LATE NIGHT CHOW NEEDED

1:24 am in Paris France
will be hitting the sack in any moment
i WILL skip brushing my teeth
because I'm tired
and sometimes defiance of 'the man' makes me feel like an adult
also I will sleep with my contacts in because it makes me feel baaaaaaaaad
and I like it
probably I feel baaaaaaaad
because when I was a teenager my mother kept me safe from sleepovers with friends who probably just wanted to get me wasted and fondle me, by saying that I couldn't spend the night because " You don't have your contact lens solution."
But this is a mere anecdote
I'm feeling like a mutant because I've been awake for the last three hours coloring,
and because I came to this country so I could be stuck with myself...and so I could prevent myself from falling in love with anyone...and now I AM stuck with myself and bored (because even if we're FABULOUS at all times...a lot of the time between doing fabulous things...we're boring as shit) and developing odd feelings for some man who lives on another continent I've kissed once and only known for a spattering of moths....I should have learned by 24 that my Plan A's always suck. I'm a Plan B kind of girl.......In every possible sense of the term........
I'm the girl who always has to pay the damned change fee when I suddenly realize Plan A is a mission abort. Rephrase: I'm the girl who has to ask her MOM to pay the damned change fee when I pull a spaz move...which is almost always. I should change my fucking name to Caitlin CHANGE FEE Marshall.

Back to mutant hood.

The reason I'm writing at all now is because when I feel like a mutant, it's great to go to an all night diner like the Chicago has--like Melrose or Nookies-- where it's fun to drink milkshakes, plan on not brushing your teeth when you get home, and watch other mutants congregating! In a diner...I can take charge of my emotional reality and morph from being a dejected weirdo, to a proud card-carrying one.
There are probably no all night diners in Paris as there are no diners here...and although the French invented ennui (so you'd think they'd have a proliferation of all night joints), I kind of get the feeling that in regards to both my feeling like a mutant, and the necessary task of working more than a 30 hour workweek that would be necessitated by any empathetic nod to mutant-hood....the french would simply reply: "Qui, je te comprends bien mon ami...mais de faire n'importe quoi au milieu de la nuit....ca c'est fortment moche."
Mark my words....the first thing I'm doing when I return to the states (barring any situation where there's a man,any man, waiting to have sex with me), is to stay up all night going through drive-throughs and carouse at 24 hour juke joints. If I were a dude, just the idea of such cockamamie-biggie fry-cherry pie shenanigans would be enough to give me a burger boner right now....
Fuck it. This need can't wait. Right off tomorrow morning I start a new mission called "find out how the French scratch their midnight-mutant itch." I'm feeling confident that such sentiments or self-alienation are universal, and that Parisians will have some PHENOMENAL, and probably hot solution to the problem....I'll keep y'all posted...

Surprise surprise

Some things you should know about France that will clearly delineate the mentality driving this country:

1. Barbers do not exist in Paris. I learned this today from a highly respected authority and must say I'm bowled over. To explain, if you're a dude and you want a haircut, you've got to put up with a chick place. And if you've got a beard, you're fucked, cause the chick places won't trim it up, or shave it into any fun shapes for you. So tant pis for those of the orthodox persuasion, or who fancy the facial hair stylings of A.J. from the Backstreet Boys. I think this is a serious problem. Some boy/girl things should be separate, like bathrooms, and bathhouses, and not so much houses of worship in my opinion...but definitely hairdressing establishments. Also gyms...I freakin hate it when people are working out in an attempt to hook it up with other sweaty patrons. Gross. Lift your damned dumbbells and leave me the fuck alone. Ok so barbers... Barbers are a necessary intermediary in the development of the classic dad-son relationship. In my home town, generations of Hinghamite men are down with Pete the barber. Pete is the person responsible for giving me one of the footholds of emotional security I've had for the last 24 years: no matter what...my Dad's haircut will stay the same. Maybe there will be less hair to cut, but 'the Pete' will be for as long as there is anything fuzzy on my pop's noggin meriting a trim. Where else can Playboys and Maxims been displayed sans souci in Paris? The ball game watched at full blare? Where can you go to get a haircut where the damned hair cutter shuts the fuck up and simply cuts hair instead of gabbing away at you, or asking inane questions whose answer she is only marginally interested in?? How can man-club culture exist sans barbers? Simply, it can't. When I asked about gender separation with regards to hair styling today, my professor responded that in France, there are no barbers because the French aren't segregationist....and all I could think about was how if my brother could have been there, he would have said something totally politically incorrect (and also hilarious) like: "The French don't have barbers because they're wimpy, which explains why all the guys here are girlie-men."
2. In Paris, if you want to buy stamps, you go to the post office. If you want to mail a letter, you go to the post office. Awesome....but if you want to BUY an envelope for said letter....you are shit out of luck. POST OFFICES DON'T SELL ENVELOPES IN FRANCE. WHAT IS THAT? Honestly, if you want an envelope to send a letter anywhere aside from abroad (post offices DO sell envelopes with pre-paid postage to foreign countries...that said...they also have one stamp whose only purpose is to put on plain envelopes being sent abroad...let me know if you sense some systematical redundancy here....) you have to go to a paper goods store. Wow. My teacher also let this one fly today to. I might add that it's not just Americans who find this practice odd...it totally baffles the natives as well.
3. Lastly...if you need passport or green card photos taken in Paris...be prepared to either produce them out of thin air...or go on a wild goose chase until you find the ONE kodak store in the entire city that can offer you this service. Apparently, independent photo processing boutiques have been replaced by a chain electronics/book/dvd/movie store (think radio shack, apple store, and borders all in one). Yet when forming this monopoly, the executives at FNAC decided that no one really needed to have identity photos taken, so the service could be dispensed with.....Add to this dilemma the fact that mostly every Parisian you meet will INSIST that FNAC can develop passport pictures, while every employee at said establishment will vehemently deny the fact. I don't such mind the stubbornness itself as the fact the aforementioned trait makes it difficult for a stranger to offer more than one "helpful" solution. Not the most efficient nation, to be sure. But let it be known, that as far as I'm concerned, there is nothing more glorious than a society where procrastination and perseveration are not so much thorns in the side of "progress", but pathways toward the good life. Vive la France.

Symmetry

It makes sense

that ginger grows underground

that it is brown with eyes and many bulbous noses and thumbs and big toes,

but no fingers

that at any point in time it is uprooted,

displayed at a green grocer's,

where it is scratched and sniffed, palmed over,

snapped

this probably hurts

wrapped up in a small brown bag

the crispness of which foreshadows the zest the rhizome will bring to a meal or dressing

to be brought home

peeled by the tender mastery of a spoon and the opposable digit--trying in each half-moon journey to the knuckle of the index finger to re assimilate with his four peers who, thanks to the cruel hand of evolution, shun his exotic looks and foreign function.

much like the root itself, a thumb owes its very shape to what has come to be over an accumulated number of eons...whatever an eon may be: 10000 REM cycles, or generations of drosophilia melanogaster in your opinion--

then scraped

till its flesh separates

fibrous elements discarded

the marrow sampled by the union of finger tip and tongue

then swept into a dish of something larger

itself composed of the best parts--freely given, torn out of, ripped or cut away from-- of many many other different bodies, sources, bulbs, and buds

the only remaining trace of prior incarnations of the root

well voiced

by the mute testament to being

perceived by the tongue,

the lingus

the lingus bears the burden of testament

some might add that a ledger of a journey could be found moreover in the bowel

but I am no scientist

and I would add

that shit

carries the herb's narrative around once to the earth

which we all know is the end, but also once again the beginning

this on one hand obscures the sequence of events

what is the cause? the effect?

what the catalyst? the result?

yet notice that such circularity gives life an evenness, a well distributed weight--so that we can feel its presence--a perfection

of symmetry

I am pleased to be a composite of what has come before. I am tickled to know that discerning the traces of my past will be a nearly impossible task to undertake forensically; years from now anthropologists will fail to read lingering muscle fragments of my petrified heart so as to publish on how it was broken and mended and broken and mended again. I prefer the science of fiction to document that which I have consumed, that which I have known.
I like to trace the bridge of my nose
to know that it has been molded like my father's and his mother but with the delicacy of my own mother's
I like to feel the obtuse breadth of my hips--it is nice that some-part of me is slow
and the cheeky 'pop' of my rump
which come from my paternal grandmother and grandfather respectively
I won't chart for you the antecedents to my facility for tears or even my penchant to ENTRENCH in a person or thing
it would be trite to give simplified coordinates for such stuff, just for the sake of poetics
when it fact such a task is like trying to sort out where the seas begin and end
can a cartographer chart such lines?
This does not necessarily hold true for lovers
which is why perhaps so many people write on the subject
once an inamorato has been dislodged from your heart, there persists a vision of dual temporality--the ability to critique what you once were, and what remains
what remains being an acknowledgement of what part of the other lingers, and what part of the other has dissipated
like taking measurements on the half life of radioactive elements

trumping such moments of lucidity of course
is the comic inability to transcribe what else you might be around or apart from this nuclear enclave of your heart

yet no mind
the lingus bears the burden of testament
to the perfection of symmetry :

I was cooking a soup
preparing for nightly ritual of 'taking in'
when I started thinking about the two men I've really loved

One taught me how to be mean
I mean really vicious
which, he also taught me,
is necessary for when you must battle
life takes teeth and claws
and sometimes and with some people
"things must be destroyed before they can begin again"...

...Star Wars also taught me that...along with the entire western cannon of mythology...and Joseph fucking Campbell...

but one taught me first, and for myself

One taught me how to be vain about my linguistic and intellectual capabilities
which I appreciate
because after all
hubris
is what separates gods from men

From another I learned to make salad dressings
really good salad dressings
with lime and ginger and peanut butter

and how also to open an avocado

to LIKE avocado

and Indian food

and the outdoors

as well as the idea of living someplace without the ocean

in favor of mountains

and that I could want to becoming something other than what I came into the world as

this other also trained me to find Orion in the sky

and instructed that beech trees will always grow in stands...

from the other I learned to yield...

Sometimes

just knowing all these things

and knowing these men exist

makes me so happy I think space will swallow me whole

I imagine that as symmetry circumscribes itself
it approaches infinite density
as if complete happiness were a black hole
and death were simply the completion of the arc

so that--after I lifetime of cycling through love--

once truly content

no trace of life can escape

despite one's best efforts to the contrary

and as one comes closer and closer to the 360th degree of the arc

one must fight harder to evade happiness

and continue to live...

these thoughts

are probably why seeing old people alone

makes my heart crumple in my throat

because I sense that they are very happy about living

but also very tired (perhaps) from a lifetime of good things

perhaps so tired

that they no longer wag their tongues and map their stories

I fret

I fret

I cry

about who is working to transcribe these lives?

Who?

...I know

that like concentric ripples in a pool pf water

emanating from what appears at least to be an infinite source

symmetry is perpetual/

simultaneously ending and beginning

but nothing in between

which is why it has no narrative

and why I should not try to counterfeit it with inadequate words...

but I am still young

and I have not yet found man to teach me to surrender

The Adventures of Adele and the Evil Pajama Blood Monster, An Introduction

PART 1: Introduction


Bonjour

Je m'appelle Adele and I have 6 years old
Everyone tells me that I have "de jolies yeux bleus" blag blah blech
I don't like to take a bath and peanut butter
I like les horses
I like to wear a jupe
BUT ONLY if I can with my new shoes

here is me:

I like to dessiner...make pictures...beaucoup

Sometime my Mom give me trouble

Sometime my Dad, and Samuel

And also my bebesitter Caitlin

And Lea too MORE dan Cetleen

Cetleen sometime get very excitee mais I want just to draw

I learn dis song from Cetleen which I like parce que everyone

everyone and Lea like it

"I tole da Witch Doctor you didn love me too...true!

I tole da Witch Doctor you didn love me nice

An than da Witch Doctor she is gave me some advice

She said ah

Oo -ee- oo-ah-ah

Ting-tang-walla-walla-bing-bang

Oo-ee-oo-ah-ah

Ting-tang-walla-bing-bang"

I like parce que toute la famille pay attention to me

Today I didn feel good

I feel tired and sad because Samedi soir

Cetleen was not nice to me

I'm not want to talk with her why

so instead I tell a story and draw for you

Is called:

Adele Hates the Evil Pajama Blood Monster

A List

LISTS:

1. I gorge on them. 3, 4, 5 pages of a ruled legal pad tattooed with 'THINGS TO DO.' This of course creates a ridiculous situation as the attempt to devise a more 'complete' and 'more perfect' list makes every bulleted do-over a farce of organization, while in comic desperation I look to past lists for guidance of a more intuitive and hence 'purer' form, only to discover that contrary to my original perceptions, these primary scrawls are naught but functional purges of my entirely facocked psyche: emotional bowel movements so to speak, soul poop.


2. I degenerate into them. If I'm keeping tabs on my thought process, I guess such a statement would mean that I'm repressively scatological. Cheers to the fact that it's usually only a matter of minutes before one of my stress-free, coherent ideas devolves into a machine gun spray of shitty bullet points. See above....and below......

....Mais c'est ne pas ca....encore

LISTS:

1. With lists I'm trying all at once to get some-place in a simple and LOGICAL set of numbered steps; ultimately I get nowhere at all.

• Detour: In French when asking for hotel accommodation, or for 'a seat at the table', we say: "Est-ce qu'il y a une place? Is there a place for me? I'm looking for a bit of rest, a sanctuary, and in effect, acceptance by some greater good." Une place--a noun representing in the abstract sense some state of metaphysical unification, while the concrete sense of location simultaneously spawns in me a persistent, lurking intuition that such a place could actually be found. Ergo listmaking....


• ...in lieu of other, more carnal approaches to transcendence, which I would add are my more natural proclivity re: a means to an end. In considering the choice between the Apollonian or Dionysian course of action, it is unclear if I have selected the former* as either I). a warped yet conscientious choice springing from the dictates of subconsciously entrenched hegemonic institutions equating celibacy with goodness, tranquility, mental clarity and GENIUS--did you know Newton was a virgin??....or II). simply because my stymied love life precludes any course of more libidinous action...
  
• * One can only hope that the cultural institutions of France--read: vino and social foreplay--shall lead to a post 'probing' the logic of such an alignment in a truly material, and provocatively narrative manner....


• DISCLAIMER. I have, prior to this posting:

A. consumed 3/4 of a bottle of phenomenal and cheap-as-dirt red wine

B. watched John Travolta and his gyrating pelvis in Grease while explicating the linguistic and sexual norms of America to a French 13 year old whose just begun to menstruate--I'm living in a Judy Blume novel--and

C. Christ I sound like a whore!

LISTS: (an example)

1. FOR TOMORROW 13/10/07

• alarm-9 am...(fuck)
• make chix sandwiches. Get a f*ing baguette chez le f*ing boulanger (bread shop). Then go to the f*ing 'supermarket' where the only thing I need for this endeavor that is actually stocked is mustard. Then go to the charcuterie (meat shop) for the chicken for said sandys. It's amazing how when pressed for time, I no longer perceive quaintness, artistry, and culinary integrity but FRENCH INEFFICIENCY. I've finally seen the day where the idea of a wholesale club gets my engine revving, and where I yearn for the ability to buy in bulk without earning the mark of Cain...
• Remember to do Lea's hair for wedding
• See Versailles--palace, gardens, Marie-Antoinette's hamlet
• Investigate the magical, mysterious, hypothetical museum pass: good for a year to all cultural institutions plus no waiting in line. This is imperative for tomorrow unless I want to wait the 2 hours needed to buy a ticket to get into the damned palace. On second thought there's no way this pass is for real. We're in France. Such a pass would require a clear hierarchy of institutional infrastructure, and as far as I can tell, the French have less managment ability than I.
• Do something productive.....

.....Encore une fois de plus....

LISTS:

Eventually, slowly, and only in certain places, my mind quiets: on a bench in the Jardins Luxembourg, in one of the blue seats of Chicago's redline as we pass over Graceland cemetery....

It's these moments where I make lists I like. These are the lists that make me feel good about the way things are, at the same time as I feel audaciously incomplete. These lists make me feel bright red alive; they are the happy heartpangs that come from knowing that nothing will ever be enough, but that looking for enough will be forever. These are the lists I don't have much to say about and can't really qualify. These are the lists of things I don't ever want to forget.

For now:

1. Carafes. At the school cafeteria of the Sorbonne--found blocks from my classroom and tucked away among side streets littered with scooters and bicycles--I can get a meal for 2,60 Euros. That's around $4.50 U.S. I wait in line and take my tray. I stack it with a beet salad, a baguette, a sampling of cheeses, an entree of fresh fish with lentils, and an orange for dessert. I pay with coins. I take a plastic cup. The cafeteria is well illuminated thanks to large rectangular windows perforating the anonymity of such a meeting place. Nonchalant sunshine of a fall afternoon streams in. Long dining tables are arranged intimately; I must nudge through a narrow corridor of bodies to arrive at my place. When I take a seat, my back presses up against that of a boy sitting at a table parallel with mine. At a table seating 20 in a room filled with 30 tables, each body is in warm contact with a neighbor; no one is crowded. I wonder if such 'goodwill' is merely a symptom of the autonomic acceptance of intimacy mandated by a country where real estate (both literal and metaphorical) is a nonexistent luxury, and then I notice the carafes. Each table has just one. Tall, pear shaped with a cubed base and round lip. Translucent. The sun beams are not chagrined to illuminate the gummy prints that pattern the glass and testify to generations of diners who have eaten this day. I know in a second that each carafe is meant to be shared by an entire table--the carafe to pour three glasses of water then filled again by the hand that emptied it at a spout at the back end of the hall. Nonetheless I look around for the other that's supposed to be for my part of the table. I eye a group of academics to my right; they are bemused by my incomprehension. They don't know that in the US there are advertisements for Airborne featuring an anthropomorphic purple and green germ whose ubiquity is meant to remind us that 'other people make us sick,' or even that at college orientation the RA first lectures new students never to share a drink with another for fear of Roofies. I don't take stock in these admonishments, but I do remark on the noticeable delay of time it takes me to form the words, " la carafe, s'il vous plait." I know at times I've trusted others too much, or assumed a stranger had the best intentions when in fact they did not. A carafe does not mean everyone is altruistic, or good, or even kind for that matter. It is not an invitation to a naive worldview. Instead, it is a mission statement, a firm insistence on our responsibility to community. In France, a carafe means we're all in this together.