Snow daze

Dreaming of warmer weather. Below, two shots of La Rochelle in summer and then one of Portlanders taking advantage of a sunny Saturday in April. Today is a snow day for the Seattle school district.

Home, home on the range

If I were a painter, this is how I would paint Montana.

Is February worse than November (in Seattle)?

It's pretty much a toss-up if you ask me. But, as these photos show, February isn't all bad. In case you are wondering, the purpose of these photos is not to reveal that our windows need washing (they do) or that I don't make the bed or do housework before sitting down at the computer to work (I don't); it is to show you that all the bitching I did last night about February being such a horrible month apparently paid off. The weather gods heard me. They tried to tell me last night, by dumping tiny hailstones on me as I got out of the car, but I was not receptive to the news. However, all is forgiven this morning. The sun is out. Neko and I are going for a walk -- but first, YOGA!!!! I skipped Monday's class because I had an urgent need to brood about the shitty weather. I promise to do double the usual number of sun salutes this morning.

February also features the bogus holiday, St.Valentine's Day, which is not really to its credit. But what are you gonna do? I offered my Valentine some red-only swedish fish, some red-only poptarts (strawberry) and a bottle of fine IPA (with a red label). Do you see a pattern or theme emerging? Red, the color of the day. Entertainment wise, we went to the Triple Door to see a Frank Sinatra impersonator by the name of Joey Jewell. He is local, I think, from Puyallup. Damn, he sounds like Sinatra. He did a 60's "Sands" tribute. He did it My Way. He flew us to the moon and treated us to a duet version of Mack the Knife. The swing band that accompanied him was perfect. A bunch of middle-aged people who looked like you would expect your high school classmates who were in the band to look. The piano player, a very skinny man with a straight back (good piano posture), looked like someone who could have been the piano player for the Addams Family.
The only blemishes on this fine evening were the lady sitting just behind us with her "date", a three-year old girl who I think must have been her daughter. Who in their right mind brings a three-year old to the Triple Door? On Valentine's Day! If I had paid a babysitter to watch my three-year old, I would have been really pissed, especially when the three-year old got tired of the crayons and started making noises that sounded like farts under water. Can you believe it! And to our left, also just behind us, were two couples who apparently had some catching up to do. The two women started yacking it up, during the show of course. So rude! Not just with respect to those sitting around them, but also with respect to the performers, who were about five feet away. My husband finally turned around and said "It must be nice to be able to catch up!" They got it; they got up and went elsewhere (the bar? the restrooom?) to chat. Geez! People! Why not use your mentality, wake up to reality....
Hearing those songs from the sixties made me think of my childhood and my dad. He loved that music, he really did. His favorites were My Funny Valentine and Moon River. And yes, I realize these are not Frank Sinatra tunes. I am talking about the period. Personally, I liked King of the Road and Queen of the House. All that music defined adulthood for me. And for those who are mad about Mad Men, let me say that I saw the real people in action. The cigarettes, the cocktails, the music and shenanigens, the hangovers, the suntans, the bad behavior, the fights, the gossip about affairs, told in hushed and rushed tones on the phone or over martinis in the kitchen at 4 pm, the benignly neglected kids having the time of their lives, unsupervised....those were the days, my friend.

Mack the Knife - I just can't help it

Ella did it.



And so did Bobby Darin. Of course.



Louis too, naturally.

More music, 'cuz I feel like it

Old Devil Moon

How about Old Devil Moon, bossa nova style?



And what about Mose Allison. This dude should be declared a national treasure.

Bound to piss some people off

On this February 14, Valentine's Day in case you have been living in a man cave without a television, I can think of no better words of wisdom than those I came across this morning. Tracy McMillan has some harsh truths for women who complain that there are no good men out there or wonder why they are single, for whatever reason they happen to be single. Click on the title for a link to the article. And don't shoot me; I'm just the messenger.

A friend of mine who professes to want nothing more than a man of character to hang out with and perhaps marry also says that she is only attracted to men who are edgy. This is the grown-up version of being attracted to bad boys, which many teenaged girls are until they finally realize that bad boys are just that, bad. Inconsiderate. Abusive. Nasty. Liars and so on. Girls grow out of this phase. Females who pass the age of adolescence without losing this childish attitude do not become women. It is actually part of a larger syndrome, which is the idea that the man you love needs to be a certain way to complete you. This is all wrong. A man cannot complete you; only you can complete you. And until you do, there will be no happy ending.

I look around me and see lots of people who are dissatisfied. Dissatisfied with their partner, dissatisfied with their job, dissatisfied with their looks, dissatisfied with life. I see married couples who are dissatisfied and single people who are dissatisfied. The good news is that I also see satisfied couples and satisfied singles. What is their secret? If they are single, they like themselves (which doesn't mean they think they are the greatest). If they are married, they genuinely like their partner (and it goes without saying that they like themselves). This doesn't mean they like their partner to dress like a 60's gym teacher; it means that it doesn't matter one way or another how their partner dresses. Back to the "edgy" requirement. For my friend, this has a fashion component. The guy has to have mastered the Seattle slacker-grunge-rock star roadie look. Personally, I might be a little suspicious of a guy who had taken the time to do this. But never mind; I am so very happy to be with my 60's gym teacher. I feel quite certain it is an effortless look, the 60's gym teacher look.

So Happy Valentine's Day to everyone out there with a heart, but especially to the guy who has my heart. Take care of it please. I know you will.

One of the world's greatest love songs. Listen to those horns!

Waiting for Mubarak

What a lovely day this is.

We are all Epyptians today.

The title links to a nice blog by an Egyptian psychologist. Lots of background information about how Egypt got to where it is today and what the Egyptians are basically like: communal and calm.

UPDATE: Egyptians are pissed. I just listened to Papa Mubarak speak to his "children". Not good. Foolish and arrogant man.

Three cool cats

Meet Maya, who spends her days hanging out in the lobby/bar of the Les Chansonniers hotel in the 11th arrondissement of Paris.



Now meet Erica, or Princesse Erica for her subjects, who lays down the law at a little neighborhood café (with free wifi!) that is also in the 11th arondissement of Paris.



And last but not least, meet Mélusine, who reigns over an apartment in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. She plays hard to get and has a scary stare (look at those green eyes) but deep down is a sweetheart who likes to crawl under the covers and purr from about 4 am to about 7 am.



These are the three cool cats who watched over me while I was away from my ménagerie. I think they realized that I am an animal lover (not everyone is) and as such needed watching over. Maya came and sat on the bench next to me as I ate breakfast while waiting for my hotel room to be cleaned so that I could crash on the bed completely clothed -- coat and shoes included -- for a couple of hours after arrival in Paris. After that, she was never far from me whenever I was in the lobby/bar of the hotel.

Erica pounced on my coat for a nap as soon as I sat on the bench at Le Réfectoire, my office away from my office in Paris (free wifi!). She did this every day, though sometimes she chose my leather bag as her bed. One day, I had to move her to get my coat, which was underneath her haunches. She awoke instantly, hissed, gave me a swipe with her paw and then lay back down to sleep. Okay! I get it! I know who's the boss of me.

As for Mélusine, it took her a couple of days to understand that I had not killed her owners or kidnapped Arsène, their two-year old boy and her best friend. I knew she had warmed up to me when I woke up in the middle of the night because I felt a giant hair on my face. I was just about to swipe it away -- which would have been really bad for me in retrospect -- when I saw two green eyes staring at me and heard the purring of an engine. It was Mélusine, who had not been seen... she let me know she wanted under the covers. That was the beginning of a beautiful though strange friendship. In order for this friendship to work, I had to understand that there were certain places I was not to go. This was not so hard, since they were mainly cat-size nooks and crannies. Who knows what she kept in there? The body parts of prior apartment sitters? One night I accidentally set my left hand on the corner of one of her nooks and regretted it instantly. I heard a hiss and felt her claws as they sunk into the flesh on my wrist. Punishment was swift and effective. I never did that again. Mélusine's two favorite activities, besides disappearing for long periods into her nooks and crannies, were drinking from the faucet and drinking from a regular glass filled to the brim.

Three cool cats, whose lives go on without me in the 11th arrondissement of Paris.

Stylish old bags

I don't often find myself at the supermarket in the middle of the day. After today's trip, I'm thinking I should venture out midday more often. I do get outside in the middle of the day, but it is almost always to take Neko for a walk in Lincoln Park. The most recent Lincoln Park masher has cooled my enthusiam a bit. He's the guy who feigns shin splints or follows women joggers until he is close enough to fake a fall from behind them, which requires grabbing onto their hips and planting his nose between their butt cheeks. Yes, you read that correctly. He claims he really just happened to fall in this way four times and that each time, the body he reached for to break his fall was that of a woman in spandex.

Anyway, the subject is stylish old bags. I was waiting in line to pay for my purchases and had a look around. I wish I had my camera. The very, very, very old woman at the counter to my left, paying for her dozen eggs with an American Express card, was wearing an off-white, fitted Chanel coat with a matching belt, under which could be seen her chocolate brown tights and matching short boots. She finished off the look with a Louis Vuitton bag (the one in the photo) that definitely qualifies as vintage. It was in mint condition. She was too, and must have been around 90.

Then I noticed the woman in front of me. She was also about 90, but had opted for the more casual Pacific NW chic look. She was a study in mauve, purple and periwinkle blue from head to foot. She had clearly thought about how to layer herself up for the day. She had put on a soft pink shade of lipstick and was wearing lots of eye makeup. The frames on her glasses tied together her lipstick and the mauve wool hat. She looked fabulous.

Against my will I visited the Louis Vuitton store on the Champs-Elysées while in Paris. It was under construction forever, or so it seemed, and finally opened its doors in 2005. I am guessing it cost the budget of a small Latin American government to remodel. The resulting concept store - and this should come as no surprise - is completely over-the-top, totally bling-bling. There are tons of photos on the internet, but none that quite do it justice; my camera was certainly no match for the gawdy splendor and sheer volume of the place. And it is a zoo, especially on a Saturday afternoon. Most of the masses streaming in and out are foreign tourists, and I am not going to say how I know that. Monique and I looked at the price tags and scoffed, agreeing that we would never buy anything so obnoxiously branded. Later that evening, an Australian friend who lives in Paris said the French don't buy Vuitton and would not be caught dead wearing it because it is too bling-bling vulgar. But the old lady with the Amex card probably doesn't care what the French or anyone else would think.

January still

I've been back from Paris for a week and a day now. My jet lag is gone, but January is still here. I took Neko for a brisk walk today, and boy was it brisk.

This is a photo of one of my few but -- I think -- well chosen purchases in Paris. It's the Caroline bag by Lili Cabas. Great bags, great prices. I wanted a red bag; I don't know why. This one is cool and I love the vertical silver lines. Plus, I didn't pay a fortune for it. I found it in a small, funky shop near my apartment. The main Lili Cabas store is in the 10th, on Rue des Petites Ecuries. So forget Lancel and the Champs-Elysées.

I took my Seattle friend to Lancel because she was intent on buying a bag from there on sale. The bag she bought was not on sale, and it was expensive. The store was overheated, made worse by the intense lighting on the upper floor. It was like being in an oven, with an extremely tenacious Franco-asian saleswoman following my friend everywhere. That bugs me about the Lancel shop at the top of the Champs. They have a better selection than the Rond Point store, but boy are they clingy.

At the same time, I understand that they don't want people pawing their pretty things. The saleswoman at the Rond Point store tried to do a little pre-sales wheeling and dealing, but it did not work on my friend. I saw a lot of pre-sales W&D going on. It felt a bit like living near Place de Cliché, as I did for a few years. At all times of day, the racoleurs would be out on the sidewalk soliciting passers-by. On the night before the sales officially began, lots of stores in the Marais were open. As I walked past, stopping to look in the windows, people would come out of nowhere and offer me special, illegal deals. Tonight only, cash only. Not interested.

Modest proposals

Since I became a university student again, I have gotten tons of "proposals", most of them blocked by my spam filter. None of them have anything to do with marriage, which is probably a good thing because I am already married, and happily so, and polygamy is illegal. The "proposals" in question all concern making extra money as a student. They generally involve telemarketing and stuff.

The subjects of email proposals and polygamy are just pretexts to mention that my friend and waitress extraordinaire Nicole Hardy managed to get published in the NY Times and find an agent while I was away in France. I saw her just before I left, so I knew about the NY Times gig. The agent and the article by Nicole Brodeur of the Seattle Times came about while I was away.

Nicole (Hardy, not Brodeur) wrote a short autobiographical piece about the experience of being a practicing Mormon woman who wants love and marriage but not children and about the resulting experience of finding herself a virgin at 36. Now an agent wants her to write the rest of her story. Personally, my favorite part of Nicole's essay was the part about Planned Parenthood -- the disconnect between what she had learned to think of PP and how she felt being taken into care by PP. It was really poignant and made my eyes well up with tears.

I just now read Brodeur's article and started to read the 178 comments it generated. But I had to stop fairly quickly, because the religious nuts seem to have taken over the comments section. How boring. One comment really pissed me off. Here it is:

It's bad enought that Hardy sinned. That she disclosed it, even bragged about it is despicable. The she profited from it is evil.

The sin? I suppose for the commenter, it was losing her virginity outside of marriage.
She did indeed disclose it, in an indirect way. Her essay does not describe her "deflowering" or name names.
Bragged about it? Well, if she did not really talk about it, then how can she be accused of bragging about it?
Profited from it? By getting an agent? Are you kidding me? She's a writer with two published books of poetry to her credit.

Whatever. She's a hard-working and talented writer, a generous human being and a wonderful waitress. She wears great t-shirts, like the one that says "talk nerdy to me" on it. Words like despicable and evil are out of place. She did not start World War Three or gun down innocent bystanders. See for yourselves. Just click on the title and it will take you to her essay for Modern Love, which appeared on January 9, 2011 in the NY Times. She bared her soul and got $300 bucks for it.

Time management is the key, but what is the key to time management?

You know I don't make New Year's resolutions. It isn't that I feel I am not perfectible - au contraire! - but the word resolution brings to mind the image of a treadmill, one that you get on and then feel stuck on, watching the clock, wishing you were elsewhere.

Perhaps another reason I don't like making resolutions is that they seem part of the ceaseless quest for "self improvement", a peculiarly American malady. There is something dispiriting to me about the idea of self improvement. In my mind, it is linked to another peculiarly American malady: perpetual dissatisfaction.

I prefer the Emersonian notion of self reliance to the "Oprahesque" notion of self improvement. Emerson was an American, so why does self reliance seem to be so foreign in this country? I met a Frenchman once at a wedding; he was the husband of the sister of the groom. He basically told me that he thought Americans were the least self reliant people on the planet (he called us "un peuple d'assistés"). I thought he was full of shit at the time, but I have since come to see what he meant. I think he has a point. But never mind. Today's rant is about time management, something I am hopeless at.

So I don't make resolutions, but I have had an epiphany: time management is the key. The question, however, is this: what is the key to time management? I wish I knew. All the ideas that come to me sound repugnant: stuff like ruthless dedication to a schedule, obsession with control, constant motion, intricate planning, no tolerance for mishaps and serendipity. Maybe I have the wrong attitude.

I'm going to study the issue and get back to y'all. I'm going to see if there is any useful advice out there about time management. And I will admit that I would like to improve my time management skills. Maybe this year. Or maybe I'll put it off until next year, I don't know. Hmmm....I think I'll see what the WWW (world wide wisdom) is on the issue of time management. Is this just another self-deceiving ploy to postpone the huge job that is staring me in the face?

I have done some preliminary research and, as I suspected, list-making is a popular piece of advice. It is true that, when you have a list of short tasks to complete, lists can be helpful and even necessary. But what if your tasks are things like this?

1. Integrate all of the extensive revisions made to the French version of the 90-page book you just translated.

2. Find a workable topic for a 25-page paper, needed to get credit for the seminar you took in winter of 2010, find the right secondary materials and write the paper.

3. Do all of the bookkeeping that you masterfully avoided doing over the entire twelve months of the previous year ended (note to W: I am exaggerating!).

4. Finish reading A la recherche du temps perdu, a 3,000 page masterpiece that I have read about 500 pages of.

You get the point. Do I really need a list to remember that these things are hanging over my head at all times? When I look at these tasks and think about the number of hours needed to complete each one, I get dizzy and my jet lag asserts itself. Sleep, it says. Close your eyes. Put down the book. Look at Neko. She has solved the time management problem once and for all. Here she is, giving a public lecture on the subject to a rapt audience.

Jardin des Plantes

Casque obligatoire!

Initially, I thought I would write regular posts during my 2+ weeks in Paris. But the fact of the matter is twofold: I would rather be doing than writing about it and, more importantly, the "livebox" (wifi router) in the apartment I was staying in did not work. I tried without much enthusiasm to fix it. I did figure out that the 26-letter code I had been given was wrong. I figured this out by finally counting each individual digit one by one, which in fact is not that easy to do. There were 27 numbers and letters in my WEP key. I even figured out which was the letter "de trop" in the code I had been given. But even this genius technology intervention on my part did not do the trick. I quickly decided not to spend hours and hours on the problem and found a nearby café with free wifi instead. This actually solved several problems, like what to have for breakfast. For information, un grand crème, followed by un café allongé. The only downside to this arrangement was that I had to be in the café to connect, which in fact is not such a downside after all. I connected less with the wired world and a lot more with the real world. And how can that be bad?

Anyway, freed from the self-imposed obligation of posting, I was more observant of my world. The first thing I noticed was that if you want to be hip in Paris, and provided that you are between the ages of about 13 and 25, you have to be wearing super big, super visible headphones. The days of smaller and more discreet ones are over, at least for now. And the funny thing is, this look is hard to pull off if you are over 25. I saw many who tried and just as many who failed. They all managed only to look as if they were trying too damned hard to be hip.

I asked Julien, who is 19 and the son of a good friend, what was up with the big 'phones when I noticed he had one in his possession. He denied it was a fad and insisted he only owned them because they are practical. Fashion groupies always pretend to be oblivious to whatever trend they are slavishly following. I don't mean this as a criticism of Julien, who I suspect really gave it no thought. He just bought a set of big 'phones, like everyone else. The funny thing is, and it truly makes me laugh, is that on this basis I am way ahead of the pack. I started using big 'phones ages ago, simply because the little ones hurt my ears and never fit right. Plus, they make me feel like I could get a massive headache any time. I have never trusted tiny earphones. So I walk my dog on Alki daily, listening to podcasts through oversize 'phones. To all you suckers looking at me like I am some sort of throwback to the past, some kind of cave woman, all I can say is that you clearly haven't been to Paris lately.

I have to go now. Jet lag is taking over my brain.

Best of 2010

It's over, 2010. So last year. 2011 is here and I am starting the year off right with a dinner composed of the best marinara sauce (sauce tomate) in the universe, made by the W.
We saw the year out properly too, with a Moroccan dinner inspired by Nawal, who was here from Paris via Fez last year but - alas! - not this year.

Three days later...

This was going to be my first day of the year post, but I got called away to eat that marinara sauce and then got involved in watching a movie "on demand". A very good movie on demand. One of the best of 2010, at least as far as I am concerned. It's called Please Give and stars Catherine Keener, one of the best actors around, as a guilty white liberal from the Upper West Side waiting for her bitchy elderly neighbor to die so that she and her husband can break down the wall separating their apartments and expand. The couple's day job is selling newly hip and hugely marked-up furniture from the past that they mainly purchase from the bereaved adult children of the kind of elderly people who live next door. Thematically, it reminded me of a largely overlooked novel by Nick Hornby from a few years back called How to be Good.
I recently mentioned True Grit, also a top movie pick for 2010, though it is not destined to be as underwatched as Please Give.

Did I see other movies in 2010? I went to SIFF, but all the films I saw, mostly French, were released in 2009. We liked Roman Polanski's The Ghostwriter, but I can't even remember if we saw it in 2010. Could have been 2009. I also liked a Claire Denis film I saw two weeks ago called White Material, which ran for a nanosecond at the Harvard Exit. Isabelle Huppert is always great as a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown. In fact, one of the best movies I revisited in 2010 was Claude Chabrol's La Cérémonie, starring Isabelle Huppert as a madwoman/postal worker who kills her baby and then, in an act of cold blood fueled by simmering class resentment, an entire family. Sounds grim, doesn't it? But actually, the movie is quite funny.

There were notable books in 2010 as well, though the only ones I read that were actually published in 2010 were Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen, Just Kids by Patti Smith, and Angel Face, by Barbie Latza Nadeau, about University of Washington exchange student Amanda Knox, who was convicted in Italy in December of 2009 of participating in the murder of her then roommate, British Erasmus student Meredith Kercher. Knox and her erstwhile boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, are currently serving time while awaiting the outcome of their appeal, a process that is automatic in Italy. Unless you have been brainwashed by woefully biased coverage in the US, you probably know that the case against the pair (and the third accomplice, Rudy Guede, who has exhausted all appeals in Italy) is strong and was well-argued by the prosecution. Two forensic items (out of far more than that number) are being re-examined and a couple of new witnesses will be heard. The prosecution is asking for a stiffer sentence, as it feels the first court was too lenient in sentencing Knox to 26 years and Sollecito to 25.

2010 was also the year in which I got back into yoga for real. It started on my birthday, as a gift to myself, and now feels like something necessary and good.

And finally, 2010 was a year of graduate study in French at the University of Washington. One class at a time, since I also have a full-time job. I feel blessed to be doing this at my age. And I have a 4.0 GPA so far, with one incomplete. I hope to write a paper next summer to fulfill the requirement that will erase the incomplete.

On the work front, the impact of the global financial crisis on my profession, financial translation, has been significant and is probably permanent. There are fewer transactions; financial services firms, banks and start-ups are less willing to spend money on translations, etc. This is an endlessly repeated cycle, but this time around the trough is longer and deeper. No matter. I feel blessed to still have work with clients I have had the pleasure of knowing for more than a decade; I feel even more blessed that they decided to stay with me when I moved back to the US. Sometimes I get kind of cranky, like when I have to work on the weekend or late at night. But on the whole, I feel blessed because I am self-employed, which offers a tremendous amount of liberty and autonomy, and also because I do work that allows me to use a rare skill and more than 50% of my brain. Even at its most boring, repetitive and stressful, translation remains a challenge; and I still take genuine pride in the finished product.

I'm not really one to make New Year's resolutions. But maybe it would be fun to try.

To be continued...

The Coen Brothers nail it with True Grit

As we left the movie theater the other night after seeing the Coen Brothers' rendition of True Grit (I am not going to call it a remake, so there), I was feeling the happy buzz one gets when one has no particular expectations and they are wildly surpassed. It isn't that I expected the Coen Brothers to do a bad job, they never do, or that I was worried their True Grit would not be as good as the first movie version, the John Wayne vehicle made in 1969. In fact, I never much liked the 1969 movie, perhaps because I never much liked John Wayne. It seemed he was always in the boring movies that played at the Burien Theater, the ones that dominated the Saturday matinée line-up. You know, like The Sands of Iwo Jima. I never liked his voice much or his looks. Somewhere, I once saw a photo of him wearing short shorts. I think it had to do with rumors about his sexual orientation. I have been unable to locate the photo since, but I found a website forum devoted to a discussion of his manhood in which a poster refers to this famous photo. He couldn't relocate it either.
The forum is hilarious, by the way. Lots of trite statements such as "He was a man's man" on one side and "Of course he was gay" on the other.
I didn't hate the first attempt to bring True Grit to the screen, and it was Wayne's best role, in my opinion. He played a bit against type and he was getting old. But Kim Darby as Mattie Ross just did not work. For one thing, she was too old at 21 to play a 14-year old. And Mattie Ross's wisdom beyond her youth is central to the story. She has true grit and she eventually brings it out in the other two.
So back to the present. We were leaving the movie theater and Walt said, with disappointment, "that was good but it wasn't so much about Rooster Cogburn." He said this just as I was thinking, with elation, "that was good because it wasn't about Rooster Cogburn." What makes the Coen Brothers' rendition so winning is that they have stayed truer to the story and made it about Mattie, told from her point of view. And after looking at more than 15,000 aspiring Mattie Rosses, they cast Hailee Steinfeld in the role. She is 14. And she gives a commanding performance. Her partners, Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon, are outstanding as well. And to their credit, they treat her as an equal acting partner and not a child. It shows through in the resulting film.
Whenever a Coen Brothers movie comes out, people debate over whether it is a "major" or a "minor" Coen Brothers. I don't get involved too much in these debates. I have liked almost everything they have done, even Intolerable Cruelty. No matter what story they are telling, they know how to write dialogue and shape plot and they film beautifully. Their movies are beautiful to look at. In addition, the casting for the minor roles is always perfect, with some great faces and voices. The opening scene of True Grit is beautiful to look at. Just the camera pointed at a boarding house in the dark, with the voiceover of the mature Mattie Ross. It isn't until the end that the eye is drawn to a dead body lying on the ground below the steps. It's a small thing, but a beautiful thing. And the scene near the end, where Rooster carries the injured Mattie to safety on the back of her horse Blackie, is almost like an animated fairy tale. The night, the prairie, the little house in the woods. Beautiful.
It's major Coen Brothers.

Maureen Dowd meets Patti Smith

I have nothing to add to what she said.
Walt and I saw Patti read from her book in Seattle last year. She is magical; she is mystical; she is ageless and full of grace. She's what I want to be when I get older.

Livraison avant Noël

A Elisabeth, maman de Mathilde, ainsi qu'à toute sa famille, nous vous souhaitons un Joyeux Noël! On vous a envoyé un paquet cadeau ce matin à midi. Le paquet est parti en bon état et nous espérons qu'il vous arrivera en pleine forme! Le voici hier soir avec son nouveau tapis de yoga. Namaste!

Mon jardin d'hiver

C'est pas triste, ça?

Demain, c'est la nuit la plus longue de l'année. Après, les nuits se raccourcissent petit à petit... Décembre, le mois le plus redouté (et redoutable?) de l'année. Il fait froid, le manque de soleil est pesant et cruel. La grisaille quoi. Les grises mines. Les âmes grises aussi. Tout le monde semble avoir le cafard, ce mélange néfaste de tristesse et de déprime. On a envie de ne rien faire, de tout faire mais ailleurs. Bon, c'est mieux que la pluie de novembre. Demain, c'est aussi la pleine lune. C'est rare de voir coïncider la pleine lune et le solstice d'hiver. Soyons joyeux! Plus rarissime encore, l'alignement terre/lune/soleil qui produit les éclipes est également prévu pour demain, le 21 décembre 2010.

Calendrier de l'Avent

Le nôtre est rempli de petites friandises.
Maintenant, il ne nous reste plus que 23 jours d'attente!
Avec une chanson pour chaque jour (il faut cliquer sur le titre).

Noir Désir n'est plus

After Téléphone, Noir Désir was France's most popular rock group. Its musical career was abruptly cut short when lead singer Bertrand Cantat "accidentally" killed his then companion, actrice Marie Trintingant, in Vilnius (Lithuania), where she was shooting a made-for-television film. He only wanted to shake her up a bit, according to Cantat, but unfortunately her head came into contact with the heavy metal radiator in their hotel room and she died, presumably while Cantat slept.




This happened in July 2003 and Cantat was tried, found guilty and sentenced in Lithuania to eight years of prison, from which he was conditionally released in late 2007. Marie Tritingant's parents, devastated by her death and what they considered to be overly lenient punishment for Cantat, were not happy when Cantat was let out early for good behavior. Since then, he has quietly pursued his interrupted musical career. But the band's recent "retour sur scène" did not sit well with some observers (myself included). I was not really surprised to hear that the guitarist Serge Teyssot-Gay had decided to leave the group, citing "la situation d'indécence qui caractérise la situation du groupe depuis plusieurs années" in addition to musical, emotional and human discord with Cantat. Ouf! I'm glad someone said it! This statement was followed a day or two later by one from the drummer, who said he was speaking for two other members of the group, announcing the end of Noir Désir.

Did I mention that Bernard Cantat was actually married to or living long term with another woman when he met Marie Tritingnant? Her name was Kristina Rady. In January of this year, she hung herself while Bertrand Cantat slept upstairs in the house they were apparently sharing. She was found by one of the couple's children. If I remember correctly, she stood by her man throughout the aftermath of Marie Tritingnant's death, and even went so far as to state that he had never, ever been phsycially violent with her, though others contested this, insisting that she had complained of physical violence in the past.




The whole thing is incredibly sordid and sad. I don't feel pity for Bertrand Cantat, but I do wonder where one goes from here. How does a person continue on from such a dark place? Is there any possibility of redemption? What kind of Act Three would not be indécent?

Où sont les neiges d'antan?

Ici, apparemment.
This is the world we woke up to today. White rooftops, tiny flakes, cold temperatures. Can chestnuts roasting on an open fire be far behind?

An office that is messier than mine

This is the office of novelist and Bainbridge Island resident Jonathan Evison. Jonathan (we are on a first name basis now) was kind enough to come and talk to a group of about 20 people in West Seattle, most of whom had read his first published novel All About Lulu. Jonathan would probably not be happy to know that I found touches of John Irving in All About Lulu. I say this because he made an offhand comment about Irving getting into trouble sometimes, because he has too many people and too many coincidences cluttering his stories. I think this is a bit harsh; Irving is a great storyteller and, like Evison, focuses on the traditional stuff of fiction: a good story, interesting people, unfortunate events, tragedy even, told with a touch of humor.
Jonathan Evison has a new novel coming out in February 2011 called West of Here. Consider this a plug. It sounds promising: sweeping, tons of complex characters, set on the Olympic Peninsula, 41 different narrative voices, the story weaves in and out of the 19th century and our own time.
I recommend this author, so shut up and read.

Le bruit qui court...

In France, the firing of three employees for writing derogatory comments about their bosses and the HR manager on Facebook has just been upheld in a labor court (industrial tribunal) decision.

This whole Facebook thing has me troubled. I de-activated my account some time ago, after a cyber-friend got upset (freaked out) when I friended one of her cyber-enemies. Having written horrible things about this cyber-enemy, the cyber-friend was afraid that the cyber-enemy would see photos of her grandchild and come after her in the dead of night. I'm not kidding. I was in trouble for friending someone without consulting every other existing friend to see if anyone had a problem with me friending the cyber-enemy. I decided the whole thing was too ridiculous to spend time on and shut down my account altogether.

And you know what? Betty White was right: What a time suck facebook is! Goodbye Facebook, hello 90-minute flow yoga class at 8 Limbs. Goodbye Facebook, hello longer walk with Neko at Lincoln Park. Goodbye Facebook, hello an extra chapter of A la recherche du temps perdu... tiens, tiens. A post-modern meaning of the title of Proust's book has just hit me in the Face! Goodbye Facebook, hello real books!

And tonight, at the Columbia Tower Club, I'll be tasting the 2010 Beaujolais nouveau at a fancy party put on by the French American Chamber of Commerce in Seattle. I know it is all just a marketing ploy and blah blah blah, but you can't beat the top of the tower and a delicious buffet! Who needs Facebook friends?

Magical Thinking

One of the smartest people ever. And certainly one of America's best writers ever. Slouching Toward Bethlehem. Miami. Play it as it Lays. The Year of Magical Thinking, of course. A Book of Common Prayer.

She once described herself as the perpetual outsider. A shy, bookish child. Devoted to her craft.

Mourning in America?

In the silver lining department, here are a couple of things to be thankful for:

1. Tea Party darling Christine O'Donnell was defeated.

Give me some time, folks. I'll find some more...

Okay, here's another one:

2. Jerry Brown is back. Does anyone remember him? He was governor of California from 1975 to 1983 (something like that). He was then the youngest elected governor of California and dated cool people like Linda Ronstadt. Now he is the oldest ever and, in the meantime, has gotten married. California always has cool governors. At least some things never change.

What else?

3. The Democrats have shown themselves to be more cooperative than the Republicans, so perhaps politics will become a shade less divisive. Actually, while I believe the first part of the equation, I know the second part is just wishful thinking.

The fact is, the vast majority of Americans do not take the time to consider the issues and weigh the consequences of their voting decisions. We get the governance we deserve. People are upset about the economy but not interested in getting mired down in thinking about the causes. They just want it to be fixed. Those who have been relatively spared are more desperate than ever to hang onto what they have. Incidentally, it was not a good time to ask voters in the State of Washington to think rationally and responsibly about taxation. The results -- disastrous for our state -- are fairly predictable. I live in a state where, apparently, it is okay with the majority to have everyone either home-schooled or wealthy enough to go to private schools. No one seems to think that the public schools deserve any funding at all. And, apparently, we have no qualms about taking an important source of funding away from our state government because it is more important to be able to buy booze at 3 pm and at 3 am from all-night convenience stores. I can't wait to share the road with these people. And forget about replacing that source of revenue with another; the voters have decided to make it even more difficult to raise taxes. What a fun state we live in! I love potholes, by the way, which is a really good thing because there are bound to be more and more of them.

The irony of the image at the top is that without public funding, effective law enforcement becomes impossible. I guess we are headed towards privatizing that too.

Fall hues

It was a perfect day to visit Seattle's Sculpture Park. The autumn chill was unmistakeable in spite of the sun. We also managed to get the yard and deck ready to hunker down for fall/winter. And our candy bowl is filled with treats for the costumed; we may have to take it to the streets again this year. Nobody comes our way because we live on a steep hill. Walt's grandson stopped by for a treat yesterday, but he wasn't wearing his lumberjack costume. However, I think what he was wearing is indistinghuishable from it.

A little bit of Picasso visits Seattle

The Musée Picasso in Paris is closed for renovation and expansion. Il était temps! That splendid museum, which is actually a converted 17th century townhouse in the Marais, could only display 300 of Picasso's works at a time (out of the 5,000 in its possession!), faute de place.

Some 150 of these works have made their way to Seattle, and other works have been packaged and shipped elsewhere, for public viewing while the work is carried out on the museum.

We got to go last night as part of a special evening sponsored by Alliance française. Our visit included wine, cheese and a brief but very informative pre-tour talk by SAM's Chiyo Ichikawa. Is it worth seeing Picasso in Seattle? Yes, I think so. The selection made available to SAM gives viewers a sense of the breadth and diversity of Picasso's long and protean career as an artist. And it is always exciting to see actual paintings and sculptures as opposed to photos of them in books. Like the work of any great artist, Picasso's needs to be viewed the flesh to be fully appreciated, I think.

Everyone will find something to like. Personally, I enjoyed watching a couple of Robert Picault's black and white videos of Picasso at work in the studio circa 1950. I also liked some of the photos, including a couple of self-portraits.



It was strange to see Picasso exhibited in Seattle, out of his element somehow. Maybe this is because I associate Picasso with the Musée Picasso in Paris, which I lived very close to for a couple of years during my Marais period. My apartment was on Rue Saint Antoine, which is near St Paul, La Bastille and La Place des Vosges. I used to walk by the Picasso museum on my way to visit a friend who -- get this -- was living in the magnificent Paris townhouse owned by the Farah Diba, wife of the deposed Shah of Iran. I won't get into why or how my friend ended up there, or even where it was located exactly. But it was an incredible place by anyone's standards. My friend was the daughter of an ex "political analyst for the State Department" (wink, wink). National security prevents me from saying another word about her or the Farah's townhouse. I value my ongoing existence.

Dysfunctional family

Yesterday I dropped a teeny tiny little thing behind the sofa (I was trying to move a huge and heavy painting 2 millimeters to the right), which meant pulling out the sofa to find it. Yikes! If anyone out there is missing anything, chances are Pushy has hidden it under our sofa. I could not believe the stash. Too bad I have forgotten to recharge my camera batteries for a week now, or I would have photographic evidence that my non-disabled cat, in addition to being evil, is a hoarder.
Nothing is too small or insignificant for her. She apparently loves wine corks and beer bottle caps. There were dozens of them. Straws too (we had a six-year old living in our basement for three months recently), not to mention paper clips, pens and pencils (many chewed on by Neko), dog toys, cat toys, chunks of dog and cat food, half eaten dog treats, balls of dust and hair (I'm not sure Pushy is to blame for this stash), several of Neko's cherished bones, money (spare change mostly), Jimmy Hoffa's dead body.... You name it, it was under the sofa.
But that's not the worst of it. In addition to living with a hoarder, we live with a bulimic. Neko, who has been particularly cunning of late in her never-ending quest to sneak a bite of cat poop as soon as our backs are turned, immediately began trying to eat the huge pile of gross, greasy, dusty stash that was under the sofa. She's bulimic! Except that she only binges, never purges. At least she doesn't eat her own poop. That would be really gross.
On that cheery note, I'm outta here for some yoga. Namaste y'all!

The face of evil

You can see it in her eyes: she loves nothing better than thwarting our desire for a quiet cup of coffee in the morning before facing the day. Before reading and reponding to emails. Before anything. Just a quiet cup of joe and, in my case, a tiny square of dark chocolate.

Pushkin Nosy Parker has other plans, however, and if she can include us in them in some way, then she is happy. You can tell by the way she spends the rest of the morning (after coming out of hiding, post-prank) sleeping on her favorite perch.

This morning, I heard what sounded like a thousand tiny beads being poured on the floor upstairs, followed by the sound of little cat feet, scampering for cover, followed by a very specific Neko bark, which I think translates as "You are going to be in so much trouble."

Did I mention that Pushy likes to get into the wicker trash can upstairs? We usually put it out of reach, which means putting it on top of the dresser. I have tried to see this as an innovation in home décor, but frankly I don't think this new placement idea will be taking the world by storm any time soon. Sometimes the trash can ends up on ground level, where it belongs. Usually, it is empty when this happens. This morning, there must have been a packet of that silicon stuff that gets packed with stuff you order that comes in boxes. You know, like lamps and stuff. Pushy found one and through a deft combination of pushing, clawing and chewing, somehow got it open. I am pretty sure Neko got involved at some point. I have no idea how the opening of this teeny packet produced a noise that sounded more like a thousand beads or marbles being dropped to the floor from a great height. Perhaps I'll have a better idea after we install the video surveillance camera that will be on 24/7.

Anyway, this is why at 7 am we were vacuuming upstairs, moving furniture to get every little bead of poisonous silicon, instead of enjoying the freshly brewed coffee that awaited us below. Of course, the vacuum cleaner bag was full and had to be changed. That's how these narratives work.

Remember the song by the Seeds?

All I want is to just have fun,
Live my life like it's just begun,
But you're pushin' too hard on me (too hard).

This little boy

One of the unexpected highlights of my stay in Paris last summer was the famous défilé du 14 juillet. July 14th is what we Americans call Bastille Day, and what is officially La Fête Nationale in France. Some Americans call it the French Fourth of July, which it kind of is, though I don't like to hear it referred to in this patrio-centric way.

Anyway, I used to watch the military parade on television when I lived in Paris, even when I lived on rue de Courcelles, which is right next to the Champs Elysées (the focal point for the parade). Since everything was closed on the morning of the parade and since all of my friends were out of town for the holiday, I decided to actually go to the parade. Without my umbrella, although I knew the forecast called for rain. And it poured. I ducked into a café at one point, just before it began to really come down. I drank an espresso and watched the parade on television for awhile. This little boy was in the café and kept running out every time the television indicated that the planes were flying overhead. He was so excited. Jumping up and down. Unable to contain himself. I had to take a picture of him. But I didn't want to be obvious about it. I always feel like I am invading someone's privacy when I take a picture of a stranger (as opposed to a group of strangers, which seems okay). I tried to be discreet. I had forgotten about this photo until I came across it this morning as part of a work avoidance exercise. I hadn't noticed that the photo also contains an arm and a hand of an unseen passerby, who is smoking a cigarette. Mais oui, bien sûr. This is France, after all.

Les bons tons

Quel week-end magnifique!

Manu

Well, that was interesting. Mathilde and I got free tickets to see Manu Chao last night at the Paramount. And we had great seats. First balcony, third row. Had it not been for the writhing woman in row one of the balcony, who for some reason felt she needed to stand up and dance, though she looked more like she was writhing in agony or had to pee, I would have had an unobstructed view all night. Luckily, she could not keep up with Manu and sat down every so often and then permanently. She was a really bad dancer, with no sense of rhythm at all. It was actually kind of hilarious.

But the real thrills were down below, in the mosh pit. Call me old, old-fashioned, no fun, whatever. But a mosh pit--what a stupendously horrible idea. Lip-service crowd control for a bunch of stoners pushing and shoving one another in random fashion, interspersed with random people being lifted off the ground and used as human projectiles. It doesn't look like fun at all. (Je sais que la maman de Mathilde lit ce blog, donc: Pas de panique! Mathilde et moi étions très sages, assises et loin de la mêlée.) It just looks like a bunch of vaguely unhappy, usually overweight, slightly awkward, mostly male humans with free-floating anger issues that they need to work out. Ick. Just ick.

Manu was pretty amazing. Quite energetic, especially considering he was born in 1961 and thus is a mere five years younger than me. In fact, he has more energy than a five year-old on speed. There are lots of influences in his music, from years of wandering around the world, from being born in Paris to Spanish parents and having a musical father with (I think) some Cuban roots. Manu is also un chanteur engagé, which is always a nice plus. Anyway, you can read all about him on the Internet if you are interested in knowing more about Manu Chao (and his original band, long since disbanded, Mano Negra). I am sure one of the influences on Manu Chao is the French rock group Les Negresses Vertes. Check them out. And Manu has produced for Amadou and Mariam, a truly amazing duo. Check them out too. Yeah, world music.

Unrelated: I found this on the Internet. It is by my dear friend Pierre Vella. You can see his name (and that of the late Cathleen Vella, his lovely wife and my dear friend) and address on the postcard he illustrated and sent to a friend.

Touche pas à mon cirque!

When I lived in the 18th (Rue Camille Tahan, near Place de Clichy), there was a vacant lot on Avenue de Clichy (on the right side facing north, which is important because the left side of Avenue de Clichy is in the 17th and the right side is in the 18th, two arrondissements that are totally different, one populaire, the other not) that one day spawned a circus. It was winter; it was a cirque d'hiver. Just a small affair -- a tent, a caravan and a bunch of tziganes (gypsies). When I was a kid, I wanted to run away and join a circus. Maybe most kids entertain this fantasy; I'm not sure many almost do it, as I did. I made a plan with my friend from across the street, which included throwing a pebble against her window in the middle of the night. I got as far as the front door of my house before I really saw clearly that this plan of ours would end badly. I touched the door knob but couldn't turn it; I went back to bed and gave up my circus fantasy.

I used to walk by the little circus on Avenue de Clichy every day. Sometimes I would see the tziganes sitting around and smoking or practicing their routines. I wanted to join them; I wanted to run away and join the circus.

The French government has recently decided to get tough on its tzigane population. The pretext is that with Roumania and other Eastern European countries joining the European Union, France is being overrun by these "gens du voyage". A little legislative history is in order: until 2000, the Loi Besson dated May 31, 1990 required cities with more than 5,000 inhabitants to set aside a patch of land for nomads. In 2000, another law was passed (Loi n°2000-614 du 5 juillet 2000) to deal with complex cases (cities with just under 5,000 inhabitants, for example). In 2003, another law (la loi sur la sécurité intérieure) placed further restrictions on the rights of these gens du voyage to occupy these encampments. In 2005, France's legislators decided to make them pay residency taxes (property taxes).

So what's happening now and getting everybody up in arms is really just part of a process that was set in motion years ago. The problematizing of itinerant people did not begin yesterday; in fact, it goes back way further than the law passed in 1991.

Back to the Cirque parisien Romanès: it winters in Paris and performs across Europe the rest of the year. It even represented France at the Shanghai World's Fair. Now Eric Besson, France's Ministre du Travail, has caused a stir for revoking the work permits of a couple of its musicians. Alexandre Romanès, the colorful and eloquent head of the Cirque, claims there is a link between the way his musicians are being treated and the government's larger crusade against gypsies and their encampments. The current winter home of the Cirque Romanès is on another street I used to live on, Rue de Courcelles (actually, the address is 42-44 Boulevard de Reims in the 17th; I was further down on Rue de Courcelles and my apartment was in the 8th arrondissement). I was listening to one of my daily podcasts (Pascale Clark's Comme on nous parle) when suddenly I heard the familiar voice of Alexandre Romanès. The France Inter program was initially aired on September 27. Romanès announced that a soirée de soutien au cirque would be held on October 4 and that he hoped his troupe would be able to perform as planned starting on November 6. Vive le cirque! Vive le Cirque Romanès! If you live in Paris, please go and see these talented people perform. Think of it as a nice way to flip the bird at Nico and all the pretty people who apparently want to rid the landscape of gypsies. Where is first lady Carla Bruni, l'artiste, when we most need her to go to bat for her fellow artistes?

Good news, horrible news

I was driving up to Hiawatha for a walk with Neko before dark, feeling happy and cheery because damn it the sun was out! I turned on the radio just in time to hear a weather forecast for the month of October that was awesome. It called for fog overnight and in the early morning, burning off around 11 am and giving way to sunshine and temperatures in the mid-60's. That's what I call an Indian Summer, folks! I couldn't believe it and even now wonder if I really heard this at all. My euphoria was short-lived, though, because the next item up on the radio was the event now referred to as the Rutgers Suicide. One of the saddest stories I have ever heard.

RIP Tyler Clementi.