.lark.

ariadnni @ 2009-12-14T00:23:00

2009-12-14T05:23:26Z

it's like buying somebody an ice cream cone,
and they thank you profusely.
you're so very kind.
how did you know rainbow sprinkles were my favorite?
and you watch it dribble over their fingers,
already forgotten,
like the hungry parking meter outside,
while they, engrossed, chatter animatedly with someone else.
one measley little lick,
all those pretty little colors gone to waste.

yes, we have deep and meaningful conversation

2009-09-16T03:55:53Z

me: are you planning to go?

Jonathan: what time again?

2:29 PM me: 8

Jonathan: if you are.

maybe even if you're not.

2:30 PM me: ok, give me a couple hours to see how i feel

Jonathan: k

me: you might have to poke me to keep me awake

Jonathan: where are the bike bells?

2:32 PM DELIVER THE BELLS

and no one gets hurt

ok, time's up.

2:33 PM Say goodbye to your precious metal bookend business-card-holder guy...

ok, I'm bluffing.

2:34 PM you've got a will of iron, young lady.

You'll go far.

Seriously, where are the bells?

The silent treatment, eh?

WELL, we'll see who's silent when I've got six bike bells at my disposal.

2:35 PM not me. that's the answer.

So where are the bike bells?

2:36 PM You play a dangerous game...

But I am relentless.

Unflagging.

Unyielding.

Un...

relenting.

...

ok, I give up.

WHERE ARE THE BELLS???

TWO can play at this game!

2:37 PM (silence)

(silence)

Maybe I'll go have a snack.

2:40 PM me: sorry! got distracted!

bells are in the hallway

2:41 PM in a pink bag

from garment district

7 minutes

2:49 PM me: i just laughed and tea went up my nose

25 minutes

3:15 PM me: now everything smells like tea

i'm writing this down here because i'll lose it on my computer

2009-06-21T15:42:05Z

played around with it, and this is my favorite chocolate chip recipe.

3/4 cup butter (salted), softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
equivalent of 1 egg but with egg replacer
vanilla
1 3/4 c flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
salt
chocolate chunks

1. oven to 375
2. mix butter, sugars and vanilla until it's super fluffy. do not allow other people to eat at this stage because you'll come out uneven at the end
3. add egg stuff. egg replacer makes the dough eatable without the threat of salmonilla
4. mix flour, soda and salt in the measuring cup. add by little bits to the dough, beating well
5. stir in chocolate
6. spread into a greased 13X9 pan. cook for 19 minutes. once the outside is browning, it's done. the middle is always gooeyer than the outside, but everybody likes goo anyway.
7. cool in pan on wire rack, then cut into bars.

Boston, revisited.

2009-06-13T22:26:52Z

there are things that make me happy. i love my new place up in Cambridge. it's full of people and music and home-cooked dinners and the gym is right around the corner. i got a job that 65 people were interviewed for. i might not have free time for the next two years, but i'll learn a lot and it'll be good on the resume and maybe it'll give me a nudge in the direction of My Life.
but that's not what i'm really happy about right now.
maybe it's because i've lived alone for the last two years. maybe because i lived alone in a country full of things i didn't understand half-way across the world from the people who might help me figure it out. there's an undeniable thrill when you wake up in the morning and wonder how to say "coffee" in whatever weird language your hostel is speaking, but there's also an undercurrent of lonely that wanderlust doesn't cure. i think i got so used to that undercurrent that i didn't realize it was still there. then i got back and i wake up and i know how to say coffee and i get a kiss good morning and all of the stress of trying to do everything by myself is GONE.
for those of you who know me in person, i suppose this won't surprise you much to learn that this has manifested in the reimergence of The Puppy, my sometimes alter-ego.
i have a roommate named Nat who is the PERFECT candidate for my daily run-barking-at-the-door-when-he-comes-in. he's better at it than J, who is not quite big enough to jump on in full puppy mode.
i'm getting a little more confident on my bicycle, so for the last week i've been zipping all over Boston, getting a) groceries b) things from my old apartment c) freckles and d) hopelessly lost. today i came home via the hill by Fresh Pond Ave, and for the first time i let myself come all the way down without braking. "QUACK!" i yelled by way of warning as i went careening past a bunch of geese at approximately 9 billion miles per hour. they looked back at me, nonplussed.
whatever.
i'm going to try to let the happy and weird bits of me retake a more prominant place in my life even when i am back in heels and blouses again.

dancing is for wusses (hurrah!)

2009-04-26T15:53:50Z

i am not a dancer.
when i was little, i went to a couple ballet classes. i liked the words in French. i didn't like anything else.
i am an athletic person. i run far and fairly fast. i am physically stronger than most women. i am quite flexible. i am a decent fencer. i am unbelievably stubborn when it comes to exercise. i think i could have been a dancer had my 5 year-old self found tutus an eighth as interesting as she found karate gis. but alas, i was an only daughter in a family of boys, and my make-believe games involved death matches with Shao Khan on the trampoline rather than grand recitals in on the green carpet in the living room.
J is a dancer.
he is a vastly superior musician whose brain automatically picks up and uses the nuances and patterns in the tunes that just sound like down-beats to me. he's the athlete i'll never be because it all comes naturally to him, whereas i sweat and ache and throw up in trash-cans for every 15 seconds i shave off my mile. he's not a dancer in the classically-trained, hours-and-hours-at-rehearsal sense. he just is a dancer. and he has no fear whatsoever in trying to pick up anything new.
if i can't get his inborn athleticism to rub off on me, i can at least try to tap into his confidence. so what the fuck. i'm learning to contra dance. maybe someday i'll learn to swing. because he's hot shit and he makes it fun. and when i wind up in the arms of some sketchy grad-student or smelly old man who sneers a little at my general incompetance or asks me for my number rather than teaches me what to do during a "grand 8 ring" or whatever...
well, i always know in the back of my mind i could kill them with a sword.
probably with my eyes closed.

optimism?

2009-04-20T03:06:04Z

today i am less whiny. i picked up with the Boston hash house harriers, which is ok. it's a lot ... frattier(?) than what i'm used to, but whatever. it doesn't have to be my social circle. just another thing to do.

lots of interviews and stuff. hopefully one will pan out.

Miya and i are singing again. we're going to make something pretty, we hope.

you know what else is great about the USA? cottage cheese. man, i forgot how much i should have been missing it in Europe.

also i'm really in love right now. it makes everything better.

here is a stupid meme where you use song titles for one band to answer questions about you. i'd hide it under a cut, but i can't make that work. oh well. thought i'd use Flogging Molly. thanks for the shout-out Allison!

1. Males or females?: Between a Man and a Woman

2. Describe how others see you: Punch Drunk Grinning Soul

3. How do you feel about yourself: The Wrong Company (my favorite answer)

4. Describe your ex: Another Bag of Bricks (Selfish Man would be a great answer, but it's not really true)

5. Describe your current love situation: Tomorrow Comes a Day Too Soon

6. Describe your current location: Man with no Country

7. And where you want to be: Far Away, Boys

8. Your best friends are all: Screaming at the Wailing Wall

9. Your favorite color is: Black (Friday Rule)

10. After all, you know that: Every Dog Has its Day

11. What’s the weather like: The Worst Day Since Yesterday (fuck you, New England)

12. If your life was a television show what would it be called? Drunken Lullabies

13. What is life to you: The Devil's Dance Floor

14. What is the best advice you have to give: Float ("Drink/Dream/Live/Be thankful, it's all you can do... but don't sink the boat")

15. If you could change your name what would you change it to: Delilah

Turkey and my mother

2009-03-22T21:54:20Z

i did a cartwheel for the first time. it was kind of awesome. my mother was so stoked to see me she didn't really even notice, but i did. because the floor of Charles de Gaulle is covered with little bits of lint and some of them got stuck in my ring where it broke two weeks ago.

we left our hotel in the drizzle. we walked down the hill to the water in the rain. we sailed up the Bospherous in a downpour. we hiked up the hill to the fortress in the sleet. and then we stood in a blizzard and i looked out at the Black Sea for the first time. a tanker that couldn't have been more than 500 meters offshore materialized out of the gray and slipped silently past, like a shark on its way to the Istanbul harbors. she tried to talk me into coming back under the umbrella, but my eyelashes were full of snowflakes and i was laughing too hard to do anything except root in my pockets for a tissue.

we went down to the train-station at night. we were late because we'd been walking Istrikral, so we had to sit in the back. the Spanish were loudly loudly looking for seats for their children so that they could see. the Americans were loudly squeaking their plastic chairs back and forth as they tried to angle. the Japanese were taking photographs with cameras that loudly announced themselves with fake ka-chik noises. the music started and it went on and the man sang for an hour and the drummer never faltered between his/her(?) 38 different rhythms and there was nothing and people started to stir more loudly. and then they came out and adjusted their hats and bowed for twenty minutes, and my mother and i didn't dare look at each other because the temptation to be loud would be too strong and we understood just how much they wanted us to be quiet before they started to whirl. but the dirvishes started to whirl and then we were all quiet.

oh, and did i mention that Ireland won 6 Nations? ERIN GO BRAGH!

get out of my head, Rorschach

2009-02-25T17:48:05Z

note to self : in periods of obsessive mental states hilighted by a tendancy towards nightmares, good bedtime reading DOES NOT INCLUDE Watchmen. i don't care how long you've put off reading it, Walker. you know better.

I love books

2009-02-16T22:02:18Z

The BBC thinks most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. I'm kind of floored by that. I think I had to read at least 6 of these suckers in high school.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'X' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X+
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte *
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X+
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (tried, but didn’t get into it)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller *
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (ok ok, not all of it)

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X+
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X+
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy *
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh X+
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky X
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X+
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X (worst book ever)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell *
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X+
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving X (I really loved it until I talked with somebody who violently hated it… and made really valid points)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X (ugh)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X+
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel *
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X+
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons (… this was a book?)
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez * (I love everything else I've read, so time to get on it)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov X
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas X (in FRENCH bitches!)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac X (10 pages left…)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X+ (I have reasons)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson X
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (I’ve read some of his other ones…)
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X+
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X+
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X+ (French)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X+ (again with the repetition, BBC)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X

51! And two of those were in French! Take that, BBC! Oh and I didn't count the ones I'm planning on because things like "Jane Eyre" have been on that list for the last 4 years. So if you respond... don't cound the *s.

In which Lark attempts to explain Paris's Black Thursday

2009-02-01T11:42:18Z

I'm no political specialist, but here's the nuts and bolts as far as I can tell.
First of all, you've got to know that striking is more than just a common inconvenience in France. I joke about it being the national sport, but the truth is that it's an accepted (and expected) political action. Where we might write our congressman or get together and write catchy things on posterboard some Saturday afternoon in front of City Hall, the French, and particularly the working class French, stop working. Museums will be shut and gazillions of tourist dollars don't make it to the government. Air traffic controllers don't come to work and somebody has to pay back Continental Airlines for all those cancelled flights. Most commonly, the metro doesn't work and the city is completely immobilized.
Ok, now on the political side, France is way more leftist a country than is the US. The two parties in the last election were the UMP- Popular Movement Union (a pretty centrist party) and the Socialists. In American politics "socialist" is practically a bad word. Obama talks about expanding health-care, and "You commie!" yell the conservatives, "this kind of socialism is what will destroy our great nation!"
So Sarkozy (UMP) won. He's an interesting duck because parts of his platform and policies are pretty... well, American. He wanted to reduce benefits to the unemployed and pensions to the retired. He wanted to increase the work-week. Basically, he wanted to de-socialize the economic and labor systems in France. (This, by the way, is a huge overstatement, and a lot of people would disagree with me.) He made the point, and it's kind of hard to disagree with, that if France wanted to really compete economically with other big first-world nations, they were going to have to operate under a more competitive system. The French voters apparently agreed with him, and the guy was elected. He cut benefits and pensions and upped the work-week.
So then the financial crisis hit, and Sarkozy, much like Bush and unlike Brown (UK) opted to offer aid to the banks and big businesses rather than the consumer and worker. For the left, this was completely unacceptable. "The French government is SUPPOSED to take care of the worker; that's what it has always done," was the prevailing sentiment. If there were an election tomorrow, I'm pretty sure the socialists would win like 80% of the votes.

So we all knew there would be big strikes. When last week rolled around, everyone already had their Thursday plans set. IF you still had to go to work (and many offices were closed), you knew you'd have to leave an hour early so that you could walk. The mood wasn't worried or even irritated, it was just about-that-time-y'know?
I went up to Bastille early in the morning to see people setting up for the gigantic manifestation. What I didn't really realize until the day itself was that the protest and the strikes weren't really focused on Sarkozy's economic stimulus package so much as they were on what people thought were his un-French policies in general. For example, over the course of the day, I saw way more posters demanding education for children without papers than posters decrying bailing out of fat cats.
But you wanted to know about the vibe, I think. This was different from most big, public rallies because so many different groups were represented. Student groups, all manner of workers unions, political parties, and a couple of people and floats from the Chinese New Year parade all showed up to march together. People brought their kids and dogs and sandwitches and spent the whole day. Like I said, this is a perfectly normal, acceptable way to make a political statement here. Once it got dark, most people split (including me) because as is often the case, people get kinda crazy. I heard about cars getting flipped over and trashcans being set on fire and some people getting arrested. That's the ugly side of the public manifestations. It's easy for comraderie to turn into mob mentality, and that happens a lot more than it used to. I actually kind of regret not sticking around to see it, but I had fencing practice.
Anyway, then Paris went to sleep and everybody got up Friday and went back to work. Most of us had caught a cold from being outside so long the day before without a hat.

ariadnni @ 2009-01-28T22:11:00

2009-01-28T21:31:05Z

i have accused myself of only posting when i'm down. i use this thing as a means of bitching and little else. well, mark your calendars because this is a happy post, thanks.

my mom's disease is better. like, way better. like, they won't have to even begin treatments this year better. the doctors say, "these things wax and wane and this is a... well, a very serious wane." so i'm not going to shave my head anytime soon!
my whole family is stoked. when she comes to Paris, there won't be anything scary looming over us. i bought her a pretty mother's day present today at the market and i'm already planning the chocolate-laden feast we'll enjoy when she gets here.
which is when lent will be over.

This sucks

2009-01-27T22:13:57Z

I think that only pleasant reviews from my latest and UTTER duress would really make me post right now. How lame of a blogger am I? I've experienced some seriously extreme emotions in the last couple weeks, and some of those were highs. And yet, it's always anxiety that leads me to the internet to type out an equivalent of bashing my head into a wall.
I may be currently self-employed, but there are over 15 balls I'm trying to keep in the air right now. Some of them are as silly and little as organizing hasher events and some of them are as intense as trying to figure out timelines for chemo treatments. Meanwhile, I'm trying to find a job and a home in a new city in the WORST financial setting our country has experienced in the better part of a century. Nothing like anxiety combined with a gym membership expiring to cause a night-terror suffering insomniac some really shitty times. I have horrible nightmares these days and sleep is an archenemy.
It's just one of those months, I think. I am really trying to keep things I'm working on functional and my own head above water, but it's like I have no safety line at all. In almost every sphere of my life, the people I was kind of depending on have their own "I'm having a really bad week" and have left, leaving me with awkward phone calls and really lonely glasses of gin at 11 o'clock when I get home from fencing.
When I grow up, I'm going to be a cave-man.

Book list 2008

2009-01-19T22:37:16Z

Ok, here's my 2008 booklist and related thoughts. Comments and suggestions for 2009 appreciated.

1. The Other Boleyn Girl – Philippa Gregory 672

Anne and Mary Boleyn. I'm on a Henry VIII kick, so I found it really interesting. It's not high literature, but it's true to history (as best we can tell) and it's fun. The movie sucked.

2. Suite Francaise – Irene Nemirovsky 448

I think probably everybody else read this when it was huge last year. It's a novel about people living and falling in love on both sides of WWII. Nemirovsky died in Aushwitz before she could finish it. It was really good for my French. I also learned how to say "land-mine." ("Mine antipersonnel.")

3. The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera 352

I didn't only read historical fiction, I swear. Young Bohemians living in a communist Czecholslovakia. It's beautifully written and I really bought all of the characters even though for the most part I didn't like them.

4. Terrorist – John Updike 320 (negative stars)

How is this guy so successful? This book is crap. Young utterly stereotypical Muslim kid who has an Irish mother (so that updike could describe her hair and temper every 3 pages) is seduced into a terrorist cell. Also included are stereotypical, completely unbelievable Black high-school aged reluctant prostitutes and stereotypical, completely unbelievable sympathetic and apparently telepathic English teachers.

5. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers 496

Nothing actually happens in this book. You read it for the style. Which is fun. And clever.

6. Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka 94

Having never read this, I figured I should so as to not embarrass myself in the company of academics at high school reunions.

7. The Boleyn Legacy – Philippa Gregory 544

Not nearly as interesting (or good) as Other Boleyn Girl, but at least you get some insight into the wife nobody ever talks about (Anne of Cleves.)

8. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami 298

Sex and death and mental problems for Japanese students. I never understood the Beatles reference, but the characters are really well developed.

9. Red Sky at Morning – Richard Bradford 356 ***

BEST BOOK OF 2008! A sort of Huck Finn meets American homefront, it's the story of a southern kid growing up out west while his dad is away fighting in WWII.

10. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides 544

Ok, this book is about incest and transsexuals, but it's also an interesting look at a Greek-American family's history over a couple of generations and it really gets at what it means to be a sexual outsider. That said, the resolution was crap and the ending was a cop-out.

11. The Six Wives of Henry VIII – Antonia Fraser 496

I told you I was on a Henry VIII kick. (In 2008 I also watched both seasons of The Tudors.) This one is a history book, but Fraser does a good job making history juicy.

12. Rhinoceros – Eugene Ionosco 160

I never actually read this in French lit, but as I am a fan of the absurdist movement, I thought it was great. A sleepy town is rocked when a rhinoceros crashes through the streets. Or was it two? Debates ensue. And it only gets weirder from there.

13. One Hundred Years of Solitude – (English) Gabriel Garcia Marquez 448 ***

LOVED it. The story of several generations of a family in Latin America that weaves magic and mythology with history.

14. Everything Is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran-Froer 288

Fun narrative voice even if the plotline doesn't really go anywhere. An American boy seeks the Ukrainian who may have saved his grandmother from the Nazis.

15. Les Jeux Sont Faits – Sartre 164

Typical Sartre depressing novel. You really are a hapless victim of your own fate. Boo hoo. I loved it.

16. The Looming Tower – Lawrence Wright 576

Non-fiction. The history of Al-Quaeda and the road to 9/11. Very comprehensive and unbiased. I think everybody should have to read it.

17. Ute

Whimsical story of porcelain afficionados who can't really cope with the real world. (Rec. by Alec.)

18. Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini 378

I will never understand what makes a book popular in the USA. This book had an interesting setting (Afghanistan before and after the Soviet occupation) but it was the MOST PREDICTABLE PLOTLINE EVER. And the characters were 2-dimensional. And the sheer number of coincidences were just laughable. Don't bother.

19. Cent ans de solitude – (French) Gabriel Garcia Marquez 460

I figured since it was written in Spanish to begin with, I oughta re-read it in French. It's just as good the second time through.

20. Pudd'nhead Wilson – Mark Twain 256

Twain at his best! Whimsical story about two boys switched at birth. A satire attacking the legacies of slavery and racism.

21. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Díaz 352

A Dominican-American family and a multi-generational curse leaving tragedy and broken hearts in its wake.

22. The Eleanor Wong Trilogy – Eleanor Wong

A bright and ambitious lesbian lawyer in Singapore struggling to succeed in a conservative society. (Rec. by Alec)

23. The Second World War – John Keegan 608

If you want to read a 600-page comprehensive history of EVERYTHING involved in WWII (and who wouldn't?) this is the book. Added fun - read it on the train from Berlin to Prague!

24. Gouverneurs de la Rosee – Jacques Romain 202

A story about a family struggling to overcome prejudice and hostilities in drout-ridden Haiti. It's really, really depressing. But has great landscape descriptions. I had to carry around a French-English dictionary since I had no idea there were so many synonyms for "leaf" or "valley."

25. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 368 ***

I devoured this book in about 3 days. An eloquent Brit and his fascination/obsession with a crumbling aristocratic family.

26. The Art of Travel - Alain de Botton 272

People seemed to think it was important that I read this. Can't imagine why.

27. The Audacity of Hope – Barack Obama 365

I probably should have read this before the election, but I didn't. Anyway, I'm even more optimistic about next Tuesday now.

The Night of Your Life - Jesse Reklaw

This doesn't really count because it's a comic book. People send the artist descriptions of their dreams and he makes them into very bizarre, often hysterical 4-panel comics. Example : http://www.slowwave.com/index.php?date=08-03-22 . By the way "Reklaw" is "Walker" backwards.

hallo there

2009-01-14T17:31:56Z

I used to love writing here. I love writing for an audience. I get so flustered when I try to talk about what I'm feeling that I often come across as utterly opinionless or a complete airhead. I used to post and then force myself to wait a couple days before I posted again.
But something happened and I stopped writing too. Maybe it was because I wasn't proud of it anymore. I didn't have anything really to say about me that anybody else would find important. Or even interesting. And that's the whole point of writing about yourself, isn't it? To be able to present yourself with the forethought that speaking never gives you so that you can carefully and meticulously make yourself sound good.
I don't know if I'm going to be proud of myself anytime soon, but I'm going to try to scrape off some rust and write again.

It's 2009.
In the last year, I sweated my face off in the summer dessert that is Tunisia. I fell in love with the casual ugly deliciousness that is Brussels and the generous beauty that is Brugges. I ate happy candy bars in Amsterdam. I stepped on what was once the Berlin Wall and I drank beer with a 10 year-old in Dresden. I listened to 12 different mosques sind dischordant calls to prayer in the medina of Marrakesh in the last week of Ramadan. I found Rick's cafe in Casablanca! I climbed Halloween-colored hills in Prague and poked my tongue out at my reflection in the river where my ancestors lived in Czecholslovakia. I went to a fetish market in Togo and bribed my first official to get back over the border to Ghana where the sun beats down so hard onto the Gold Coast that all you can do is sleep or run away to the shade of the rain forest. 8 new countries isn't bad.

I read 28 books and probably a couple that I forgot to put on my list. I'll post that later. By my estimate it was 9,973 pages.

I kept alive a long-distance relationship for a full year.

So here's to 2009. I'm aiming for 10,000 pages and a not-so-long-distance relationship. It'll probably mean fewer countries though.

Upcoming political nonsense

2008-09-12T08:52:59Z

I've gone to work for Vote From Abroad, the "Easy Route for an Overseas Absentee Ballot" and the... less bipartisan Democrats Abroad. If you're in Paris and are interested, here's some upcoming information from the Democrats Abroad:

The polls couldn't be any closer thus any mistake could mean defeat. Now with the Conventions over, the real fun starts: the debates. Consequently, will Senator McCain claim that there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under his
administration? Or, will Senator Biden tell Governor Palin that she isn't Jack Kennedy?

Well, the only way to find out is to watch them as these could well be the defining events of the campaign.

Fortunately, the Young Democrats and the Young Republicans are going to be showing them.

We will be watching the first Presidential and Vice-Presidential debate live while we will be rebroadcasting the two other Presidential debates. The two live debates will be at 3 AM and last 90 minutes. The rebroadcast will be the next day and more fun than YouTube as it will be a bipartisan crowd thus there will be cheering and jeering with every comment.

At the moment, we haven't finalized the locations yet but want to tell everyone regardless so they can plan accordingly.

As such the details are:

1)    Presidential Debate #1 on Friday, 26/Sept thus 3 AM on the 27th
2)    Vice-Presidential Debate on Thursday, 3/Oct thus 3 AM on the 4th
3)    Presidential Debate #2 on 7/Oct thus the rebroadcast will be 8 PM on Wednesday, 8/Oct
4)    Presidential Debate #3 on 15/Oct thus the rebroadcast will be 8 PM on Thursday, 16/Oct

And, of course, there will be an election night party. In fact, there will be two: one at Cine-Aqua and another at Palais M. The first will be sponsored by the Democrats and Republicans Abroad. It will include food and drink and will cost ?80 and ?50 for those under 25. The other will be sponsored by the Young Democrats and Young Republicans*. It will be a cash bar with food available for purchase and will cost $10 which will include bagels and cream cheese.
Proceeds from this event will be donated to the American Red Cross thus, like the debates, will be open to non-Americans.

More details to be forthcoming once we have finalized the venues. For any and all questions, please email us at roadtothewhitehouse@gmail.com.

this is what i do on Sunday afternoons.

2008-09-07T19:49:13Z

Our usual hashtrash guy missed the run, so I volunteered to cover. Here's the review.

Hash No. 709 or "That's what SHE said!"

The afternoon started slow, but then who can blame us? Approximately half of the 20 hashers who drove, trained, skipped or crawled to Garches this fine summery day had driven, trained, skipped or crawled to a hash party the night before chez moi, and at least half of that number passed out at some point during the party itself for sheer exhaustion and/or one too many glasses. (oooh, a math word problem! all you MBA's can smile smartly and crack your knuckles!)
Anyway, as we ragtag motley crew assembled amidst murmurs of "How were the vacations?," "Not so loud, amigos, my head is pounding," and "Aw crap, Cupid's back," somebody got the inevitable phone call from Mysigha that he had missed the train and would we mind waiting for him since he had no less than 800 people with him? We did but only because Alka needed to buy more baguettes to feed the abnormally large group. (This of course meant Alka waving her imperious Grand Mattress Wand and appointing a lowly peon, in this case Blonde Ass, to "Go buy 3 baguettes, mule!")
After Silent Fart gave us a quick chalk talk, Coke Head ate some flour, Cupid chatted up the hot Australian chicks who showed up, Blonde Ass returned with baguettes, Mysigha and his brood showed up, Cupid chatted up Just Blanche (CS: "I'm not used to seeing you with your clothes on." JB: "Um... have we met?"), Mysigha gave us a chalk talk again (?), Lemonentry freaked out that there were more than 20 of us and the park rangers would take all our beer-money for an entrance fee, and Cupid chatted up all remaining new females... we split into a walker group and a ru- er... a non-walkers group. And away we went!
As I and my ankle are still recovering from the adventure I good-naturedly refer to as the mud-beer-slip-twist-of-excruciating-pain last week, I joined the walker crew today. This meant joshing with Bumper, listening to approximately 8 billion stories about recent rock concerts from FrogAss and following Pat My Fly. It's convenient to have a hare in the walker group! We walked a mighty, agonizingly brutal 80 steps into the woods and then took a right and hung out at the beer stop waiting for all those suckers to finish sprinting up and down hills and join us.

JustDylan of the Mysigha Brood was the FRB of the moment with Hot Dog a few paces behind. JustBlanche and BlondeAss showed up a bit later without their shirts. Neither of them mentioned what might have occurred in the time since we'd split company that caused them to lose their garments, and as far as I know they still ain't talkin'. (CupidStunt : "I told you your clothes would come off." Blanche: "Well, this is as far as YOU'RE getting.") Much beer was drunk amidst the swatting of mosquitoes, the singing of songs, and the mighty fight to keep Coke Head from eating all of the peanuts.
Off we went again! I can't speak for the actual pack, but we walkers drank the left-overs, took a pit stop, tossed the bottles, and strolled back to Garches at a leisurely pace.
We circled up only to be temporarily shanghaied by a dude who happened to be walking by with his family. This random passer-by, I am not making this up, is a hasher from the Congo by the name of "Job Master!" What are the chances?? The extent of my knowledge of the Congo comes from that horrible 90s movie where the giant gorillas kill everybody and throw eyeballs at Tim Curry, but it turns out it's also a country with a hash! Who knew!? It was especially funny because the guy wandered up with his wee little daughter in the middle of a song, so here's FrogAss leaping about pelvis-first yelling something like, "And then I fucked a viking! With horns! For hours! Fuck!" as the little pig-tailed 4 year-old clutches her tricycle and stares at him in horror.
Anyway, after the longest freaking circle in HISTORY, in which downdowns went to virgins (3!), hares (2!), Hot Dog (1!), and just about everybody else since there was still beer, it was FINALLY GODDAMN TIME TO NAME JUSTBLANCHE!
Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the list of all 15 proposed names in the order in which they were knocked off the list (so, yeah that last one is her name.) Themes included : sex, Hawaii, sex, funny story, Hawaii, and a couple of bizarre references that nobody else understood. Also Hawaii and sex.
Hot Volcano
Hot Cum
Spout - (nixed because somebody else already has it)
Pamela
Doggy
Hot Mount
Mount
Screamer
Hala Hala Thighs
Bodily Fluid
Very Flexible
Wait Don't Move
Wanna Laya
Basic Instinct
... and introducing the one and only
MOANA LAYA

we're so very clever.
And finally, to continue the time honored tradition, the following are lines said during the hash to which I COULD have replied, "That's what SHE said!"
"Boy, you'll eat ANYTHING." - Pat My Fly (to the dog)
"That hurts my buttocks." - Bumper (I'm not actually sure what she was talking about)
"I LOVE nuts!" - Frog Ass
"I shoulda used a rubber." - Bumper (she was, oddly enough, talking about her tshirt, not her offspring)
"That's the thing about babies. They're so flexible!" - Pat My Fly
"Despite all this, we really do hope you'll come back." - Mysigha

And that's the note I think I'll end this on...
Love, beer, and many happy returns (God willing, to the arms of palm-skirted island maids),
CFWM

vampire night

2008-08-20T12:16:01Z

My body is a cage that keeps me
From dancing with the one I love
But my mind holds the key

I'm standing on a stage
Of fear and self-doubt
It's a hollow play
But they'll clap anyway

My body is a cage that keeps me
From dancing with the one I love
But my mind holds the key

You're standing next to me
My mind holds the key

I'm living in an age
That calls darkness light
Though my language is dead
Still the shapes fill my head

I'm living in an age
Whose name I don't know
Though the fear keeps me moving
Still my heart beats so slow

My body is a cage that keeps me
From dancing with the one I love
But my mind holds the key

You're standing next to me
My mind holds the key
My body is a -

My body is a cage
We take what we're given
Just because you've forgotten
That don't mean you're forgiven

I'm living in an age
That screams my name at night
But when I get to the doorway
There's no one in sight

My body is a cage that keeps me
From dancing with the one I love
But my mind holds the key

You're standing next to me
My mind holds the key

Set my spirit free
Set my spirit free

only three continents to go!

2008-08-18T14:01:08Z

Tunisia

The first thing that you notice about Tunisia is that it is hot. Like, the air-conditioned airplane touches down and you think, “Oh man it's gonna suck when they open that door” kind of hot. Almost all of Tunisia is a massive Death-by-August, Lawrence of Arabia kind of desert, except for the only part of the country that I actually saw. Despite the air, which is clearly 110° dry desert air, grass and tress and lush lawns and botanical gardens all grow happily along a green coast-line in complete defiance, as far as I can tell, of all known laws of climate and botany.

As far as the people, warmth is something different entirely. Everyone at my hotel and the majority of the people I buy water bottles from are terse and rude to me. This is hard for me to stomach because a) I hate it when people don't like me and really try to avoid that, and b) I am buying a lot of water bottles. I carry giant, awkward 2 litre things around with me everywhere and finish them within an hour and have to go buy another. It is SO hot and so dry that I go for stretches of like 36 hours without having to pee. Which is very weird for me. My cab-driver, on the other hand, is so talkative and eager to show and share Tunisia, that I hire him to show me around the old city and even let him rip me off a bit when he takes me to the airport. (That was an “on the other hand” to the rude Tunisians, not that bit about bathrooms.) Najla's family too is gracious and friendly almost to a fault as I try to sneak into Najla's pocket when she's not looking, the 11 dinars they bartered down for a soccer jersey I wanted.

I spent a day and a half with Team Jamoussi, wandering through covered medinas where Mariam helped me act more Arabic so that I'd stop screwing up their bartering abilities, through smaller cities and towns around Tunis with their ornate bright blue doors, blinding against the whitewash of the walls, and through the ruins of old Carthage.

Guide: Here are some Phoenician ruins. Then the Romans destroyed them. Here are some Roman ruins. Then they were destroyed. Here are Byzantine ruins. Then they were destroyed. And there are the Tunisian houses!

Lucy: (to Anouar) So be VERY careful.

This left me a couple days to tool around by myself, which is VERY STRONGLY RECOMMENDED AGAINST IN CAPITAL LETTERS AND MAYBE EVEN AN ITALLICS by my guidebook. It's not dangerous, exactly, the guidebook hastens to add, just... there aren't many women who walk by themselves here, and men are much more forward in North Africa.

I raise an eyebrow. “Look, guidebook,” I say, “I live in Paris. I've been clubbing in ROME for Chrissakes. I can handle forward guys.”

Guidebook is offended and hides under a table so that I will not be able to find him the next day and will almost certainly get lost without his handy map.

Guidebook also recommends that I dress conservatively, but since it is 110°, jeans would mean death, so it's big, baggy calf-length pants and a black zip-up shirt with the sleeves cut off but that still covers my shoulders. Men ARE forward, but they aren't gross, and it's kind of fun to hear them guess where I'm from if I don't respond when they speak French to me. Based on my tally, I look Portuguese more than anything else. Who knew? Rob, I think, will get a kick out of this.

Women do not talk to me, but they smile and look at me with great curiosity as I tramp by in my dykie outfits, lugging my awkward water bottle and clearly very lost. Not too many women wear the head-scarf in Tunis – 30% maybe? That's more than it used to be, according to Najla because it's currently... in style.

I'd buy it. As I walked down to my hotel one night from a festival in Sidi-Bou Saīd, I passed two girls in black skirt-top outfits. One was wearing a bright yellow hijab that matched perfectly the collar on her tank-top, the cuff on her skirt, and her heels. The other girl had the same outfit in red. To my eye, it made them look a little like crayons, but not necessarily in an unsexy way... which I thought was the whole point.

Mum was really curious about the food when we spoke, and I'm sure I made up something, but the truth is that I only ate one “Tunisian” meal while there. Mariam explained to me that everyone in Tunis looses weight during the summer because on days where 120° isn't uncommon, the only thing you can imagine stomaching is fruit, ice cream, and ohmygodIneedanotherwaterbottle. This isn't necessarily bad as the fruit is AMAZING. I bought a peach and a bag of figs from a vendor in an orchard, and that fruit was so good that if it game me worms, I'd still call it worth it.

I say “if” because as I finish this, I am currently on a train from Amsterdam back to Paris, and I've had stomach problems since we got to Belgium 5 days ago...

it would have made a great voicemail but my phone was out of batteries

2008-06-06T09:39:12Z

hello.

i am thinking of you right now because the clouds can't decide whether to hide behind my chimney or not. you seemed sort of transient in our last meeting. it might have just been our tendancy for a glorious melodramatic example of things going unsaid. there was something in my early-evening that made you seem more like a pleasant daydream or a fade-out in crime TV than someone holding a gift bag and exchanging pleasantries. but you tripped on a chair and it made a noise.

my city smells like summer and like rain tonight. the sidewalks are sweating out the last stubborn bits of spring and everyone's shoes have been ruined. people swarm out of the underground like ants but when they open their mouths, they make subway noises. there are tan-lines everywhere, even on the taxis. i am lying on my back on my roof looking at the indecisive clouds and thinking about summer and summers while the gritty roof-mud gets in my hair.

read any good books lately?

Paris Update IV: Just That, said the Fox.

2008-05-21T09:04:04Z

First off, a big ol' hallo to all YOU new folks on the mailing list! To you and to people like Grandma (hi Grandma!), here's some forewarning : I'm irreverent and use bad words in this email. But I remain readable! Evan Smith, I'm going to make fun of you in this edition just 'cuz I know you won't read it! Ha ha!
Anyway... Jeeeeeez, months, Walker. It's been MONTHS since we last heard from you! "We thought you were dead, killed in a cage fight in Bangkok!" cry the pessimists among you. "We figured you'd run away with a heart-shatteringly beautiful gypsy with big earrings and could now be found dancing under the shadow of Notre Dame with a goat named Jezebel!" cry the optimists. (All gypsies should own a goat, don't you think? It's bad enough that in France they ruin the bonfire and swirly skirt image by hawking and stealing and generally being a real pain anywhere there's a hope at ripping off a tourist in this city. They should at least own a goat.) No I'm very much alive, having survived Thailand, and I'm still swearing under my breath at the stinking goatless gypsies... and do apologize for my long absence. Credit it to the elephant in the room.
"What is with the animal metaphors?" you hapless mailing distribution list must be wondering. But honestly, isn't that a great idiom in the English language? The Elephant in the Room. The unspeakable subject that is IMPOSSIBLE to ignore. "Elephant in the Room" would be a great name for an emo band. Anyway, there was this unfortunate elephant in the room for ME of late. i could send around the email that was unbearably funny in which i whined about all the blisters I'm getting from running about with beer in my shoes or i could wax poetic about the impossibly beautiful rainbowed reflections of the royal palace in Thailand upon the strange whitewash of the army barracks next door. but the truth is, i've got a lot on my mind that would be really weird to talk around, and as it was, i wasn't allowed to talk about it. But now i am! guess what?! i'm losing my job!
the part of me that is a little too proud hastens to add that they're not firing ME exactly. they're closing the Paris office, and there is no way in hell this little pirate is going back to Houston. i don't feel like discussing the blood-soaked details, but basically my company found itself in a situation that many noted economists and high-ranking energy analysts have described as, "royally fucked." a lot of stuff had to go, and that, unfortunately, included my bureau. there are upsides. i get a decent severance package, and this whole thing happened just in time for me to actually get my visa. so while i may get deported after all, that won't happen until one year from April 23. i have decent contacts and am more or less bilingual, so my job options seem... well, there's a reason to be optimistic. the downsides are obvious. i WOULD have really liked my job. also, in the subsequent hullabaloo in the Paris office, everyone has been stressed, short, and quick to stab each other in the back. i spent some time absolutely convinced that i was going to be completely screwed over (again!) by hr, receiving neither the somewhat comforting severance package of American employees nor the medical coverage and, you know, food and stuff that the French employees will get from the government. some of this has been resolved. what's left is a REALLY nasty aftertaste of corporate America. i knew i should have been a caveman.

right, enough of that. there are fun things too. i have gotten really into hashing. (new folks, look up the Hash House Harriers on wikipedia. meanwhile, a quick explanation : a social running group that involves tromping around in the woods, lots of yelling, and even more alcohol.) i am running at least one and often two hashes a week now. i hared my first one last weekend and went through the naming ceremony two weeks ago. this requires kneeling in the middle of a circle while the r.a. solemnly pronounces you by your new, incredibly embarrassing hash name while simultaneously pouring flour over your head. then everybody else sings a song and pours beer on you. the result is that you smell like a bakery, get really weird looks on the train back home and find yourself picking dough out of your hair up to 5 days later. and no, i will not tell you my hash name. you'll just have to WAIT and learn it when you go on a run with me. unless you are a close family member in which case, you will simply never know. get used to it.

the summer is rapidly approaching and with it come enough visitors to make me invest in a box-spring and stock my fridge with things besides mustard, vodka, and club soda nicked from my office. (this actually is all i have in my fridge right now. i would take a picture to prove it, but my camera is out of batteries.) IF you are coming to visit but have still not given me dates, i need them soon. i'm not pointing fingers unless your name starts with R and ends with Ebecca El-Saleh. [Shannon Bedo, you're not off the hook either.] my calendar follows at the end of this email.

i have an adorable apartment in the Latin Quarter. i even have the ability for a landline, but since i don't have a telephone yet, i'm not going to give you the number. for now, if you want my new address, email me. my apartment is more or less empty of the 8 billion cardboard boxes it had about 10 days ago and i'm intent on making it mine. i have put things on the walls, and it now has things as interesting and diverse as a huge hovering ufo-looking floorlamp that nearly killed me trying to get it from ikea to the 5th on the metro, a Chelsea towel set, and a freezer that reaches temperatures at which vodka actually freezes. i'm not making this up. i didn't even know that was possible. still need to buy : a telephone, fans for upcoming hot summer months without air conditioning, food.

if you miss me like mad, it's probably a good idea to send me love tomorrow before 10 pm. tomorrow, as you are doubtless aware, Chelsea takes on Manchester United in the Champions League finals. i intend to be loud, clad in blue, and rather obnoxious. if we win, i may be killed by rabid English hooligans. if we lose, i may have to kill myself. or go sulk for the subsequent couple YEARS. go play tag with a bullet train, Christiano Ronaldo, you whiner.

Love, Take Care, and On On!,

Lucy/Lark/Alouette/----

p.s. as PROMISED : when Evan blows his nose, i am constantly reminded of the cannon fire in the last 2 minutes of the 1812 Overture.

p.p.s. my schedule :
May 23 - June 1 : Lucy to RI for Commencement and Related Insanity
June 5 - 9 : She volunteers to put up 2 Jabberwoks as they travel through Paris on some official a-capella tour of wussy. Also of Europe. The Jabberwoks are an all-male fancy-shmancy a-capella group from Brown. We pirates used to use them for cannon fodder. They will never know what hit them.
June 14 - 17 : Jake visits from England! (June 16 : Fraternity party in Lucy's apartment)
End June : Tootles, Cheniere. Have a nice life.
June 21 - 27 : She goes to California to be with her family! And be in the Redwoods! Yay!
June 27-29 : Her friends get married and she and Pat get scared and thereby drunk! Yay!
July : Jonathan. Also, unemployed. There are not words enough.
Early July : Blanche and Alianza and Woozy and Lark and Cannon and maybe even Blackheart and Karlotta live in one apartment. This means a lot of hot, blond potentially single pirateness sharing a bed. I am, of course, talking about Woozy.
Either late July or Early August : She [and possibly J] jet off to Tunisia to bother Najla. Hi Najla!
August 4ish - 10ish : Alec! Insanity Ensues!
September sometime or maybe October : Daphne will stay in exchange for "washing your floor." Whatever that means!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the kind of summer I am expecting.

p.p.p.s. i am going to backlog old distributions on blogspot : http://corsaireaparis.blogspot.com . you new folks can find my past adventures there. you old folks can stop asking me for that funny story where i told off the Parisian rugby fan.

p.p.p.p.s. I hope Butterbur sends this probptly. A worthy man, but his memory is like a lumber-room : thing wanted always buried. If he forgets, I shall roast him. (Kudos to those of you who get the reference. Without google.)

and it's hooked within my gums, within my gums

2008-05-13T23:15:40Z

things that make sense in Lark's life right about now : nope.

it's funny. i've never spent quite so long quiet on this page with something so gloriously melodramatic keeping me from whining. sometimes i make even MY eyes roll.

talk to you soon.

aaaa.

2008-04-11T05:30:08Z

i am a mess right now.
ready to leave Texas, thanks.

7 days until RI.
let me know if you want to come to my birthday party.

there's a reason at the end, i swear

2008-04-03T02:51:27Z

i am sipping a home-made concoction i am calling "The World's Most Unhealthy Smoothie," which consists of three ingredients: Swirll frozen-yogurt, crumbled up gingersnaps, and 6 oz of cheap vodka.

many things have happened in the last month.

i found on my voice mail the nigh-desperate greeting of someone i never expected to hear from again. i wandered back-streets of Paris and solved cyphers. i sun-burned my nose with light glinting off centuries-old sequined pottery dyeing red and gold and royal blue the walls and strange back-arched shingles of the royalty of Thailand. i drank shot after shot of a strange Asian whiskey to give myself the stomach to sit through the most brutal publicly accepted spectator sport the world has to offer. i rested with my brother, talking about death and love and mushroom soup until the sky turned pink, sprawled out 23 stories above the mosquitoes, burning asphalt and weird orderliness of the traffic of downtown Singapore. i stumbled back to work to realize that i had found my voice and my feet, and i had mastered the current instead of being swept along trying to keep my head above water. i spent a week with the most electrifying young person i know as we learned all over again the eccentricities of each others' minds and the contours of our bodies in arguably the most romantic city on earth. i reunited with an old muse and thought him just as inspirational. i wandered, unannounced, out of the shadows to wish my best friend a happy birthday. i learned 7 new cocktail recipes, involving ingredients as exotic as lychee liqueur and as unconventional as a spicy shrimp cocktail. i killed two friends with quick, artless and brutal lunges out of the darkness. i was, in turn, assassinated in a quiet, almost graceful manner while i curled up on a leather sofa, watching my lover coax gypsy music out of a violin. this year, i have read 2,872 pages of fiction, not including the book i am half-way through.

and now i sit at the kitchen table in the house in which i grew up. i have just stumbled in from a run, and my World Cup 2010 tshirt is sticking to me and my hair is curling impossibly tighter to my face. it is still too early for cicadas, but the crickets are singing unabashedly outside in the heavy air, almost gray with humidity.

there. i have worded this as dramatically as possible. i have intentionally erred on the side of melodrama because as grossly poetic as this is, not one bit of that is exaggeration.

in less than a week i will be 24. nobody can say this little Aries didn't live 23 up as best anyone could.

made of magic

2008-03-08T09:38:30Z

the night i cracked a rib fencing, i received an email, a facebook message and a myspace post from PP. PP turned out to be Puzzle Pope. this is what the first email said:
From your island home, go to the south shore. Turn left and walk to the bridge. Across the street and on your left is a building with big brown doors and a square address. The rightmost word on the bottom plaque is the key to the message on your Facebook account and to your next destination.
far be it from me to turn down potential recruitment by secret societies (at best) or a little adventure (at the very least,) so off i went. i did, however, have a slight crisis of conscience as i had previously promised Jonathan that i would give him a heads up before i ever got involved in something like this again. i decided that if the code proved too hard, i'd include him and he'd probably have a better head for the number stuff anyway.
after two days of searching, i found the following plaque:
ICI VECUT
DE 1952 A 1976
RENE CASSIN
1887 - 1976
PRIX NOBEL DE LA PAIX
EN 1968
hmm. rightmost word? what does that mean? the sign is set up in a paragraph format! i guess PAIX (peace) is the word extending the farthest to the right? here's what my facebook account said:
Pt bet eva df Istncb se t'Leezx xs i zpfm. Vdu efal skdw qq qy qqh nijt. Wpl seafvnma ihm Atnbbalm, xcd pll mikn Ecods llts qq roaq?
(The answers, a name and number separated by no spaces, are a Gmail address. You've forgotten the password, but you can still log in...)
Feel free to try to hack it yourself. it took me forever. here's the answer:
At the end of Avenue de l'Opera is a café. You will know it by its name. Who designed the Dentelle, and how many Euros does it cost?
wtf is a dentelle? according to google, it appears to be some sort of lace. what am i going to do, walk up and down the whole of Avenue de l'Opera looking for a cafe with a striking name and then hoping there will be a fancy table-cloth for sale in the window?
(the answer to that question is "well, duh.")
and, of course, just across from the grand opera house... is Café de la Paix. and after circling the building and peering sketchily in the windows for an hour, i discovered on the menu posted out front a dessert called "la dentelle." it was designed by somebody named Olivier Lapidus, and it cost15 E.
i RAN all the way home (though i'm not supposed to now because of the whole rib thing) and entered olivierlapidus15 into gmail, saying i'd forgotten my password. the password prompt question was:
I used to sit here and watch people go by with My Old Man. What did he drink and how many francs did it cost?
« My Old Man » is a short-story written by Hemingway. I happen to adore Hemingway's short stories. I couldn't remember what "my old man" drank in the story, but a phone call to a friend in the States and a quick google search revealed:
We'd sit at the Cafe de la Paix, my old man and me, and we had a big drag with the waiter because my old man drank whisky and it cost five francs, and that meant a good tip when the saucers were counted up.
"whisky5," a change of password, and i had myself a new email address. the only email in OlivierLapidus15's account was a week old and read as follows:
Well done!
From the Eiffel Tower, cross the river and then the Palais. At the roundabout, make a left. A great man keeps watch over two plaques. One has a wheel at the bottom and one has a wheel at the top. The second holds the key to the message on your MySpace account. Take the letters, in order, from the French quote and the name of the man who said it.
In the quote,
"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime." -- Ernest Hemingway
the numerical phrase
(6 1 17) (19 18 9 1 4 14) (19 9 1 4) (13) (15 2 31 6 3) (15 1 6 9 10).
would read, THE OYSTER OWNS A WRIST WATCH.

and THAT was the moment i knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was Jonathan who pulled this off. "the oyster owns a wristwatch" is my favorite cryptic term. one of the games that i like to play is writing that on paper napkins at cafes and then carefully putting them back into the dispenser. (the first time i took Jonathan with me to play that game, i think i made him love me a little. i know a fellow adventurist when i meet him, and i weild my trump cards like a dating champ.) there are three people on the planet who would remember that i use "the oyster OWNS" and not "the oyster HAS:" my childhood best-friend Nickie, who is recently engaged, living in New Orleans, and way to busy for this, my brother Alec who is in Singapore, and Jonathan.
i took a lunch break from work and off i went through the rain to Trocadero, where a statue of Benjamin Franklin looks down across a roundabout. the quotation reads:

"Au Plus Beau Des Ouvrages -- L'élaboration De La Paix" (Benjamin Franklin)

i still had to decipher:

(7 5 11 12 7) (4 13 10 26),
On Wednesday (if not before) there will be something waiting for you
at 52 Rue du (4 10 1 1 11 7). Claim it soon -- it will not wait long
for you. Good luck!

and my last night in Paris before i left for an adventure in Singapore and Bangkok, i found a 24-hour post office at 52 Rue du Louvre. a "poste restante" was waiting for me. it was full of photographs and knick-knacks and beautiful stupid shit.

"how. the. HELL. did. you. pull. this. off?"
"in my AI class, the first day, the professor did all thiese silly little magic tricks. a lot of them were cool (like the floating penny and stuff.) some were stupid. at the end, he asked 'ok, who wants to see how this was done?' we all did. he showed us some that was amazingly simple. 'this,' he said 'is AI. it looks like magic, but it's really all stupid shit.' i'll tell you someday, but for now, let's let it be magic, ok?"

and i say... yeah, i can handle a long-distance relationship for a little while longer. because he is made of Magic.

L

latest Paris update

2008-03-05T22:37:22Z

Every reply I have gotten to these has fueled my epistolary ego a bit, and those of you who have actually emailed ASKING FOR ANOTHER UPDATE... ah, such endulgence, sweeter than chocolate. (It isn't of course, as I still have 3 weeks of Lent to go.) Now, I'm sure you're all reading the title of this email and thinking the same thing.

"Where does a young professional expect to find ADVENTURE in a lifestyle of stockings and shoulder-pads? well any of you who have known me for any amount of time know that adventure generally has no problem finding me, and I'm used to near brushes with things like lost shoes and hypothermia.

i actually didn't manage to do my usual Sunday adventure today because on Thursday's edition, i cracked a rib. don't panic, Mom, if it were bad i would have called you by now. i was fencing and just got SLAMMED in this one bout. (and since i know at least Pat is wondering this, no i didn't win it. i did get a toe-touch though.) i've gotten whacked pretty badly fencing before, but this was the first time i woke up the next day and realized it hurt to inhale deeply. i, of course, dealt with this in my usual mature, stoic fashion. namely, complaining loudly and bitterly to anyone who will listen while simultaneously refusing to do anything even slightly inconvenient to change the situation. (the practice is founded on a complicated and systematic prioritizing mechanism that exists only in Lucy's brain and cannot really be explained to anyone else. in fact, I'll probably change the subject and start talking about figs.) for other evidence of such action, please see the chapters of my life entitled Lucy Runs With Shinsplints or In Which She Decides "Calibration" is for Wusses. on Friday i went over to Fariba's for dinner as she'd invited over a bunch of fencers. Fariba also lives on the island, but the whole of my apartment can basically fit into her kitchen. for serious, it is the most beautiful living space i have seen in this city. also cool: shoes are forbidden; she keeps spare slippers by the door for house-guests. Fariba is among the kindest person i've ever met. she took me out for dinner my first week here and lends me her puppy whenever I need some dog-walking time and periodically calls me up to make sure i'm doing ok in this great big city all by myself… and is, quite obviously, not French. anyway, one of her guests is a doctor and another is Christophe, the fencer responsible for my current condition. i am politely and sweetly whining to Christophe when Dr Guy (his name is not Guy. I have no idea what his name is) says with some concern, "where was the hit?" and proceeds with an impromptu medical exam. after some minutes of "Does this hurt?" testing (of the sort a doctor can perform while you are all standing around awkwardly in fluffy slippers in somebody's living room) he says that he is pretty sure the rib is cracked, but not broken. ribs heal, so i don't need to worry, but, he says, i should be careful running outside because shallow breathing, especially in cold weather, can cause pnemonia.

"Look," I say quite frustrated by the whole situation. "It's bad enough that the day before I have to move everything i own up four flights of stairs, i injure myself to the point where putting my left arm through a jacket sleeve hurts and blowing my nose is next to impossible... now i have to worry about diseases scary enough to warrent three syllables and a silent P?" there is, of course, an upside to this. fencing SOUNDS pretty cool to your average american. i mean, if i tell somebody my sport is sword-fighting, your average conversationalist's mind will immediately jump to Errol Flynn swinging majestically from a chandelier with a rapier in his teeth. once you've actually seen regular fencing, with its stupid outfits and whiny participants and lots of stopping, you realize it's actually kind of a prissy sport. but you know what? i got HIT WITH A SWORD HARD ENOUGH TO CRACK A BONE. yes, i AM a bad-ass. still, it meant i had to skip my usual weekend adventure.

you're probably getting sick of my referring to it like that, so i'll start talking about i recommend wikipedia for those curious, but basically, this is how it works at HHH Sans Clue (because we run in the woods around St. Cloud. get it?) a couple of people, the "hares" lay out a track in flour. the "hounds," i.e. the runners, meet up at a given starting point and follow the flour trail. so that all athletic abilities stay together, there are often obligatory meet-up points, and false trails (everyone has to wait for the slower runners at a given point and then branch off in multiple directions, looking for the real trail). there are also Beer Stops. if you find one blot of flour, you might be on the right track. you then yell "On One!" so that the rest of the hounds know you might have found the trail. "On two!" if you've found two blots. "On on!" means three blots, i.e. the real trail, and all the hounds go yelping along in the direction you've found yelling "On on!" as they go. at the end of the hash we have a Circle. this involves things like beer, dirty songs, beer, and pouring beer over the heads of "virgins," i.e. new hashers.

all i can say is that it is an extracurricular that involves a) exercise b) adventure c) yelling and d) beer. in other words it is the best thing ever.

i didn't go hashing this weekend because, frankly, pneumonia really doesn't fit into my whole plan to go to Asia this week. nor is going to a doctor. (you know what's really delicious in France? Figs. For serious. Add that to the list of Things that Taste Better in France...which includes just about everything except domestic beer...which is kind of cheating since everyone in France drinks Belgian, which is practically French anyway.) i did wrap a scarf around my nose and a bicycle lock around the chariot (whom I have named, in continuation of my tradition of naming my vehicles after celebrated ships, "The Golden Vanity") and wandered all over the 1st and 2nd arrondissements. adventure this weekend meant finding a Laundromat.

see, I can be responsible in the face of injury. this is possibly my first real lesson on the grown-up side of things. sometimes "adventure" has to be redefined a bit. next week I'll even know that the little packet of soap my landlady left me was actually meant for the dishwasher.

Love and Figs,

L