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.