teeny books

blogger no more

2008-05-06T21:37:00.004-04:00

Well, the time has come friends, to officially say goodbye to the blogger version of teenybooks and move onto teenybooks 2.0. I had originally planned to wait until the design was complete, but after playing with wordpress for a while I found myself quite addicted and haven't really been able to make the switch back. (we're getting it all worked out and it should be done in a week or so...)

Updated your rss reeders please: http://www.teenybooks.com/feed/

The archives will remain unchanged for as long as blogger lets me keep them up.

Cheers!

http://teenybooks.com

email me: marcia (at) teenybooks.com

The Night Owl

2008-04-28T23:24:00.001-04:00

"I work at night. I don't just mean I write at night - I am writing this at 1.53am, as it happens - I mean I function at night. After sunset, I think as clearly as I ever will. I want to walk about, play the banjo and wear hats. I want to enjoy being alive in an uninterrupted and possibly creative way. Left to my own devices, I would always keep my office hours between 10pm and 4 or 5am. Sadly, the rest of the world fails to understand this and tends to telephone me most mornings. Traffic noise, hammering next door, unforgiving travel schedules, the necessity of meeting daytime people and purchasing food; they all conspire to drive me from my bed and disturb my natural order, so I spend my life jolting from one kind of jetlag to another."

A L Kennedy

Read the rest.

Learning to Love you More: old fave

2008-04-26T15:33:00.003-04:00

I was hanging out yesterday with a friend in Prospect Park, discussing the joys of walking (how can something that I do so often that its easy to take for granted, bring me so much peace and joy its beyond me) when he told me about an art project he'd joined in on with Harell Fletcher called the "Long Walk Home" which basically consisted of gathering a group of people at Grand Central Station and walking each and every single person home.

I bring up this story because it reminded me of Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July's website: Learning to Love You More, which as always been one of my favorite blog-project websites.

My favorite assignment photograph a significant outfit. Click on the list of names on the right hand side to see each person's report.

Misunderstandings

2008-04-26T15:08:00.004-04:00

I woke up this morning a little bit before 5am and I was lying in bed thinking and thinking. So I got up and wrote a little bit and then blogged a bit. As I was looking for the post that referenced my resolution, I came across Auden's poem "More Loving One."

It was a poem I'd first heard the stanzas of "If equal affection cannot be, / Let the more loving one be me" during high school on a show that I watched at the time. I wrote it down and searched for the complete poem. What I realized was that the meaning of the entire poem had been obscured from me by those few lines. Being a person who always feels things deeply I was resigned to accepting the fate of that second stanza.

I was reading it this morning and I kind of chuckled to myself as the rest of the poem revealed itself. Seeing it in its entirety. The end of the poem is like a small epiphany, Auden says "Were all stars to disappear or die, / I should learn to look at an empty sky / And feel its total dark sublime, / Though this might take me a little time." Which means that yeah while he discusses the inequality of feeling as having weight, that he'd rather love more than less, he also realizes that if the object of his strong affection were to leave or disappear that he'd learn to live with it and appreciate the sky (or life rather)for what it was without it eventually. That everything would be just as awe inspiring without the things that we believe make them so important.

Revelations are beautiful that way, whether referring to the revelation at the end of the poem or realizing that you'd never really understood it until now.

Being Analog in a Digital World

2008-04-25T20:03:00.002-04:00

Well folks.

We've nearly reached the end of my blogger blogging era. I've been playing with the idea of drastically changing my blog since a little before the New Year. So here it is, April and I'm excited to be nearly there, it had gotten to the point that everything about blogger's clunky back end design had begun to annoy me. Posting photos was still a chore, the look of the actual blog was bad and I still didn't have my own domain name.

The change isn't quite complete, since I'm still playing with everything and figuring out the look (I keep talking about the mysterious banner at the top which will be created through my own cunning and genius...well not really...I've got lots of creative friends), but quite soon.

I will keep the archives here active as long as blogger will allow. It would be ashame to lose my virtual documentation of the past three years.

Before Sunrise, Before Sunset. Paris.

2008-04-20T20:30:00.006-04:00

Last night I dreamt that I was watching the same movie over and over again. Maybe it was everyday, but definitely repeatedly over the course of the dream (since in dreams time expands and contracts at will).

I couldn't remember the movie, but I woke up with the thought that it might have been Before Sunset.

Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are my two favorite movies ever in life, the latter weighed a great deal in my decision to go to Paris. I watched them almost exactly a year ago and the idea popped into my head to buy a ticket right then, to leave the next weekend if I could. The idea of walking with someone and discussing everything through the streets of such a beautiful backdrop struck me as one thing I infinitely wanted to experience in my lifetime. Even now, watching it again, I still have that small ache in my chest at the end. I still feel that same tug. (I watched them both again this afternoon to relieve myself of the funk that I woke up in...Definitely did the trick)

The last ten minutes of that movie, sigh...if you haven't seen it, add it to you Netflix list. You'd have bought a ticket as well.

My First Guest Spot

2008-04-18T01:49:00.002-04:00

Nope.

I haven't stopped writing my long Parisian post in case you're waiting and wondering where my usual morning updates are, they've just moved briefly to Wordbk for a small guest stint.

Word.

Shakespeare and Company

2008-04-16T08:11:00.005-04:00

If you're ever in Paris and happen to be as big of a fan of books as I am, visit the original Shakespeare and Company, opened by George Whitman:

The Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart

When Frances Steloff was president of the American Booksellers Association she told me that my bookstore had drifted into being the sort of place that might have been designed by the world's greatest architects. I have let my imagination run wild with the result that a stranger walking the streets of Paris can believe he is entering just another of the bookstores along the left bank of the Seine but if he finds his way through a labyrinth of alcoves and cubbyholes and climbs a stairway leading to my private residence then he can linger there and enjoy reading the books in my library and looking at the pictures on the walls of my bedroom.

...

I may disappear leaving behind me no worldly possessions - just a few old socks and love letters, and my windows overlooking Notre-Dame for all of you to enjoy, and my little rag and bone shop of the heart whose motto is "Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise". I may disappear leaving no forwarding address, but for all you know I may still be walking among you on my vagabond journey around the world.

- George Whitman

Hopelessly Rafael: A Brief Parisian Anecdote

2008-04-16T06:20:00.008-04:00

It was on my third day of my Paris trip, after my brief day trip to Versailles, that I met Rafael. I had not, up until that point, actively made any effort to seek company. I would even go so far as to say that I had been avoiding interacting too much with anyone from the hostels and was appreciating the self explorative tone my adventures had taken. But there he was...

I was standing outside smoking a cigarette when he approached me, and though I can't remember the details of the beginning of our conversation, I do remember that he began to ask me questions as openly and inquisitively as a child, that I found it hard not to answer or to keep my little self imposed wall up. I was trying to maintain a quiet silence in my head which is sometimes good for writing. I found it nearly impossible. His smile was king, green eyes unwavering and he had a small patch of grey hair just behind his left ear (I've always found something completely endearing about prematurely grey hair, maybe I find it instantaneously warm and disarming through stereotypes of my own creation).

He loved the american language, be it in book, film or music. He seemed to love the words "nice" and "good." Often telling me, "Oh, Marcia, you are verrry nice" or "KFC was verrry good." He was from São Paulo, Brazil and we discussed in length the corruption and the danger of growing up there (it was verrrry bad). We also discussed crowded trains, families, awkwardness in front of cameras, the Parisian weather, the importance of soccer, writing, art and whatever else that crossed our minds. I introduced him to a few phrases in English and tried to help whenever he was struggling with explaining a certain concept.

We stood outside smoking cigarettes and talking till it began to rain harder (there seemed to be a little drizzle on almost all my Parisian days) and he invited me in for a drink. He told me about the night before (Verry Bad). Rafael had just arrived at the hostel, early before he could check into his room and needed to use the pay phone at the corner to let his parents know he'd arrived safely. On his way outside he ran into a girl who also happened to be from Brazil, they struck up a brief conversation in Portugese, both excited to find someone that reminded them of home. Much later when he returned to the hostel he ran into the same girl again, this time drinking with a few other people. She invited him over for a drink. Drinking turned to dancing. (She was verrrry attractive). She seemed to like Rafael a lot. So he, being 'nice' and 'good' Rafael, told her he had a girlfriend at home that he loved.

He looked at me his eyes all big and earnest, "but she didn't care. It was not very nice. You could tell that she had too many glasses of wine. I tried to leave and she kept saying stay, stay, stay. She buys me a glass of wine. I said no and she buys it anyway. Just like that. Then, do you know what she did?"

I had a guess.

"She kissed me!!"

He briefly explained the logistics between a brazilian kiss and an american kiss using hand motions (though I'm fairly sure a drunk kiss is a drunk kiss) which seemed to involve her nearly sucking his entire face. He pushed her away, maybe a minute too late, but he felt incredibly guilty. He had to tell his girlfriend because they told each other everything but he kept telling me how horribly bad he felt and how he'd left. (I sat there maybe wanting to tell him that he shouldn't tell his girlfriend, that it was just a slip in judgement or that it was she who kissed and maybe therefor not such a big deal. He'd stopped it anyway. But I said nothing. ) The girl was upset that he pushed her away and Rafael felt bad about that too. He reiterated how attractive the girl had been.

Then he said, "The Man in me wanted to go upstairs and lie with her, but the...um..."

"Boyfriend," I supplied.

"No...the Human in me. The Human in me that loves another Human knows that my love is much bigger than that desire."

At that moment, I fell a little in love with Rafael myself. I saw in him something great and desirable which I'd felt once and had been lost along the way. He was a hopeless romantic.

He believed that he could tell his girlfriend what had happened and because they loved one another it could be worked out. That any problem could be resolved. That love was powerful. Maybe I'd even stopped completely believing that men like that could exist.

Still there is a part of me of course, that thinks, that thought, he's young and that the world will teach him a thing or two.

But I really hope it doesn't.

Career Choice: Fail

2008-04-15T10:34:00.003-04:00

For the record, writers get no love. And if you're thinking maybe I'll take up a career in writing, don't move to france.

France of all places. Home to the historically intellectually astute. Philosophers. Poets. Novelists.

Do you know what the french are interested in?

Photographers.

If photographers and writers were in a battle for drumming up career interest in Paris, writer's get the smack down (old school wrestling style) each and every time.

(of course I hardly consider the opinion of a waitress and a cook to matter that much anyway)

(yes thats my bitterness talking)

My One Purchase

2008-04-15T05:32:00.001-04:00

I am extremely pleased with it.

The Eiffel at Night* (to expand a bit on bk's post)

2008-04-15T04:22:00.004-04:00

*He was so excited about all the beautiful ladies, I thought I'd give a more in depth and marica-esque account of the night.

Sunday night was my last night in Paris. It rained all day but the sky was still bright and things took on this different light that I'm sure only happens in Paris. The sky is still incredibly blinding on clouding days in Paris, everything seems a bit whiter than one would expect. I found myself squinting even on the rainy days. We decided to walk to St. Germain for dinner and hang out in a part of the Latin Quarter we hadn't explored (or he rather, I realized once we got there that it is where I had wandered the sunday prior and had my brief epistolary affair with the older gentleman over espresso and lunch.)

After wandering over Pont Neuf from the apartment, we settled inside Cafe Jade on 10, Rue Buci, a very hip and modern little restaurant/cafe/bar, though I don't think it made the superfuture guide. The walls were adorned with the names of famous artists from all over the world in bold colors. The crowd seemed our age, gorgeous in a very Parisian way...and yes the women were absolutely beautiful. They were all stylishly dressed, everything about them had that flair and simplistic style that we'd expected to find right upon entering France simply everywhere. It did dominate a bit of our conversation as every woman that walked into the room seemed a bit more alluring than the one prior. And at least to my and bk's probably ignorant standard of Parisianesque, they fit the bill completely.

The rest of our conversation was the sort of conversation that Paris breeds. At times heavy, at times wordly, at times thoughtful, at times philosophical and at times light and airy.

Diner was delicious. I had the duck, which was delicious and which if I close my eyes I can almost still taste. Bk had the rumpsteak I believe...I must say it makes me happy, the number of restaurants that serve fries with everything. We had two carafes of wine. The clock struck 10:45. I nearly turned into a pumpkin. My one goal for my last night in Paris was to see the tower sparkling at night. We had to run/walk back to Pont Neuf, which is where bk had suggested seeing the tower, as opposed to the foot of the tower. I am exceedingly glad that I agreed.

This was the magic I'd been waiting for it, that one moment to cap off my trip and make me completely sad I had to leave and return somewhere that could never be quiet enchanting or charming as this (though ny has its charms).

Standing at the northern most alcove of Pont Neuf, with the water of the Seine River dark green and swirling beneath me. The rattling of the rain against my big yellow umbrella muffling out the sounds of the city. The traffic at my back, the Norte Dame at my back, to my right and my left the dazzling Paris city lights and just like that she began to sparkle, her great big spotlight twirling in the clouds. Like a stationary firework, that never dies out. And I'd hate to be repetitive but it was incredibly magical. Everything was exactly staged like I might have been the starring lead in a my own little Parisian adventure movie. The entire city seemed to breathe and pulse and be there just for me.

I think I left a piece of myself there in that little alcove of the bridge or maybe I gave up something that I'd been holding onto.

I had a dream about it tonight, seeing the Eiffel Tower from the bridge, the entire moment, right down to my soggy tote bag seemed to recreate itself in my head.

I wish that I could have the same dream every night for a very long time.

Blazey and Sonya in Paris

2008-04-13T03:52:00.004-04:00

Two or three days ago, over a glass of wine while we lounged around the apartment (maybe there wasn't wine but it seems fitting) bk turned to me with a devilish smile and said 'do you think think the courtyard by the big building is a good place to meet someone?'*

I looked up from my book and shrugged. 'Sounds good to me.' paused for a beat. 'Wait who are we meeting?'

bk just replied 'someone I know.'

And this began my two day inquisition. No question was too big or too small.

'who are they?' someone i know

'what are their names' george and jordan

'where do you know them from' ohio

'how long have you know them' five years maybe

'are they designers' one is

'are they tall or short' they're not tall

'black or white' white

'are they like you or blazey?' um....like me

'why are they in paris' they came to party

'where are they staying' i'm not sure

Somehow the story of george and jordan began to take a life of its own, the gay couple from ohio, that I was reassured would thoroughly enjoy meeting. The first day we waited for them at the Centre Pompidou, I kept looking for the stylishly dressed gay couple (bk said they were like him). They ended up not making it and we got coffee and went shopping instead.

The second day we were scheduled to meet them at four pm at Notre Dame. After going to Shakespeare and co (another blog post all together), we walked along the Seine till we reached a short bridge that connected Paris' left bank to the Ile de la Cite. I tried to not ask any more questions.

Right as we walked into the small courtyard I saw a curly head in the distance. 'Oh my god, that guy looks just like Blazey from behind. Look at his hair, look at the way he walks. That's so weird...wait....standing with the brown haired girl that looks...sorta like sonya...these people are like their doppelgangers...bk you have to follow them and take a picture."

It was absolutely hilarious. I was so convinced that they couldn't possibly be in Paris that we followed them for a whole five minutes without it ever dawning on me that it might be them and even as Blazey turned and his face came into view my first thought was 'wow, Blazey came to paris without telling bk, friendship-fail' I had been told that he was surprising her with a weekend trip to San Francisco.

It was a great evening in Paris...not so much of a bad way to end my two weeks. Its a little weird seeing them in the Cafes and against the backdrop of all the Parisian buildings, a little weird and a lot of fun.

Brooklyn storms Paris.

These guys are the best at surprises.

*(Centre Pompidou is very close to our place).

Bk Takes Me Shopping.

2008-04-11T14:33:00.002-04:00

One of the highlights of having bk join me for my Paris adventures (convincing him didn't take much arm twisting) was all the cool kid stores we'd go to along the way. We've sort of got this perfect mixture of new and old going on. Yesterday I took him on my walking tour of Montmartre and the Sacré Cœur, through old charming Paris, to the place where Amelie was filmed, Today we went to all the hip stores in Paris. Artoyz (a big little toy store with all of the little figures that bk and his friends collect) and Kiliwatch (a big expensively priced but cool vintage store)...There were a bunch of others. Even I got into the swing of things, spending money. I'm consistently amazed at the amount of work that goes into designing stores. We walked into one and there was a narrow spiral concrete staircase that led to a little cavern underneath, fashioned after a cave with arched walls of brown concrete bricks. Everyone in most of the stores were really nice (another kick in the face of the french rudeness myth) and I think that most of the bored attitude you encountered in any of them would be akin to any high end retail store.

Another thing that I love about Paris...walking through the streets (nearly running at times to keep up with his longer legs) are the things you run into along the way. We passed the Gallerie Vivienne, which is one of the great passages in Paris...most of the roof is made up of these ancient skylights. Slightly brown and yellowish. You walk through a hall with shops on both sides until you reach a big dome, with the same skylight/greenhouse effect and a big light fixture hanging down that reminded me of a cross between a candelabra and a chandelier.

Somewhere in the midst of this we stopped to eat at a small cafe (my food was cooked this time) while it rained and was sunny at the same time.

The Eiffel Tower, the dreamer and me.

2008-04-11T14:24:00.004-04:00

The couples made it more beautiful.

I know its a cliche, but lest we forget, I am a girl and I do have a great big heart. Seeing these two couples standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, one young, one older about twenty feet apart from one another standing on the great big lawn/garden. They were both embraced, the younger couple just staring out across the at Paris, taking everything in, the older couple alternately kissing and looking up at the tower, whispering to one another in that secret language that two people in love share.

It was the first time I felt completely overwhelmed by the romantic nature of the city of lights. It made me both a little hopeful and a little sad in equal measure. Like bk said: "Its universally understood that you can't go to Paris without thinking about love, wishing for love or being in love."

At the Eiffel Tower is the moment when it gets the best of you.

Notre Dame

2008-04-10T20:20:00.005-04:00

I don't want to lose track of my days...

I think its easier with the time spent talking verbally about how things go and how life seems and the nature of things (because Paris breeds that or I breed that or a mixture of the two).

Being alone its so much easier to tell your verbal story to someone. The world.

Two days ago we went to the Notre Dame. Which is much larger and more majestic than it is in any photograph you've ever seen. I'm always struck when I stand beneath something with that much history by the passage of time, the number of people who have stood in that very spot and thought the exact things that I thought. The people who spent their entire lives building and perfecting every inch. The people who went through great pains to restore it after parts were destroyed.

A note about the woman begging from bk's photo. The whole situation was a little intense. She followed us across the courtyard in front of the Notre Dame, asking for money because of the photograph. I can't say I was nonplussed by the whole thing. He seemed a little less phased. I think I'm not sure I agree with his whole idea of not paying someone who is begging, especially considering that its the least you can do if you're going to snap their photograph and exploit their lifestyle for your art.

There are lots of impoverished Romany people in Paris. (what we call and probably offensively gypsies). They're outside of every major tourist attraction. The first thing they say is "Do you speak English?" though I believe its the only english they speak, once you say yes (and I think for the first day bk kept saying yes) they'll show you a hand written note. I have not, since I've been here seen anyone give them money. You'll also find a few women, like the one in the photograph, sitting or kneeling (sometimes on Metro stairwells) saying nothing, heads bowed and holding a cup. There is something about it that I find slightly unsettling.

Last Nights Dinner (And 3 bottles of Wine later...)

2008-04-09T04:50:00.004-04:00

photo courtesy of jaybeekay

Last night, being the daring traveller that I am, I decided to try steak tartare. I think that because of the name, I expected raw steak, raw steak which seemed not so bad in the scheme of things, when considering how much I eat steak rare to the point that its only brown on the outside. Besides, I'm gutsy. I'll try anything once. When in Rome?

I was not expecting what I got.

Steak Tartare is raw ground beef with an egg on top, for those not in the know, served with capers, onions and parsley and sliced potatoes on the side.

I did eat it, most of it.

It wasn't so bad, if the texture didn't get to you. The capers gave it most of the flavor and they serve it with worcestershire sauce (i googled the spelling nic). Also the large quantities of wine consumed before (one bottle), during (one bottle) and after (one bottle) helped.

I can still taste the capers.

Maybe I should be a little less daring.

Apartment Living

2008-04-09T04:33:00.004-04:00

Monday was uneventful. I decided not to wear myself down with traipsing all around the city. Bk was coming Tuesday and I didn't want to feel rundown and tired by the time he arrived. I did check out and fall in love with the beautiful apartment in Le Marais. On a street lined with galleries and cute little shops, behind a large, tall green door (it was so parisian and interesting looking that I thought for a long while that it couldn't possibly be the place), Past two courtyards, up four flights of wooden stairs that slope and sag. Is the most charming little attic apartment.

The apartment thing is nice, it feels homey. There are wooden beams across the roof. Lots of windows, one overlooking a small terrace, that I believe we have access to, and the courtyard.z The other out across to the other buildings. A tiled floor in the living room and kitchen, with small spanish rugs. Two or Three big wooden amours. A real bed (its been a week, hostel mattresses are like cardboard) all with white linens...there is something quite charming about that.

This morning bk made breakfast (croissants, eggs, cheese, juice).

It feels almost like living here. Watch out. I might run away.

Sunday Night, Paris Snow.

2008-04-09T03:49:00.005-04:00

Sunday Night found me at dinner at a wonderful restaurant in Le Marais with the Cali Boys. A girl from the hostel, Brianna tagged along as well.

The best french onion soup I've ever tasted (a bit on the salty side but I like that sort of thing). Chicken Supreme--cooked in riesling with fabulous oniony chivey mashed potatoes. I wish I had taken a picture because they really were fabulous. We exchanged information, finally.

Afterwards I attempted to go out but with a Metro that stops running at 1am and everything being closed on Sunday Nights it was mostly a failed attempt on my part. I'm not sure whether or not they ever made it out, at 12:30 I ran to catch the train and said my final goodbyes to all of them.

What really made the evening for all of us was the snow. It snowed in Paris in April. I've never seen anything more enchanting or magical than all the statuesque 16th and 17th century architecture with snow flakes falling all around it. I wanted the weather to be warm while I was in town. I wanted there to be lots of sunshine. But it felt like a small gift from Paris to me.

Missing Post and Photos

2008-04-08T03:39:00.004-04:00

Just for the record, I'm not slacking on the posting. (or only posting photographs of guys from California).

At Oops Hostel the internet is free but the connection is slow and gives out (they only allow you to use it in 30-60 min and it gives no warning when they sign you out) so I end up losing emails, blogpost and get cut off in the middle of uploading photographs.

There was a great photo taken from the coffee shop where Alexander and I shared an espresso on Sunday which overlooked the Pantheon. There was a photo of the biggest and most beautiful dog I'd ever seen, tied to a gate surrounding a huge fountain. The sign that said "beer goggles, the cheap alternative to plastic surgery."

There are also a couple of post that I've written in my head that will hve to wait as well till later.

The Parisian Afternoon

2008-04-06T09:20:00.003-04:00

This afternoon was very nice and relaxing. All of my plans usually are in flux for most of the day so I never made it to the Museum. I started walking north from my hostel and ended up at Rue de Muffetard (sp?) where there is an outdoor market quite by accident. It was one of the places and things I wanted to do while in Paris, just to see and experience. I continued walking north (hoping to make it to the Seine) bu stooped to get chinese food (because its inexpensive).

When I stopped in an older french gentleman upon realizing my difficulty ordering offered assistance and asked that I sit and eat with him. Me being me, said sure why not? Talk to more french locals get to know a bit about the culture.

Afterwards he invited me to a café to sit on a terrace and enjoy the sun light. We drank espresso talked about french poetry and literature. Talked about life. Talked about American culture and linguistics. He explained to me the importance of French Appertifs which is loosely translated into appetizers but is a very important french way of life. Its the way, he said, that he french get together and talk about life and enjoy one another's company and it can go on for hours, you eat or you don't eat, but its really about communing with another person. Enjoying company.

Then we walked to the river (it was nice to have someone point out the architecture and the nuances of the city along the way) where we sat on a very narrow staircase (his secret of course) that led straight down into the water.

I suppose for now that's it. I really would like to head to the room and take a (hopefully) short nap. Maybe when I wake up I'll call some people to see what their dinner or evening plans are...

Till later.

A Few Random and Un-ordered Notes

2008-04-06T05:21:00.006-04:00

Blogging after a bottle wine, a beer and a cocktail is a lot like emailing after a bottle of wine, a beer and a cocktail. Except of course that everyone can see it. You wake up the next morning and think...wait...did I just say that. Why yes, M, yes you did.
Cool design hostels attract cool looking people.
I'm still quite exhausted (I haven't really gotten that rest yet).
Headed to the Musee D'Orsay today most likely.
Most people recommend going to the same places in Paris...Musee D'Orsay, Montmartre, Versaille, so far they're all right.
Free internet is a gift from Bob.
I did not change my hostel plans (that seemed like a much better idea last night, than this morning and was contingent on where I would end up Monday Night...which is looking like the apartment!!).
Hostels say they're in a great location...thats usually not true.
Moving your luggage over and over again makes you realize what you could have left at home...which was probably a lot.
Don't buy things that don't fit your bags.
Hostel free breakast is always a baguette and a croissant and maybe with cereal, coffee and orange juice.
I'm getting excited at the idea of having consistant company. Trips alone are fun...I'd like to travel alone alot more, but it'll be nice to have someone around to motivate me to get out and do things again since my energy is lagging.
Everything I brought is wrinkled which means I'm only wearing a few things anyway.
I'm less surprised by the amount of time people spend chilling at their hostel than I was when I arrived.
I'm having a hard time keeping track of what day it is. Is it Saturday? Sunday? the 5th?

Last Night-Today

2008-04-05T19:54:00.003-04:00

*Edit

This morning.
I woke up.
I looked around.
Room full of guys still.
And remembered I had no Credit Card....still....right.
Sucktastic.

Majority of my day (11:30am-4:30pm) was spent on the phone with the bank trying to get an emergency bank card or cash. Finally they sent me cash and I had to literally dash to the Western Union to get a replacement. I'd love to recap last night but I think I'll save some stories to tell when I see people.

Once I got the cash I decided to make that trip to Chez Hanna on 54 Rue des Rosiers in the 4th arrondissement (Marias). I'd read about it on Voice of a City. Plus I seriously wanted to take a stroll around the 4th and check out what all the fuss was about. First, the falafel was seriously delicious and came with all sort of goodies (eggplant on top was great). Second, the 4th arr is seriously where everyone beautiful and young and paris seem to be. I'd been looking for the stylish french women (outside the champs where its mostly tourist anyway) and finally found them there. Dressed to the nines in the latest and greatest, the girls of Le Marias would give new yorkers a run for their money. The styling is similar but very different in a way I find hard to put into words. Maybe its less the outfits and more the personality or a mixture of the two intersecting.

I walked past a bar, considering as always to stop by and have a drink, and who would happen to call my name but Timothy, one of the now infamous CA boys. He'd been stopping into to have a drink while the rest of the guys made a trip up to the Eiffel tower. So we sat for a beer during happy hour and then went to dinner at Takami (sp?) on Rue De Temple, where I had a sushi and skewers of meat and cheese, it was a very weird and very delightful take on the kebab.

Following that we headed to the most scandalous club I've ever been to. I did meet lots of people from Germany, Poland. Paris is a lot like NY in that everyone is from somewhere else or visiting.

Jeff, Mick, Josh and Mick all met up afterwards and thats when I said au revoir. Too much party the night before, it was around 12am and I didn't want the subways to stop running. Leaving me stranded with no way to get to my very far hostel. We rode the subway to République (it was the moment of saying goodbye to someone four of five times, only to realize they're going the same was as you).

Tomorrow I switch hostels.

I am considering, much to Tim's encouragement, changing to their hostel (they switched this morning) instead of the very fashionable Oops (which is actually not too far away). Their's is much cheaper and I figure as long as I'm having fun why not let the good times roll.

Plus I'm ready for a little company after a week of near solitude.

When does bk arrive again?

The (self proclaimed) Best Falafel in the World

2008-04-05T19:35:00.002-04:00

That was my sole objective for the day. I read about Chez Hanna on Voice of the City, a blog written by people from Paris for people visiting Paris. A sort of personalized Not for Tourist guide.

This falafel marks the moment when my day turned around.

Last Nights Party

2008-04-05T06:24:00.002-04:00

Um......

It did involve Absinthe. But when in Rome I suppose, do as the californians do.

I was exhausted from too much travel so I went to take a nap and woke up to six fairly attractive guys from California who invited me out to a disco for a little dancing in Paris.

Lets just say that I've got quite a few stories to last me a life time from last night. The guys were great though and I'm glad to have met them, they invited me out again tonight, but I think I'll sleep instead.

An afternoon by the Seine

2008-04-04T12:28:00.003-04:00

(written yesterday after a walk down the Seine)

Today after spending the morning exhausted, legs achey and nearly unable to muster up the energy leave the hostel (Rafael talked me out with slow and steady persistance) I ended up walking 2 1/2 miles down the Seine River and thinking and thinking. I spent about four hours meandering northeast from the intersection of Avenue de New York and Avenue Albert de Mun near the Eiffel Tower and to the Île de la Cité. My legs feel like they might fall off right now.

My thoughts began with the idea of me Living in Paris, Being in Paris, Raising a family in Paris, Being happy in Paris. I could see it in front of me unfurled like a dream. I drifted as quiet as a cloud between sitting on the waters edge and walking through the trees; up the staircase to peer out across the river and back down to hop like a kid between the stones. And I thought. I guess at some point my thoughts turned melancholy.

I wonder if its possible to be in Paris alone and be light and airy the entire time, if there isn't some sort of melancholy built into the air that gets in through the soles of your shoes and makes you reflect on everything. The view of the Seine is enough to make anyone's heart ache.

Being there for hours was enough to turn my thoughts from the trivial to matters of the heart to the nature of love to my achy knees.

2008-04-04T12:17:00.000-04:00

Near the Passerelle Solferino from Marcia Howard on Vimeo.

I had to do it

2008-04-04T11:46:00.005-04:00

(I dedicate this post to blazey...

not because it contains food)

It looks like a Baguette

But really its a hot dog!

The mustard was so good and spicy.

Sorry Bk for stealing your hand posing technique, but you knew it was going to happen eventually.

Bad Adapter

2008-04-04T06:45:00.003-04:00

I nearly burned down my room.

Apparently something happened when I plugged in my curling iron to the cheap adapter I bought at MoonPrix. That something involved a super hot curling iron. It started smoking, almost burning through the towel I had sat it on (more smoke). The plastic tip on the curling iron started to melt.

I also can't plug anything into it, which may have been a blessing in disguise, I suppose lest a surge of power blows out my ipod.

Being Literary in Paris

2008-04-04T04:41:00.003-04:00

I had two thoughts coming to Paris:

I'd like to write in a cafe
I'd like to see a poetry reading (Preferably in french)

When I read on Voice of a City, last night after returning from Montmartre and before I could head to the 4th, that there was a poetry reading at L’Ogre à Plumes, I automatically ran upstairs grabbed my stuff and headed out the door. I had, of course neglected to look at the date, by tonight at 9pm they meant the night of the 2nd and not the third. I was promptly lost after exiting the subway and when I finally oriented myself, I realized that it was the big bar/restaurant right at the end of the block and visible from the Metro.

It was the most wonderful little bar. While it pretentiously called itself the "café littérature" it was exactly what I would have expected and desired it to be, a couple of little old type writers. Books in french place haphazardly in various places. A small and literary crowd. Decent wine for 3,50€ a glass. I don't think I'd ever had so much fun at a bar alone. I don't think I've ever been in a place where so many women sit at bars alone. I read, I wrote, I soaked it in. I listened to the American visiting friends talk for a while. I enjoyed a horrible french cigarette (the smell of which is quite irremovable by the way--aj please send cigs with bk--I'm dying here). I botched some french. I felt again, what it might be like to live here.

It was the perfect end, to the perfect day.

Montmatre, Love, O'Vinea, Love.

2008-04-04T03:41:00.006-04:00

Yesterday was so perfect I feel I have to break it up into bits just to write about it appropriately, without losing everyone in one long post that goes on forever. I think it marks the day I fell in love with Paris.

I walked around Montmartre and the Sacré Coeur, guided of course by the wonderful Gilles Desmons who I highly recommend (beware though, it seems near the end of his walks he becomes slightly lazy with directions, meaning that you should have a map handy and be prepared to lose yourself a bit...which is not entirely a bad thing). I spent a lot of time staring leisurely onto all of Paris, walking up and down the winding streets and stairways that populate the area, through beautiful cottages and gardens all built as early as the 17th century. Gazing at homes and the playgrounds of some of the world's greatest artists and writers and general seekers of fun and pleasure.

It was a walk to put everything into perspective. It was, I think, my second favorite day in all the world.

I also conquered my fear of the French at O'Vinea, a wonderful little café on the Rue Lepic. I walked by. I stopped to look at the menu. I walked a few more yards down. I thought okay, its now or never. I either speak the language or continue on being hungry and waiting to find a market, there was still another hour or so left on my walk. Plus I'm beginning to think of croissants as the axis of evil. I think its time that i switch to baguettes as my food of choice.

What I learned at O'vinea was that I don't think the French are rude at all. I have in my short time in France found everyone more than willing to help. Its true that everyone speaks a little english, and therein lies the problem, american knowing this walk into the situation expecting to be helped in English, usually from what I've seen not even trying to speak a little french. And its true what people say...if you want good service or directions its best to at least try. It is, of course, a french speaking county and the fact that Americans, the most idiotically patriotic of all don't give the language a go, while we constantly harass other nationalities in America to speak the language, seems the most ridiculous of all. I've consistently been helped and received more than great service in all but one place. I try, they try, we reach a nice little middle ground. I also noticed that most people aren't so confident in their English that they feel comfortable having a conversation.

At O'Vinea I ordered en Salade Poulet (thank god the romantic languages all resemble one another) and my first espresso. The food was great and I enjoyed the feeling of sitting at a café without feeling rushed. Eating my meal I felt triumphant, elated and full. The salad was beautifully presented, my server was absolutely handsome, the sun was setting over the buildings. I met two frenchmen with whom I had the most hilarious conversation. Gabriel and Uni. (Oh...you're from New York...I love New York....you know Brooklyn?...50 cent?...Canal Street?... I love canal street). They told me I looked like Kelly Rowland (?), which sounded at first like Kelly Holland. Then they offered me a little of their salad, a little of their beer, a little of their bread, a ride on their scooter, a place to stay at their apartment (we have big big house, in a very pop-u-lar area), their phone number, a night out on the town, taught me a little french.

I continued my walk, I was propositioned by an artist who said he wasn't sure whether he should paint my picture or pick me up. Maybe both? When I said I had no money. He said 'okay, then I'll just pick you up. ' It's Paris, let me walk with you, we can fall in love.

Parisian men are great, really. I mean they're alot more fun to say no to. They're attractive. They've got swagger and style. They're charming, they don't cat call or whistle. They're also relentless. They can't figure out why, if you're an american woman alone in Paris, you'd say no to a glass of wine or why you wouldn't let them walk with you for just a while.

I suppose being alone gives you a much bigger opportunity to talk to people that you might not have otherwise, to carry on the conversation just a bit longer than usual....

The Perfect Day

2008-04-03T18:37:00.006-04:00

(see it big)

I've already started to write about it but I'll wait till tomorrow to post.

Dear James, I could kiss you

2008-04-03T06:42:00.006-04:00

Dear James who mans the front desk at the St. Christopher Hostel from time to time.

Giving me a room that I can stay in without checking out every morning and rechecking into a different room every night, has provided me with a raison d'être. You made me momentarily forget what a suck-fest this place is, while putting me in a room with a majority of people who are close to my own age and seem genuinely interesting. When you said, I've got a bed on the 3rd floor for the next four days I didn't respond not because I'd been drinking...like you so quickly assumed...but because I was seriously thinking of leaning across the counter and placing one big kiss on that lovely face of yours. I'm not sure what you magically did at the computer screen that made it possible for me not to change rooms every night, that the girl at the front desk couldn't do the day before but whatever it was, and despite the three spanish brothers/friends who talk all night like little girls, I'm grateful.

Cheers,

ps: Todays goal, ear plugs and one of those nifty face masks.

Today Montmartre, Tomorrow the World.

2008-04-03T06:27:00.003-04:00

I'm taking it sort of easy today after another sleepless night. I decided that I'm tired of waking up every morning at 7:30, not doing my hair or my make up, making it out before 10 and back to the hostel exhausted around 6-7pm. Today I'm going to leave a little later, enjoy the afternoon/evening sun (its back for a moment) and see a little of Paris by night. (I'm having a hard time with this it seems and have put on and removed my jacket several times)

I'm headed to Montmartre to climb the stairs near the Sacré Coeur where I hear there is an amazing view of the city, maybe take a gander at the Moulin Rouge (I'd like to get photos for my mother). And if I'm lucky stop in the Red Light district and pick up a hooker...which is apparently what the three spanish brothers thatswoke me up five times last night were up to (she was muy caliente they said).

This is a photo of the Sacré Couer which I found online to give Blazey a reason to look at my blog.

Also I can't get the taste of the Parisian Marlboro Lights out of my mouth...its almost enough to put me off smoking completely. Almost.

Day trip to Ver(sigh)

2008-04-02T11:44:00.002-04:00

I'm afraid to write about it, because it was such a great day, as if putting it in words might cause it to lose some of its magic. I don't want to lessen it with trivialization. It felt big. Yesterday my friend said "there are certain professions, places, experiences... that serve as particularly great metaphors for life... a city like Paris has got to be one of those places." Today was that day.

I took the RER C train to the Versailles, a suburb of France about 40 minutes from the city. I was quite excited. I'd packed crossaints (smooshed from hanging in my bag for two days), proscioutto, some kind of dutch cheese and a bottle of wine. Apparently my hostel is in Paris' Bed-stuy (this is why I haven't been out yet but more on that in another post) and the store that I went to was like family dollar where they'd run out of everything. So I got the dutch cheese in place of mozz and was surprised to find that I really enjoyed it. Back to the story.

I arrived in at the Versailles Rive-Gauche station with Walking Paris by Gilles Desmons, this great little illustrated walking book, great for restless (read overly energetic) souls like me that find all their enjoyment in pounding the pavement. The directions are great and the history of the locations is very interesting, even though its a little hard to pay attention to while you're walking and a little dry to read if you're not walking. I kept stopping every few yards or so at first to check where I was, what it meant, to stop at main gates of the chateau and look back at where the avenue de paris, the avenue de st. cloud and the avenue de sceaux met. Later as I continued on I found a nice medium between reading a head and walking a little. I didn't actually enter the Chateau, it costs money and since I had my handy guide book it didn't seem all too pressing. I wish now that I had taken some time to go through it as I've looked at pictures and it looks as breathtaking as the grounds.

Side note before walking to the chateau, I stopped to by a post card for my friend. The owner of the store an older gentleman with a kind smile, was so nice that it made my day. After exchanging Bonjour (whenever you walk into a shop in paris you are almost always greated with a hello and a smile...at least the shops that I've been in, which I find to run against the general idea of the french and their famous rudeness) he began to speak to me in french, after which I flubbed my most important line Je ne parle pas francios. He asked me where I was from and then he said, "You are very welcome here in France." I thanked him and gave him my biggest brightest smile and for which he gave me the postcard for free. (almost in those exact words) I smiled all the way ot the gates of the chateau.

I want to right about my experience in the gardens surounding the chateau but I'm having difficulty (despite all the thoughts running through my head at the time when I should have grabbed my note book and put them to paper). It was that moment of being somewhere that is unlike anywhere you've ever been before, the air is more crisp and everything is more beautiful than it should be. It was the wrong season to be at the garden, too cold and the leaves were still just barely beginning to bloom. The sky was overcast and rain looked immenent nearly the entire 2 1/2 hours I was there. But it was simply moving, standing there at the fountain overlooking the Grand Canal, I never wanted to be so disconnected to experience everything fully and quitely as I did at that moment. I had nearly talked a girl, Johnna, into joining me and I'm sure we'd have had a great time, but I was so happy to have the time to think and breathe and to walk at my leisure, losing myself. The garden is great because everywhere you are, seems like somewhere you shouldn't be, there are so many gates everywhere. I found a big stone bench with moss growing out of it and made three sandwhiches which I ate in silence, watching the occassional person slowly meander through. There were also qutie a few older couples which made me extremely happy, something about a couple of a certain age (think 60-70) slowly walking through the gardens on a cold day, holding hands and talking quitely to one another like teenagers...man it just filled me with so much hope about love. They were everywhere sitting on benches watching their dogs play...the general crowd, once you got past the Bassin d'Appollon was 40+, but once you got into the larger part of the garden there were all these people in love. I'd almost say that I'd rather not have discovered Versaille on any other day but today. I wandered around, past the grazing sheep and horses, until I found a clearing where I sat and while the clouds gathered enjoyed my first glass of wine in france and my first real rain in france.

From there I meandered up and accidently off the grounds not realizing I'd entered the surrounding town, until I saw cars, street signs and bars. So I also enjoyed my first time getting lost in France (with no map to guide me as I was outside of Paris).

I found the train station in the rain, paid just in time and hopped aboard the train. I'm not sure why I'd felt a kinship with the girl who sat across from me (it seemed ridiculous that she sat across from me at all since my legs were propped up, blocking the seat and also because the train wasn't full at all) but she asked me if we were on the train to Paris, which I confirmed and we both kept simultaneously looking at our maps. We napped together, if thats weird to say, seperately but together. It was just that sense of doing something along with another person that I hadn't felt in a couple of days. She smiled (maybe her biggest and best smile) and thanked me as she exited the train.

I wasn't so sure but I really think I love being in Paris alone right now at this time in my life, I didn't imagine how much I needed it or how or why it might change me, but I did need it and it is changing me...minutely and bit by bit, but a change nonetheless.

Day 3: Versailles, Heaven's Gate and Living at Animal House

2008-04-02T02:45:00.004-04:00

I think I'm headed to Versailles for a romantic walk around the grounds and perhaps a bike ride. I'm unsure as of now where to rent the bike (I hear its on the grounds), how much it might costs (my daily budget is hilariously ridiculous) or if I can still ride a bike (yes I know how the saying goes, but its been over ten years). I'm also considering saving the Versailles for tomorrow when the weather might be nicer and finding a few street markets. Making my way to Chez Hanna in the 4th arrondissement, this afternoon for what is supposed to be the best felafels in Paris.

Yesterday I walked from the Arc de Triomphe down the Avenue des Champs Elysees and sat in the Rond Point Des Champs Elysees overlooking the Theatre Marigny, where I enjoyed 3 croissants and watched a young teenage couple talk and play on the bench in front of me for maybe a half an hour, till they left and I resumed my walking. I was immediately drawn to the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais, down avenue Winston Churchill. Its amazing as you walk down that way and the gold dome of the chapel peers out from overtop the Hotel des Invalides. I felt quite literally that it must be what entering heaven looks like, should a heaven exist, crossing the bridge above the seine. The sun making its first appearance and making everything look radiant and majestic. I'm sure on another day it might not have been quite so beautiful as it was at that moment. But then it was breathe taking.

From there I continued on the Rue Saint Dominique past the ministére de la défense, with the guards standing outside...along these building there are big gates manned by two blue clad guards that lead into little courtyards with car parks, that reminded me of something from a james bond film. I stopped in the sq. samuel rousseau and watched children play and a few students smoke cigarettes in a small playground over looking s chapel. A short while later I walked on the Boulevard Saint Germain for a while entering the 6th arrondissement which was much more...hip and elegant than the districts I'd passed through prior. Lots of stores, lots of expensive looking clothing, and men in great suits...which I suppose leads me to talk about a great part of my trip so far, French Men and their swagger. Its quite a possibility that I might move to france just to spend more time with the arrongant, beautiful and almost cruel looking french men, their well tailored clothes...no wonder women in france are so partial to adultery. I have never seen so many women (probably not french) staring so openly at men before...one girl nearly ran into me, but my were they beautiful. Enough of that. Back to the important matters.

I'm considering checking out of my hostel in favor of the old hostel, I have to call and see if they have rooms, but this place is quite the nightmare. First off the benefit of the other hostel, besides being located near the Place de la Republique, was that the travels were all in the same age range as myself, here the bar and the large (10 to a room) dormitory style housing has drawn a much younger crowd in the 18-21 age range. I never realized how much I don't have in common with an 18 year old until now, matter of fact I can't remember the last time in the past couple of years that I spent enough time with an 18 year old (outside of during train rides) to give it much thought. But oh sweet jesus, its not alot. Couple 18-21 years olds with a bar and a hostel "club" and you have a recipe for a sleeping disaster. First off, most of these kids are on the younger side, closer to 18 and have taken a year off from college to explore europe, secondly in their exploration of europe they've decided, in true american style, to spend their time socializing with other people from america (a few brits and a rarer few from other parts of europe) in the hostel bar (there were of course a few older men waiting in the wings like vultures). Somehow by asking for a mixed room (or by virtue of the short hair cut), I've ended up in a room full of nine 18-21 year old males, trickling in at various stages of the night in various stages of drunkeness with an influx at 2am...this morning, I awoke to a symphony of snores and emerged from my bed (I did have the curtain replace by the way) to find a room full of boys sleeping in various stages of undress, a few of whom shut their curtains as they realized a girl was in their midst (one boy kept peering out every so often). I was quite upset to have ended up in the all male party room, but then I considered the alternative nine 18-21 year old drunk girls...yeah, I'll stick with the snoring. I think I might this place another night, but I'm going to call the other hostel to see if they have rooms available beginning tomorrow. On a good note they do sell plug converters and metro tickets so it can't be all bad and 24 hours of internet usage for 6€ (which means that I can keep blogging and posting photos at my leisure).

This morning I awoke to a slew of emails from my friends at home which definitely made me feel a lot better after a near sleepless night and lightened my mood. The second best from Stéve, that I missed yesterday at the arc de triomphe and who I played one sided phone tag with (definitely appreciating the invention of cell phones now), who sent me Nina Simone's Funkier than a Mosquito's Tweeter Jazeem all styles remix, which is already one of my favorite songs.

Till later, A bientôt.

(I've tried to re-read and edit all the typos...but I'm still all over the place with this keyboard)

St. Christopher Hostel 2: Hmmmm

2008-04-01T09:05:00.005-04:00

I've arrived at my second hostel (well I arrived at 10:30 this morning) to check in...though the check in wasn't until 2pm and of course there was no where to store bags except a small little locker area (20 lockers, 100 guests; you do the math). Apparently because of some crazy computer booking thing, I'm going to have to check out and recheck in every morning, which means gathering all my bags and trying to beat everyone down to the lockers so that I don't get stuck as I did today carting my bag around (apparently you can leave your bag in the basement at the "club" which isn't secure, but no one told me that after they told me they were out of lockers). So I went to the Cimteriere du Pere Lachaise, determined to keep my plans, with my big pink suitcase in tow. If you've ever been, I was quite the sight lugging the suit case up long flights of stairs, down gravel passageways, between graves. I had to stop and chuckle at myself every so often, I felt resilent and a little stupid, but I had fun. I'd like to go back again before I leave, sans luggage.

I'm considering checking back into the last hostel I stayed at upon first arriving Absolute Paris, depending on what happens with tomorrow's bag situation, where I won't have to change rooms and they have secure baggage storage...and each room has its own shower/bathroom. The internet is alot worse off, but the girl showed me how to make a phone card call and the staff were much more helpful then the people here.

Also I'm curious how I ended up with the only bed that does not have a curtain.

For lunch I had a pear in the Square de la Roquette and it was the sweetest thing I've ever eaten. I'm quite sleepy (still) and quite happy. (I considered taking another nap but after yesterday's accidental snooze fest I thought better of it and decided to rest in front of a computer instead)

I've also just met a girl from Canarsie, Bk...represent.

Three people have asked me if I'm British saying that I have a slight accent... I'm wondering if they mean the muffins in my mouth. One asked if I was here for fashion, I'm taking that to mean I look fabulous. The small bits of fench from my guide book have served me well and (unrelated) I'm supposed to meeting up with Sir today at five or six.

Viva la France.

Day Two: Ready

2008-04-01T02:33:00.002-04:00

Bonjour!

I slept nearly an entire fifteen plus shameful hours yesterday(no aj and bk I have not done the math on that, but I went to bed around 4pm and I just woke now at 8:30).

My first hostel was a great place to get rest. Only two other people in my dorm, who were both polite and quite, an adjacent bathroom that was clean with warm water. The actual hostel is in a great location that provided lots of entertainment during my walk around the city, near the republique and canal saint martin. I wondered around trying to lose myself but all the side streets seem to lead me back to exactly the same street where I started, so making my way back to the hostel when I was ready to pass out was fairly easy. I'm glad I have two weeks because I don't feel that guilty about giving my body the chance to rest and I just became excited after realizing how much there is to do and see. Today I'd like to walk up the champs to the arc de triomphe but first to make my way to the cemetiere du pere lachaise. I also got a calling card and plan on trying to meet up with Siracuse Steve (my unofficial tour guide) or my friend Cate.

Thats all. Absolutely nothing has happened yet really, but I'm leaving this hostel and need to use my internet card.

Typos be damned...

2008-03-31T15:37:00.002-04:00

The key board is all backwards. Day one of Paris Adventure a few quickies:

Air India is quite the experience...there was an inflatable life vest sitting on the floor under the chair in front of me, and the whole thing smelled like curry.
Sleeping pills and free inflight Johnny Walker not the best idea. When I arrived I felt like a zombie.
I spent an hour trying to get from the RER to the Metro. Which apprently I didnt even need to buy a ticket for when transferring.
Things are not so hard to find. My hostel I found fairly easily without getting lost.
I wandered around the Canal for an hour or two until I realized I was so sleepy ,y legs were shaking.
I slept most of my first day away.
Paris is twice as beautiful as I expected.

Two Women

2008-03-15T18:18:00.001-04:00

There were always in me, two women at least,
one woman desperate and bewildered,
who felt she was drowning and another who
would leap into a scene, as upon a stage,
conceal her true emotions because they
were weaknesses, helplessness, despair,
and present to the world only a smile,
an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest.

Anaïs Nin

Exactly

2008-03-15T11:54:00.001-04:00

Erica Funkhouser, "Day Work"

Alone. I love to be alone. Against
the numberless infinities. Or for
the re-creation of the little chores
that roof my world: embellished emptiness.

A round peg in a square hole will find
its four corners—within, without—and fill
them with its private tyrannies. Be still
and see if solitude will make you kind.

Contained. I love to be contained. The air,
a pair of trees that rise in unison,
the shade that lends my day abundant edge:
inventions, all. The other world's a cage.
The body scatters and is never done.
Small teeth and claws await us everywhere.

From Earthly, Funkhouser's fifth collection of poems. via Beatrice)

the narrative

2008-03-15T09:11:00.002-04:00

It has been a while. In the silence of the past week I was more able to reconnect with the story, to think and imagine the narrative which drives it, to develop it more. To fine tune my mind to focus less on my own solipsistic narration (twitter on crack) and exist outside of myself in a world that, while driven by my experiences and views, stands on its own merit. To hear the characters speak and advance. To see a plot unfold in its own natural way. Its all a little staggering. And reason to be quite for a little while more.

"A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens--second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day's events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths."
--Reynolds Price

My Ten Text*

2008-03-14T00:36:00.003-04:00

It was promising to be another quiet day in marcia phone land, but then I got these in the evening. I wasn't going to post 'em cause I like to keep it relevant and reflective, but they really made my day:

hi
sending you as many messages
to reward you for leashing up that twitter
to make you feel less lonely
you
should watch some felicity or watch anything to
distract yourself
don't worry be happy cus i'm
so awesome
.

Good friends are hard to find.

(*what's the plural of text? texts? that sounds like it referrers to ancient literary scrolls...)

Site Design, Feeds and Missing Content

2008-03-13T16:05:00.006-04:00

I've been thinking a lot about what gets lost in translation lately. More specifically blogs that get mangled by everyone's feed readers. Lately I've been trying some old fashion net surfing.

A few thoughts:

Most people I know have (with the exception of me I suppose) have put some thought and effort into their blog design. (see bk, or super clean and simple tyfo, or faves like dork mag, maud or design boom; even blazey pimped his tumblr.) It's as if someone designed a magazine cover and the store ripped it off before they sold it.
Lost Content: This infuriates me with the tumblr rss feed and I am currently trying to find a solution. If I post a song and you never go to my blog then you'll likely never hear it (might not even know it's missing in the first place). Quotes and dialog are cut short. Links are lost. SERIOUSLY!?! Come on tumblr? That brings me to my second point...
Abbreviated reading: When I go to a blog I'm more likely to peep the content (especially when aided by a nice design) but once you get into the act of scanning your feeder it becomes just that, scanning. If you're missing content from say...my tumblr, you're less likely to care to go back to check it out within the context of the other 5,000 posts you also want to check out. Its not intentional it just happens. Even the information most people pick up, myself included, is done in a quick once over without giving much thought to the words. Which once again means that the design is lost and so is the content. Why bother blogging at all? (No wonder we're all goldfish)
Once you add a few blogs you have to add a few more. Completely inundating your reader, feeder and therefore yourself, with useless information.
And the Final point. I love google, but their reader is just plain UGLY. Who seriously wants to sit around and stair at the nastiness for an hour or two?

Just make an effort to try and visit the sites of your favorite blogs. It'll definitely make the world a better place and inflate everyone's traffic. Think of it as doing your part to keep those damn designers on top of their game.

I'm curious to hear everyone else's thoughts.

The Universe: planetarium reflections

2008-03-13T15:00:00.003-04:00

I know I steal a lot from Whiskey River. Trust me, I don't want to but I can't help myself. Their quotes are so amazingly relevant that I can't help but think to myself, so and so has to read this. So please do us both a favor, add it to your reader.

This one particularly reminds me of my trip to the planetarium and teeny my reflection after.

"The universe takes on a whole new meaning when you know that your place in it was not foreordained, that it was not designed for us, indeed, that it was not designed at all. If we are nothing more than star stuff, how special life becomes. How inspiring it is to share in the sublimity of knowledge generated by other human minds, and perhaps to even make a tiny contribution toward that body of knowledge that will be passed down through the ages, part of the cumulative wisdom of a single species on a tiny planet orbiting an ordinary star on the remote edge of a not-so-unusual galaxy, itself a member of a cluster of galaxies millions of light years from nowhere."
- Michael Shermer

Maybe I was ego tripping?

2008-03-13T12:30:00.002-04:00

The Flaming Lips=Zen?

The lyrics to my favorite Flaming lips song:
Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell.

I was waiting on a moment
But the moment never came
All the billion other moments
Were just slipping all away
I must have been tripping
Were just slipping all away
Just ego tripping

I was wanting you to love me
But your love it never came
All the other love around me
Was just wasting all away
I must have been tripping
Was just wasting all away
Just ego tripping

I was waiting on a moment
But the moment never came...

A lot can change in a year.

2008-03-13T06:16:00.003-04:00

Its been exactly one year today since I packed an overnight bag and moved on with my life. A lot can change even in a day. I had no idea what I was giving up, but I didn't know what I stood to gain either.

It puts things in perspective. How many of the people that I know will I still speak to in a year? Which of the things that feel immediate and important are still going to matter?

"Reality is flowing. This does not mean that everything moves, changes, becomes. Science and common experience tell us that. It means that movement, change, becoming is everything that there is. There is nothing else; everything is movement, is change. The time that we ordinarily think about is not real time, but a picture of space."
- Henri-Louis Bergson

(If this post lacks coherence or eloquence its because its seven am in the morning and I've been up since four....there are so many things I wanted to write between the bed and the screen that aren't really translating into real coherent thoughts)

Zero SMS

2008-03-13T05:30:00.005-04:00

Its been over 24 hours since I received a text message. Only two personal calls, one from my roommate and one from my mother; and bare minimum in the chat department. It is indeed an odd and isolating event. A great deal of silence. A little refreshing and a little lonely at the same time.

Its hard to imagine that a year ago this was sort of the way life went, sans blog, twitter, facebook, flickr, tumblr, etc; I chatted with only one person online on a regular basis and I only received one personal email on the exact same day last year.

I did finish finally finish one book and start another. Write a great deal. Bake a casserole and drink a bottle of vino. It was a good day, a great evening.

On Self Respect: Part Deux

2008-03-11T08:17:00.004-04:00

A few people ruminated on the recent post quoting Joan Didion's On Self Respect and whether that would mean my slowly fading web presence/willingness to be as "accommodating"as I've been in years pass. And yes I've been answering fewer emails, sign into chat less frequently and considering the invasiveness of twitter. I offer a few comments back and would be curious to hear any one else's opinion (not on myself particularly but on the quote)

From a Chat:

Creative people.... need/love to find their own solutions to everything and will rarely have it any other way. No matter how sweet they are. I think, that's the essence of being creative. Problem Solving.

But yes you need to be more selfish.

From a Comment:

How is lack of self-respect related to a lack of self? What if - sometimes, or to some extent - this problem is caused by the fact that we don't perceive ourselves as well or as thoroughly as others perceive themselves? Then we overcompensate to try to demonstrate that we know what it's like to be human, that we can empathize and communicate.

The sad part is that it usually works - who would call us out? Who (especially there in NYC) is sufficiently unconcerned with him/herself that they'll see your behavior as your own madness, and not a reflection on them?

From an Email 'Twitter could be your calling":

Because I am in awe of your self-disclosure, and because this makes it sound like I won't see you for a good long while as you reconvene with self, I offer you the slightly contradictory words of Viktor Frankl:

"I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this sonstitutive characteristic 'the self-transcendence of human existence.' It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself - be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter."

Alice Smith

2008-03-08T07:26:00.004-05:00

I saw Alice Smith perform last night at Highline Ballroom.

In June 2006 I came across Alice Smith on Big Stereo and sought out a couple of her song. March 2007 I met someone else who dug the song "Dream" as much as I did, and had a deja vu experience. "What song is this" I thought, "How do I know her?" Why of course, from my own musical library.

Every so often I encourage people to jump on board with a particular female vocalist. Its not because I have great musical for sight, I just happen to be in the right place at the right time and know what talent is.

Why you'll listen to her:
Alice Smith was honest to goodness one of the best female vocalist I've seen perform live. Ever. In Life. I didn't think it was still possible for someone to produce the sound that came out of her mouth, without theatrics. Yeah. Think Ethel Waters or Bassie Smith singing the blues in 2008. Modern music for modern times of course, but just as moving.

Standing almost stock still on stage, she made it look like it was the easiest thing in the world to produce a sound that even Alicia Keys appears to struggle with. It took me a minute to register, could that girl be making as big and as dynamic a sound such as she was? Yeah. The conversation of course went back to Things We Know. If Amy Winehouse was Billie Holiday, tragic and talented, then Alice Smith was Sarah Vaughn or Ella Fitzgerald. She'd live to be 80 and has more raw talent to boot. Plus, she's absolutely gorgeous with an insane body. Every one was mesmerized.

Why you'll never hear of her:
Live, you almost wonder whats missing from her album. Well. Her. The recorded songs don't do as much to capture her range and talent as they should and leave something to be desired. She's all performer with a record that could be better.

But if you've ever wanted to see a nice souther girl make good and you dig good music: Listen and Listen and Listen.

French Kisses and Bad Days Made Better

2008-03-06T22:07:00.003-05:00

I went to see the film Un baiser s'il vous plaît or Shall We Kiss at the IFC Center as part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. A film by Emmanuel Mouret, who spoke after the screening. Quite entertaining and if it finds American distribution, I'd recommend seeing it or renting it.

It tells the story of Gabriel and Emilie who meet on the streets of Nantes randomly one afternoon. He offers her a ride , and the ride turns into a pleasant dinner with clearly romantic overtones. At the end of the night he goes in for a kiss only to be turned down by Emile, who believes that even a small kiss could have the most unexpected consequences. They cut to the story of Judith and Nicholas (played by Emmanuel Mouret), two very good friends, who as a means of curing Nicholas' need for affection decide to engage in a quick tryst that begins with just a kiss (what was probably the most awkward and funny love scene I've ever seen on film.) The film centers around there growing affair (Judith is married to adoring, rich and attractive Claudio) and the unexpected repercussions of their actions. Wry, observant and also quite touching, SHALL WE KISS? is a very contemporary meditation on the wages of infidelity. Mouret's intelligent, successful characters deluge their emotions and instincts with very open speculation as to why they're doing what they're doing, trying to appear as if they're in control while it's clear to everyone else they haven't been for a while.

My favorite part of the evening was the discussion after the film, a woman asked in french about the difference between American cinema where infidelity is often treated as tragic and French cinema where it usually takes on a more comedic light. Mouret responded, while of course everything in the film had consequences, in France infidelity was a national sport.

The Dreams are Killer

2008-03-05T20:15:00.004-05:00

My dream life has been rather interesting. I'd been trying to think of the context in which to write about it, but honestly, they need no context. They're a little insane and a little unstable and make only a little sense. (I try to avoid writing about dreams because well, usually they're quite boring for someone else to read about, but this one was quite interesting in the oedipal sense...and the fact that I dream greek mythology):

I dreamt of a boy, I'd never met. Dark and small and african and the beginning of the dream he was told "you will kill your father by the nights end." And it was a joke that no one believed. A smallish man that resembled the boy, except for his expansive chest and his wrinkled face. His wide flat nose and his strong demeanor. I dreamt of a trip that we all took by bus. The greyhound variety with grey seats and a pattern sewn into the strip down the middle that hearkened back to the tetris days. People who were familiar to a life that I am no longer leading, I was surrounded by them. Faces and names that my subconscious recall, but I, in my waking life, do not. The place we went was uneventful. Everything was bright and lit up (this I recall from a recent event).

Skip the uninteresting details. The what we did in between or who we spoke to or why. Skip to the hotel room, which is most important. Again, I can't recall why I was placed in a hotel room with a father and son, I think I thought it odd and questionable. But there were no other rooms and nothing to be done, so I went. We sat the father and I, face to face. He on the bed looking down to me on the floor (the boy sat in the corner on a chair, a single lampshade illuminated his dark face and was the only light...shadows crept up like vignetting, around the edges of the room). He seemed upset, and he talked and talked. We fought and fought, to varying degrees of intensity, for what seemed like hours. In the end, he was convinced that I should marry his son. It seemed ludicrous. I might have said so. He continued on and the boy looked on his face set into a grim stare. His face a mask, two white eyes bobbing in the darkness. Pulsating. You could nearly see his neck tha-thumping which each beat. Quickly. I wish I could recall what made him so angry. But only the lounge from the chair to the bed was memorable. Only that he was on his father before I could firmly grasp the situation. Seeing someone strangle another person in their dreams is still unnerving. Even if the man had never lived and there for couldn't really die, I can still see it when I close my eyes. Something so passion filled and heartless, even imagined, stays with you.

The man jerked and jiggled. He twisted alarmed and batted at his son, but the boy stayed fixed like a 500 lb weight on the mans chest. Impenetrable.

And then it was over, almost as quickly as it had begun. He stood up. He wiped his brow. He looked at me as though I had stumbled into the room mistakenly while he committed his crime. We stared like that for a beat, unsure of what to do.

"You have to leave," He told me. And just like that he began to move around the room, tidying things up. Wrapping his father in a blanket as though the man had never lived. It felt like he had done it in my honor, even though I can't recall why, killed his own father just like that. He hurried around as I stood there in shock.

Sirens began to wail...nothing is ever easily explained in dreams. But there they were, officers, the entire party of our trip standing in anticipation. He pushed me toward a door that separated our room from the next. His face again impenetrable and I felt a tenderness sweep over me. For what he'd done for me, for what he'd lost, for what he'd been told would happen and could not avoid. Maybe for all the things we can't avoid. And he pushed me through...and moments later I walked into the light where everyone stood waiting. Police looked with fire arms held. Someone wrapped me in a blanket and I watched and waited for him to turn himself over.

Awake.

On Self-Respect

2008-03-05T19:30:00.002-05:00

I read this quote in September when is was published on Maud Newton from Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem, told myself to buy the book (and I would have today had I not had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.) I've referenced it more than once in conversation and today I felt the need to bring it up again within the context of the conversation I had with a friend today. It revolved around a writers discipline and the art of saying no:

If we do not respect ourselves … we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out — since our self-image is untenable — their false notions of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Hellen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan: no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous…
It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self.” In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something so small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves — their lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

"And lead us not into temptation" as the scripture goes. I've got to have a little more self respect, when it comes to my writing, my friendships, my relationships. I've got to learn to say no and distance myself. I cannot be apart of it all and still give time to my writing.

Just my thoughts on today.

The Cocktail Party: T. S. Elliot

2008-03-03T16:33:00.001-05:00

It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous.
Resign yourself to be the fool you are.

You will find that you survive humiliation
And that's an experience of incalculable value.

That is the worst moment, when you feel you have lost
The desires for all that was most dersirable,
Before you are contented with what you can desire;
Before you know what is left to be desired;
And you go on wishing that you could desire
What desire has left behind. But you cannot understand.
How could you understand what it is to feel old?

We die to each other daily.
What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them. And they have changed since then.
To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and convenient social convention
Which must sometimes broken. We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.

What is hell? Hell is oneself.
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.

Half the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important.
They don't mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it
Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle
To think well of themselves.

There are several symptoms
Which must occur together, and to a marked degree,
To qualify a patient for my sanitorium:
And one of them is an honest mind. That is one of the causes of their suffering.

To men of a certain type
The suspicion that they are incapable of loving
Is as disturbing to their self-esteem
As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.

I should really like to think there's something wrong with me —
Because, if there isn't then there's something wrong,
Or at least, very different from what it seemed to be,
With the world itself — and that's much more frightening!

Everyone's alone — or so it seems to me.
They make noises, and think they are talking to each other;
They make faces, and think they understand each other.
And I'm sure they don't. Is that a delusion?

Can we only love
Something created in our own imaginations?
Are we all in fact unloving and unloveable?
Then one is alone, and if one is alone
Then lover and beloved are equally unreal
And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams.

I shall be left with the inconsolable memory
Of the treasure I went into the forest to find
And never found, and which was not there
And is perhaps not anywhere? But if not anywhere
Why do I feel guilty at not having found it?

Disillusion can become itself an illusion
If we rest in it.

Two people who know they do not understand each other,
Breeding children whom they do not understand
And who will never understand them.

There is another way, if you have the courage.
The first I could describe in familiar terms
Because you have seen it, as we all have seen it,
Illustrated, more or less, in lives of those about us.
The second is unknown, and so requires faith —
The kind of faith that issues from despair.
The destination cannot be described;
You will know very little until you get there;
You will journey blind. But the way leads towards possession
Of what you have sought for in the wrong place.

We must always take risks. That is our destiny.

If we all were judged according to the consequences
Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention
And beyond our limited understanding
Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.

Only by acceptance of the past will you alter its meaning.

Every moment is a fresh beginning.

(This has been feeling particularly true as Of Late so I thought I'd share)

Love/Karma

2008-03-03T14:52:00.002-05:00

"The Opposite of Love is Not Hate.
The Opposite of Love is Fear.
And the Opposite of Fear is Understanding.
Which means the Opposite of Understanding is Hate."

(found on the back of a Karma Card)

We Feel Fine

2008-02-29T12:36:00.004-05:00

Check out We Feel Fine:

Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.).

Be Kind + Muppet Babies

2008-02-27T09:56:00.005-05:00

I was trying to think of a cutesy way to say how much I liked Michel Gondry's New film Be Kind Rewind, but I have to just start by saying I just plain enjoyed it. The movie was funny, it had heart, it made you feel sentimental without feeling overly cheesy. The feeling I got from watching it was similar to watching films as a kid. The whimsical nature of the film hooked you in, said don't take things so seriously and entertained and moved you all at once.

My friends and I all joked, half seriously, about going home, grabbing a camera and making our own "sweded" films. Therein lies the genius. As Gondry stated about the exhibit at Dietch Projects (which allows people to create their own films and have them displayed in the exhibition) “I intend to prove that people can enjoy their time without being part of the commercial system and serving it. Ultimately, I am hoping to create a network of creativity and communication that is guaranteed to be free and independent from any commercial institution.”

It reminded me a lot of watching Muppet Babies as a child. Something in the fact that it stimulated our imaginations and encouraged us to find inventive ways of playing. We'd watch the Star Wars episode and suddenly we'd be using the couch pillows as the starboard of our space ship and with pots on our heads we'd launch our own exploration into the great imaginary unknown.

Big ups to everyone out there grabbing their cameras and playing like they're five again.

Are You Normal?

2008-02-18T03:21:00.006-05:00

Last night I found myself engaged in a discussion about normalcy in regards homosexuality, but it ended up spreading into the larger idea of normalcy itself. Normal is by definition confining to social norms; living up to social expectations set by the society in which we lived. (A redundant statement but one which I found myself repeating) It might have been normal in the 1500 or 1600's to wear tights and a large brimmed hat but would not be considered by today's standards unacceptable. It might be normal during the Roman era to partake of homosexual relationships with young boys, but again would be condemned by today. This is not a praise of one set of standards over the other or not saying that the world should exist without morals. Just that viewing one thing as normal and another thing as abnormal can plunge us into a different sort of immorality. Especially when morality, in and of itself, is such an arguable thing.

To bring it back to more modern ideas, normalcy still exist in America in nuclear families, while the western civilization is changing to include a large variety of mixed familial types not bound by blood. Normalcy still dictates that women over a certain age should be married. I'm just getting started and am not quite ready to go into full rant mode, but once we begin to examine our lives we realize the ways in which we might all fall outside of normalcy's radar. I think of my own current affairs, which have not subsided to "normal" coupledom, but which have, at least for the time being, tried to find a way to work beyond the current ideology of the status quo relationship. It may not work but at least we pushed the envelop. And this is only looking at one way of thinking. I feel that once we begin to entrench ourselves in the idea of normalcy we lose the motivation to find and/or try something new.

Let the fundamentalist hold fast to their views of normalcy. And...as the saying goes, "I am human and therefore nothing is foreign to me."

it might be a better argument were it not four am, but I'm sure you get the idea.

In Praise of Melancholy

2008-02-17T12:27:00.003-05:00

I came across this article as sort of happenstance, reading about the dumbing down of America. Eric Wilson's name was briefly mentioned and I had the urge to find out more about his beliefs regarding false happiness--as I wondered about my own pervasive happiness, which seemed in some ways a denial or rather a disregard and pushing away of the sadness which sometimes affected me. Not to say that I should suddenly be plunged into melancholy, just that I, in my nature, am particularly found of questioning certain states of being. I felt that it was an on going conversations that I've had with friends in regards to so completely immersing oneself into one thing so that it became a religion of sorts. The cult of shiny happy people...which I so deeply embraced. That being said, I am not necessarily in complete agreement with everything thats said in his article, but I do find that there is a certain degree of artistic creativity that suffers from a denial of melancholy, pushing it to the corners of the soul. Not allowing it to travel through oneself to the page. There is a repression that I find, from time to time, myself embracing. Just as a matter to think about:

Why are most Americans so utterly willing to have an essential part of their hearts sliced away and discarded like so much waste? What are we to make of this American obsession with happiness, an obsession that could well lead to a sudden extinction of the creative impulse, that could result in an extermination as horrible as those foreshadowed by global warming and environmental crisis and nuclear proliferation? What drives this rage for complacency, this desperate contentment?
...
I for one am afraid that American culture's overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. I further am concerned that to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations. I am finally fearful of our society's efforts to expunge melancholia. Without the agitations of the soul, would all of our magnificently yearning towers topple? Would our heart-torn symphonies cease?
My fears grow out of my suspicion that the predominant form of American happiness breeds blandness. This kind of happiness appears to disregard the value of sadness. This brand of supposed joy, moreover, seems to foster an ignorance of life's enduring and vital polarity between agony and ecstasy, dejection and ebullience. Trying to forget sadness and its integral place in the great rhythm of the cosmos, this sort of happiness insinuates that the blues are an aberrant state that should be cursed as weakness of will or removed with the help of a little pink pill.

I'm not questioning joy in general. For instance, I'm not challenging that unbearable exuberance that suddenly emerges from long suffering. I'm not troubled by that hard-earned tranquillity that comes from long meditation on the world's sorrows. I'm not criticizing that slow-burning bliss that issues from a life spent helping those who hurt. And I'm not romanticizing clinical depression. I realize that there are many lost souls out there who require medication to keep from killing themselves or harming their friends and families. I'm not questioning pharmaceutical therapies for the seriously depressed or simply to make existence bearable for so many with biochemical disorders.

A Poem Of Friendship: Nikki Giovanni

2008-02-14T19:41:00.002-05:00

We are not lovers
because of the love
we make
but the love
we have

We are not friends
because of the laughs
we spend
but the tears
we save

I don't want to be near you
for the thoughts we share
but the words we never have
to speak

I will never miss you
because of what we do
but what we are together.

(Happy Valentines Day Everyone Everywhere-
over and out
M)

Yes....

2008-02-14T17:17:00.003-05:00

...I am posting love letters.

Heck its valentines day and I have a vagina.

So enjoy.

Rainer Maria Rilke on Love

2008-02-14T17:13:00.001-05:00

To love is good, too: love being difficult.
For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it.
With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love.
But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is--solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves.
Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate--?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.

Love Letters: Robert Browning to Elizabeth Browning

2008-02-14T17:10:00.001-05:00

You will only expect a few words, what will those be?

When the heart is full it may run over, but the real fullness stays within.

You asked me yesterday "if I should repent?"

Yes, my own Ba, I could with all the past were to do over again, that in it I might somewhat more, never so little more, conform in the outward homage, to the inward feeling, What I have professed, (for I have performed nothing) seems to fall short of what my first love required even, and when I think of this moment's love...I could repent, as I say.

Words can never tell you, however, form them, transform them anyway, how perfectly dear you are to me, perfectly dear to my heart and soul.

I look back, and in every one point, every word and gesture, every letter, every silence, you have been entirely perfect to me, I would not change one word, one look.

My hope and aim are to preserve this love, not to fall from it, for which I trust to God who procured it for me, and doubtless can preserve it.

Enough now, my dearest, dearest, own Ba!

You have given me the highest, completest proof of love that ever one human being gave another.
I am all gratitude, and all pride (under the proper feeling which ascribes pride to the right source) all pride that my life has been so crowned by you.

God bless you prays your very own R.

Love Letters: Napoleon to Josephine

2008-02-14T17:08:00.001-05:00

I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the intoxicating evening which we spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil.
Sweet incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart!
Are you angry?
Do I see you looking sad? Are you worried? ...
My soul aches with sorrow, and there can be no rest for your lover; but is there still more in store for me when, yielding to the profound feelings which overwhelm me, I draw from your lips, from your heart a love which consumes me with fire? Ah! it was last night that I fully realized how false an image of you your portrait gives!
You are leaving at noon; I shall see you in three hours.
Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire.

Bonaparte

Love Letters: Franz Kafka to Felice Bauer (Excerpt)

2008-02-14T17:05:00.001-05:00

Fräulein Felice!

I am now going to ask you a favor which sounds quite crazy, and which I should regard as such, were I the one to receive the letter. It is also the very greatest test that even the kindest person could be put to. Well, this is it:

Write to me only once a week, so that your letter arrives on Sunday—for I cannot endure your daily letters, I am incapable of enduring them. For instance, I answer one of your letters, then lie in bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you. I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough. But for this very reason I don’t want to know what you are wearing; it confuses me so much that I cannot deal with life; and that’s why I don’t want to know that you are fond of me. If I did, how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you?...

Love Thy Enemy

2008-02-14T17:01:00.000-05:00

“It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.”
Gandhi
(via Zen Habits)

Loving Day: Dr. Phil Style.

2008-02-11T15:06:00.001-05:00

Valentines is quickly approaching.

My friend asked this past weekend about my best valentines and nothing immediately came to mind. It wasn't because nothing good had happened, over the past few years my ex and I would usually celebrate with a card or candy, sometimes with dinner but we usually kept it relatively simple (with the exception of our first valentines, which was sweet and fun; punctuated by a horribly bad dinner at serendipity and the best of intentions). I think a few times there might have been flowers.

I was raised in such a way that I always viewed romantic love as such a small part of the holiday. Not that it lacked importance but it was equal in proportion to the weight of familial love and platonic love. The first thing that came to mind when he asked the question, were my younger years when my grandmother (and later my mother) would buy small boxes of chocolates and cards for my brother and I. Little love notes and tokens of their affection. Miniature snoopy dolls. Flowers. The mini-cards that we'd exchange at school to our friends in elementary. The carnations and cards I gave to my friends in high school. I miss those.

I miss my grandmother's most of all.

When we focus so much energy on one thing we lose sight of the bigger picture.

Movie Night: Underdogs and Mafioso.

2008-02-11T11:24:00.000-05:00

Eastern Promises- I can't quite put my finger on why I liked this movie. At times it was slow and not much happened, but the fight scenes were definitely brutal (the russian bath scene definitely lives up to the hype) and the end was rewarding. I highly recommend.

Rocket Science- I wanted to enjoy the movie and I think I even enjoyed the movie for the first half hour. The Wonder Years/Winnie the Pooh-esque voice over. The smarter and more clever than humanly possible debate student; rooting for the awkward stuttering lead character with a backpack full of notebooks (which we rarely see him utilize, except to drag it around). In the end, the movie just wasn't rewarding enough. All of the adults seemed kookie and a bit oversexed. All the young people were weird enough to have rolls in Napolean Dynamite, which I personally didn't think was that much of a film in the first place. While I appreciated the point of the movie, which didn't give lead character Hal Hefner the miracle, overcoming the odds transformation that a lot of Hollywood movies might have, I still felt set up for disappointment every time he competed (and lost) a debate tournament. But in case you felt you didn't catch the lesson, Ginny hits you over the head with it near the end, stopping mid-debate to tell Hal how she improved the quality of his life by making him more of a fighter.

Mr. Brooks- Don't. Even. Get. Me. Started.
GARBAGE.

The Internet has Murdered My Already Fleeting Attention Span

2008-02-05T07:56:00.000-05:00

Last night I stopped to write my friend a letter, on the train ride home I'd been composing it in my head, working out all the nuances and thinking of the perfect turn of phrase. Its one of the things I find fun and exciting.

Once home though I turned on the computer and it all fell apart.

During the course of writing my letter I stopped numerous times to check tumblr, flickr, facebook, twitter and god knows what else; despite that nothing had conceivably changed I stopped again to check it a second or even a third time. I stopped to write a shorter email to someone else. Even during the course of writing this post I stopped and clicked on the headers in my tabs section, which seemed to have no apparent purpose except to give myself a mental break.

The last few times I've picked up a book I've found the task of focusing on each page equally as difficult. On average, in a book that I find quite enjoyable I get through about a page and a half before my mind starts to wonder. Hopefully I start writing micro fiction because I can barely get through what I'm writing lately, averaging about five or six hand written sentences before I stop to do something else. This blog post began yesterday, was written partly this morning and will hopefully be completed now, this afternoon.

I've always had a bit of difficulty focusing on things over a long period of time, most of all on movies, least of all on books. But it seems over the past couple of months as my dedication to various sites has increased, my attention span has completely decreased. My productivity on the job has become a problem when every two to five minutes I feel like I need to check my email or see if I've missed a twitter. I'm always online and I'm always available but it feels like I'm getting less and less done. Apparently a BBC article reports that I am not the only goldfish in this internet ADD pond:

If you are spending too much time on the internet and are concerned that it is affecting your concentration, you are not alone.
The addictive nature of web browsing can leave you with an attention span of nine seconds - the same as a goldfish.
"Our attention span gets affected by the way we do things," says Ted Selker, an expert in the online equivalent of body language at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US.
"If we spend our time flitting from one thing to another on the web, we can get into a habit of not concentrating," he told the BBC programme Go Digital.

Great, first it was commercials breaks now its the internet.

I feel like I should join a IA support group.

Nuyorican Poetry Slam Finals

2008-02-02T16:35:00.000-05:00

The Nuyorican Poetry Cafe is always a good time and a requisite for anyone living in New York City. Its the place where a lot of the best and the brightest of the city have started their careers and its been a dream of mine forever to read on their stage (it will happen eventually).

I'd love to offer a detailed account of which poets performed and the nature of the poems as well as my opinion on each of them, but I was much to busy enjoying myself, and listening to the message and the words, to focus on pulling out my notebook on the smaller than small tables and trying to scribble while they were introduced.

The guest poet was Amanda Diva of MTV2, Def Poetry and Sirius Radio Fame. I'm hoping that my homeboy jumps on putting his vids of her from the show somewhere online, giving me the opportunity to link in and show instead of tell. (Usually I would take this opportunity to give my opinion on her weakness and strengths, but I'm still tired after a long night. I will say she was dope, in spite of whatever qualities might have eluded her).

She also encouraged everyone to check out her blog.

One of my other favorite poems of the night came from Chad Anderson. Find it on his myspace page titled splitsville (yes us girls were all suckers for his brand of breaking up).

I didn't catch the last name of Adam from Bushwick, the guy I was personally rooting for but if I figure it out I'll amend this post with links to his stuff as well.

Adventures in Sobriety Part Trois: Temptation and Dancing With My-se-elf*

2008-02-02T11:38:00.000-05:00

And lead us not into temptation...

In clubs and at parties, not having a drink is not particularly a problem, but throw in a rainy friday and the type of bars where the only thing to do is have a reasonably priced drink and there you have a recipe for temptation. Small quiet bars certainly offer more reasons to suck from the sweet nectar of jack daniels. I was alternately slightly repelled by the liquory sweet smell and drawn to partake of its goodness. Not to mention that week one didn't provide as much challenge as week two, when the craving to involve myself in some sort of debauchery finally started to overwhelm me. Plus it always strikes me that NYC was almost designed with the drinker in mind, there is hardly a place you can go that doesn't at least offer wine and 90% of all the people I know are in a constant state of partaking.

* * *

The dancing part took place at a small dance. club that a few of my friends and I occasionally frequent. The last few times I went out was with a group of girls, which was sort of different being that usually in their various stages of drinking, from beginning to end they're usually still a little ready to dance. Where as the fellas were a little more willing to post up on the wall and gawk at the fly girls on the floor (and they were fly). The problem was that I suddenly became aware of myself when it seemed that I was dancing alone in the corner of the room, standing next to girls who looked like they had just stepped out of magazines. Usually this sense of self doesn't strike me in a club setting, if it strikes me at all, but last night was a little different without anything else to focus on (besides my sober bust a move) I turned inward. I did eventually venture out onto the large part of the dance floor, but it was so hot and crowded that there was barely room to move amidst the wriggling bodies leaving me after a few songs slightly uncomfortable (especially with random guys pawing me) and drenched with sweat.

It reminded me of a passage I recently read in Alain de Botton's On Love in the chapter titled "Mind over Body" about the corrolation between thinking in clubs and during sex:

If the mind has traditionally been condemned, it is for its refusal to surrender control to causes supposedly beyond analysis; the philosopher in the bedroom is as ludicrous a figure as the philosopher in the nightclub. In both cases, the body is predominant and vulnerable, so the mind becomes an instrument of silent uninvolved judgment.

I did in retrospect attribute this to the battle of the sexes (hanging with guys vs. girls) but I think that it was just having people around who were occasionally willing to indulge you and join in OR having a place that was sensible for solo sober dancing i.e. somewhere that your nuts didn't start sweating the second you entered the room. I say this because my first crew was comprised almost entirely of persons of the male variety and while I usually preferred for them to indulge me a bit (there was one guy who was always and is still always down to shake his grove thing); I was also okay with the singular dancing. Maybe also I should consider the order in which it happened, it usually tended to be that we ALL started dancing together and then they got tired and left me to my own devices, by which time I was usually so comfortable it didn't matter that I was dancing alone. Plus I hate to attribute too much of my enjoyment on others which (it seems unfair and lacks personal accountability), though I do believe sans drink I'm much more likely to feed off other people's energy.

Whatever the case, I did have fun while it lasted even if I felt slightly removed from the scene.

*My favorite song to grove it alone to.

Adventures in Sobriety Part Deux: The Frat Party

2008-01-27T11:38:00.000-05:00

What can be said about a frat party that hasn't already been said.

The guys were all big burly meat heads. The girls were all lasciviously drunk and grinding horribly on the dance floor. There were drinking games (flippy cup). There was jungle juice. Everyone looked suspiciously similar. People kept handing me beers. There was a gaggle of fifteen (maybe eighteen) year old boys mysteriously occupying the middle of the room. The girl that went to t he restroom before me threw up in the sink.

Thats not saying the night was without its fun or mischief. I was sober to catch a few video gems.

I heart Dark Room

2008-01-26T12:52:00.000-05:00

I began using Dark Room this morning and I am converted. I've always been lacking a bit in the attention span department, which you might know if you've ever had a real live conversation with me. I switch subjects faster than a race car driver switches lanes. Writing had become the chore of trying to ignore my sms, my roommate, my email (3 accounts), gtalk, aim, facebook, flickr, tumblr, myspace, google reader and manage my musical selections. While its logically simple to close out of these programs one look at the little firefox icon at the corner of my screen and I'm sucked right back into the vortex of internet hell. I think to myself, I'll just quickly check my email. Suddenly an hour has been wasted looking at only God knows what and before I know it the entire morning, afternoon, evening is missing. Nothing has been written.

Dark room is created to solve the problem of distraction. Its a full blacked out screen. Surprisingly effective. Just you and the words. (The original program Write Room was developed for macs)

The above is what I've completed in the past twenty minutes or so. I'm excited. I've got a soundtrack and a little forward momentum.

Happy Saturday.

Adventures in Sobriety : Part Un

2008-01-25T09:58:00.000-05:00

I'm not drinking.

This will shock and amuse my friends. It will please and humor my mother.

No its not a sort of take it easy for a while, which quickly descends back into drinker-ville, but a real life down to earth month long break from the bottle.

It began with a casual handshake (to be fair I was still recovering from the weekend long hangover and hardly realized what I was agreeing to) for a two, wait three, nope count 'em four week break which allowed the occasional glass of wine (red because its heart healthy).

Last night marked my first night out sans alcohol. At a Rolling Stones Magazine Malibu Open Bar nonetheless. A few observations:

The drunk girl- she's kind of obnoxious and makes you feel a little embarrassed for her; not necessarily the person you want to become when you're wearing a satin dress and knee high boots (or a gray AA t-shirt and a vest for that matter).
I miss dancing sober- When I was a freshman in college I used to go to Lotus, when it opened in 2001 and you could still go see the not yet famous Paris Hilton being cock slapped on the basement dance floor (I mean this literally) ; I was poor, there were no open bars, yet somehow every wednesday I made it out on the dance floor and stayed till four in the morning without a buzz. Long after all my friends had abandoned ship, I rocked on. I missed that, it was nice to remember that I don't need two beers and a shot of jack to shake my thang on the dance floor.
Not drinking on the one night all your girlfriend's finally get together, sort of makes you the butt of all their jokes. Take it in stride, they still love you.
Not having a hangover Friday morning is quite supreme.
Unless you're completely lame, the night will be just as fun sober and more memorable to boot, as it was when you were drinking.
Once you stop drinking all your usually sober-ish friends will decide to pick up the bottle and invite you to a bar. They will then ridicule you for not drinking when they're drinking and try to tempt you into drinking again. (This is really an amendment to number 3, maybe they don't still love you. Bastards.)

(Forgot: Seeing Mario Van Peebles parade around the party like the B celebrity that he is, second best part of the night. Running through the windy street with city grit whipping our faces and acting like goofballs was the first.)

Descriptions, Descriptions, Descriptions.

2008-01-24T12:45:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a lot in terms of the descriptive lately with a heavy focus on people. Living in New York gives you the opportunity to be inspired again and again by the hundreds of people you pass daily. I watched the old man sitting across from me on my way into work and I imagined what I would describe about him if he were to be a character in a story of mine.

Would it be his newish brown coat with the plaid lining that looked all at once trendy yet tradition. His fresh ironed and starched pants blue work pants that could have been part of a suit or a work uniform, leading me to wonder about his blue or white collar status. Would it be the way that he sat, slightly overweight and hunched in his seat that reminded me of an adolescent. The way that his large jowly cheeks hung around his mouth, as if in anticipation of the many expressions that passed through his face over the seventy odd years of his life. His elongated nose, that somehow drew attention to the sleepy eyes on either side of them. The white hair of his eyebrows. Or simply the girlishly long and extraordinary immaculately clean nails at the end of his yellow -grayish skinned fingers, that cleared up the earlier speculation of his status in life. They were not the nails of someone who had labored all their lives.

I passed a description of one of the main characters, Rahel, in The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy which I found particularly pleasing a few days ago and I had no context until now in which to write about it:

He first noticed Rahel in the school library and then again, a few days later in Khan Market. She was in jeans and a white T-shirt. Part of an old patchwork bedspread was buttoned around her neck and trailed behind her like a cape. Her wild hair was tied back to look straight, though it wasn't. A tiny diamond gleamed in one nostril. She had absurdly beautiful collarbones and a nice athletic run.
There goes a jazz tune, Larry McClaslin though to himself, and followed her into a bookshop, where neither of them looked at books.

What I found particularly striking about the description are the way these details, tied into the context of the story and say so much about Rahel without saying anything at all and how it also gives you a glimpse into Larry who finds this strange and chaotic woman attractive.

These are the talents I hope to somehow absorb and translate into my work over the coming months. Descriptions that add to the bigger picture of the narrative in just a few short sentences, revealing enough to give the reader an idea into the psyche of the character but not to ruin the imagination.

Damn You Idiotarod!

2008-01-22T12:38:00.000-05:00

Every year right after it passes I say how much I wish that I had gathered a group of people and a shopping cart and run. This year, of course, I realized it was coming up before it passed, could probably rally the people to do it but happen to not be drinking at the moment. And what fun would racing down the streets of Brooklyn, costumed and in the freezing cold be if you weren't fairly close to pissy drunk.

So Damn you Idiotarod 2008. We'll try again next year.
Also if you've never heard of it before check out the website and find out what it is, there are some traditions that you won't find anywhere else except for New York.

Writing: My Elusive Short Story.

2008-01-22T07:05:00.000-05:00

Having been thinking about the things I want this next year and trying to set a few goals for writing since it seems that I've always wrote and never done anything with it, I had a revelation. I kept thinking how I'd like to write more short stories and submit more in the next coming year, but what I realized this morning is that my short story tools are rusty. Though I have completed some pieces of short fiction over the past year I hardly remember reading any collections of short stories save one (not including the ones I hadn't completed). If the key to learning the art of writing is reading, then the key to learning the art of short stories is obvious.

Ah, why is it that epiphanies are often so obvious after we have them?

Abundance

2008-01-20T20:11:00.000-05:00

By Louise Glück via the latest issue of the Paris Review.

A cool wind blows on summer evenings, stirring the wheat.
The wheat bends, the leaves of the peach trees
rustle in the night ahead.

In the dark, a boy’s crossing the field:
for the first time, he’s touched a girl
so he walks home a man, with a man’s hungers.

Slowly the fruit ripens—
baskets and baskets from a single tree
so some rots every year
and for a few weeks there’s too much:
before and after, nothing.

Between the rows of wheat
you can see the mice, flashing and scurrying
across the earth, though the wheat towers above them,
churning as the summer wind blows.

The moon is full. A strange sound
comes from the field—maybe the wind.

But for the mice it’s a night like any summer night.
Fruit and grain: a time of abundance.
Nobody dies, nobody goes hungry.

No sound except the roar of the wheat.

When Life Hands You Lemons...Go to Paris

2008-01-17T18:59:00.000-05:00

I finally bought my ticket to Paris today, which is quite possibly one of the most exciting things to have happened in a long time. I was thinking, Life may not turn out the way you want it to and People aren't what you'd hoped or expected they'd be and there will always be things around to go wrong, but I can always control myself at least (and that self is going to buy a ticket to Paris, whether she can afford it or not).

So here I am headed to Paris on March 30th for 15 days. I haven't got much figured out (though I do have one friend in Paris) and I've still got a lot of saving to do (The plan is to read as many books between now and then as possible, write a lot, learn a little french and rent as many seasons of various shows as I can consume between now and then so as to suck up all the time I usually might need to spend money), but I'm just as confident in things working out as I was on Sunday that I would purchase my ticket this week.

The Eve

2008-01-17T07:23:00.000-05:00

On the eve of things I have not known,
A quarter past the first of confusion.
I draw things beautifully in the sand
and wait for them to come to fruition.

(I wake this morning with words on the tip of my tongues and creeping stealthy out of my closed eyelids. Some days I conduct a little chase and am lucky if I get a few back. I think its imitation, but I'm sure someone is very flattered.)

Cinematic Orchestra

2008-01-16T10:01:00.000-05:00

Into You.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

2008-01-15T17:09:00.000-05:00

If there is anything to know about me, it is that I like for things to be circular, to start somewhere and end somewhere in a roundish sort of way. I think of many things that way and have devised a philosophy regarding the circular nature of things all my own (or maybe I learned it somewhere.) I had been thinking of posting more Winterson this holiday season as I had done last holiday season, to bring it back full circle I think, but had nothing in mind really to post, with the exception of that which I'd already posted. So this morning while riding the train when the introduction to Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit came into my mind, I thought automatically that I wanted to post it and how it related rather directly to my current state of mind.

Another of my favorite things if you knew anything about me you'd know, is to share things that I love with others and this introduction is one of my favorite introductions of all the introductions that I've read. Not that there is much to it, there isn't, just that there is a certain truthfulness that I've found to the words.

Oranges are not the only fruit was written during the winter of 1983 and the spring of 1984. I was 24. At that time I was sharing two rooms and a hip bath with the actress Vicky Licorish. She had no money, I had no money, we could not afford the luxury of seperate whites wash and so were thankful of the fashion for coloured knickers which allowed those garments most closely associated with our self esteem, not to be grey. Dinginess is death to a writer. Filth discomfort, hunger, cold trauma and drama, don't matter a bit. I have had plenty of each they have only encouraged me, but dinginess, the damp small confines of the mediocre and the gradual corrosion of beauty and light, the compromising and the settling; these things make good work impossible. When Keats was depressed he put no a clean shirt. When Radclyffe Hall was oppressed she ordered new sets of silk underwear from Jermyn Street. Byron, as we all know allowed only the softest, purest whitest next to his heroic skin, and I am a great admirer of Byron. So it seemed to me in those days of no money, no job, no prospects and a determined dinginess creeping up from the lower floors of our rooming house that there had to be a centre, a talisman, a fetish even, that secured order where there seemed to be none; dressing for dinner every night in the jungle, or the men who polished their boots to a hard shine before wading the waters of Gallipoli. To do something large and to do it well demands such observances, personal and peculiar, laughable as they often, are because they stave off that dinginess of the soul that says taht everything is small and grubby and nothing is really worth the effort.

BBC Teaches French

2008-01-15T09:06:00.000-05:00

So I'm trying to find a cheap and easy way to pick up a little french. It doesn't have to be conversational as honestly I wonder how conversational you can be after studying a language for 3 months, but I'd like to be at the very least be able to feel like I'm trying. There is, I think a bit of pressure for the American traveling to France to have a better grip of the language than other places. Given one, their thoughts about Americans and two, the rumors that vendors will often try to rip off people who don't speak the language. I'm not really sure whether the second is true but I'm also not sure I'd like to find out especially if I'm there alone.

The BBC lessons are fairly harmless emails that come into your box once a week. Sort of a constant reminder to stay on track. Its supposed to be completed in a three month time, which is quite fitting for my needs.

bbc.co.uk/languages


French Steps - Tip 1 Bonjour, here's the first of our weekly emails with tips and encouragement.

If you can't read this email properly, view our online version


	The aim is for you to complete French Steps in three months, and we'll be providing an end of course assessment (OK, it's a test) so you can see how well you've done. Click here for a few tips to get you started: We also suggest you find someone who can follow the course at the same time as you. Visit the tip page to find out how to use the course together.

Next week we'll be back with more tips. We hope you'll find French Steps useful and entertaining.

Good luck with your French!

Reading Too Much Makes the Brain Soft

2008-01-15T08:53:00.000-05:00

The NY Times has a fantastic article about the times when other forms of media hadn't been introduced and people worried about the negative effects of reading to much:

We’re not the first generation to invest reading with miraculous powers. But until radio and television dethroned the book, social reformers worried about too much reading, not too little. Advice about when and where not to read was once a medical specialty. In an 1806 diagnosis, a British doctor hypothesized that the “excess of stimulus” produced by reading novels “affects the organs of the body and relaxes the tone of the nerves.” Reading at the table interfered with your digestion, reading before lunch with your morals. Another expert, in 1867, warned that “to read when in bed ... is to injure your eyes, your brain, your nervous system, your intellect.” Cue to the other in-bed activity that makes you go blind. Like masturbation, reading was too pleasurable for its own good; like masturbation, it threatened to upstage real human contact (messy, tedious, disappointing) with virtual pleasures.
...
Reading was for girls what gaming is for boys: absorption shading into addiction. And like the Xbox or the potato chip, the pleasure it gave in the moment was proportionate to its dangers in the long term. Then, reading was a sign of laziness; now, readers get credit for hard work.

Blogging and Not Blogging

2008-01-14T23:13:00.000-05:00

Its been a week or more since my last post, which seems weird considering the amount that I posted when I had so much free times during the holidays but I suppose it isn't. The first full week of being back to work felt a little draining. Though I can't say I minded it much, I just ended each day feeling the need to veg out and relax. Mostly I spent a lot of the time with friends, discussing politics. discussing life. discussing art. discussing reality. discussing happiness. discussing music. discussing dreams. discussing for the sake of discussing. Smoking too many cigarettes. Drinking too much whiskey. Overcaffeinated. I hadn't realized how much I needed a post holiday mental vacation.

It was fun but now I'm trying to get back to work. More post to follow?
I hope so.

The More Loving One (an old favorite)

2008-01-06T23:55:00.000-05:00

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

    -- W. H. Auden

Mudita and the Pursuit of Happiness

2008-01-05T08:33:00.000-05:00

This past week I met a buddhist writer and the founder of a meditation center, named James Baraz. We talked casually about writing with all the distractions from modern technology and he encouraged me to come to a talk he was giving at the NY Insight Center about "Awakening Joy" a course that he teaches at Berkley. Though I've always been hugely curious about Buddhist practices the new agey title of the seminar made me feel a little wary. I decided to go on a whim, he was standing there gazing at me expectantly with his hippie mustache, how really could I have said no.

I took a few notes while I was there but the idea that captured me the most was Mudita- the buddihist word for rejoicing in another's happiness. The wiki definition is finding pleasure in another person's well-being. It is supposed to be the most difficult of the brahmaviharas (buddhist virtues) to cultivate which I've find generally true in my dealings with people. We, selfishly, may be less happy if for instance, whatever makes someone dear to us joyful simultaneously takes them away from us or if someone does well while we experience misfortune, but Mudita encourages people to connect with a sympathetic sense of joy We meditated on the principal. I think it was my favorite part of the whole experience.

The whole thing strikes me as a bit over the top, but it was moving and cheesy and kind of great. I'm quite glad I met Mr. Baraz and look forward to keeping a regular correspondence with him.

More thoughts on the New Year

2008-01-03T21:58:00.000-05:00

A friend, with whom I have regularly over the course of the past six years engaged and debated over all manner of philosophical and artistic ideas had this to say in regards to the new year and resolutions:

This year I will learn to know myself in a new way. I will find the themes and patterns that emerge naturally from my actions and desires, and I will - like Dali adding a few pen strokes to turn a block of newspaper text into a picture of a sleeping giraffe - use planned actions to highlight and emphasize that hidden me. Rather than meditating on what I could be, or dreaming of things I will do in 10 or 50 years, I will meditate on what I have done, and I will think of ways to do that more or better immediately upon awakening. Rather than focusing on what I would like to be, I will focus on what I am. Instead of planning to do something good for society, I will continue to do the things that I already do that help people.

I found it to be a little in line with my own New Years theme.

Bohemia: Where Art, Angst, Love and Stong Coffee Meet

2008-01-03T21:30:00.000-05:00

I'm reading Bohemia by Herbert Gold again and while it doesn't quite affect me the way it did upon first reading (all young and starry eyed I wanted to embody every iota of the words he spoke, its a more of a quick lighthearted read than I remembered) it does still create in me a certain longing for a time I've never known, as well as the urge to run back to Tiny Cup (neighborhood coffee house) and knock around a few Big Ideas with friends.

My whitewashed monk's roost has gradually become stuffed with the debris of life. Books, music, painting, prints, files, clothes I didn't wear yesterday or even the day before that' carbon copies, notebooks, the poetry I won't publish, journals, and income-tax records. Yet when I arrived in San Francisco, I came stripped to the bone--two barracks bags and the intention to live on pure spirit. (I may have meant nerve.) What stuck in my mind about Walden, which I had read like the Torah, was Thoreau spying a hobo crossing a field with all his possession in two sacks. And Thoreau was filled with pity, because the hobo still had to carry those two sacks.

It's easy to cry "Simplify! Simplify!" Complications are inexorable, inexorable. My formerly monkish roost now has children's drawings on the walls...I couldn't escape the common destiny, thank God

Nevertheless, Thoreau's impulse toward purity, spirit and lonely nerve provides an enduring subtext to American ambition. It's one of the most moving nostalgias we keep amid all the noise and hustle.

I'd been talking a lot about simplified living with all my friends but it seems now returning from my trip I've only made my life more cluttered with things than when I began. It seems life is like that, I'd lost nearly everything only to find it slowly filled up with new people and new belongings and new dramas. Coming across this in the book was kind of a reminder how life will always create new things to fill up the voids. No matter how much I'm always trying to let go.

We hold these truths

2008-01-02T23:08:00.001-05:00

Sitting here thinking of all the things I know
and all the things I do not know.

The impossibility of ever knowing-
and the fact that we try endlessly anyway.

Viva la Difference

2008-01-02T17:55:00.000-05:00

A letter I found from an old friend, who taught me a lot about living and gave me words to live by. Dated September 10, 1999.

"My mother died this summer, and the months leading up to her passing and the months since have been times of great introspection and soul searching. I think you will be pleased to know, Marcia, I have decided I kind of like the person my mother taught me to be----the kind of person who in today's world is a little different---different because I wear a smile and am happy most of the time; I speak to people; I look at the positive side of things rather than the negative; I think of other people and encourage them and notice them and make them feel special; I show care and compassion and respect to all; I don't make fun of other people; I don't gossip; I don't backstab and I'm not mean-spirited, boorish, sullen, secretive, flippant, rude, spiteful, vindictive nor two faced; I don't hold grudges I'm enthusiastic; I show my inner happiness; I like to have fun. If thats being different, viva la difference!"

A big box of old things

2008-01-02T17:45:00.000-05:00

One of the goals of my road trip was to bring back personal belongings that were left in Texas years ago. It amazes me all the things we forget we have owned once they're packed in a box out of sight.

I get the feeling that a lot of my post over these next couple of weeks will incorporate things that I come across in trying to sort through everything.

Bare with me, with the end of one year completed and the beginning of another underway, a little nostalgia should be permitted.

Resolutions 1998

2008-01-02T17:03:00.000-05:00

I didn't actually make any resolutions this year although I answer the question mechanically whenever asked "Read more, write more, travel more."

I stopped making yearly resolutions a while ago.

Its the same every year, you achieve some things, don't achieve others and you try to make it better than the year before (both in what you achieve and what you intend on achieving).

I did however find my resolutions written down ten years ago at the age of 14. I find it striking how little everything and nothing changes:

Be less Annoying (the age when I became self-ware)
Do school work and get better grades
Eat more Healthy
Clean More
Ask for less
Be less sarcastic (never achieved that one)
Have more self confidence
Read more
Write more and better
Write in my journal more

Back to the Knoxville Hostel (a few photographs)

2008-01-02T16:44:00.000-05:00

Our breakfast of Champions. Thanks Al!
The Common Area

The girls dorm consisted of two bunk beds, since no one else was there, we both got a bottom bunk.

The Adventures and Misadventures of West Virginia*

2008-01-02T16:08:00.000-05:00

Lost.

I suppose it happens to everyone, and while we were fortunate enough never to have made a wrong turn or missed an exit (until we got to Manhattan) over the course of two days. We were, however misdirected by google maps an hour out of the way though West Virginia into a small mountain towns on US 219. I have tried to recreate this glitch in directions a few time with no luck.

A few notes regarding being lost and a little frightened:

Two frightened people, who are also close friends, will do their best not to frighten the each other. So while they both may have thought they were being followed neither will say anything until they're nearly home.
Mountain towns are only enchanting for the first twenty minutes, afterwards the romanticism wears off and you realize that its the exact same as any small rural town, except it has a more beautiful back drop.
People in that part of West Virginia do only two things: go to the salon and go to church.
Bridges made of wood don't look safe nor do they feel safe once you're driving over them.

On a more positive note without the glitch we would never have driven through the East River Mountain, which was kind of amazing.

*and not, as the post was previously titled, Tennessee (which will likely continue to show up in everyone's reader despite the edit)

Stars and Mountains: Tennesse and Virginia.

2008-01-02T15:04:00.000-05:00

I feel as though this post could suffer terribly if I try to romance the stars as they were in Tennessee. What can be said about them that hasn't been said before? The problems is, when living in the city, it becomes easy to forget the number of stars in the sky and how beautiful it is when there is nothing else to see for miles around. There with nothing but the stars you begin to question your decision to be surrounded by concrete and steel, when the stars are so much more wonderful than all the lights in New York City.

If the Stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Virginia was by far the most beautiful portion of the trip, and at the risk of sounding horribly cliched I will describe the Appalachian mountains as best I can: There is no other way to see the country except by car, since everything is a blur and places have lost their significance, the reasons we go within the US seems to have all the wrong motivations to really experience and appreciate everything beautiful there is to offer. I have no friends that have made trips to Niagra Falls and the Grand Canyons as adults. Every one is off to gamble in Vegas or to the beach or to visit friends, but no one is going to see the mountains or stare at a gorge and to feel the immenseness of the country. So it is by road now that suddenly we can see and take in, when there is nothing left to distract us, the beauty of the mountains that we forgot existed. There on the roads, which wound up and down through the hillside like man-made valleys, yet marked by pavement instead of rivers, suddenly one could feel small and the force of history baring down and not forget the importance of things. Not forget the passage of time. I saw on my journey old and rusty shells of trucks and tractors sitting sloped on the hillside, almost forgot yet in front stood the mark of the modern age in the shape of a misplace billboard. The tree covered mountains rising up through the fog and hugged by clouds that looked as soft as dreams, more rounded than the Rockies, just like I'd learned in school. I saw it it all and it was enough that I wanted to sit down by the side of the road and cry, that all these things could be nearby and yet so far, and that somehow we'd lived our whole lives without seeing them.

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself... "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again."...The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Texas and Arkansas.

2008-01-02T14:19:00.000-05:00

I would love to say that my writing skills could make the beginning of our road trip more interesting, but I'd be lying. On our way out of Texas our anxiousness kept us from talking too much and we traveled through places both of us had been through many times. Texas is as always a hard state to get out of, its huge and flat and there isn't much to see. It was however the best part of the trip for photo taking, since the sun was shining and I was still excited to try to capture as much as possible (this is prior to remembering the limitations of my camera).

I would love to say that Arkansas was much better, but it was pretty much the same with more trees.

Dallas Zoo Giraffe (I've always loved looking at this from the highway)

Visit Paris

Rear view Sunset in Tennessee:

Welcome 2008

2008-01-02T13:12:00.000-05:00

I tried very hard not to repost this, but alas after staring at if for an hour I think its best that I give into my urge to share it.

No worries. I have a few original posts on the way.

New Beginning

And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate.

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years -
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres -
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our
business.
- T. S. Eliot
East Coker
Four Quartets

Via Duncan's blog

My favorite compliment

2007-12-30T08:00:00.000-05:00

"You are the definition of quality."

Thank you.

And you are one of the people I continue to write for.

Freezing in Knoxville Tennessee

2007-12-30T07:27:00.000-05:00

Part one of our trip is done, and I'd love to tell more about it but I am quite literally freezing in Knoxville, TN. The hostel itself, simply called the Knoxville Hostel is a quaint little house in a small college town and was our refuge last night from 12+ hours on the road. The manager/owner, who is by far the nicest person I've ever encountered in all of my 24 years (it was so much like talking to an old friend that I never stopped to ask him his name), stayed awake to great us at 2 am in the morning in his wine colored bathrobe, show us where the toast and jam was before letting us know that he would only be charging us 2.50 less a piece than the cost of the room. He hasn't yet charged us and let us know that he'd be off to church in the morning (we're still unsure of when to pay and if we should leave before he returns, but we were much too tired to ask).

To say the place is quaint would be an understatement, thought not derisively. Its more like stopping at the house of a family friend, filled with lived in clutter and books and mail and dirty dishes. The bedrooms in the girls dorm have two plain white frame bunk beds with the plaid sheets that I remember from plenty of college students beds (mine were covered in hot pink lips, thank you very much). With a covered fire place and a mirror above. There were extra many extra blankets and robes maybe left behind from other guests. (They seem to not throw anything away so there are lots of things left over from guests before including a charger so that my cousin could charge her phone.) There seem to be a million things going on in every surface of the place and its the type of environment that one finds which inspires them to place an entire scene in, to invent characters to act and react within the very specific nuances of the space. If I were to write a scene here I would definitely keep him, the manager, as a pivotal point of reference, since he somehow ties this whole place together.

But like I said, its morning now and there seems to be no heat, making taking a shower a horrible prospect. Getting up to blog was sort of a stretch and now my hands are cold and I'm ready to get back on the road. Its late and we should have left by now. When I return, time permitting, I'll post all about the trek through Texas, Arkansas (sorry D, it was an unexpected change and I would have called you had I not left so late), and most of Tennessee.