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Life has been long and narrow recently, like a midnight trip to the bathroom down the dark corridor outside my childhood bedroom. Or like the way I feel in New York city at midtown. Yegh.

I've been in the shit. Up to my knees in PhD applications and self doubt. Throw some anxiety in there comme un digestif. I probably should been seeing a shrink or gulping down pills for that, but really, who has time? When ever I start to get panicky I sort of just tell my subconscious its full of crap, and that it better knock off the shenanigans. OR ELSE.

Honestly, if I had a hunky man to rub my feet and other things at night, I probably would dispense with all fantasies of board certified whosies, chemical leg-up-ers, and the militant approach to my neurosis. So I like to do it when I'm stressed--I no longer feel guilty about this. A bit manly, yes, but I'm confident that one day, I will find a loving partner who approaches life's little obstacles with a raging boner, or who can at least is can pull the team together when I need to be indulged.

That said...the whole process of trying to prove myself to a group of strangers is almost complete, and I'm looking forward to the new year. To the freedom to take long weekend vacations to Belgium, Italy, Germany, and the Czech Republic. To museums, and parks, and historical landmarks. To cafes and VIN and the search for romance. Hopefully with someone tall. With light eyes, scruff, a sturdy build, and good hair. No one who smells French.

Wow. To think of it...its kind of amazing how much 2006 and 2007 sucked. Granted, 2007 was better than 2006, but only because instead of two really nasty things going down, I only had one big setback. I could be pessimistic and go the whole "bad things come in threes" route with regards to my prognostications for 08, but I think that would just be ungrateful of me. I freaking live in Europe. I'm livin the dream! The dream, btw, could only get better if it involved being in love, and ergo...some coitus....aaaaaaaannnnnnnnnddddddd acceptance to every PhD program to which I've applied, aaaannnnnnnnnddd....some more coitus. But I desist.

Before I hit the sack and grab less than enough sleep before facing a day of class and 8 hours with three children under the age of 9, I'd like to record some things about Paris that some day I'll want to remember:



1. I'm standing on Rue Notre Dame des Champs...a tiny one way street that plays hide and seek with the Jardins Luxembourg behind the periphery of the corner of Rue Vavin, the cobbled pedestrian way that connects road to park on the perpendicular. Its a winter day in Paris, which means it's cold, and the sky is threatening like an aging Femme Fatale who pours a drink only to find the bottle's empty. Perhaps this explains the lurking feeling one gets in Paris that something is always hanging over one's head, some business left undone, but on the rapidly unraveling fringes of the mind....as if one was standing in front of his wife and swearing all fidelity while his zipper was down. Its terrible. And funny like that. This is a day where I as well have the feeling I've been caught with my hand in the jam jar. What jar, prosecuted by whom, and the the gravity of the offense, I can't tell you. I only know I'm being deposed. From the French I've learned that there are really only two possible solutions to such a sentiment. Actually there are three, but tragicomic sex just depresses me, and unlike the French, I don't think depression is an elevated state of consciousness. Today then, I could turn to wine, or to treasure hunting. Treasure hunting is why all French women are stunning in the way of things that are old and sentimental and built by hand. Needlepoint. The tin turn crank sifter in my mother's kitchen drawer. French women have eyes that NOTICE things. I want that femininity, so today my nose is pressed against the glass of an elevator sized antique shop and I'm craving the reinforcement THAT antique Sapphire ring, shaped like an ellipse and edged with diamonds, laid out on blue velvet, tucked behind a gold cigarette box in an unlit display in a shadowed window of an anonymous building would bring if only someone who found me like I found it would slip it on my fourth finger.

"WHERE" I call to the lonely part of myself,

"WHERE ARE THEY?" The men I mean, the soul mates, the life partners, the best friends. The ones who will really want to give you their lives and who will not know whether you want a simple band or something really materialistic, definitely because you don't know yourself. The ones who are smart, and funny, and pluck the grey hairs out of your head on Sunday mornings, and drink with you before watching documentaries because they are too serious to take them in sober, and who know how to kiss you, and aren't too afraid to really do so, even though in all probability any person who'd ever dare to hope he or she could ever be enough for anyone else is deluded, if brave.

"Dead" he says.

I turn.

Old Man. Red Cap. Curved back. Cane.
Walking past. Up the hill.

"They're all dead."


2. In America we call it the funny bone. In France, its referred to as "le petit juif," because its small, and hurts you.

3. Here, pillows are square. This is so odd, and so perfect.

4. Before going to sleep, Samuel takes a python sized stuffed snake from his toy box, and inscribes it, in increasing concentric circles, within the borders of his pillow so that as he dreams, his head will rest well nested within the coils of a childhood whim.

5. I speak the language of an empire. This is strange.

6. For Thanksgiving, I went to the home of a friend of a friend. A woman. Romanian born. Late 50's perhaps early 60's. Eyes crowding her nose to get the view from the bridge. Art Historian. Married to Charly, 70's, American. She loves this holiday because it is a holiday of immigrants, of which she is one, a time to open her arms to the world and thank it for having her, for giving her a place, and to honor those who move, those who trespass, those who lance themselves into being. She has no children. Every year the meal features the students rotating through coursework in their University careers, and whichever friends happen to be passing through town. In between her two front teeth there is a salient gap. The interloping space has such a sense of humor, such an insolence and fecundity, that I want to take this woman in my arms and hold her tight for all the mothers in the world that she, by some odd oversight of fate, will never be.

This is the same woman who, when I was described the blood curdling moans of a cat in heat, said: "My dear, those are not the screams of the devil, but of a WOMAN."

this once...

josh and i were at my grandparents cottage just before it was sold away, and we decided to go fishing on the lake at dusk. we had gone into town that morning and paid something absurd like $50 for 3 day licenses--we were catching dinner damn it--and so when the sun set we were prepared. we loaded the canoe with poles and bait and pushed off from the dock, careful to avoid the swimming rock submerged just below the water's surface and straight off the homemade pier. to be honest, i wasn't really convinced we would catch any great shakes. i had been fishing in that lake since childhood without accruing a single memory of my line going taught, of reeling in my prize to show off to all my cousins--to prove that in fact there was a reason I was the oldest grandchild....clearly because I was superior at all things, including fishing. josh however was optimism all the way. except it was optimism without a smile. it was serious optimism. he was a serious outdoors man. i have this one TERRIFIC picture where he's leaning over the side of the canoe scrutinizing the placid body of water for even a single bubble--for any trace of aquatic life. I don't remember seeing a one bubble. evening progressed and the sky began to ink into the lake's horizon. then suddenly there were bats. this freaked me out big time but excited josh who saw it as a sign of feeding time. if the bats were swooping to the water's surface for a buffet of larvae and insects, the fish would be rising to the same occasion. josh was right, he did catch something--by accident. after a bit of casting, he reeled in his line to realize he had a guppy who'd swallowed the hook. the little guy fit neatly in josh's palm, hiss gills working almost as frantically as josh was to release the hook. problem was, the hook was well on its way to the fishes gut. josh worked and worked the hook delicately, stopping every few seconds or so to submerge the baby bass to give him breathing time. this went on for a minute or so, until blood began to issue forth from the gills. i had been growing slowly distraught over the deteriorating condition of the baby fish, but blood was too much. i launched into sobs at the tragedy of a life plucked so haphazardly, and wrung my hands over the maliciousness of fate. and then there was josh, in a canoe on a man made lake with a hysterical woman, trying to save a fingerling who would probably just be eaten by the big guys anyway. eventually the finned creature was freed, and as Josh put him overboard, I put the flashlight on the water. together the two of us watched the bass as he exerted every once of strength left to descend slowly, slowly, out of the penetrating strength of the light, and into the black sludgy depths, probably to die of blood loss or severe wounds. i asked josh to drop me at the dock. i don't know what made me feel worse: the fish, or the pathetic downfall of our best sportsmen intentions.
this story came back to me tonight out of nowhere, and it made me truly happy at first--the absurdity of the situation. but now, after writing through it, i wish that Josh had caught something in Pennsylvania--that would have given him a nice memory in place of the one i hope he still has.

countdown

this is the official countdown to something big

i woke up today with an omen in my heart

that's a feeling you only get once in a while in your life

its like the feeling of lying on the beach by Lake Michigan on one of those summer nights when the air is warm enough to permit night swimming and the sand is only illuminated by the glow of the city lights and drifting out across the water are the sounds of a foreign accordion like instrument emanating from a midnight festival of a Greek orthodox community

i freaking love america

and rock and roll

maybe this omen is just libido

but who gives a fuck

if it makes you feel really alive