankets snug around you,
into sleep you drift away.

I bend to gently kiss you,
when I see that on the floor...
there's a letter neatly written,
I wonder who it's for.

I quietly unfold it
making sure you're still asleep,
it's a Christmas list for Santa,
one my heart will always keep.

It started just as always
with the toys seen on TV,
a new watch for your father
and a winter coat for me.

But as my eyes read on,
I could see that deep inside,
there were many things you wished for
that your loving heart would hide.

You asked if your friend Molly
could have another Dad;
It seems her father hits her
and it makes you very sad.

Then you asked dear Santa
if the neighbours down the street
could find a job, that he might have
some food, and clothes, and heat?

You saw a family on the news
whose house had blown away,
"Dear Santa, send them just one thing,
a place where they can stay."

"And Santa, those four cookies that
I left you for a treat,
could you take them to the children
who have nothing else to eat?"

"Do you know that little bear I have
the one I love so dear?
I'm leaving it for you to take
to Africa this year".

"And as you fly your reindeer
on this night of Jesus' birth,
could your magic bring to everyone,
goodwill and peace on earth?"

"There's one last thing before you go,
so grateful I would be,
if you'd smile at Baby Jesus
in the manger by our tree."

I pulled the letter close to me,
I felt it melt my heart.
Those tiny hands had written
what no other could impart.

"And a little child shall lead them,"
was whispered in my ear.
As I watched you sleep on Christmas Eve
while Santa Claus was here.

...Author Unknown

You can find Noël Blanc out there in Cyberspace being sung by other chanteurs, but I find this version evocative in a melancholy manner. And, there is that detail about Dalida's having committed suicide... Yes, there is that...

Birth, life, death, resurrection--reads like a script for a Passion play or a year of Judeo-Christian holidays and TARGET two-day sales in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave...

I am the Resurrection. But, that's another story, and, of course, it's a bit early for that as the calendar pages fly.

However, I am not a Christian, per se––not that I don't feel trapped in a state of grace as divinity personified. Which should explain some things... But, I don't hold that against Christmas or Easter and, as far as I can tell, neither Santa Claus, nor the Easter Bunny have found it to be an obstacle on their yearly rounds. They have never neglected me. Although, to be truthful, I have locked them out a couple of times over the years, but, fortunately, they always stopped back by the next year.

Jesus himself is in the forgiveness business, so I know that he has no problem with my long truancy from Vacation Bible School––I did take the blue plaster pie-tin-molded cast of my 4-year-old hand, never fear, and it sits on my desk anchoring me to my Oklahoma-rooted religious cultural traditions.

Nevertheless, I come from an honorable, long line of dead transmogrifiers, thus assuring that I have a grand capacity for turning virtually anything into grist for the mill and can hold my own against any cash-strapped Dust Bowl mechanic when it comes to using spit and baling wire to keep the tractor in the field or the car on the road trip.

"Noël Blanc"
performed by Dalida

Oh ! quand j'entends chanter Noël
J'aime revoir mes joies d'enfant
Le sapin scintillant, la neige d'argent
Noël, mon beau rêve blanc

Oh! quand j'entends sonner au ciel
L'heure où le bon vieillard descend
Je revois tes yeux clairs, Maman
Et je songe à d'autres Noëls blancs

Oh ! quand j'entends chanter Noël
J'aime revoir mes joies d'enfant
Le sapin scintillant, la neige d'argent
Noël, mon beau rêve blanc

Le sapin scintillant, la neige d'argent
Noël, mon beau rêve blanc

Oh ! quand j'entends sonner au ciel
L'heure où le bon vieillard descend
Je revois tes yeux clairs, Maman
Et je songe à d'autres Noëls blancs

La nuit est pleine de chants joyeux
Le bois craque dans le feu
La table est déjà garnie
Tout est prêt pour mes amis
Et j'attends l'heure où ils vont venir
En écoutant tous mes souvenirs

Oh ! quand j'entends chanter Noël
J'aime revoir mes joies d'enfant
Le sapin scintillant, la neige d'argent
Noël mon beau rêve blanc

Oh ! quand j'entends sonner au ciel
L'heure où le bon vieillard descend
Je revois tes yeux clairs, Maman
Et je songe à d'autres Noëls blancs
Je revois tes yeux clairs, Maman
Et je songe à d'autres Noëls blancs

"Sorry About That Entrée..."

2010-12-20T07:46:00.001-08:00

I know, I said I was going to come back with the entrée, right? Well, just be thankful that you aren't expecting Christmas dinner at my house... How 'bout if we just make a meal of appetizers? Sounds good, non? You wouldn't want to do it all the time, but sometimes it's nice.

"Carol of the Bells"
performed by Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks

"The Christmas Song" - en Français

2010-12-20T00:01:00.000-08:00

OK, all you lovers of French out there, this is just the appetizer. I'll be back later with the main course... Enjoy!

"The Christmas Song"
French lyrics

Le feu danse dans la cheminée
Dehors on tremble de froid
Nuit de Noël, de sapins parfumés
Partout, tu fais naître la joie

Et au réveillon, pour les amoureux sous le gui
Les baisers seront permis
Les enfants, le coeur vibrant d'espoir,
On peine à s'endormir ce soir

Le père noël s'est mis en route
Sur son traîneau
Chargé de jouet et de cadeaux
Et les petits guettent et écoutent
La ronde folle des rennes dans le ciel

Et moi pour vous,
je fais ce simple voeux
Qu'on échange depuis l'enfant dieu
Jeunes et moins jeunes
soyez tous très heureux
Joyeux joyeux Noël !

Et moi pour vous,
je fais ce simple voeux
Qu'on échange depuis l'enfant dieu
Jeunes et moins jeunes
soyez tous très heureux
Joyeux joyeux Noël

"A Ghost of Christmas Past..."

2010-12-19T00:01:00.000-08:00

Cartoon by Dan Piraro, Bizarro

"My Christmas List"
performed by Simple Plan

"Patty Did You Know?"

2010-12-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

cartoon by Tom Cheney

"Live forever.
Ask Jesus for details."
-seen on wall on 16th Street,
San Francisco, California
summer 1980
...resurrected from one of many
personal journals still to mined...

Breaking news in from the geographic center of France: Le Blanc is living up to its name as it is currently blanketed in de la neige blanche! I woke up this morning shortly before 6am, fired up my laptop, started checking my lines, fed and coffeed myself, and set about working on today's post in honor of the season to be jolly, the ancestors, their descendants, and, quite simply, my personal well-being, sanity, and emotional equilibrium.

The third of the Gregorian calendar represented by September, October, November, and December is emotionally-charged for me in a way that the rest of the year is not. School started the day after Labor Day in my childhood Oklahoma (I loved, if not school at all times, the promise of school and the new school supplies!) , my sister was born on September 20, 1956, Halloween was an excitedly anticipated night of excess, Thanksgiving was filled with family gatherings of one sort or another, my birthday came rapidly on the heels of the cultural imperative to eat turkey on the last Thursday of November, and both Santa and my little brother showed up on Christmas morning. It was a set-up for annual bouts of emotional feast and famine that continues in a slightly attenuated form to this day.

This year is no exception to my calendar-induced season of heightened emotional pitch. Fortunately, for me and my seasonal memory overload, on Thursday afternoon at 1pm, I put my husband in his car with his GPS programmed to drag him to the driveway of sister's home––his suitcase packed to get him through a week of calling on his nearest and dearest, his red T-shirt plastered with SANTA in white, up front and center, and a bag full of Santaesque goodies to distribute among his siblings, nieces, nephews, grand-nieces and -nephews, children, and grandchildren––and wished him bonne route et bonne chance as he made the concerted effort to construct a bridge back across the chasm created by his ousting from the first marital-family hearth a quarter of a century ago.

Currently, the bridge resembles nothing so much as one of those rickety constructions made out of jungle vines and tiny slats of hand-hewn wood––with a slat missing for every three still hanging by a thread of deteriorating vegetable matter––strung across the Valley of the Gwangi that the intrepid cowboy must traverse, adrenaline surging, before an enraged autochtone hacks the bridge off at its anchorage and he smacks face first into the cliff wall on the other side, if he doesn't just tumble into the abyss below. Things take time. Relationships take longer...

Patricia Lee WRIGHT Marshall
soon to be delivered of her 2nd child
Chickasha, Oklahoma
Christmas Day 1954

Jerry Franklin Marshall
& The unsuspecting 2 year old Pliers
520 South 7th Street
Chickasha, OK

The first step toward the open road...

and the last day of being the only child...

There's a new kid in town...

William Perrien Wright, Jerry Kevin Marshall
and The Pliers in her new incarnation as "the oldest"...

To go home may be impossible, but it is often a driving necessity, or at least a compelling dream... Home is a concept, not a place, it is a state of mind where self-definition starts; it is origins––the mix of time and place and smell and weather wherein one first realizes one is an original. . . . Home . . . remains in the mind as a place where reunion, if it were ever to occur, would happen. . . . It is about restoration of the right relations among things––and going home is where that restoration occurs, because that is where it matters most.

––A. Bartlett Giamatti, Take Time for Paradise

Family: Mode d'emploi...

One could do worse than to offer this book as a Christmas gift...

The sometimes obvious...

The rather more obscure...

"I'll Be Home For Christmas"
performed by Sarah McLachlan

Now that my Frencher Half is safely on his own road home, I am free to go home and restore the right relations among things to my heart's content and the limits of my ability to dredge my vast store of memories, rifle though my photographs, leaf through my old journals, and follow my impulse to leave crumbs on a cybertrail deep in a genealogical forest distinguished by the wreckage of innumerable massive trunks of trees uprooted and felled, branches wrenched from their points of origin by gale force estrangements and losses...

Had I not had the good fortune to read Monica McGoldrick's revelatory book, You Can Go Home Again, on the plane trip between southern California and central Oklahoma to attend the funeral of my 95 year old grandmother in March 2009, I would still be doing exactly the same psychoemotional archiving activities today––the habit of doing so, much like breathing, is deeply rooted in my nature––but I would be doing them without benefit of the confidence that her work conferred upon the value of my own.

Jerry Kevin Marshall
the Christmas baby boy
DOB 12/25/1954
circa summer 1955

The Christmas Template
Chickasha, Oklahoma, 1955
Effie Estelle WALLACE Marshall
Jerry Williamson & Lillie Lorene JOLLEY Marshall
James Edward Marshall, I

The house the Marshalls built...
Effie Estelle WALLACE Marshall & Jerry Kevin Marshall
Lillie Lorene JOLLEY Marshall & The Pliers
Christmas 1955

The Christmas baby boy's first birthday
Christmas Eve, 1955
1108 Iowa Street, Chickasha, OK

"Mary Did You Know?"
written by Mark Lowry
performed by Kathy Mattea

Mary did you know that your baby boy would someday walk on water?
Mary did you know that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters?
Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new?
This child that you've delivered, will soon deliver you.

Mary did you know that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?
Mary did you know that your baby boy will calm a storm with his hand?
Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
And when you kissed your little baby, then you kissed the face of God.

Mary did you know?
Mary did you know?
The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dead will live again.
The lame will leap, the dumb will speak the praises of the lamb.

Mary did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary did you know that your baby boy will one day rule the nations?
Did you know that your baby boy was heaven's perfect Lamb?
This sleeping child you're holding is the great I am.

"This Ain't Yo' Mamma's Christmas..."

2010-12-17T00:01:00.000-08:00

"2010 TV ad for Christmas @ TARGET..."

If you're fresh off the boat from the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, "the Christmas season" in la France profonde can feel somewhat anti-climactic. Add to that a total absence of commercial television and "You on yo' own, Bubba!" I accept that as one of the many baby steps in the acculturation process for a recent pilgrim to France and, truth be told, I was already used to a low-key response to the season for the 23 years in California with my Frencher Half, so I have long since had my back-up plans for Christmas for my inner-USian-child.

Dinner for 5...
if you've got the meal, Honey,
I've got the tableware...
Tuesday, December 7, 2010

As you may recall, a good part of the past 9 months has been about unpacking boxes. December was no exception. Out in the back, above the space where the patriarch used to stable his horse, there is a mini-attic of sorts, accessible by a trapdoor in the provisional ceiling of the old horse stall. That space is dusty but relatively dry--in that there are no actual leaks in the roof tiles--and has been a catchall recently for all the boxes that we succeeded in emptying and flattening out for temporary storage last spring. Additionally, there were 2 or 3 boxes full of miscellaneous red, white, and green Christmas decorations such as Christmas-themed flatware, placemats, napkins, coffee mugs, brightly-colored hand towels with Christmasy designs embroidered thereon, Santa-emblazoned playing cards, stockings, candles, candleholders, ersatz Santas in cardboard, glass, plastic, fabric, and a few tree ornaments that haven't seen a tree in years. There are even a couple of garlands of novelty lights--wannabe Santas and Airstreams--regrettably corded with U.S. plugs and bulbs... Mince!

Last week I climbed up there with the Frencher Half, who oddly enough does not trust me alone with ladders or knives, to break into those boxes and break out some sidekicks for my annual festival of digital Christmas carolers. We hauled the stuff out in batches, dusted it all off, and started hanging and placing it strategically around the house. And while we were at it, we set the table and hosted an impromptu dinner for three friends up the road who just happen to have been hurled by the ether from SoCal into Le Blanc. Thank Santa for the Frencher Half or we'd only have the holiday dishes on the table with nothing to fill them, unless, of course, you came over to cook for me...

L'arbre de Noël
Amédée Varin, French, 1818-1883
Published in Paris, 1982

My Christmas doings have consisted mostly of giving gifts of tea and cookies to warm up the day during this season of cold weather. I even dragged the Christmas wrapping paper down from the real attic and intend to formally wrap a couple of boxes. Last week the Frencher Half and I went into the town to the east 60kms and the town to the west 60kms, on weekdays, bien entendu, for a couple of shots of commercialism and strains of Christmas Muzak®.

The city of Poitiers has a two-storey mall that is anchored by a FNAC with a restrained inventory. But it has the basics--books, movies, gift cards for the grandchildren--and we helped ourselves to a small sampling of each. Otherwise, it's very quiet around here, festively-speaking. And there is an extent to which that is a function of fears and concerns about the economy in France. The vendors at the public market have been justifiably disgruntled in recent weeks due to the low turnout at the weekly Saturday market and there was a food fair in a large hangar that exists in town for just such events at which the turnout was remarkably weak.

Although, come to think of it, I did notice a lot of adults coming out of the separate corrugated tin shed, filled with toys and accessible by a cordoned pathway, that E.Leclerc set up in its parking lot. And I did find a couple of packs of red/green/gold paper napkins to pinch hit for my red cloth ones, just in case. So, there is a current of seasonal consuming coursing through the town's veins. Whew!

"Noël Nouvelet!"
Lyric: 16th C French
Music: Traditional 16th C French
arranged and performed by Loreena McKennitt

Noel nouvelet! Noel chantons icy;
Devotes gens' rendons a Dieu merci;
Chantons Noel pour le Roi nouvelet;
Noel nouvelet! Noel chantons icy!

En Bethleem' Marie et Joseph vy'
L'asne et le boeuf' l'Enfant couche parmy;
La creche etait au lieu d'un bercelet.
Noel nouvelet! Noel chantons icy!

L'estoile vint qui le jour esclaircy'
Et la vy bien d'ou j'etois departy
En Bethleem les trois roys conduisaient.
Noel nouvelet! Noel chantons icy!

L'un portrait l'or' et l'autre myrrhe aussi'
Et l'autre encens' que faisait bon senty:
Le paradis semblait le jardinet.

Noel nouvelet! Noel chantons icy!

Noel nouvelet! Noel chantons icy!

En douze jours fut Noel accomply;
Par cinq vers sera mon chant finy'
Par chaque jour j'en ai fait un couplet.
Noel nouvelet! Noel chantons icy!

"Blue Xmas: To Whom It May Concern..."

2010-12-16T00:01:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of Hulton Archive...

The older I get, the more curious I am to hear widest range of Christmas music possible. So, each year, beginning sometime after Thanksgiving, I start wearing out my own modest collection of Christmas songs, but I also actively look for new ones that I've never heard before. This year, having listened to some jazz instrumental interpretations, I wondered if Miles Davis had ever done one. In my research I dug up an anecdote concerning that which stated:

According to Jack Chambers (Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis), when Columbia wanted Davis to contribute a song to the "Jingle Bell Jazz" album, Davis complained to Dorough, "What the f*ck am I supposed to play for them? ‘White Christmas’?"

Ho! Ho! Ho!

So, in honor of Miles, I've posted something totally new to me for your edification and entertainment...

"Blue Xmas: To Whom It May Concern"
written & performed by
Miles Davis & Bob Dorough

Merry Christmas
I hope you have a white one,
but for me it's blue

Blue Christmas,
that's the way you see it when you're feeling blue
Blue Xmas, when you're blue at Christmastime
You see right through,
All the waste, all the sham, all the haste
and plain old bad taste

Sidewalk Santy Clauses are much, much, much too thin
They're wearing fancy rented costumes, false beards and big fat phony grins
And nearly everybody's standing round holding out their empty hand or tin cup
Gimme gimme gimme gimme, gimme gimme gimme
Fill my stocking up
All the way up

It's a time when the greedy give a dime to the needy
Blue Christmas, all the paper, tinsel and the fal-de-ral
Blue Xmas, people trading gifts that matter not at all
What I call
Fal-de-ral
Bitter gall.......Fal-de-ral

Lots of hungry, homeless children in your own backyards
While you're very, very busy addressing
Twenty zillion Christmas cards
Now, Yuletide is the season to receive and oh, to give and ahh, to share
But all you December do-gooders rush around and rant and rave and loudly blare
Merry Christmas
I hope yours is a bright one, but for me it bleeds

my Daddy is the only human being I've ever known
who actually used the utterance "Fal - de - ral"
Odds are, the expression is probably
a bastardization of something in French!
929 S.W. 66th Street, OKC, OK
circa 1960

"Christmas Red, Green, and Blue..."

2010-12-15T00:01:00.000-08:00

"Santa"
Jean Ray, French
1920

decorations of red...

I'll have a blue Christmas without you...

on a green Christmas tree...

I'll be so blue, thinking about you...

"Blue Christmas"
words & music by Billy Hayes & Jay Johnson
performed by Céline Dion

I'll have a Blue Christmas without you
I'll be so blue thinkin' about you
Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree
Won't be the same, if you're not here with me

And when those blue snowflakes start fallin'
And when those blue melodies start callin'
You'll be doin' all right, with your Christmas of white,
But I'll have a blue Christmas with out you.

Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree
Won't be the same, if you're not here with me
I'll have a Blue Christmas that's certain
And when that blue heartache starts hurtin'
You'll be doin' all right, with your Christmas of white,
But I'll have a blue, blue Christmas

"Tis The Season To Break Out The Snow Movies..."

2010-12-14T00:04:00.000-08:00

"A Simple Plan"
Billy Bob Thorton

illustration by Liliane Baron

I've noticed that he follows
her instructions to turn left,
no questions asked...

Just as I suspected, Hopelessness and Hope
are found on the same road...

a frosty expanse along the road
linking Le Blanc and Poitiers...

a fork in the road...

a chilly detail...

Hopelessness and Hope,
two farms with a backstory...

"A Simple Plan"
one of my favorite snow movies...

"Christmas Time's A Comin'"
performed by Sammy Kershaw
written by Tex Logan

Christmas time's a comin'
Christmas time's a comin'
Christmas time's a comin'
And I know I'm goin' home.

Snowflakes are fallin'
My old home's a callin'
Tall pines are hummin'
Christmas time's a comin'

Can't you hear them bells ringin', ringin'
Joy, joy, hear them singin'
When it's snowin' I'll be goin'
back to my country home

Christmas time's a comin'
Christmas time's a comin'
Christmas time's a comin'
And I know I'm goin' home

Holly's in the window
Home's where the wind blows
Can't walk for runnin'
Christmas time's a comin'

Can't you hear them bells ringin', ringin'
Joy, joy, hear them singin'
When it's snowin' I'll be goin'
back to my country home

Christmas time's a comin'
Christmas time's a comin'
Christmas time's a comin'
And I know I'm goin' home.

White candles burnin'
My old heart's a yearnin'
For the folks at home
When Christmas time's a comin'

Can't you hear them bells ringin', ringin'
Joy, joy, hear them singin'
When it's snowin' I'll be goin'
back to my country home'

Christmas time's a comin'
Christmas time's a comin'
Christmas time's a comin'
And I know I'm going home

Christmas time's a comin'
Christmas time's a comin'
Christmas time's a comin'
And I know I'm goin' home...

"This Is Not Exactly A Blahg Post..."

2010-12-03T12:01:00.000-08:00

...mwah, mwah, mwah...

You know, it's funny...

I have now been in living in la France profonde for just short of 9 months and I have assiduously avoided making any pronouncements on what I've encountered since my arrival. The reasons for that are manifold, but the number one reason is because I very quickly realized that I had not only brought myself with me to France, along with my own unique way of processing information in two languages, but I had also brought the totality of my 58 years of Americaness––with the exception of the physical landscape and its props––with me, too. So, as a good guest, if you will, a recent immigrant, I have felt that it was best to just observe and not pronounce.

Nevertheless, today when I went to le Café du Centre to have a light lunch as part of celebrating my birthday, it did cross my mind that French people, as a diverse and motley group of human beings, have gotten a bad rap when it comes to being described by foreigners as unsmilingly reserved.

I am convinced that, for the most part, that impression is derived from a lack of French language skills on the part of the observer, first and foremost, because it simply has not been born out by my first hand experience in the midst of French people living their daily lives within my sight and hearing for the past three-quarters of a year. Today was a perfect example of what I'm getting at...

The Frencher Half and I walked over about a block from the house to the café for lunch. We arrived right on the dot at 12noon. The café was bustling and we were offered a table near the entrance that would have been a bit chilly if we had accepted it. I explained that it was my birthday and that we wanted to linger a bit and were willing to wait for a table in the back, if there was no objection. Quickly thereafter a small table was found for us among equally small and larger tables with parties varying in size from a couple of diners to 8 or 9 people at a table. We perused our menus, ordered, and then had time to take in the ambiance of the room––convivial with a nice little hubbub of conversation going on throughout.

December 3, 1953
First Birthday Party
old habits die hard...

As I observed the people at the surrounding tables, what I was most conscious of was just how animated they were, how much they were talking, kidding around with one another, laughing, and beaming those smiles left and right. There were tables of men, tables of women, tables of mixed company but without fail they were tables of people engaged in conversation with one another. They were not loud conversations, in spite of their animated nature--just sociable.

It crossed my mind that whoever was describing the French as "reserved" had not been to the middle of France to a small town on a Friday at lunch. It goes without saying that most of the people in the café had at least a passing awareness of one another as part of the town, if they were not already family, friends, or coworkers. And that they were members of an economic class that could afford the option of going to a restaurant for lunch. But, all in all, they were anything but unsmiling and reserved.

Les toits de Paris,
Gustave Caillebotte, 1878

Les toits de notre cour...
Le Blanc, 12/2010

"Some Occasions Call for a Name..."

2010-12-02T00:44:00.000-08:00

Because, after all, what would it serve to write?
Isn't it enough simply to think?
(liberal translation...)

Off to a good start with a philosophical question...

I haven't been around here much lately. I have been gestating my, relatively, newly moved self for 9 months come December 6th. I am on my MacBook often for long hours but not blahging. Cat's had my tongue for almost 2 months now. I must have been doing something. I was probably mostly making lists, although I did make it to Paris for a week not long ago––another story for another time...

Tomorrow I will be 58 years old. Consequently, I was awake at 4-something this morning. I always get excited when my birthday is in the offing and I can't sleep late. Due to its proximity to the Thanksgiving holiday, the excitement starts early every year. This year was no different, even though I was far from the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave and the actual festivities.

Happy le birthday!

Truth be told, I probably squeeze a couple of weeks of low-grade excitement out of my birthday every year thanks to Thanksgiving and my own penchant for celebrating the hell out of the date of my birth. This year it's on a Friday, which means, of course, that I will make a fuss out of it all weekend long! It didn't hurt that I spent 55, plus or minus, birthdays in the USA where the Christmas TV specials start being trotted out by December 5th, Christmas rolls around about 3 weeks later, and we then had New Year's Eve and New Year's Day to enjoy after the gift-wrapping paper had been shredded!

...unless she went to Atmosp'hair.
In which case she looked great!

Saturday, November 27, 2010
traces of the first snow...

...but she had hypnotized herself
into not seeing them...

In spite of what you might have heard, there is no gift-giving gene. According to Richard Bandler, "visual" people give gifts and "auditory" people give greetings. Other than that, gift-giving is a culturally-inculcated behavior. Being a successfully-socialized native of the Land of Conspicuous Consumption, and being a "visual" person, I'm big on giving gifts, although I must say that living in central France has made it possible for me to detach myself almost entirely from the treadmill of endless events that necessitate gift-giving––saving me time, energy, and money in the process. I'd much rather have the gift of time and that is one thing that is in short supply these days.

...Pamela turning the other cheek...

I only bring up the subject because my husband was not culturally-predisposed by his working-class roots, nor his WWII upbringing in German-occupied 1940s Paris, nor postwar reconstruction France, to spend much time contemplating gifts that he was going to offer to anyone, never mind me, on his or her birthday. Thus, when my birthday rolls around I'm on my own in the gift-giving, if not celebrating, department... Just this morning I offered him a birthday card to give me if he was short! Turned out he already had that covered, so tomorrow at breakfast I'll have a pre-chosen card along with my morning coffee. In the meantime, I gave myself a copies of Mariner Software's MacJournal and Ascendo's DataVault for my birthday, so I don't have to do any last minute shopping. Thus, I'm ready for a lovely day of quiet pursuits.

In fact, I've have been using the Ascendo DataVault (there is an HP Data Vault, not to be confused with Ascendo's product) password protector for the past week in the interest of emptying my head of all the passwords, PINS, account numbers, email addresses, etc., that have been cluttering it for the past 15 years, more or less.

I have entered no fewer than 90 separate items of information and I am unemployed, for chrissakes! And we are only two. I can only imagine what it must be like for employed, two-income households with dependents... I was worried about my husband's ability to locate and access his entire financial life in the event of my unexpected death or maiming, so I got the software to relieve my feeling of responsibility for things I cannot control. I feel better already. The software is stand-alone in one's PC or laptop with a possibility to synchronize it with a mobile unit such as an iPhone or a Blackberry, neither of which I possess, nor have a hope in hell of possessing with the required monthly fee... I sent an email to see if it could be synch'ed with another laptop.

Mamma & Pamela
some time after
Wednesday, December 3, 1952
Norfolk, Virginia, USA

Prior to commencing the brain-drain of memorized log-ins, I also emptied my memory, into Shelfari, of 812 books that I could recall having read in my lifetime. I had seen the Shelfari widget on other blogs and had embedded one in ...Spit and Baling Wire... because I thought it was cute. And then one thing led to another and I just couldn't stop dredging up the memory and names of books that I had read. It turned out to be a really good mental exercise because I searched my memory in several different ways looking for titles themselves and, of course, found more than just the books. I obviously failed to log every book I ever read, but I brought back to present memory many of the books that I appreciated and took pleasure in reading over the course of my life. And I revisited the memory of my past self at different times in her life, with different people, in different abodes, at different libraries.

Daddy & Pamela
some time after
Wednesday, December 3, 1952
Norfolk, Virginia, USA

When I wake up tomorrow to the first day of my 59th year of living––having completed 58 of them––I will begin the year, if not of magical thinking, then, at least, of magically surviving the ages of both of my parents at the time of their deaths. Barring falling down dead within the next 2 weeks, it will be fairly easy to live longer than did my mother, as she killed herself 2 weeks after she turned 58. It seems hard to believe that that will have happened 20 years ago come March 31, 2011. I'll have to hang in a bit longer to surpass my father's time on earth, as he died 2 months before his 59th birthday in August 1989. But, the fact of the matter is, I want, and expect, to live for some time to come. I'm in good health, I'm happy, and I am excited to see what the next year brings.

In honor of my birthday, and the list of 812 books in Shelfari, I asked my husband if he would loan me the transformer that we brought with us from the States that we typically use out in the shed to recharge his electric tools and make rice in our favorite rice cooker. He brought it upstairs for me this afternoon and I finally hooked up our first computer, the Packard Bell PC that we purchased back in October 1995, once again.

The PC had been boxed up since we were sent packing back in 2006 and took up residence in the beater trailer for 4 years. I hadn't touched it for almost 5 years. But, with the help of the transformer, I was able to get it up and running in about 15 minutes and I was able to find the ACCESS database that I created back in November 1993 when I was finally able to concentrate enough to actually read a book from the beginning to the end and wanted to record my psychological crawl back from devastation after my mother's suicide.

Every time I completed a book I put it on the list. And I am gratified to tell you that the list of 812 books I created in Shelfari, without the prompt from my original database, was right on target. I left out a lot of books. I ended up with 964 books total this evening when I finished transposing everything from the list of 500+ books in ACCESS to the Shelfari list. Not bad for a 58 year old brain! Now that it's all nicely moved over to Shelfari with virtual books on virtual shelves, I'm excited to imagine the books that I will be reading in the year to come. Our bookshelves are full to bursting and with the Amazon Kindle on hand there's never been a better time for reading.

Where, indeed, is Pamela?
Only ever a keystroke away...

I have been doing other things associated with housekeeping in our laptops. I spent a couple of days bringing them all up to snuff as concerns the operation and browser software so that we can easily access the internet via our NeufBox. We watched "All The President's Men" in a Region 1 DVD on a 2004 iBook that I upgraded to from MAC Panther to MAC OS X Tiger, 10.4.8, by using the install disc from a different iBook. Which means that we can now use it for surfing the Web. And that also means that we have a laptop for visitors to use for the Internet or for watching a DVD. That's a nice asset.

It's time for me to shut down now and get some rest. I hope that whatever you are doing you are having fun with people you like and appreciate. I'll think of you tomorrow as I celebrate the accomplishments of my past 58 years and jump into the living of my 59th year!

Old Pictures
The Judds

Here's a little girl playing dress up
Somewhere under all that lace
Standin' in her mamma's high-heeled shoes
with a lipstick-covered face

An' here's a little boy on a pony
He's a cowboy all the way
He used to pull my hair and make me mad
At the Saturday matinee
Oh, who'd have thought I'd lose my heart
To the same little boy someday

Lookin' through my old pictures
Faded photographs
Some of them bring me close to tears
Others make me laugh
Old mem'ries seem to come alive
And open up the past again
And let me dream inside

Here's brother with his very first automobile
We thought he'd wash the paint away
He took a job that took him West
He's doin' very well
But we don't see much of brother these days

Oh, and this is my favorite of my papa
He's dressed up in his Sunday suit
Wide-brimmed hat, a watch on a chain
Well, I'm gonna tell you the truth
It's a picture of a downright handsome man
Caught in the prime of his youth

Lookin' through my old pictures
Faded photographs
Some of them bring me close to tears
Others make me laugh
Old mem'ries seem to come alive
And open up the past again
And let me dream inside

They open up the past again
And let me dream inside...

"Now All I Need Is The TV/VCR/VHS/Cart Combo..."

2010-10-05T22:09:00.000-07:00

...and, of course the guests.

But you wouldn't be interested in that, now, would you?

Flagship Motel 6,
Santa Barbara, California
December 3, 2007

Turns out my street is the shortest one on the Orange Brick Road. Who woulda thunk?

without context
there is no there there...

I realize that some people would not be interested in VCR/VHS combos in France. However, I assure you that with a collection of some, what?, 700+/- DVDs and VHSs in both U.S. and French regional coding, such equipment can come in very, very handy. I'm a huge fan of movies, as some of you may already know, so the first major purchase I made upon arriving in central France, once I was alone with an automobile and time on my hands, was a small, by today's standards, flat-screen television on a pedestal and a DVD/VHS combo from Conforma. I also added a modest set of complementary speakers with a sub-woofer to boost the sound quality of the TV.

That little set-up is safely ensconced in our pompously-called salon with black cotton velvet drapes. It is not hooked up to French television reception via our NeufBox due to an anomaly in our tiny town. But that is fine by me. I haven't watched anyone's network television in 8 months. Which is not to say that Law & Order: CI, Season 5 has not kept me company during many an interior painting hour. Ha! There is no finer companion for such a task! Or that I have not had the exquisite pleasure of watching 3 seasons of France's adopted hero-of-detection, Colombo, while squealing about the '70s' fantasy L.A. and the stab-you-in-the-eye attire of both the male and female actors featured in each episode. Or that one of my laptops is not loaded up with Season 1 of Mad Men. With all due respect to Henry de Monfreid, Ella Maillart, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry Miller, Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux, et al., there is no time like the present to be in the wind. You can mix it up all over the planet thanks to 1s and 0s and pixels!

la petite piaule before...
March 2010

However, TV is not the reason that I bought the television. Language is the reason that I invested in all that entertainment equipment. I learned French from films long before I had an in-house French conversation partner upon whom to hone my skills. I spent 25 years going to French films in the USA, France, Scotland, Mexico, anywhere there was one on the marquee. I saw my first French-language film, Paris Brule-t-il? in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma with Mrs. Baker's 8th or 9th grade French class when I was 12 or 13 years old. What a revelation! John Huston's Moulin Rouge premiered in my birth year and remains one of my all-time fantasy France films.

dismantling underway...
June 1010

The great thing about the VHS half of the DVD/VHS combo is the fact that, now that no one gives a rat's ass about VHSs, it is designed to play any VHS. Thus, all the copies of French films, among others, that we bought off Tower Records for three times nothing when they were divesting themselves of the VHS format in the face of the market takeover by DVDs, and then dragged to France in that 20ft container in April 2008, can be enjoyed at our leisure and used to reinforce anyone's French-language learning. Yippee!!!

old lino half torn out...
June 2010

The DVD half of the combo machine is dedicated to French region-only DVDs, but that is only a minor inconvenience because I have 5 MAC laptops of various vintages lying around the house, 2 of which are set to play French DVDs and 3 of which are set to play U.S. DVDs. So, this week, while my Frencher Half was up north, I was able to mount my own private Pedro Almodóvar film festival using the bought-in-France TV/DVD set-up in the salon and view the film in Spanish with French subtitles. That is a great way to improve two languages at once, I swear!

I was also able to watch French DVDs of a British film, Prick Up Your Ears and a Canadian/British coproduction of Felicia's Journey in English English with French subtitles––which is a fantastic way to test your knowledge of French by checking out how well the translation has been done via the subtitles themselves––on the TV/DVD combo. I got the British film for $2.99euros at Auchan and Atom Egoyan film from Amazon.fr for under $6euros.

prep cement and primer underway...
July 2010...

On other evenings, I watched French DVDs of a U.S. film called AutoFocus and the Spanish film Volver on an old MAC laptop that is frozen on the French region in one of the upstairs bedrooms before. AutoFocus was also only $2.99euros at Auchan and Volver was from a boxed-set I gave my SIL as a gift which, I might add, she never even took the cellophane off of. It's not that she doesn't like P.A. It's that she doesn't approve of the concept of a television in the home that will play movies... Everyone has her cross to bear, I suppose.

new lino installed, new paint applied...
September 9, 2010

Yesterday, when the wandering Frenchman showed up, it just so happens that he came home with a Paris-suburb-friend's total VHS collection all taped up in cartons. There were about 160 good-condition VHSs, evenly split between new and copied from TV movies and documentaries that his friend had given him after converting them to digital format. Talk about The Treasure of the Sierra Madre! We unpacked it all and stacked it up in one wing of the shotgun hallway that runs from the front door to the back courtyard. You will be interested to hear that I had a major ESP moment upon opening one box in particular. I saw La Nuit de Varennes in 1983 in San Francisco and harbored a deep desire to see it again. I even took the FH to a film showing at my old place of employment, only to be told that the film had not arrived. Upon opening the largest box I had a flash of the film and a thought that it might be contained therein. Lo and bef'inghold, it was there! Along with a French version of The Front and Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Make my day!

daybed w/trundle installed and made up...

So, now you can see why I still have to furnish la petite piaule with an entertainment module. The foreign language study zone is fairly complete. The bookshelves are stocked with books galore on French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese. There are even Tagalog and Vietnamese primers. And I still have to run a test drive on the wifi out there. But, all in all, as you can see, we have a brand-spanking-new state-of-the-art petite piaule almost completely finished. Oh, yeah, it will probably have a frig and a toaster-oven when all is said and done, but, I ask you, if you had to choose between multimedia and food, seriously, what would you choose?

spackle, 3 coats of primer, 3 coats of finish applied...

curtain rods, curtains, appliances, bookcases installed...

holes drilled, anchors sunk, screws screwed,
posters photos, mirrors hung...

bookcases overloaded,
world's cutest, most flexible table
and closet mounted...
September/October 2010...

a FrancoAmerican coproduction,
too cozy for words...

"We'll leave the light on for you..."

and Bill Burdette will leave the light on for us...

"How Do You Work This Thing Again?"

2010-10-03T23:04:00.000-07:00

Well, it's probably like riding a bicycle––once you learn how, you never forget, unless, of course, you have a traumatic head injury between rides, in which case, all bets are off...

Traumatic head injuries aside, for the time being, I hadn't intended to not post for 7 weeks, but that's what I did, didn't I? I did some mental blahg posting, but not much. I wondered why I wasn't posting, but not much. I was probably running silent, running deep...

sign posted on the memorial grounds of Oradour-sur-Glane...

Mostly it had to do with two separate, but equally powerful, influences on free-association and blahging:

the fact that my version of life in France corresponds poorly to popular francophile fantasies of the good life in France, and
the matter of mortality

"I had the right to remain silent,
but I didn't have the ability!"
–Ron White
random t-shirt that says it all...

As, perhaps, was to be expected, as part of the transitional phase of relocating to France from the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, I started to feel a need to articulate why I came to France when, and under the circumstances in which, I did. And, frankly, with all of the physical labor that there has been/is to be done around our little homestead, I haven't had the energy or the concentration that such a process of clarification in writing would have required of me.

Since last August's post, it has just been day after day of paying attention to both the demands of establishing a physical household in a new land; working to "plug us into" the socioeconomic network of la belle France; attending to family and friend relations and visits; and trying to squeeze in time for intellectual pursuits.

Examples of all four abound:

unpacking and stowing two decades worth of shared belongings in a 200+ year old house with absolutely no closets on-site.
building and loading provisional shelves full of clothes, linens, books, CDs, DVDs, photo albums, USA important docs, France important docs
raising hell with the bank over overdraft fees and getting them waived ("Mary, don't ask!" but I triumphed and got my $172 euros back)
setting up an electronic register for the checking account which is hemorrhaging like a stuck pig
doing the scut work for my husband on large projects such as the one pictured below...
setting up online statements/accounting with all of the major utilities––TV (of which Le Blanc has none, don't ask)/telephone/Internet (SFR), electricity of France (EDF), gas of France (GDF), cell phones (Orange & SFR)
reading up on the history of France; the exportation of U.S. cultural constructs in psychology; psychosomatic illness, among other books
painting the common spaces––WC, shower/sink room, hallways
installing floor-to-ceiling drapes in hallways and at the top and bottom of the stairwell to cut the wind/cold of the coming winter
introducing us into the stream of medical/dental system
setting up a French electronic communication universe of voicemail, email, and contact lists and using them
setting up a semi-independent guest room with new lino, paint, furniture, appliances, bookcases, closet

They don't call it starting over for nothing! And, to top it all off, my days are conducted entirely in French. I don't speak Standard American English here. It is of no use whatsoever. So, fortunately for me, all those years of speaking French in the USA are paying off in spades.

This list of non-optional activities has been ongoing for just short of 7 months now, and that's not counting the BIL and cousin events inserted for a change of pace. My Frencher half had/has ideas stacked up for years' worth of work on structural improvements including, but not limited to, an awning that he designed, constructed, and painted with my humble assistance in order to protect both the guest room and the cellar below from the inclement weather that is a salient feature of life in central France.

Next on the list is the installation of a door in a 2-foot-thick stone wall that will permit access to our property from the rear. The permission alone to construct such a door took 6 months to acquire. Not due to any bureaucratic torment, but simply because every single thing in France takes longer to do than in, for example, the USA. That is not a complaint, that is a reality of living deep in French culture. You've heard of "livin' on Tulsa time" or "bein' on lawyer time?" Well, there's such a thing as "French time" and it's worlds away from time as conceived of in the good old US of A. Take my word for it, it will make for better tourism or acculturation...

before...
September 2009

an x-ray of daily life in la France profonde...

after...
September 2010

sitting on the top of the auvent...

So, as you can see, I haven't had much time for plumbing any depths other than those of the toilet bowl on le broyer––which, for those of you who care, is a toilet in which a limited amount of water is standing when you go to make use of the facilities and in which water rises up to meet your deposit of waste material before then being very noisily sucked down the toilet drain. If you have spent your life urinating and defecating into a toilet bowl full of water, you don't know what you've been missing in the way of bowl cleaning and air-freshener use. All I can say is that I realize the error of my ways in not having been more appreciative of the toilet bowls that I have known in my past...

In addition to the interminably long "To-Do" list, I have been in a state of deep contemplation of the concrete factors that inspired me to move to France. As you may, or not, know, my husband is 74 years old. He doesn't look it. He doesn't act it. His medical profile, with the exception of having had a near-fatal heart attack in March 2002 and a radical prostatectomy in July 2004, does not show it. And his work history is an anomaly in the USA and France––he was still banging on hard, unyielding stone and producing hand-drawn architectural renderings and cutting lists until June 2009, and getting paid a salary for it as a self-employed tailleur de pierre.

"Death Came A Knockin'"
performed by Ruthie Foster

The guy is a bloody Energizer Bunny with a great disposition. He can barely tolerate downtime in any form. But, and this is the part where mortality enters stage right, he is not immortal. Nor, I suppose, am I. However, statistically-speaking, it is he who is closer to having an experience up close and personal with his mortality. And, if he is lucky, it is I who will have the experience of the proof of his mortality and he will be in the Ether before the Devil knows he's dead.

It was with these elements in mind that we went to a small gathering of the, mostly, elderly to discuss the legalities and costs of getting ourselves buried, that was promoted by the local funeral home and presided over by our lovely notaire. It was a great cultural experience and led to our having visited the funeral director to prepare our funeral arrangements last Tuesday. The next step is laying out the payment plan with the financial lady. Nice people, one and all. An unavoidable activity if you are the 2nd wife of a man with children from his first marriage. Trust me.

"The Loved One," 1965

Thus, evidence of my prowess in French notwithstanding, my feelings about being in France are bittersweet. We had 22 years in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, we did some traveling to see its wonders, and we have the Kodak moments spiral-bound in genuine fake leather to prove it. But one can't pretend that the party is going to go on forever. Or, rather, one does so at one's peril. I know exactly what it feels like to lose a paramount human being in one's life. It feels like a bomb went off in one's thoracic cavity and left a crater the size of the Hexagon.
So, having already had 2 special deliveries on the wall in the course of this married life, I lobbied for a move to France where the house was paid for; the doctor was within walking distance; the grocery store was right through that 2-foot-thick wall along the back of the courtyard; the children, the grandchildren, the sister, the brother, the nieces, nephews, grandnieces, grandnephews, and various cousins were all within a few hours by car or train; there was a monthly stipend, a small savings account, and national health insurance--the young, capable, independently-employed nurse came to the house last week to give us the flu shots that I procured myself from the pharmacy, whose backdoor opens onto my short and narrow little street here in Boonville, France. My annual pap & pelvic is done. France even tested me for Vitamin D and I came up deficient, so it also treated me with some booster swallows of a monster Vit D replacement called Zyma D. I'm up for my mammogram on October 12th.

"Why break my blahg silence today?"

My Frencher half is up north, making the rounds from sibling to friend to sibling to child to grandchild. I have some free time to mount a private Pedro Almodóvar film festival in Spanish with French subtitles ("Be still my heart!"); ride shotgun to Tours for an ophthalmologist visit for a 3-year old with her grandmother, my SAE-conversation student; write numerous private emails; work on a contact list for a potential future incarnation as a recipient of foreign visitors to my French home; forget to move my car from the public parking lot that quick-changes every Saturday into le marché couvert and have to run out in my London Fog-covered sleeping t-shirt; ignore the mail, ignore the telephone; skip meals, eat at odd hours, eat whatever I want, eat dessert first, whatever; have a 2nd session of hypnotherapy in Châteauroux; shop for household appointments; drag every stinking suitcase I own––and the utility shelves upon which they were stored––up 3 flights of stairs in preparation for that hole in the wall out back––without which we can't buy supplies and install our dream sub-flooring in the attic on the way to transforming it into my own private old-age home––every woman has her dreams!; and, finally, blahg a bit.

I missed blahging regularly, but I hate writing when I'm tired. There's no point in it. And more to the point, no pleasure. And being tired is part and parcel of this herky-jerky transition I'm making between an old life and a new. I have said before that the most noticeable symptom of my own acculturation process is fatigue itself. Fatigue is a response to stimuli for me and the tiring stimuli are myriad.

Rasmenia recently did a blog post on a phenomenon that induces great fatigue each time I leave the house to engage the new terrain and its natives. If you want to take a peek behind the scenes of the acculturation process for denizens of the USA who attempt it here in France, her post is a terrific place to start. The truth of her experience slaps me upside the head every time I enter a grocery store, a hardware store, a bookstore, you name it, any place that human beings congregate. I knew about it intellectually from reading Edward Twitchell Hall's The Hidden Dimension two decades ago, but living it out is enough to send me scurrying back to my hidey-hole a bit more weary for wear:

Hall is most associated with proxemics, the study of the human use of space within the context of culture. In The Hidden Dimension (1966), Hall developed his theory of proxemics, arguing that human perceptions of space, although derived from sensory apparatus that all humans share, are molded and patterned by culture. He argued that differing cultural frameworks for defining and organizing space, which are internalized in all people at an unconscious level, can lead to serious failures of communication and understanding in cross-cultural settings. This book analyzed both the personal spaces that people form around their bodies as well as the macro-level sensibilities that shape cultural expectations about how streets, neighborhoods and cities should be properly organized.
Hall's most famous innovation has to do with the definition of the informal, or personal spaces that surround individuals:

Intimate space—the closest "bubble" of space surrounding a person. Entry into this space is acceptable only for the closest friends and intimates.
Social and consultative spaces—the spaces in which people feel comfortable conducting routine social interactions with acquaintances as well as strangers.
Public space—the area of space beyond which people will perceive interactions as impersonal and relatively anonymous.

Cultural expectations about these spaces vary widely. In the United States, for instance, people engaged in conversation will assume a social distance of roughly 4–7', but in many parts of Europe the expected social distance is roughly half that with the result that Americans traveling overseas often experience the urgent need to back away from a conversation partner who seems to be getting too close. At the level of fixed and semi-fixed feature space, the terms Hall uses to describe furniture, buildings and cities, every culture has similar internalized expectations about how these areas should be organized. United States cities, for instance, are customarily set out along a grid, a preference inherited from the British, but in France and Spain a star pattern is preferred.

"Forewarned is forearmed," as they say. However, "There's no way out, but through," as I have been known to say, which means that I'll be out here flailing, no doubt, for some time to come. I'm sorry that there is no fashion, no cuisine, no tourism, no photos of old frequently-photographed monuments, no francophilia here. I'm sure it must be very boring for visitors to this blahg.

I had tastefully artistic photos of the clean-up of a 2-car wreck on a two-lane road with a median upon which one had to work hard to succeed in smashing into anyone else, but a municipal policeman accosted me while I was stopped in the middle of the road in a traffic slowdown, moralized to me about taking pictures of le malheur des autres (there were no victims of said car wreck present, only the tow truck and the cops for the graphically crumpled front- and back-ends), insisted that I delete the photos of mangled metal, and refused to give me his name or ID number for future reference.

"Welcome to France!" Officer Friendly has been replaced by an individual who is under no obligation to identify himself by name or identification number to the citizenry of France. Oh, I know this tidbit because I went to la Gendarmerie and la Police Municipale to inquire about the assertion that one is not allowed to photograph the police of France, nor, it would appear, a car wreck, and that police officers do not have to proffer ID upon request by a member of the public.

Wrap your red, white, and blue brain around that concept, mes chers!

"Look Mom, no hands!"

"The Power Of Negative Thinking..."

2010-08-15T00:36:00.000-07:00

"For many people, guilt is a signal that they have chosen to do something for themselves. I advise most people with serious medical conditions that there is probably something out of balance if they do not feel guilty. They are still putting their own needs, emotions, interests last. The power of negative thinking could permit people to welcome their guilt rather than shun it."

––When The Body Says No: The Hidden Cost Of Stress
Dr. Gabor Maté

Today, as is my habit, I started my morning with a quick tour of the blogs I follow and I came upon a post by a woman who has been a friend of mine for almost 25 years. She had posted movingly about recent times and accomplishments in her life and, because I have been acquainted with her and have memories or times in my own life that are inextricably interwoven with hers, I could not help but read her post at more than one level. Or, perhaps, read into her post parallel challenges that I knew were there, above and beyond those to which she alluded. Naturally, the level at which I was reading her post overlaps and flows into my daily life, my recent reading, the motivation for that reading, and the challenges that I face at this point in my own life.

If my friend were not writing a blog I could not read it. Thus, I would only know about her life and personal challenges those things which she chose to share with me verbally, or those things which I had observed for myself over time. If I had not been reading material that was pertinent to what I sensed or felt that she was dealing with, that dovetailed with issues that I too was in the process of examining, I could not segue from my current reading to her current post and back to my current contemplation of the issue of positive thinking as contrasted with negative thinking––all matters of chronic physical illness aside because, at the moment, neither of us is dealing with the repercussions of a cancer diagnosis or any other chronic physical health problem, to our knowledge.

Nevertheless, you can take it to the bank that, as human beings, we are all dealing with the stress inherent in the individuation and maturation process associated with our relationships. And, in my case, it has been demonstrated on numberless occasions, for the entirety of my life, that I have a habit of substituting an amazingly broad variety of physical symptom equivalencies for the emotions that I am reluctant to, that it feels decidedly unsafe to, or that I don't know how to, express, and, thus, subsequently, repress––which has given me ample opportunity to experience the U.S. medico-industrial complex from an up-close-and-personal vantage point over the years. More often than not, those emotions whirl around an axis of anger.

Consequently, upon reading my friend and fellow female blogger's post today, my immediate response, in the form of a comment, would have been the quote below, had I not thought better of it and decided that I should probably put things in context and use the quote that her post inspired in me as the jumping off point for a post of my own...

"Low" can be a very good place to be, and stay, for a good bit, when one is at a critical juncture in an overfull-of-fulfilling-the-needs-of-others place in one's own life.

The Canadian physician, Dr. Gabor Maté, in his book, When The Body Says No: The Hidden Cost Of Stress has a chapter entitled, The Power of Negative Thinking which mentions in part:

The first step in retracing our way to health is to abandon our attachment to what is called positive thinking. Too many times in the course of palliative care work I sat with dejected people who expressed their bewilderment at having developed cancer. "I have always been a positive thinker," one man in his late forties told me. "I have never given in to pessimistic thoughts. Why should I get cancer?"

As an antidote to terminal optimism (my bold), I have recommended the power of negative thinking. "Tongue in cheek, of course," I quickly add. "What I really believe in is the power of thinking. As soon as we qualify the word thinking with the adjective positive, we exclude those parts of reality that strike us as "negative." That is how most people who espouse positive thinking seem to operate. Genuine positive thinking begins by including all our reality. It is guided by the confidence that we can trust ourselves to face the full truth, whatever that full truth may turn out to be.

As Dr. Michael Kerr points out, compulsive optimism is one of the ways we bind our anxiety to avoid confronting it. That form of positive thinking is the coping mechanism of the hurt child. The adult who remains hurt without being aware of it makes this residual defence of the child into a life principle.

...In order to heal, it is essential to gather the strength to think negatively. Negative thinking is not a doleful, pessimistic view that masquerades as "realism." Rather, it is a willingness to consider what is not working? What is not in balance? What have I ignored? What is my body saying no to? (my bold) Without these questions, the stresses responsible for our lack of balance will remain hidden.

Even more fundamentally, not posing these questions is itself a source of stress. First, "positive thinking" is based on an unconscious belief that we are not strong enough to handle reality. Allowing this fear to dominate engenders a state of childhood apprehension. Whether or not the apprehension is conscious, it is a state of stress. Second, lack of essential information about ourselves and our situation is one of the potent activators of the hypothalmic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress response. Third, stress wanes as independent, autonomous control increases."

"Low" is a very good place to be even when one is not battling a chronic physical health problem, it would seem, according to Dr. Gabor Maté, that is. Not that I have any opinions about it...

Dr. Maté came to my attention on the eve of my departure from the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave for France. I had never heard of him until the evening that I was driving from Stevenson Ranch to Malibu without a map and he was being interviewed in the context of a PBS radio fund-raising drive. I had known for quite some time that I regularly suffered painful physical symptoms of one sort or the other that had their roots in emotional distress. Although, I was born in 1952, I didn't really get it until 1995 after having suffered with what was diagnosed as sciatica but was actually repressed rage over the suicide death of my mother in 1991 ("How fucking dare she?!"––among other emotions...), I will admit. And "getting it" seems to be a non-linear process of having to "get it" over and over again as new challenges, and symptoms/equivalencies, arise.

"When the Body Says No: The Hidden Cost of Stress"
Democracy Now! radio interview with Dr. Gabor Maté 1/3

"When the Body Says No: The Hidden Cost of Stress"
Democracy Now! radio interview with Dr. Gabor Maté 2/3

"When the Body Says No: The Hidden Cost of Stress"
Democracy Now! radio interview with Dr. Gabor Maté 3/3

It was only after coming upon Dr. John E. Sarno's book, Mind Over Back Pain, four years after my mother's self-inflicted death, and finding that my behavioral and psychological profile fit very closely with that of those individuals that Dr. Sarno had treated for what he called Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS) that I began to have my sciatica symptoms subside to any dependable degree. Being very impressed with the wisdom of his words, I went on to read all of his other books, up to and including his most recent collaborative publication, The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders, which I just completed reading this past week and which overlaps mightily with the observations of Dr. Gabor Maté in When the Body Say No: The Hidden Cost of Stress.

"The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders"
radio interview with Dr. John Sarno

Having completed those two books, with plans to reread both of them, I am currently reading the newest book by one of my favorite authors, Barbara Ehrenreich, entitled Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America (this book is entitled, Smile Or Die... in the UK) which takes a slightly different approach (read a thoughtful review that does a good job of putting the work's blessings and curses into high relief) to Dr. Gabor Maté's, allegedly, tongue in cheek suggestion to practice negative thinking, but nevertheless offers one an opportunity to read a sustained argument that puts the personal and the political on equal footing.

"Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America"
TV interview with Barbara Ehrenreich 1/2

"Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America"
TV interview with Barbara Ehrenreich 1/2

I have a running debate with myself about whether I am a pessimistic optimist or an optimistic pessimist. I have a finely-honed ability to recognize when we are in the midst of a best-of-the-worst situation––we might definitely be in the crapper, but we're still floating. But, no one on earth is going to get me confused with Pollyanna. I am disinclined to attempt relentless cheerfulness. I've got B Plans for my Plan Bs and I actually believe that there are people, places, and things in any given life that are worth making escape plans for and quitting in one's own best interest. I cherish the Blues and need my down time. As Calvin Banyan writes in The Secret Language of Feelings, "The Tertiary Feeling of depression (situational not clinical - my comment) is the safety valve nature has provided to save you from continuing fruitless effort in which you were engaged. ...recovery from depression requires rest and a new approach."

I'm likely to be contemplating the issues brought up in this post for some time to come, so if you are of a mind, stop by and muse upon them with me...

"A therapist once said to me, "If you face the choice between feeling guilt and resentment, choose the guilt every time." It is wisdom I have passed on to many others since. If a refusal saddles you with guilt, while consent leaves resentment in its wake, opt for the guilt. Resentment is soul suicide."

––When The Body Says No: The Hidden Cost Of Stress
Dr. Gabor Maté

"I Can't See Clearly Now..."

2010-08-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

As I noted yesterday, I had not intended to post about electronic jigsaw puzzles, but I got sidetracked.

I had something rather more pressing on my mind. I was planning to enlighten those of you who have had little or no experience with Turkish toilets in the interest of saving you any number and variety of miseries. But before doing so, I would like to introduce you to some important reading glasses that I have loved.

pearly white #3.00 readers
from Barnes & Noble, Costa Mesa, CA...
lost in April 2010 in France...

The pearly white readers that you see pictured above were a gift that I gave myself for one of my birthdays a couple of years ago. I found them at a Barnes & Noble outlet in SoCal and, because they were both pearly, as opposed to plastiquey, white, with #3.00 magnification factor (allowing for the reading of the obscenely small print in maps), and a modified, rounded--off rectangular form, I fell madly in love with them. Some of you will recall that I lost them at Le Grand-Pressigny Musée de la Préhistoire on the occasion of an afternoon outing and a change of handbag. I would have been less likely to have lost them had the lasso that is attached to them in the photo above been attached to them last April on the museum grounds...

black matte from optometrist,
Newport Beach, CA...
lost in June 2010 in France...

The glasses in the 2nd photo were my favorite prescription bifocals––I read many a wonderful book with them––and were lost one day during the course of an outing that entailed any number of getting-ins and -outs of the car while taking a ride around the local countryside here in MON, France. I did not realize that I had lost them, and the sunglasses clip-on attached to them, until perhaps a day after their disappearance. I was carrying a different handbag than the one I usually carry for travel and a different one than I had been carrying for the loss of the pearly white readers... It goes without saying that I switched back to my "travel handbag" at that point because I am habituated by long years of use to stowing my important belongings in it and have never lost any of them while using it.

pinky beige glossy from Costco optometry,
Fountain Valley, CA...
lost in August 2010 in France...

decidedly bad look
in a country abounding in Turkish toilets...

The prescription sunglasses pictured in the 3rd and 4th photos above were procured with my last official Rx from the 4th Street Kaiser Permanente optometrist in Santa Ana, California in 2009, along with a pair of matching reading bifocals, at a Costco outlet in Fountain Valley, California. I arranged to buy them because they were not f'ing rectangles and I brought them to France in September 2009 and left them, both pairs of glasses, together, safely, in the house until I could be reunited with them in April 2010 when I finally took up residence in our small abode here. Since April I had been wearing them fairly successfully to protect my eyes in bright sunlight and to be able to read maps while in the car.

On Monday, August 9th, the day after the man suffered his heart attack, in no small part due to the complications of chronic alcoholism, in the stairwell of the café/bar across the street, my Frencher half and I decided to make an outing in our general geographic location. We packed a picnic, loaded up the car, and set out to see the sights.

It was a sunny day, so I wore my pinky beige prescription bifocals so that I could read the maps like a good bavigatrice (this is a word of my own creation that combines the function of acting as the female navigator ((navigatrice)) and that of being the entertaining female travel companion who is not doing the driving ((bavarde) and should not be confused with baver, which, quite simply means "to slobber" or "to drool")––a job, I might point out, at which my husband fails miserably––not not drooling. He refuses to entertain me when I am driving. He just doesn't see it as his duty. Consequently, I let him drive and entertain us both, at very best, or myself, in a worst case scenario.

We visited, among other things, the tiny town of Menoux which was home to a Bolvian artist, his French wife from le Berry, and their 5 children for many years, and still houses his family and his legacy of artwork, including an interior paint job that he did on the village church that will knock your socks off. We toured both the church and the public areas of the now deceased painter/sculptor's home, talked with one of his adult daughters and his vivacious quite elderly wife, and then took back to the road.

At a certain point in our drive we decided to pull over into a rest area that was just across the road from an overlook out across a sharp meander in La Creuse, the river that runs through the town of Le Blanc. There was a semi-shaded picnic table and we had a simple and relaxing lunch. A couple in an RV joined us in the parking lot for a lunch break of their own at the table in their rolling home. It was all very pleasant.

After our meal and packing up, my husband went off to the WC, a tiny little building tucked away at the other end of the parking lot from our table. When he got back I decided that I would avail myself of the opportunity to take a leak and to wash my hands. So, I headed over to the concrete edifice and entered to find two urinals on the wall directly in front of me, illuminated by natural light, and an open door to a Turkish toilet interior awash in semi-darkness.

Thus, to avoid any misstep, I took off my superb-fitting, perfectly-tinted, eye-saving, highly comfortable, prescription bifocal sunglasses and hooked them into the neckline of the top that I am shown wearing, coincidentally enough, in photo #1, just as they appear hooked in the neckline of my dress in photo #4, so that I could see to enter the descriptively-known "squat" toilet, place my feet on the magic pedestals for just that purpose, assume the position, and take a leak––all without getting my calf-length denim skirt drenched in the watery residue of anyone else's attempt to do the same.

Bearing in mind that my left ankle does not, in the least, bend, given that it was crushed in an accident and reconstructed with metal plates, screws, and bone grafts, I have, understandably the slightest penchant for leaning just a tad forward when in the process of executing the micro-motions necessary to correctly position myself to take advantage of the oriental-style commode. And only the slightest forward slant of my torso was required to flawlessly, with no effort on my part whatsoever, launch my carefully-anchored sunglasses from the neckline of my top to the large-diameter, non-grated-at-any-level-prior-to-arriving-in-the-septic-tank-below-the-earth's-stony-crust, gaping ceramic hole beneath my half-crouched form. In fact, I did not feel my darkly tinted bifocals detach themselves from my apparel. I was only aware that they had done so as I heard the first, and perhaps only, clickety-clack! of plastic on ceramic and witnessed briefly, and with utter astonishment, as my much needed eyewear slid relentlessly, hopelessly, straight, down the drain. "Do not pass go. Do not collect $200." Down the drain... "Shit."

Well, as you can no doubt easily imagine, I then proceeded to piss on my beloved glasses, clean up, wash my hands, and get the f'k out of the latest Turkish toilet to wreak havoc with nature's call and drench a section of the bottom of my skirt in back, try as I might to avoid such an eventuality. The one thing that I noticed, however, was that I did not experience the visceral surge of adrenaline that would normally have accompanied such an event. It is possible that I have become inured...

"I Can See Clearly Now"
performed by the Holly Cole Trio

Don't pass up this next song. It is one of my favorite C&W songs. I went all the way to Nashville, Tennessee to buy the CD after listening the hell out of the the old cassette. I'm just sayin'...

"Down To My Last Broken Heart"
performed by Janie Fricke

Well, I've been down to my last dime
Down to my last dance
Down to the last time
Down to my last chance

Well, I've been down to
nothing, left at all a time or two
This time I think I'm down to
something, I can't afford to lose

I think I'm down to my last broken heart
I think I'm fallin' in love with you
I'm just afraid to start
Until I know for sure
our love won't fall apart
'Cause I think I'm down to my last broken heart

Well, I can feel the spark of love
and it's a sweet dream
But will there be enough
to keep on burnin'
Well, I've felt the flame of love before
And I watched it burnin' out
This time I wanna know for sure,
without a doubt

'Cause I think I'm down to my last broken heart
I think I'm fallin' in love with you
I'm just afraid to start
Until I know for sure
our love won't fall apart
'Cause I think I'm down to my last broken heart

Yes, I think I'm down to my last broken heart

"Oh My Gawd! There Really Is A Gawd!..."

2010-08-12T00:50:00.000-07:00

...and she completely distracted me from my intention of posting about something entirely different! But, that is what the unexpected is all about, I suppose. Unless, of course, the "unexpected" is about scaring the shit out of me, again!

Anyway, I was lying in bed, as usual, reading, as usual, when I decided to pop out of bed last night, just before shutting down the laptop before bedtime, to check email. At that point, I got a junkmail from the Springbok® jigsaw puzzle people, which got me scrolling through their offerings because we recently did a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle that was not by Springbok® but reminded me of them because the pieces did not require a microscope and a 1000 watts to view them, nor were they all cut to the same exact Lilliputian size and shape.

a good reason to own
a Conforma 25 euro coffee table,
a rectangular glass Lazy Suzanne,
and a large, thin, lightweight piece of Masonite...

I have my standards for puzzle working and they include no more that 500 pieces (for now), bright colors, graphic designs, and pieces that have been cut in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. I also look at the cover of the box which Margaret Drabble, in her autobiographical work, The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws, said her aunt taught them not to do, if memory serves.

a sense of accomplishment at a discount...

In any event, Springbok® got me Googling jigsaw puzzles which took me to a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Jigsaw Puzzle Generator web page. I 'bout died from joy! I am not kidding! The puzzles are generated from NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC photographs––now I've got your attention, right? Who can resist a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC photograph?

The Jigsaw Puzzle Generator allows you to tinker with a few options for controlling background colors and textures, piece size, piece orientation (static or random), and it times your progress. I once mentioned in a post having left the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave with a raft of jigsaw puzzles, but I didn't mention that it will most likely be a cold day in Hell before I set myself the task of working certain ones among them. The pieces are too small and uniformly-shaped for my low frustration threshold.

Now, thanks to divine junkmail intervention, I can work a puzzle a day, a puzzle an hour, the sky's the limit!

Happy puzzling it all out!

"Where is that post I was going to write about the thieving Turkish toilet?"

"Piece Of My Heart"
performed by Janis Joplin &
Big Brother & the Holding Company

Didn't I make you feel like you were the only man, well yeah,
An' didn't I give you nearly everything that a woman possibly can ?
Honey, you know I did!
And each time I tell myself that I, well I think I've had enough,
But I'm gonna show you, baby, that a woman can be tough.

I want you to come on, come on, come on, come on and take it,
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby, (break a..)
Break another little bit of my heart now, darling, yeah. (have a..)
Hey! Have another little piece of my heart now, baby, yeah.
You know you got it if it makes you feel good,
Oh yes indeed.

You're out on the streets looking good, and baby,
Deep down in your heart I guess you know that it ain't right,
Never never never never never never never hear me when I cry at night.
Baby, I cry all the time!
And each time I tell myself that I, well I can't stand the pain,
But when you hold me in your arms, I'll sing it once again.

I'll say come on, come on, come on, come on, yeah take it!
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby. (break a..)
Break another little bit of my heart now, darling, yeah, (come on…)
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby, yeah.
Well, You know you got it, child, if it makes you feel good

I need you to come on, come on, come on, come on and take it,
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby. (break a…)
Break another little bit of my heart, darling, yeah. (have a)
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby,
You know you got it (waaaaahhh)
Take a…Take another little piece of my heart now, baby. (break a…)
Break another little bit of my heart, and darling, yeah yeah (have a)
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby,
You know you got it, child, if it makes you feel good

"Strange Sightings From The MON, France..."

2010-08-10T07:52:00.000-07:00

I was thinking seriously of taking a year-long sabbatical from writing in my 28 month old blagh(s). I really need to read more and do some journal writing to help me clear a few hurdles over here. And, besides you 4 or 5 champions of my blahg, my reflections in writing are hardly anyone's cup of tea, nor would they be sorely missed in Blaghlandia...

But, this morning on the way to the post office in small town (pop. 9,000) central France, after a doubles visit to the local doctor, a stop by the medical lab, preparations for a daytrip to the big town an hour away to sort out medical receipts at the CPAM and apply for a gimp permit for my car, as my unsuspecting husband and I were rolling along at a slow rate of speed on one of the ubiquitous impasses (narrow little neighborhood streets, sometimes open to vehicular traffic, sometimes not) in hexagonal towns, from which we intended to turn left onto the street housing the post office, what in gawd's name did we spy but a man––exiting his little French rowhouse with the facade flush against the street on our left, crossing (in front of us) to his SUV parked opposite his rowhouse door, and engaging in the process of opening the car's door––with a ponytail, a receding hairline, a beard, a navy-blue polo-style t-shirt covering a respectable layer of adipose tissue, a pair of sandals, and almond-colored, with a navy-blue spotted design, cotton bikini-brief panties cradling his family jewels, leisurely as you please...

Now, don't get me wrong. I see nothing objectionable in the man's sartorial choice. I'm sure that he was quite comfortable (so much so, in fact, that he forgot to put on his pants before leaving the house, perhaps) and his attire was no doubt quite convenient for a quick nip out to get something from the backseat of his car. And I've seen family jewels in their birthday suits presenting arms and at ease, trying to make a dash for it down the leg of a pair of boxer shorts, and on display in a wet Speedo® (the papparazzi caught the Governator sporting that look not long ago), among other appearances and geographical locations. However, the truth is I have never seen a small town Frenchman parading about in public in his panties. Nor, come to think of it, had my Parisian-born French husband who has 51 years on me in the France-observation department.

As the vision of "Family Jewels in Repose" cradled by Fruit of the Loom® in designer colors passed in front of us, time slowed down to a crawl. I could clearly see the fabric of his undergarment––as well as the puckers of elastic around the leg closest to me moving out from under his fleshy rump, across his leg, and back down under his compact kit––below his polo, with his naked leg-and-foot-in-sandal combo completing the outfit. I would not have been more surprised had I seen Gozilla galumping down the same street. There was simply no previous context into which I could incorporate the apparition standing on the other side of our windshield. It looked exactly like a 5'7" three year old with a hairy face.

I looked at my husband. He looked at me. My mouth dropped open. His made an audible, amused, amazed noise. And we kept on rolling down the street to the turn off for the post office. It could have been a dream, except that we are both still shaking our heads and laughing out loud 7 hours later. So, if only to bust your Givenchy-laced French fantasies, I might just keep it up for now...

"C'est si peu dire que je t'aime..." --Louis Aragon

2010-08-08T00:01:00.000-07:00

I'm a fan of anniversaries of all sorts.

Given the sustained chaos that was my own life for at least the first 35 years, anchoring events by date has often been the only way to anchor them at all, from my point of view. Thus, I can write with total certainty that this 22-year-long marriage, to this man, may be the singularly most stable relationship that I have managed to create and maintain with any other human being in 57 and a half years.

Which isn't to say that events could not have been anchored by resonances with other events. That could have been done, too. But, it would then still have been a challenge to align them, contemplate them, take a lesson from them, not repeat them, if you will, because lots of shit happened...

the Grand Canyon
stop on the honeymoon road trip
1,500+ miles/5 days
September 1986

...and, if last night was any portent of things to come, shit is still happening.

I'll get to that...

Normally, had we not just relocated to France, and were we not in the process of surviving the transition at both a personal/couple level and a cultural level––never mind a "work-oriented identity vs retiree identity" and a "gainful-employment cash flow level vs a fixed-income level"––we would probably have taken to The Road to look around and relax for our anniversary. However, bearing in mind all the trouble we went to to install ourselves in this little house in the MON, France, we decided to stay home and see how we felt about it on the day of our anniversary. Nevertheless, being an honorary citizen, with a solid gold key to PlanBlandia, and always having hedged bets on my hedged bets, we decided to have a quiet lunch at a neighborhood restaurant on Saturday to mark the occasion, leaving Sunday itself free to evolve of its own accord, without too much pressure from us to turn out any particular way. Well, other than still being married at the end of it...

I should probably tell you that I called the mayor's office last week to inquire about the possibility of remarrying my husband in France on 10/10/10 because I don't actually have any experience with the man with whom I am currently living––the Frenchman returned to the land of his birth––if not his old neighborhood in Paris. So, I am following William Bridges' outline in "Transitions:..." on relationships-in-transition. I won't belabor you with that here and now, but should you ever find yourself living with someone you've loved (you are positive that you have loved him or her) but no longer recognize, you could do worse than consult Bridges.

...had to be sure we could
take to the road together before taking any vows...

Where was I?

Oh, yes, shit happening.

before...

during...

and after the modest ceremony at
City Hall, San Francisco, CA, USA
8/8/88

After a lovely lunch within walking distance of the house, we returned for some reading and napping––wine and pizza, you know... Then we spent a number of hours, each in his/her own corner of the house, working on the minutiae of setting up a life and reviewing some memorable moments in the past.

My husband keeps an annual agenda with a surprising number of important events jotted down concisely therein and he faithfully carries some of them forward to his current agenda, as well as noting them in a "book of days" perpetual agenda, every year. He was in deep concentration on that project last night until about 9pm having, after 7 years of his belongings being in a storage unit of one sort or the other, finally gained access to all of his old year-at-a-glance notebooks under one roof. Impending wedding anniversaries will do that to some people––inspire them to review the past. I was working on a "contacts" list in our French email universe. Anchors come in all shapes and sizes...

reflections of a modest lunch
in a small town in the center of France
the day before the day, just to hedge our bets...

We turned in at about 10:30pm, read for a few minutes, turned out the lights, and intended to sleep uneventfully until maybe 5am, 6am, if we were lucky. As you may or may not be aware, our bedroom window fronts a narrow one-way street directly opposite a small café/bar which happened to be closed by the time we went to sleep. While sleeping I was awakened no fewer than 5 times, by what I supposed was simply Saturday night, loud-voiced, foot traffic, but never completely awakened until 3am when I gave up and got up to go into the other bedroom, located at the back of the house above the back courtyard, in search of silence.

Minutes later I heard my husband get up to go to the bathroom and called to him to come join me in the quieter room, at which time he told me that there was something dramatic unfolding at the café/bar, accompanied by a fire department ambulance, throwing Saturday Night Fever lighting all over the walls of our bedroom through the vented openings in our shutters, and a SAMU doctor's van that had already disgorged a couple of physicians.

For about 15-20 minutes we observed the comings and goings of the firemen and doctors between their vehicles and the starkly-lit interior of the curtained entryway to the café/bar; the owner of the bar and a constant companion waiting on the sidewalk in obvious distress; and the arrival and departure of other unknown individuals to engage the proprietress in conversation. As the time lengthened, given our own past experiences with ambulances, and the surge in distress, as evidenced by audible sobbing, we began to believe that someone had been pronounced dead. We dressed and went down to see if we could at least convince the café/bar owner to call her husband who, as fate would have it, was hours away by car for several weeks this summer running a parallel business.

After some time spent acknowledging the death, due to cardiac arrest, of a 59 year old man who was a faithful patron of the café/bar, a friend of the bar's owners, and a resident of a studio located just above the bar, we returned home with memories refreshed of my attendance at my own alcoholic father's funeral for our 1st wedding anniversary, my attendance at the funeral of a beloved aunt for our 19th, our return from a trip for our 20th to discover that our neighbor had committed suicide by rifle shot to the head, and, just to up the emotional ante, the near fatal heart attack and life-saving efforts of the firemen and physicians for both my husband in March 2002 and my BIL in January 2010. These events, anchored by date and resonance in cellular memory, need no prompting from us to return unbidden. I will admit to a stomachache in the aftermath of this early morning's sad, but in no way surprising, drama. Did I mention that only those who come to our aid in times of emergency, my husband, and I were uninebriated? I probably forgot...

An impromtu wake is currently in progress at the café/bar across the street. My husband is marveling that the village church has just struck the bell, sounding 12noon, and he is now busying himself with making mussels for our 22nd wedding anniversary day lunch at home. I am reflecting on Dr. John Sarno's assertion that some individuals' only problem, with respect to generating psychosomatically-rooted-physical-health problems, is the fact of mortality. And I'm wondering where Raymond Carver is when you need him.

If anything about this post feels wordily cryptic to you, don't feel bad. It probably is. I am constitutionally incapable of writing a simple declarative sentence and, what is worse, I have no desire to.

"Il n'aurait fallu"
written by Louis Aragon
performed by Léo Ferré

Il n'aurait fallu
Qu'un moment de plus
Pour que la mort vienne
Mais une main nue
Alors est venue
Qui a pris la mienne

Qui donc a rendu
Leurs couleurs perdues
Aux jours aux semaines
Sa réalité
A l'immensité
Des choses humaines

Moi qui frémissais
Toujours je ne sais
De quelle colère
Deux bras ont suffi
Pour faire à ma vie
Un grand collier d'air

Rien qu'un mouvement
Ce geste en dormant
Léger qui me frôle
Un souffle posé
Moins une rosée
Contre mon épaule

Un front qui s'appuie
A moi dans la nuit
Deux grands yeux ouverts
Et tout m'a semblé
Comme un champ de blé
Dans cet univers

Un tendre jardin
Dans l'herbe où soudain
La verveine pousse
Et mon cœur défunt
Renaît au parfum
Qui fait l'ombre douce

"Give Me A Book To Build A Dream On..."

2010-07-31T05:29:00.000-07:00

"Have Viewfinder, Will Travel..."

On Thursday, July 1st, with the ultimate destination of Pau in mind for Saturday evening, July 3rd, via Toulouse, the Frencher half of this particular pair of pliers headed off in the opposite direction, to the lovely town of Uzerche, the "Pearl of the Limousin" region, in the Corrèze departement, situated on a deeply incised meander of the Vezère River.

Once there, having visited previously in September 1990, we found a parking spot in the historic center wandered along the cobblestoned streets, noticed many renovations underway, stopped in at the tourist information center, and headed to the Café-Restaurant Denise CHAMPTIAUX at 8, rue Porte-Barachaude for lunch based on no stronger referral than the hordes of workman headed to her place at 12noon and the baby-foot machine conspicuously located in her front dining area, banked by soccer trophies on display. Well, the cold pink libation in the sweating beer glass clinched the deal as we waited in front of the bar, hopefully, for a table. Which, of course, was announced as unavailable or "complet" upon our first inquiry, but, for some strange reason fortuitously turned into "We'll seat you at the table for 3 and seat the party-of-3 at a table for 4. D'accord?"

the neighborhood laundry facilities in days of old...

After that it was Belgian beer with grenadine and a regional specialties menu fixe with a backdrop of the Vezère River overlooked by a lavoir that made lugging top-knotted double-bed flat sheets filled with a week's worth of laundry for a family of three from the duplex to the laundry-mat two blocks away on the corner of Lewis and Archer in Tulsa, OK on a summer Saturday, look like child's play––which it was because I was only 9.

things go better with pink beer...

But, be that as it may, I had it easy compared to the women who had to do the wash in Uzerche for a few thousand years. It had to have been a quarter of a mile, straight down and across a field, to the river's edge to get to the washing zone along the riverbank. And let's don't even think about the dry goods going down and the wet lumps coming back up––the stuff of nightmares... Fortunately, there was no one down there, male or female, doing his or her laundry, so we were able to fully enjoy our million-dollar-view seats on the covered balcony overlooking the forested valley through which the Vezère was meandering.

a postprandial gaze at the Vezère River's other side...

If you can believe it, Uzerche was just a pit stop, albeit a gorgeous one, on the way to le gouffre de Padirac (Be happy, I almost titled this post, "With A Knick-Knack, Padirac..."), to which I had been trying to get for more than a decade because of a bee in my bonnet, no doubt put there by one of Ann Barry's tales...

"Through Patsy's eyes, sights I'd seen time and again took on their original wonder. The gouffre de Padirac, an enormous chasm in the limestone massif of Gramat, seemed even more awesome. The deep caverns are reached by descending in two elevators to passageways with astonishing stalagmites that can be seen both on foot and by boat along the underground river three hundred and thirty-eight feet below the surface. Both Patsy and I, being from Missouri, are stalagmite––and stalagtite––buffs: the underground caves of Meramec Caverns and Onodaga Cave in the Ozarks are renowned. Padirac has a powerfully dramatic setting and a legend connected to it, involving a Faustian bargain struck between St. Martin (and his mule) and Satan (with his sack of souls). Patsy, who had read Butler's Lives of the Saints, strictly for amusement, relished all such lore.

Though I'd been to Padirac at least three or four times, I'd never seen it under more treacherous conditions. Patsy, to my surprise, proved amazingly intrepid. Because of the severe floods during the spring and summer of 1993, the river was a gushing, roiling torrent. We could hardly hear ourselves speak above its roaring turbulence as we trundled down steep wooden stairs sloshing with water. The water pelted us from overhead. The smooth, timeworn rocks glistened on every side. Passageways underfoot were slippery––a misstep and you could be swept into the surging river. When we boarded the boats (insubmersibles), they rocked nauseatingly. We were both giddy, a nervous giddy. If this had been the States, the caves would have been "closed temporarily due to unsafe conditions." But this was France, the France that loves raw nature.

At the end of the boat excursion, an automatic souvenir photograph is taken of each returning boatload. Patsy and I chose to purchase one, which cost an outrageous eight dollars (17 years later the cost had only risen about 20%). When it was mailed to us later, it proved to be worth every penny. Patsy and I are huddled together, frozen, drenched, and––I remembered––fatigued and famished after the ninety-minute excursion. The photograph, however, illuminates the scene like a stage set. The hellish rain and gloomy atmosphere are erased, reducing the crowd in the boat to a cast of comical characters having a seemingly inexplicable reaction to what appears to be a beautiful setting. Patsy and I are smiling cheerily, having survived the reckless adventure together."

––At Home in France: Tales of an American and Her Home Abroad
Ann Barry, 1996

It won't surprise you to know that I didn't recall any of the details of her spelunking adventure with her friend Patsy, not even the souvenir photo mentioned, and we had great weather and a comparatively sedate visit––having reread what theirs had been like––but it was a cave and it was visitable by the halt and the lame, so I was game and I had to see it with my tailleur de pierre husband, or bust! That's how deeply Ann Barry's description of her visit had registered with me lo those many years ago.

Prior to getting to le gouffre de Padirac, however, we had to make our way over hill and dale through picture-perfect central France in a southwesterly direction passing through Limoges, Uzerche, Tulle, and Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne–where we also stopped, visited the Abbey church, bought vintagesque postcards, went down to the river, gawked at old houses, both renovated and un-, and paid $6euros for 2 ersatz citron pressés––the ones where it's not real squeezed lemon juice at all but, rather, bottled genuine fake "lemondade". Oh, well, that's what vacations are about, right? At least in part––getting taken for Rubes.

And before we could get to le gouffre de Padirac with our sweaters on to accommodate the perennially chilly underground temps, we had to spend the night in Padirac proper, as in, the town of... And, just by chance, we didn't have any reservations anywhere. So, we followed a sign to the middle of a lovely nowhere countryside to a quite chi chi gite where a man told us that he only rented by the week and that he was "full up for the season." But he kindly provided us with a little "Rural Gites of France" booklet and steered us toward the village of Padirac where we called up a man on our cellphone––as we sat on the edge of town in front of the "Padirac" sign––who said that he had a vacancy and that we could come on over. Easy Peasy!

Turns out we were 5 minutes from his full-fledged three-generations of family-run diary farm-cum-hostel. Amazing. Cute. Simple. Efficient. Full up. And hot with no AC. But it was hot everywhere that day, so, we took our bags up, got out of our grubby day clothes, took showers, redressed, and drove over to Rocamadour for a light dinner and a quick look around. Our movements, thus far, were just a few days in advance of the national vacation surge towards the highways and byways of France. Thus, we were almost alone everywhere. Vacationers were still few and far between on the roads but the watering holes were densely peopled.

and now watch my Frencher half pull un gite out of his hat...

The next morning, having sworn that we would return to Rocamadour again one day for a leisurely visit, we got up early, showered, packed, and descended to check out the farm and wait for the nutritious, above-and-beyond continental, breakfast that was included in our room fee of $40 euros. That gave us a chance to go and observe the grandfather, father, and adult son managing the morning milking of the dairy cows, to pet the calves, and to laugh at and photograph the antics of the ducks, chickens, and geese. It was a gas! And the people were very, very nice––both owners and guests. We met a party of three women up from Lyon, two of whom worked for an internationally-renowned interior decorating firm specializing in silk and other specialty fabrics (given the priorities of our era, they had done a few doghouses with silk beds for the inhabitants, among other projects), and one of whom was an administrative assistant in the notary industry (which is totally different than what you imagine in the USA, by the way).

un gite rural, that is, complete with a dairy farm

and every form of fowl to be found...

After breakfast and great conversation with our co-hostelers, we drove off to take a tour of le gouffre de Padirac which opened at 9:30am and had yet to open upon our arrival. There was already a small crowd waiting on the steps leading to the entry and ticket counter so we joined them for a few minutes, the doors opened, and we all headed in for the first tour of the day. The obvious advantage to going early was the fact that there was no line to speak of. The bank- and movie theater-style ropes used to cordon off the anteroom to the cave were mute testimony to the serpentine lines of cave enthusiasts that must be controlled from time to time. But, that morning, the way was clear and we just breezed on through to the metal staircase worthy of the Empire State Building and made our way down, down, down to the incredibly beautiful interconnected caves below.

a stoneman at the source...

I will spare you the technical details––better women than I have listed them elsewhere––and stick to the marvel and wonder of wandering beneath the earth for an hour and a half along safe illuminated trails that hardworking cavers, park rangers, maintenance crews, guides, gondoliers, and, most especially, electricians have kept available for more than a hundred years, in one form or another, so that the average Joette such as myself could experience the earth in the act of recreating itself over hundreds of thousands of years without need of spelunking gear, head lamps, food, water, maps––don't let me forget the maps––and endless coils of rope. I can't even imagine caving for fun and profit. And I'm only mentioning the land cavers. There are aquatic cavers who also explore and monitor le gouffre de Padirac, gawd love 'em!

a cenote by any other name would be as beautiful...

You will in no way be surprised to learn that I took the ultramodern elevator(s) back up to the earth's crust after our visit. Why spoil a perfectly good outing with excess physical exertion? Especially on damp stainless steel stairs the sheer number of which would serve perfectly for the creation story of a physical-prowess-worshiping society that shall remain nameless! Once back up to the surface I, as usual, wasted no time in taking a spin around the modest gift shop on the trail of a few postcards with which to wow you and entice you to take the time to visit these fascinating and reverence-inducing examples of Earth's neverending process of self-renewal.

and as breath taking...

Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine
by Edward Harrison Barker, 1893

Being within a mile or so of the Puit de Padirac--that gloomy hole in the earth which was supposed to be one of the devil's short-cuts between this world and his own, until M. Martel proved almost conclusively that it was not the way to the infernal city, but to a subterranean river, and a chain of lakes that could be followed for two miles--I set out the next morning to find it.

I might have spent hours in vain casting about, but for the help of a peasant, who offered, quite disinterestedly, to be my guide. He was an old man, with a very Irish face, and eyes that laughed at life. But for his language he would have seemed a perfectly natural growth of Cork or Kerry. Here may be the place to remark that the stock of the ancient Cadurci appears to have been much less impaired here in an ethnological sense by the mingling of races than in the country round Cahors. The peasants, generally, have nothing distinctively Southern in their appearance, although they speak a dialect which is in the main a Latin one, the Celtic words that have been retained being in a very small proportion. Gray or blue eyes are almost as frequent among them as they are with the English, and many of the village children have hair the colour of ripening maize.

We left the fertile valley and rose upon the stone-scattered causse where hellebore, spurges, and juniper were the only plants not cropped close to the earth by the flocks of sheep which thrive upon these wastes. All the sheep are belled, but the bells they wear are like big iron pots hanging upon their breasts. Each pot has a bone that swings inside of it and serves as a hammer. The chief use of these bells is to prevent the animal from leaving its best wool, that of the breast, upon the thorns of bushes.

We have now reached the brink of the pit, which is not bottomless, but looks so until the eye faintly distinguishes something solid at a depth that has been measured at 175 feet. The opening is almost circular, with a diameter at the orifice of 116 feet. This prodigious well, sunk in successive layers of secondary rock, looks as if it had been regularly quarried; but men could never have had the motive for giving themselves so much trouble. Did the rock fall in here? No explanation is satisfactory.

How it fills one with awe to look into the depth while lying upon a slab of stone that stretches some distance beyond the side of the pit! Bushes with twisted and fantastic arms, growing, they or their ancestors, from time immemorial in the clefts of the rock, reach towards the light, and the elfish hart's-tongue fern, itself half in darkness, points down with frond that never moves in that eternal stillness which all the winds of heaven pass over, to a thicker darkness whence comes the everlasting wail and groan of hidden water.

This horrid gulf being in the open plain, with not even a foot of rough wall round it as a protection for the unwary, I asked the old man if people had never fallen into it. 'Yes,' he answered, 'but only those who have been pushed by evil spirits.' He meant that only self-murderers had fallen into the Puit de Padirac. 'Pushed by evil spirits.' Perhaps this is the best of all explanations of the suicidal impulse. Strong thoughts are sometimes hidden under the simplicity of rustic expression.

He told me the story of a man who, having gone by night to throw himself into the Puit de Padirac, came in contact with a tough old bush during his descent which held him up. By this time the would-be suicide disliked the feeling of falling so much that, so far from trying to free himself from the bush and begin again, he held on to it with all his might and shrieked for help. But as people who are not pushed by evil spirits give the Puit de Padirac a wide berth after sundown, the wretched man's cries were lost in the darkness. The next morning the shepherd children, as they led their flocks over the plain, heard a strange noise coming from the pit, but their horror was stronger than their curiosity, and they showed their sheep how to run. They went home and told their fathers what they had heard, and at length some persons were bold enough to look down the hole, from which the dismal sound the children had noticed continued to rise. Thus the cause of the mysterious noise was discovered, and the man was hauled up with a rope. He never allowed the evil spirits to push him into the Puit de Padirac again.

The people of these causses have a supernatural explanation for everything that they cannot account for by the light of reason and observation. They have their legend with regard to the Puit de Padirac, and it is as follows:

St. Martin, before he became Bishop of Tours, was crossing one day this stony region of the Dordogne to visit a religious community on the banks of the Solane, whither he had been despatched by St. Hilary. He was mounted on a mule, and was ambling along over the desert plunged in pious contemplation, when he heard a little noise behind, and, looking round, he was surprised to see a gentleman close to him, who was also riding a mule. The stranger was richly dressed, and was altogether a very distinguished-looking person, but the excessive brilliancy of his eyes was a disfigurement. They shone in his head like two bits of burning charcoal. 'What do you want, cruel beast?' said St. Martin.

This would scarcely have been saintly language had he not known with whom he had to deal. The gentleman thus impolitely addressed returned a soft answer, and forced his company upon the saint, who wished him--at home. Presently Lucifer, for it was he, began to 'dare' St. Martin, after the manner of boys to-day. 'If I kick a hole in the ground I dare you to jump over it,' was the sort of language employed by the gentleman with the too-expressive eyes. 'Done!' said St. Martin, or something equivalent. 'Digging pits is quite in my line of business!' exclaimed the devil, in so disagreeable a voice that the saint's mule would have bolted had the holy rider not kept a tight rein upon her.

At the same moment the ground over which the infernal mule had just passed fell in with a mighty rumble and crash, leaving a yawning gulf. 'Now,' said Lucifer, 'let me see you jump over that!' Whereupon, the bold St. Martin drove his spurs into his mule and lightly leapt over the abyss. And this was how the Puit de Padirac was made.

The peasants believe that they can still see on a stone the imprint left by the hoof of St. Martin's mule. This adventure did not cause the saint and the devil to part company. They rode on together as far as the valley of Medorium (Miers). 'Now,' said St. Martin, 'you jump over that!' pointing to a little stream that was seen to flow suddenly and miraculously out of the earth. Before challenging the arch enemy he had, however, taken the precaution to lay two small boughs in the form of a cross on the brink of the water. In vain the devil spurred his mule and used the worst language that he could think of to induce the beast to jump. The animal would not; but, as the spurring and swearing were continued, it at length went down on its knees before the cross. But this did not suit the devil's turn. On the contrary, the proximity of that emblem which St. Martin had placed unobserved on the ground made him writhe as though he had fallen into a font.

Then with the speed of a lightning flash he returned to his own kingdom--possibly by the Puit de Padirac. A church dedicated to the saint was afterwards built near the scene of his triumph, and the healing spring where it comes out of the earth is still known by the name of Lou Fount Sen Morti--St. Martin's Fountain.
––published 100 years before Ann Barry's visit to Le gouffre de Padirac with Patsy

As you can see, I didn't pass up the opportunity to purchase the souvenir photo that Ann Barry thought so costly. In the intervening years the price had creeped up to $8.50 euros but I would have bought it at $10 euros. If one is not traveling with a tripod, or a porter/photographer, it is difficult to come back from an outing with pictures of a couple who have been traveling together. It's either one or the other of them who has been taking the photo, unless a stranger on the road takes pity on their future slide show and offers to snap a shot of the two of them together. We are no exception and I have plenty of shots of us taken from the vantage point of my own right hand attached to my inordinately long arm, bearing down upon us from above, while cutting some interesting architectural detail to bits. We aim to please...

the incredible underground adventure...

the underground gondolier and his passengers
on le gouffre de Padirac's subterranean river
Friday, July 2, 2010

Reproduction of a rare turn-of-the-19th century lithograph
of le gouffre de Padirac by the artist Emile Vavsseur
for the Railroad Line of Orléans ...

From Padirac we headed off by way of Cahors, Montauban, and other localities to a Toulouse suburb called Pibrac (home to many employees of Airbus) where we would spend the night in a tiny hotel with a fan, a TV, a shower, and a set of twin beds located on the main drag of Pibrac above a bar/restaurant. Never fear, however, the bar/restaurant is a bit misleading... By 9pm the street folded up tighter than a main street in mid-America, on a Friday night no less, and we slept like babies until the morning came and we were once again forced to search for caffeine, protein, and carbs.

It might be France, but the morning menu is written in the blood's ratio of of caffeine-to-red-blood-cells...

"A Kiss To Build A Dream On"
performed by Louis Armstrong

Give me a kiss to build a dream on
And my imagination will thrive upon that kiss
Sweetheart, I ask no more than this
A kiss to build a dream on

Give me a kiss before you leave me
And my imagination will feed my hungry heart
Leave me one thing before we part
A kiss to build a dream on

And when I'm alone with my fancies,
I'll be with you
Weaving romances,
making believe they're true

Oh, give me your lips for just a moment
And my imagination will make that moment live
Give me what you alone can give
A kiss to build a dream on

When I'm alone with my fancies,
I'll be with you
Weaving romances,
making believe they're true

Oh, give me lips for just a moment
And my imagination will make that moment live
Oh, give me what you alone can give
A kiss to build a dream on

PS... As you might have noticed, it took me 4 days from the time I started working on this post until today when I could finally publish it... (and even at that it got overlooked due to dueling uploads!)

Life is what happens when you're busy trying to do a blahg post!