bouncing ball of all-over-the-place random

the last post found our heroine being welcomed into the kitchen of a community center/alternative space/squat and being offered tea:

5 september, 2010

so we sat and had tea and talked politics and life and hope for the future, and i learned that this place is very like many places i’ve been involved with, in need of restructuring, tired, looking for promise.  we compared the states of various punk/alternative institutions we were both familiar with, how to get out of feeling burnt out, how i can get involved in the space.  then i learned about the state of nationalism in Poland.  i was told that patriotism does not necessarily equal nationalism which does not necessarily equal fascism, but the left is quick to point fingers; then those people who are not fascist, or maybe even not nationalist, are alienated away from the left because of the conflation of their love of country with something undesirable.  it’s a much more delicate subject than in the US, due to Poland’s intricate history, especially when you consider how often the country was occupied, deleted, wiped off the map.

we also talked about the state of the right wing in the US, and i got to try to explain the tea party movement, which was fun.  but what are they against?  hubert wanted to know.  good question.  so much.  everything.

we both agreed that the right is (usually) able to present a clear picture of their values to “outsiders,” people who don’t yet define themselves in terms of left or right but who are looking for clarity, looking for something to believe in.  the left is fractured and confusing.  and there was some talk about trying to work within the system, to use the tools of capitalism against it, because the powers allied against us are hella rich.

it was a stimulating conversation that i can’t really encapsulate here.  but it was interesting to find that we were in agreement about so many things.

and, of course, somewhere in there i was offered the guest room for as long as i may need it, and any help in finding a room or a flat that they could offer.  i was told that one of the guys who lived there had a girlfriend who had just moved from vienna and was looking for a flat. maybe we could look together?  maybe.

the radio was playing the whole time we were talking and i counted two amy winehouse songs and two white stripes songs in less than two hours, which was weird.  (today when i showed up in the kitchen, amy winehouse on the radio, again.)

people came in and out of the kitchen, in and out of the conversation, but it was mostly just me and hubert ranting at each other, drinking black tea and comparing world views.  i was handed an ear of corn on the cob and three of us ate and talked about my Polish roots.   then i met cliff, from canada, who was visiting with kymin, the girl i had talked to on my arrival.  they are both english teachers, living in barcelona.  cliff had spent the summer at crk, trying to get a job teaching private lessons.  we talked about the recent trend of Poles who have spent a lot of time in the UK passing themselves off as native speakers and asking for such a low rate that it’s impossible to get decent money for teaching.  of course, when most people i’ve talked to make 7-10 zloty an hour (divide by three, americans) in a variety of jobs, it’s hard to complain that you can’t get the 50 zloty you used to be able to expect for an hour of private lessons.

after about two hours i excused myself and headed out, at the same time as cliff and kymin, who were going to the store to get food for dinner. i told everyone i would be back the next day to take up temporary residence, then left for the hostel to check my email and figure out my mess of a life;  which seemed to turn out to mean attempting to read while three drunken spaniards watched something on their computers that involved a lot of screaming and made them laugh so incredibly abrasively hard that it hurt my spine.

the guy in the bunk below me the last few days has barely left his bed.  he just lays about, staring at a variety of electronic devices most every minute of every single day.  looking down from my perch above, the floor around his bed looked like a technology showcase tipped over, spilling Iphone and I whatsit and Isomethingorother and electronic book reader and laptop in a messy pile around his prone body.  why did he need so many gadgets?  why did he never leave the room?  he showed up friday, but it wasn’t until this afternoon, sunday, that the mystery was solved when the friends he had been waiting for finally turned up.  damn, though, you’d think even if he was waiting for travel companions he would still leave the room once in a while.

there was also the guy who was out all night every night and would come back to sleep at around 5 am or so.  friday he slept most of the day.  saturday, when he returned to sleep around 7 am, a german tourist questioned his right to his own messy bed, asking if he had just checked in and why was he trying to claim that already claimed bed?  i thought he must have been out partying all night, but saturday he was in the kitchen on his laptop until late.  maybe that’s where he had been thursday and friday night, too.

(i was jealous of the ability to use the free wifi in the hostel — despite my hopes my computer did not just fix itself once taken from the corroding sphere of brendan’s influence.  oh well.  the computers at the hostel were fine, but were so public, and often occupied, and the stools squeaked and … yeah.  i’m never satisfied and i want everything my way).

today, sunday, i’m out of the hostel and in the squat.  i rolled my heavy, crumbling suitcase across the river in what has become almost hot weather. the guy who was coming in the gate as i arrived was visibly amused by my rolling suitcase.  not exactly the traveling punk image, i know.  but now all that’s in the guest room, next to kymin and cliff’s giant backpacks. there’s a band practicing in the practice space and i’m sitting in the courtyard , waiting to see if my mom is going to try to call my newly reactivated cell phone.

i’m glad to be out of the hostel, but i’m already worried about what the next few days will bring.  aside from job interviews, i have to start looking for somewhere to live, a process which i am completely ignorant about.  how does one go about doing that here?  i did find an apartment listed on craigslist my second day here, which surprised me.  the site hasn’t really caught on anywhere but in warsaw and, to a lesser extent, krakow.  the woman who owns the apartment wrote back but she wouldn’t tell me much about it until i told her a little about myself.  it’s in the center of town, which means it’s probably expensive.

and the coffee at the hostel this morning was total crap.  i’m not sure what was in it, but it was almost like chicory’s crappier cousin.  i made some tea, but i ended up spending way too much for an americano at a tourist-based chain because it was the first place i came to.  but it afforded me the opportunity to sit and write for a while, to get caught up on this.  then i went down to the galeria, or mall, because it’s sunday and every place else is closed.  i needed ink cartridges for my fountain pen, which ended up being more expensive than i could have imagined and which i can’t use anyway because i’m not sure where the hell the pen is in my luggage.  or i don’t want to take the effort of trying to find it just now. so i’m using the crappy pen i stole from the company where i used to teach english.  it keeps seeming to run out of ink, which requires some banging and nearly tearing up the pages of my new notebook with little circles until it starts to flow again.

this is interrupting my creative process.

the woman who sold me the ink cartridges really did not want to touch my hand in any way.  as she handed me the change she pulled off this delicate maneuver where she pulled her hand away from my advancing palm while managing to almost throw the change into it.  impressive.  crazy.

so, three days in wroclaw — i feel like i’ve barely looked around yet.  the center of town is endlessly beautiful, hard to believe so much of it is reconstruction.  i still have good feelings about being here.  that’s good. yup. good.

tomorrow i have to get up early and get copies of my CV (or resume to you americans) off of my email, somehow.  the computers at the hostel were so old they didn’t recognize my flash drive, so though i was able to download the documents i need it was impossible to save them to something; or to print out master copies since i stupidly saved them in docx format and everyone here seems to use XP, which is not compatible.  argh.  so then i have to figure out where to print some copies, then go around and drop some off at some schools.  then i’m meeting a prospective employer for coffee.  he told me he probably doesn’t have anything for me but that we should know each other, so informal get-together.  meeting is people good.  right.  remember that.

nothing to be nervous about.

nothing at all.

ok, maybe i can allow myself to be nervous about my computer, since now i am without internet, unless there’s some internet here i can use.  possibly.  no one’s around.  in fact, i don’t even know where the bathroom is.  that might be a problem soon.

and now i have almost two thin notebooks full of posts to … post.

argh.

reanimating culture

5 september, 2010

i woke up at 10 am yesterday, saturday, which means that minus the half hour when i stumbled to the bathroom at 4:30 in the morning, then checked facebook to make sure things were really true, i slept over 12 hours.  i needed it.

i figured out how to put more money on my phone without having to interact with any human beings, which meant a list of numbers popped up; people who had tried to call me in the last month, when i had a german card in there.  then i rechecked the directions to the squat and wandered outside, where it looked like rain.  so, back inside to get my rain jacket.  back out, and i realized that it was actually cold, too.  so, back in for a sweater.  then on to adventure.

brendan had found their web page for me when i was trying to figure out how to make sure i look for some damn community in this new city of mine.  i had written, and it took months to hear back, which was a note encouraging me to get in touch if i came to town, or to just stop by.  then i wrote again and asked if they had a couch.  i never heard back.  with only one day left in the hostel i crossed my fingers and really really hoped they had a couch.

the rain hit hard as i wended my way to the north of town center, toward the university.  i stopped in at the used clothing store because i was still wearing my ruined shoes that soak up all the water in the world.  the shoes i had bought the day before were for job interviews, but they didn’t much help with walking around.  i found some that weren’t hideous, for the equivalent of $5, changed my shoes under a tree and bounced off, with happy feet, across the university bridge.

the directions started out good:  “Close to Nadodrze Railway Station, even closer to Staszica Square, in one of unsignificant courtyards you will find Centre for Culture Reanimation (CRK). Starting from Main Market Square through Uniwersytecki Bridge you shoud [sic] reach Drobnera Street, then follow Łokietka Street to Św. Macieja Square.  On the left side of the square you will find Kazimierza Jagiellończyka Strret.  “  so far so good, until i got to the square.  i sat in the park there for a minute, trying to figure out where to go from there. it’s a beautiful park, with trees, fountain, benches, random columns.  rain.  on the left side of the square there were three side streets, none of which were correct.  maybe they meant right?  once more, all around the square, no Jagiellończyka.  back to the left side — maybe up a block from the square?  ah, yes.  there it was, a full block up from the square, on the left.

tunnel to #8

then the directions got a little unclear:  “…on the left pathway cross the tunnel with number 8. You are pretty close. As you pass the tunnel turn your eyes slightly to the right and you will see CRK’s signboard. Main gate is open during events – if you want to visit any other time – look for a doorbell.”  i passed #8, which was actually on the right, not the left, and turned my eyes to the right and saw … a drunk-looking guy standing by a pile of debris.  another guy came up and talked to him.  middle-aged, swaying, they didn’t look like they could help me.

cross the tunnel?  i finally figured out they meant go through the tunnel.  ok, past the swaying drunks, into a parking lot/courtyard in the midst of many buildings.  looked right, looked left.  where the hell?  nothing.  huh.  back out to the street to make sure it was really #8, stepped in some dog shit in my new used shoes, then back through the tunnel, looking around.  i could see 8c, 8d, 10b.  absolutely no #10c/d.  wait, what’s that small edge of color behind that tree?  oh, jesus, a giant mural.  i had been wandering around for ten minutes and i just hadn’t checked behind the damn tree.

in my defense, there was also a temporary yellow storage-unit type giant metal box blocking my view from the tunnel as well.  all i had to do was take a few steps around it and … it turned out to be so easy.

the gate was locked, so i looked for the bell mentioned in the directions.  i found it, i thought, and rang it.  then waited.  and more waiting.  i was behind metal doors at the end of a covered drive that led to a courtyard full of bikes and stuff, one of those big gates that has a hole through so you can unlock the padlock inside.  so, i was able to stare down into the inner courtyard.  staring, waiting.  then a guy came out of a basement door with a bike, tried it out around the courtyard, riding in circles.  then he leaned it against some other bikes and went back downstairs. i was waving and yelling hello for this whole process, but something about the acoustics of the covered drive seemed to swallow my voice.  i also realized that there was music playing down his way.  he came back out a few minutes later and looked about when i yelled, as if he almost heard me.  apparently not, because he went back in.  he had never looked my way long enough to distinguish my frantic waving.

so.  ring.  wait.  ring.  wait.  i was about to leave a note, or go into the business next door to see if there was some other way to get attention, but just then someone came out of said business and walked past me to a car.  dreds, studded belt, all in black, he looked like someone i should ask about the squat, but he was already starting up his car before i fully registered his presence.  but he registered mine and pulled up next to me, asking a question in Polish.  i couldn’t handle it, so i asked if he spoke english.  he seemed to react poorly to my use of the formal, but i was just so used to it.  so, he asked again, in english this time, “do you need to get in?”  yes.  “i will show you a secret.”  he taught me the super-secret way to get through the gate, and the whole time i was babbling about how i had been in contact with hubert and needed a place to stay and did he know hubert?  duh.  he nodded, unamused.  i asked his name, and he seemed really uninterested in mine.  he pointed the way to the door to the main house, locked the gate, and got back in his car.

ok.  feeling like an idiot, i went to the far back corner of the yard, where i found the main door to the house unlocked and open.  up the concrete stairs, arrows on the walls pointing every which way, voices above me.  totally kinda nervous about being in this space, as if the rules of punk spaces would be different in other countries.  come to think of it, i often feel nervous in punk spaces for the first time, or at least not completely comfortable, even without the added language barrier.  not sure why.  isn’t this supposed to be my community?

yes.

i stopped on the second floor to babble at a girl who was sitting at a table, making jewelry from a plate of beads.  “do you speak english?  i’m here to visit and i’m wondering where to go and i need a place to crash and i don’t know what i’m doing and i had been talking to hubert …?”  she turned out to be american, and also a guest.  she said she didn’t know about all that other stuff, but that she thought hubert was upstairs.

i walked into the kitchen/living room upstairs and there were two girls on a couch, two guys in the kitchen and a giant dog who started barking at me.  i asked for hubert.  he was one of the guys.  i talked to him as he made a sandwich, hi, i’m janice, we spoke via email.  “i don’t remember.”  well, at least he was honest.  i told him i was the one from SF who was moving to wroclaw and needed a place to crash.  “yeah!!  i remember!!  … did i write you back?”

he offered me tea or a “basic sort of sandwich” and told me to please sit on the couch and make myself comfortable.

pictures stolen from here

“uncofmfortable” is totally a word

5 september, 2010

nathan’s villa hostel is not exactly a paragon of friendly customer service, but it’s the kind of surly i can appreciate.

since i seem to live at the computers near the reception desk, over the past few days i’ve had the pleasure of hearing the variety of girls at the counter continually treat people as if they are absolutely crazy for asking them questions.  last night three british gentlemen approached the counter while i was on a computer nearby.  they asked the girl if there was a really good nightclub nearby.  note of detached ennui, “um.  there’s one around the corner.  it’s called senso.”  she then began to describe how to get there, in a monotone of deep deep boredom.  the response, “but is it really good?”  girl: “i don’t know.  i’ve never been there.”  they laughed at her response, and then seemed to realize how deep her lack of caring went.  their laughter broke off and they shuffled sheepishly to the elevator.

plus, any requests for suggestions for places to buy anything, well anything that can’t be bought at reception, will lead them to direct you to one of the galerias, or malls, in the vicinity of the old town.  no local wisdom for deals, just a tourist map and a pointing finger.  go that way.  galeria.

it was this attitude that led me to believe that, with a job interview hovering over my head, i’d be better off trying to find shoes on my own, rather than ask for advice about where to get some.  i woke up way too early in the morning and wandered the streets, back to the train station, around south of the old town, where i had seen some shoes stores through my rain-drenched glasses the night before.

in tarnow, the town i used to live in, there are expensive shoe stores and cheap shoe stores, usually right next to each other on the main drag.  maybe it’s because i am in a bigger city now, and thus things are more spread out, but there were no cheap new shoes to be found and the expensive shoes were really expensive.  at the time the 50 zl i had in my pocket and the 20 zl deposit i would get back after returning the key to the hostel was all i had in the world.  so, frantic run — in desperation.  i found 15 zl (US equivalent = $5) new shoes in one shop, ridiculous heels that would surely kill me.  so … no.  eventually i found a used clothing store, though, that was advertising everything at 50-90% off, which made their prices comparable to the used shops in tarnow.

some things are better in small town poland.

of course, i was running around the center of town, where everything is always more expensive.

so, “new” shoes, “new” sweater, back to the hostel to try to clean up.  there i met a girl from dublin who was on her way to berlin and wanted to know what it was like living in poland — we only had a few minutes to talk, but it was the first social interaction i had in the hostel, aside from the mousy german girl smiling at me and letting me know which beds were free.

well, with such social possibilities as the loud british siblings from the first night, i thought it best to keep to myself. that first morning i was drinking coffee in the hostel kitchen when the loud girl came flying in and started yelling at her brother about … something.  i guess he had pulled his IPOD out of her bag, and didn’t he know the zipper was broken?  it would be his fault if it wouldn’t shut again.  she was oblivious to the rest of us, who had no desire to hear this.  in fact, she acted as if she were on stage, performing for his and our edification.

but i had a job interview to get ready for, and dublin girl had sightseeing to attend to, so social interaction was limited.  i had no iron and my most presentable shirt had been shoved in the back of brendan’s closet under all my other clothes, for a month.  i tried to work out the wrinkles with my towel, to no avail.  later my mom told me i should have hung it in the bathroom as i was showering, as the steam would work out the wrinkles.  clever mom.  oh, well.  it’s known that i’m not very good at this “being professional” thing.

hearing, mere moments before going to the interview, that my ex-employer had finally deposited some money in my account, leaving me very much not destitute, was a good omen.  i went out with a spring in my step.

i got to the interview ten minutes early and was surprised at how official the school looks, and that they had a questionnaire to fill out.  i was also surprised to see that i had gotten this school mixed up with another, and this one taught more than just english.  it was also a lot bigger than i thought.  they wanted me to prepare the outline of a lesson and then walk them through it.  my previous job “interview” had consisted of a short emailed essay and then a desperate plea for me to get to town as quickly as i could.  they asked me what methods i like to use and i’m really bad at keeping the terminology straight so i wrote a sort of mish mash and mentioned the communicative method.  luckily that’s their preferred method.  so, hooray for me.

i had to sit longer than the 20-30 minutes given to prepare the lesson and the questionnaire, since it turned out she was interviewing someone else before me.  so i sat in the office and watched some  politics unfold around me as some guy in a beige suit kept coming out of an inner office and saying something to the receptionists.  they would wait for him to leave before rolling their eyes and looking at each other in silence, then moving off to do whatever it was he had commanded them to do.

eventually i was brought up two flights of stairs to a classroom, where i sat down and was asked a few preliminary questions before being asked to go through my lesson.  i had channeled all my training to put together a lot of exciting activities, using as much terminology as possible.

i think it was awesome.  it seems the school only hires teachers per class, so they would only try me out with one or two classes to start, adding them as i prove my worth.  she bemoaned the fact that they didn’t have anything to offer me right away.  i left feeling excited about possibilities, treated myself to dinner and a beer on the rynek, and went back to the hostel, where i found out via facebook that dave had died the day before.

fuck.

dave was part of a group of friends that i used to have a lot more contact with.  in the year before i left SF he and his girlfriend had even moved into an apartment a few blocks from my house, but i still rarely saw them.  never as often as i would have liked.  san francisco is like that.  people you love are a stone’s throw away but for some reason you just can’t get there.

i didn’t even know he was sick.  he was diagnosed with leukemia shortly after i left town, it seems.  i want to write about him.  i want to sing his praises.  i want … i can’t right now.  it’s too hard.  soon.

soon.

 

 

drunk ghosts all a-mumble

this story begins here

3 september, 2010

when the bus finally arrived, i was the first to buy a ticket, the request for which came out in broken Polish, and for a moment i wasn’t even sure i was speaking the right language, which made me stutter.  then i sat down with a clear view of the monitor that told me where all the stops were, each one disappearing from the list as we reached it, counting down to the last.

bluto sat down across from me and opened a can of zubr beer, which he had taken out of his backpack.  it now looked pretty much empty, and i wondered why he had been in paris with an almost-empty backpack.  he spent the rest of the ride asking people where we were, since he couldn’t see the monitor behind him.  when we stopped at the defunct western train station, he really got into a panic, until someone told him that, no, that was not the main station.  the main station is the last stop.  relax.

finally we pulled into a bus stop that had a sign marked “train station”, but i couldn’t see any actual station.  it turned out to be around the corner, which caused no end of confusion.  still, i followed the crowd, who seemed to know where they were going, which put me right across the street from the crazy monolith that is the wroclaw train station.  even under construction it’s impressive.

i’ve seen it from the tracks, and have some intimate knowledge of its temporary digs from my miserable journey to berlin, back in july.  this was the first time i could take the whole thing in.  and it was more imposing since it was dark, locked away behind wooden partitions.  i didn’t think to take a picture.  in fact, i didn’t remember my camera until half a block later when i was greeted by my first store front, which happened to be a brightly-lit sex shop.

this is particularly funny to me, because wroclaw happened to be the town where my train to germany last december picked up the porn guy.  did he buy his porn at this sex shop?  no, more likely he got it at a kiosk in the train station.  it looked like train-station-kiosk-brand porn.

i walked my way towards the rynek, past all the stores i would try to buy shoes at the next day, realizing the whole way, as the rain came down, that i should have looked closer at the bus stop list and, oh, maybe compared it with a map.  if i had done that i could have gotten off the bus much closer to the hostel and avoided dragging my suitcase in the rain.  suck.  as it was, i passed many of the buildings i had just seen from the bus windows.  since the hostel directions were from the train station, it never occurred to me to look for any other stop.  argh.

so, hostel.  above the KFC.  right.  a mousy-shy girl was waiting for the elevator.  i had just maneuvered past the traffic parked on the sidewalk and found my way into the building.  we got into the elevator together and then she let out an “oh!” and did a weird turn towards the far wall.  i thought she was crazy, until the wall she was staring at opened up.  right, double-sided elevator.  one of those wonders of technology i can never get used to.

i’ve been lucky to have never had to stay in a common room in a hostel.  i’m usually traveling with someone who agrees on a private room, but my budget was tight so this was my first experience with communal accommodation.  i arrived to find three chatty brits, two girls and a boy, talking loudly to each other as if they were the only ones in the room.  they had projecting theater voices.  they continued to speak as if they were alone long after the shy girl from the elevator showed me the two vacant bunks and then crawled into hers to try to sleep.  one of the girls whined long into the night at the guy, who turned out to be her brother, even after it was obvious that many more people wanted to sleep, him included.  eventually he just stopped responding to her, which did not stop her trying as quickly as you would think.  i wrapped a sweater around my head and shut my eyes, trying to sleep.

those uncofmfortable, squeaky stools on the left are in front of the computers. i lived on them for three days. my room was on the far right.

i pretty much failed.  the brit-girl eventually shut up, but other folks were in and out all night.  one guy came in and loudly opened a beer and drank it while laying down in his bunk.  i know because i removed the sweater long enough to look at him.  he was the same guy who was in the  bathroom for a long time the next morning.  when he finally came out, the place smelled like smoke and there was a cigarette butt in the toilet.  a 100 zloty fine is obviously a lot less horrible than a 3-floor elevator ride to that guy.

anyway, clanking, arriving, the noise of lockers opening and shutting, and i realize there’s just no way to be quiet with a padlock.

at one point i awoke in the the night to muttering, and a drunken gentleman standing in the middle of the room, oscillating in the dark.  he was obviously trying to figure out what bed was not occupied and therefore his, but with a lack of light, and his mumbling and moaning, it all took on the feeling of the supernatural, as he swung from one bed to another, mumble, mumble mooooaaaaaannn.

finally i heard him fall into a bed.

in the morning i couldn’t tell which guy he’d been.

p.s. since my camera has since been stolen, and all photos of beautiful nathan’s villa hostel have been lost, i stole these from various places.

 

crash land

you must go backward to go forward.  this story starts here.

3 september, 2010

the stewardess spoke Polish with an accent and seemed really proud of her accomplishment, which rubbed my ever-increasing language breakdown right into my face.  i tried to figure out where her accent was from, which is probably why i was so distracted i ordered more wine in a sort of accented english that was comprehensible to no one.  oh my.

i still couldn’t concentrate enough to get any writing done, so i wiled away the time with the in-flight magazine, and in staring at the clouds below us.  then we started to perceptibly shift downward, heading back towards those clouds.  as we did i noticed the first vestiges of far away sunset starting to touch the west.  then we plunged through the clouds and below into full-on, pitch-black night.  completely surreal, such a sudden change from day to night, from clear to raining.  like that peter pan disney ride, into the next room and it’s night, wisps of cloud obscuring the barely-lit villages below.

darkness and rain.  welcome back to poland.  hug me with your big, grey arms.

the applause that usually occurs when planes full of Poles safely hit the ground was tentative this time, starting slowly in the front and moving back, almost timid, surely not full of the bravado i was lacking.  i realized this was the first flight i had ever had where i wanted to get right back up into the air again.  or rather, i hadn’t wanted to come down.  in the sky i was safe from the reality of things on the ground.  i have a long history of throwing myself into situations like this with very little plan.  this time i had directions, i had a place to stay, though only a bed in a 10-bed hostel room, but i had no money and only one pair of continually wet shoes, as well as a broken computer that had a great deal of my life trapped inside it.  pondering the good and bad of it all, my reverie was broken by the woman on the aisle seat, who jumped up as soon as we landed, waved to me emphatically and said, with force, “au revoir!”  then she shoved through the people trying to pull their own luggage down and disappeared.

hmm.

so, baby steps.  i collected my bag with little fanfare, and then realized that the only instructions i had for the bus stop was that it was “north of the airport.”  which way is north?  where is the exit, even?  armed guards at the customs station did not stop me or anyone else as i entered the terminal proper and was instantly jealous of the people who had someone waiting for them.  was there a little placard with my name on it?  no.

the main terminal looked like the cleanest greyhound station in the world, which isn’t saying much.  outside it seemed so dark.  i couldn’t see a bus stop.  wait, there’s a stop but no signage, no people, abandoned.  the rain quickly worked its way into my wrecked shoes.  back inside, i looked on the walls for a map of the area, or some sort of information for new arrivals.  nope, nothing.  i had looked at the information desk before stepping outside and there was no one there.  now, after many minutes of scanning the horizon in search of a bus stop, i looked again.  there were two people there now, both of whom were incredibly amused by my asking in what probably sounds like pretty good Polish if they speak english.  i’ve heard this over and over, how well i speak, which leads me to say that, yes, i can say that one sentence about how i can’t speak Polish and that one question about whether or not someone can speak english pretty damn well.  i’ve got those covered.

so i asked where the bus stop was, and the answer made me cranky, “right out front.”  i had been out front, what was she talking about?  but i walked out again, this time through a different door, the one near the information desk, and from there i had a different view of the area.  i was able to see that, yes, duh, there’s a bus stop and yes, there are a few people waiting.

brendan will probably laugh at me, because earlier i had been practicing how to ask where the bus was in Polish, and when the time came i failed.  still, my spirits were flagging, and had been ever since we had passed beneath those clouds.  so i sloshed out to the bus stop through ruined shoes and took a spot in the crowd.

the girls next to me were speaking spanish, loudly, from beneath their oversized backpacks, which threw me in a confused language state again.  i tried to figure out why the young couple next to me had all that camping equipment if they also had the tiniest baby ever.  did they go camping?  in france?  with a baby that small?

i looked at the time, then at the schedule; seven minutes to go, which stretched into 17 as the bus continued to not show.  i couldn’t believe how dark it was — hard to see down the unlighted street, which turned a corner anyway, so what was there to see, aside from approaching headlights, not attached to anything?  the darkness made every approaching light seem huge, bus-sized.  nothing to see.

except for, of course, my friend bluto, from the paris airport, farther down the line of people, walking out into traffic to get a longer view.

meanwhile … at the airport.

3 september, 2010 (for the full 3D effect, read the last two posts first)

so … 20 minutes standing in a crowd of people staring up at a TV set with a bunch of words and symbols on it … waiting for someone to call the gate for our flight to rainy, relatively-freezing wroclaw.

the mix of languages grew worse and worse.  the couple to my left argued in english.  loudly.  she had no room in her bag for her new book because she was carrying multiple pairs of his sunglasses.  multiple pairs. i had trouble placing the language for a minute.  what are they speaking?  oh, right.  my mother tongue.  to the right, polish.  in front of me, spanish.  there were flights to bratislava and budapest and rome.  one giant conglomeration at the foot of the tower of babel.

and still no information about the gate.  i started to worry i was in the wrong place — the Polish around me signified nothing, as there was an earlier flight to gdansk that was still boarding.  everything around me said ryanair — not my airline.  all of the flights listed had more information than the one i was waiting for.  i looked around and saw bluto, my friend from the check-in line, lurking around with his backpack.  ok, good.  he’s on the flight.  either i’m in the right place or we both fucked up.  then i saw batman, the guy in the DC comics shirt who had been in line behind me.  ok, three of us fucking up is some bad odds.

i lost my concentration on the screen, as i kept watching a young couple who seemed to have very different ideas about their relationship.  he was holding her and kissing her and put his arm around her lower back.  she would pull ever so slightly away and look at her phone.  he continued to beam while she almost scowled.  it made me sad.

then, all of a sudden, the gate was announced and we moved like anxious cattle toward it.  boarding pass scanned and taken, we were herded down a walkway by the tarmac where … we stood around some more, and watched people getting off the plane that would soon be ours.  five minutes to clean and switch luggage, and i marveled at the speed with which wizzair turned over their flights.  then people were allowed to move, but … not all at once.  a barrier came down in front of me, wielded by an angry french woman who started yelling at the various cell phone users, “maintenant!  MAINTENANT!!” this brought about an amused response, as the passengers in question leisurely finished their conversations.  “at this point, no more cell phones!” she yelled, and i honestly can’t tell you now what language she yelled it in.

then she lifted the rope and let me, and the others behind me, go.  i made my way to the back of the plane, having flashbacks to flying out of kiev on a similarly attired purple plane, my traveling partner somewhat incapacitated and completely outrageous.  a middle-aged woman came on after me and asked, in Polish, if she could sit in the aisle seat.  i answered in Polish, “please.”  i was by the window, an empty seat between us, which she immediately started filling up with her things. then she asked me if that was ok, but not only could i not figure out what she was asking, i couldn’t figure out what language she was asking it in.  my brain had had a full lingual breakdown and i just stared at her.  finally i asked “english?” and she stared at me.  maybe she had spoken in english, who knows?  finally i said, “jeszcze raz?”  “one more time?” and she grabbed my arm and said, in Polish, “OH!  you speak Polish!!”  my continued attempts to explain just how little Polish i actually speak were shrugged off with a “yeah, yeah” gesture.  so she asked me in simple terms, using her hands broadly, if her stuff on the seat between us was ok.  oh.  yeah.  fine.  no problem.

she crossed herself as we took off, as many Poles i have flown with seem to do.  then we were in the air, the village of beauvais behind us.  paris even farther behind.

coming up with witty titles is hard.

3 september, 2010

i had trouble writing last night — just wanted to sleep.  that may occur today as well.

so … brendan saw me off at the confusing paris-beauvais bus center, after that one last tour through the paris metro.  as we were transferring lines, we passed a lively slavic band playing it’s heart out in the passageway, and he smiled and said they were playing me home.  the bus center consists of a schedule that doesn’t seem to have much truck with reality.  it’s based on when your flight leaves — each bus leaves three hours before each flight.  in reality, buses pull in at random and signs are placed on the front of them for 2 or 3 upcoming flights, which causes a lot of confusion.  my bus wasn’t scheduled to leave for another half hour or so, but there was a bus, saying “wroclaw.”  people for barcelona or wroclaw or any number of other destinations either rushed the bus or stood back, trying to figure out if they should be rushing the bus.  brendan urged me to take the bus, but i wasn’t ready to go just yet.  i wanted to sit and smoke and not think about what was coming.  so we watched flocks of confused people either get on the bus or not, no indication why some walked away.  finally it was clear that the bus was pretty full, after one last group that had been standing back decided to go for it and were turned away.  but, no matter, they pulled the signs off the bus and put them on the next one down.  mass exodus to that bus.  i decided to join them.

hugs goodbye, get on the bus, sit by the window and try to look out past the grease smudge the exact size and shape of someone’s profile, caked on the bus window.  ew.  we started off, still 15 minutes earlier than the scheduled time on the list by the ticket window.  despite all my intentions, i did not start writing furiously, instead looked out the window, listening to the french, spanish and polish merge all around me until i couldn’t tell one from the other.  we headed towards arch de la defense, which i had only seen from far away.  it lines up with arc de triomphe, arc du carousel and the louvre, almost a straight line, so it’s visible from any one of those.  close up it looked pretty much the same as far away.  bigger, surely, than i thought.  we didn’t get close enough to tell, though, because we turned.

as we had passed over the seine, i got momentarily sentimental, thinking it would be the last time i would see it, at least for a while.  i didn’t know we were about to turn and drive beside it for a long long time. i snapped a photo, which made the french woman next to me look up quickly, as she obviously wondered what, possibly, could be so interesting out there to warrant a photo.  she got no answer, and looked confused.

she forgave my eccentricities, though, when a slow wave of realization swept the bus a minute later, regarding the “fasten seat belts” signs at the front, mounted visibly on either side of the clock that counted down exactly how much of our lives were going by.  it may have been spurred on by the driver, because there was a loud, somewhat-commanding pronouncement from somewhere ahead of us, and the people in the front started digging for belts.  this prompted a slow wave of digging, clanking, buckling that dragged its way back to us.  the woman next to me, probably still wondering what could be so interesting about the seine, had trouble pulling her belt out far enough to go around her before it locked and would go no further.  you would think she had never done this before, ever.  i held on to the buckle repository while an italian girl on the other side spoke in a language that neither of us understood, loudly, as if yelling at the seatbelt.  she pulled the strap out ridiculously far and handed it to the woman, who handed it to me.  team effort for safety.

we got to the airport after an hour of watching paris turn to suburb turn to industrial wasteland turn to rolling fields and villages — stunning.  and suddenly, tin shack airport.  weird.

i got off the bus and almost walked away without the suitcase that was tucked into the belly of the bus, perhaps because brendan had lugged it from his house and put it on the bus, so it was almost like it didn’t exist.  it avenged this forgetfulness, though, when i tried to pull it out of the luggage compartment and the edge caught on something, thereby smashing my finger between the edge of the suitcase and cold, unforgiving metal.

ow.

i rolled into the terminal and saw there was no check-in line for my flight yet, rolled back out to enjoy the sunny weather.  ten minutes later i went back to be greeted by a huge line.

wizz air makes you print out your own boarding card, or pay them to do it, which fucking sucks, really.  on my way to paris, easyjet had a separate line for people who had checked in their bags online and simply needed to drop them off.  here, at paris beauvais, there was one large confusing line that looked more like an audience than anything linear.  i tried to go to customer service to ask them if there was somewhere special to drop the bags, or did i have to wait on the big non-line line just to leave my bag, but there was a large confusing line there, too, only kept in vague line-like shape by velvet ropes.  so i gave up and, getting on the damn check-in “line”, i decided to take my chances there.

i was behind a guy with only a backpack, who fucked up my language centers even more than the bus of babel had by speaking into his phone in both french and a rushed Polish that was beginning to sound like french.  i will call him bluto.  he looked as confused as i felt, and i caught him checking out my passport for a while, though it did occur to me later that he really needed to talk to someone to make sure he was in the right line and he was just trying to gauge my language possibilities.  eventually he guessed that the irish passport was probably going to mean no help for him.

finally he caught the speech of the people in front of him:  Polish, though it really was starting to sound like french to me.

i was really excited, though, that i could follow their conversation pretty easily, despite the language mish-mash in my head.  he asked if he needed to be on the line if he had no bags to check.  they said no, not if he had printed his ticket from online.  he said he didn’t have internet so he couldn’t print his ticket.  they said they didn’t know, he would have to ask.  and so on.

and we waited.

turns out he had to go the business office/customer service area and wait on the other more-line-like line to pay them for the ticket, then come back and have the counter guy print it out.  absurd.  same thing that happened to me on easyjet going to paris.  i guess check-in counter employees are not trusted to handle money anymore, nor to work a printer more than once an hour.

then over towards security — i couldn’t figure out if i wanted to go through yet or not.  what was on the other side?  i couldn’t tell.  i’ve had my fair share of sitting in vacant concrete boxes for hours on end, with no duty-free or overpriced wine to entertain me, so i stopped in the midst of some other stopped people who were all staring at the departures board above.  i alone was staring past everyone, trying to spatially untangle the mess of things i saw before me.  to one side was an elastic barrier, beside and beyond that people coming and going, but i physically could not make out the distinction between spaces.  it looked like everyone was wandering in and out of the security zone at random.  i couldn’t make out the lines.

i tried.

apparently i was sufficiently confused- or suspicious-looking to warrant attention, because one of the security workers saw me and gently whisper-sang, “come, come,” in a sirenesque french that drew me forward, despite worries of being smashed against the rocks of boredom, stuck on the other side of security with nothing to entertain me.  no way out.  i handed her my ticket and she jotted some things on it and motioned me into the security area.

the last time anyone jotted anything on my ticket, it was a series of scribbles that apparently translated to “extra-search the shit out of this passenger,” so one glance at my defiled ticket and that’s what i was given — extra searching that landed just this side of strip-search.

luckily that was not the case this time, and the scribbles seemed to mean nothing in particular, as far as i could tell.  or maybe signaled the security woman to be extra snappy when she realized she would have to speak english, but i doubt it.

she did make me take everything out of my pockets, including my snot rag, which was a first.  and she made me take off my belt before even going through the xray, which i am not accustomed to.  and i had to remove my arm wristlet thingies, which barely have any metal on them at all and have never ever set off any metal detector ever.  but she was that thorough with everyone around me, as well.

it all went through without a hitch, though, and i gathered up my belongings and waddled to a corner, trying to keep my pants up while not dropping anything.  least dignified thing ever.

luckily it was not the wasteland i was worried it would be on the other side.  i bought a 3€ bottle of red wine and sat down opposite a girl who never looked up from texting and either had a really bad cold or was sobbing quietly.  i really couldn’t tell.  i decided to save some of the wine for later, especially since i was under the mistaken impression that they were going to call our gate soon.

so, 20 minutes standing in a crowd of people staring up at a TV set with a bunch of words and symbols on it.  wroclaw was the only city that didn’t scroll through the name of the city and the name of the airport.  there’s only one.  it was also the only city on the list with a temperature under 25 degrees celsius, and without a little shining sun icon.  at 16 degrees and overcast it won the race to most miserable-looking location, hands down.

au revoir …

2 september 2010

i am way high up in the air above — somewhere — no idea what time it is or how long we have to go.  the wine i splurged on is making me both overjoyed with life and seized with the initiative to punch things.  a dangerous see-saw to play around on.

the problem is that i can’t quite control rampaging emotions today, and trying to deaden them only adds to the wild swing.

somehow i packed most of my things last night, though i marvelled at how hard it seemed to be to get it all back in my suitcase.  brendan took one look at my exploding crap and said, “oh, no, they’re not going to search that.”

sarcasm was lost on me.

then i was quizzed on my parisian experience.  trying to be truthful, i heard my own voice come back to me sounding like a vapid cheerleader.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

now i’m in the hostel, no longer on the plane.  my see saw knocked me right out of being able to focus.

anyway, i was trying to tell the story of leaving.  so, yeah, i packed.  there was no raucous goodbye, just hugo chavez and some beers and falling asleep in front of the “TV,” like an old married couple.  the sort of party that fits our PBS sensibilities.

then it was morning — i got up too early, as usual, and had my ongoing battle with the various people via email, re:  still not being at all paid by anyone.  enough to make me anxious.  brendan had his usual waking-up experience — it’s like watching a sleepy puppy trying to crawl out of a deep dark hole, his process towards consciousness; but he had coffee in his fist, so i figured it was an ok time to start shoving the rest of everything into my suitcase, making as much noise as possible.

we took one last spin around the neighborhood for groceries, more or less tracing the same steps we took my very first day, 4 weeks ago.  then he made me one last sandwich and we hit the road.

despite my protestations that he didn’t need to come with me, he insisted — mostly because he seems to have a low opinion of my coping skills.  still, it was nice to have the company, and to feel taken care of.  we walked to the 12 line and started the long odyssey to porte maillot, halfway across town, where i would meet the bus that would take me to the airport.

all of the stops on the outskirts of pairs have “porte” in the name, as if there are magic doors into the city, or dangerous black holes that suck you into the world outside it.  we had to transfer at place de concorde, and i got to take one last tour through the sites, albeit underground.  best way to experience the champs elysses.

you can only talk about being poor so much before everybody’s bored.

1 september, 2010

just after midnight.

shit.  rabbits rabbits.  happy september.  in a day and a half i leave this weird haven of paris — can’t believe it will be a month on that day.  i’m sure i’ve worn out my welcome many times over, though luckily my host barely looks up from his computer long enough to tell me so.  i wanted to do so much more here, in a shorter amount of time, but crippling poverty and the stress of trying to extract money from the people who owe it to me meant that mostly i freaked out a lot — fucked up my skin with stress and beer and cigarettes, bruised some internal organs figuratively if not literally, got sick twice, got worse and worse at the little bit of french i could get to come out of my mouth, made two batches of cookies (one good, the other not so much) and one amazing banana bread, went through many ink cartridges in this here pink plastic fountain pen (this is the last), wondered over and over what will become of my computer (which stopped working my second day here), etc.  the thought has occured that the computer will start working again the minute i remove it from this place, but i’m not getting my hopes up.

i’ve also thought, a lot, about how to celebrate this line i’m crossing, again.  starting over, again.  how to be a better person.  how to actually look for community, or at least interact with people.  i will be forced to embrace the kindness of strangers, which i’ve insulated myself against a little too much lately.  well, it’s a feeling of having moved a little too far from an ideal, rather than an actual literal truth; every single day in tarnow i depended on the kindness, or at least tolerance, of strangers.  but that’s survival.  i want to build.

i’ve been recreating Polish phrases in my head, instigating imaginary conversations, trying to get back to it after a month in germany then a month in france.  i’m itching to speak words in that language.  today i had to look up how to say the word for “six,” because i kept pronouncing it in german and i couldn’t for the life of me remember the word in Polish.  weird.

i have nowhere to stay beyond a few days in a hostel.  i have some leads, many leads, but nothing yet concrete.  i have two job interviews and no clothes to wear to them.  walking the streets of paris has destroyed my five-week-old shoes, which is not a surprise.  but, you know, everything’s going to be alright.

i really, truly believe that.

so what are my thoughts after an accidental month in paris?  the first thing that pops into my head is the niceness of people here.  i grew up surrounded by the american myth of the rude french, and i suppose if i were a tourist, going to the places tourists go, i would see some of that.  the only person even a little rude to me was on the champs elysees, which was due to frustration over a communicative breakdown.  usually people were helpful.  for example, when wendy and i were trying to figure out how, exactly, one gets in to the montparnasse cemetery, standing on the street looking at the confusing map, a woman stopped and smiled and asked if we needed help.

terry, my teacher-trainer in prague, said that the myth comes from differences in cultural expectations.  in france you are expected to greet people in the shops, maybe chat a little, use respectful language.  things move slowly.  americans have no patience nor experience with such slowness.  on more than one occasion, brendan and i found ourselves waiting for people in front of us to stop chatting so we could pay, which was fine.  terry’s thesis was that the french are insulted by our impatience and we are insulted by the reaction of their insultedness.

phew.

the other thing is that i have a really skewed vision of how many people actually live in this city.  i got here on august 5th, and half of the population was on their annual month-long vacation.  half of the shops and restaurants i’ve walked by have been closed.  the last few days i’ve seen so many of these shops reopening.  it’s strange to see closed shops as a normal thing and then, suddenly, one day there are tables of books outside on the sidewalk in front of what, a day before, had been a blank in my vision.

the first day i got here, the storefront downstairs was open — inside, random stark machinery and men circling, some in white, making false teeth.  the next day they were closed, and brendan was surprised to see that they actually went on vacation, since they usually worked late into the night, weird hours, letting in random couriers on scooters, picking up false teeth in the middle of the night.  i was looking forward to witnessing some of that, but then they went on damn vacation.

but the other day, the metal shutter in front of their window was opened again, and there was the machinery, the men, the teeth.  it made me feel like i had been here for a long long time indeed.

but mostly i’ve just enjoyed wandering the streets, being surprised.  yesterday i accidentally walked by the sorbonne and was floored by the size of it.  massive imposing, and in front a security guard giving directions to a confused middle-aged couple, smiling and gesturing, which brought it all down to human-size again.

I sink like a stone that’s been thrown in the ocean …

30 august, 2010

nothing like a lot of emotional upheaval and walking around in wet shoes in the rain for days on end to make you come down with a fever on a saturday afternoon.  actually i blame the emotional upheaval more than anything else.  so, down for the count all day saturday, we didn’t get to père lechaise cemetery until sunday.

that’s exactly where we were trying to go a few weeks ago when my stomach freaked out and i lost 2 days in feeling like crap.  so it was easy to imagine that something connected with trying to see oscar wilde’s grave makes me some variety of sick.

but really, this time there was other stuff, too.

so, saturday was lost in napping and watching american experience on PBS online and frantically sending messages via facebook whenever i could get upright enough to reach the keyboard.

so … sunday.  it was a bit of a slow-moving day … come to think of it, like every day.  so we couldn’t fit both the cemetery and the maison de victor hugo, our original plan.  i felt fine, but since there was always the chance that sick was laying in wait for me, i forced brendan to take the metro to the cemetery.  i had wendy’s metro pass, since she left town friday on her way to berlin.  it was good through sunday.  that was another reason why getting sick sucked, because i had two-days-worth of freedom to go wherever the hell i wanted and instead i got to lay motionless for a long time.

but, whatever.  brendan is dedicated to foot transport, and in general it seems that even when he’s sitting still he’s actually moving.  so seeing him just standing on the metro, waiting to arrive at our destination, was very much like seeing a rather mobile fish forced to sit about on land.  i spent most of the time enjoying the brief stretch of elevated track the #2 line had to offer, though i was initially confused that we had to go underground to go aboveground.  two lines stop at that stop, one below, one above, so the gates are consolidated underground.  aha.  views all around, until it disappointingly went underground again.

père lechaise is a veritable city of the dead, filled with ostentatious and often-crumbling tombs.  it also happens to be where a lot of famous parisians are buried.  i just really wanted to see oscar wilde, and to avoid jim morisson, or at least the army of pilgrims who wandered in search of his tomb.  still, i love a good cemetery, regardless of the fame of the corpses.

a few days before wendy and i had had lunch in cemetaire montparnasse, in front of the grave of simone de beauvoir and jean-paul sartre, reveling in the fact that since they were probably stacked on top of each other, the usual practice for common parisian graves, and she died second, that meant she was on top.  i was also happy to see that the tomb was covered in small thank you notes written in various languages, all of them addressed to her.  after, we had been completely unable to find samuel beckett’s grave.  up to the correct street in the cemetery, up and down the street, what the hell?  back to the map posted by the front gate, yes, there’s serge gainsbourg, he’s supposed to be diagonally across.  back up the hill to the street, where we were stopped by a guard.  he blocked our path and told us that they were closing, we would have to leave.  he blew his whistle a few extra times to make sure we all understood.  some women asked him why they were closing an hour early and he gave the most amazingly “i don’t give a fuck” shrug i have ever witnessed in my life.  i wanted to run past him, yelling, “but … he’s right there!  we’re almost there!  … somewhere.”  because i could see the graves i had scrutinized before, and it’s not like there was suddenly a new one, or one i had missed.  no beckett.

then i realized it made a better story.  we went to beckett’s grave but he didn’t show.

so instead i nodded my head at ionesco on the way towards the main gate.  whistle blow and giant bell.  a beautiful guard answered the questions of departing guests as she pulled the chain for the bell, a sound marker to let us know where the way out exactly was.

at père lechaise i didn’t want to make the same mistake, so i pointed us more or less directly in the direction of oscar wilde, just in case they decided to close … um … three hours early. it was highly possible. of course, there were a few distractions on the way.  marcel proust, who i don’t really care about but …i seemed compelled to take a picture.  a sideline into an area inhabited by a gigantic tour group when we got there.  we had to stand aside and let them pass before we could discover what they had been staring at.  apparently it was a confusingly unclear ghetto, unexplained.  more wandering, past the monuments to foreigners (“strangers”) who fought for france some time in the past.  the polish eagle on the polonaise memorial looked less like an eagle and more like a chicken.  the czech memorial had figures in various states of what was probably pain and despair but which actually looked like wild drunkenness.

finally i could see the big blocky tomb from a distance.  it is noticeable, being the only tomb in the area defaced with lipstick kisses and scrawled slogans, despite a placard in english and french asking people to please not do that.  i also had printed enough pictures of it in my long career as a photo printer to recognize it anywhere.  brendan took one look at it and said that the bad part of being dead is that you can’t stop the stupid shit people do in your name.  i was surprised to find the cyrillic for “ukraine” scrawled above someone’s name, and, inexplicably, elsewhere on the monument, three simple words:   “jon bon jovi.”

other memorable monuments, viewed on the way to see wilde, included two balloonists who died when they went higher than oxygen.  they lay side by side, their hands clasped together.  there was also a memorial topped with a small man riding a small lion.  i said that i wanted that on my gravestone when i died, me riding a lion. later i read that it’s the grave of a lion tamer.  he is depicted atop of the lion who ate him.

wilde's monument

we made our way to chopin, stopping by to say hi to sarah bernhardt, and steering widely clear of morrison; though the closer we got to his neighborhood, the harder it was to avoid his obvious fans.  we popped our heads into the creepy columbarium, with it’s horror-movie lighting design.  then we tried to find the monument to something or other (brendan will have to remind me) with no success.  it did not appear to exist in reality where it appeared to be depicted on the map. we thought maybe it was outside the cemetery wall, not inside, and intended to check on our way out.  of course we forgot.

but it was time to meet brendan’s friend sarah, at the metro stop .  she couldn’t seem to believe that we were actually there, since we had had to cancel twice, both times on account of my interesting health situations.  then wine in the park, discussing our various cloudy futures while foul-mouthed children ran around and around.

walking back to the house in the gathering storm that didn’t break until a few hours after we were safely inside.  not so for robin, who was seeing arcade fire at an outdoor festival.  they had to cut their set short because the wind was making the rain come sideways, right at them.

31 august, 2010

p.s. pissed off to find out later that gertrude stein and alice b. toklas are buried at pere lechaise.  grr.  i somehow never saw them on the list.  considering stein’s influence on my young life, i would have liked to have paid my respects.  well, reason to go back.