Didn't intend...

to go as a dead ho geisha, but that's kinda what I ended up lookin like.

(Sorry, I can't flip photos.)








And completely unrelated, (but also speaking of dead things) I got around to uploading the photo of my Shoes of Death that I got in Italy for 5E. And I love them.

Halloween always throws me off.

I don't know quite what to do. Consider that:

Last year, I worked because I was depressed and living in a basement in Park hill.

The two years before that I was taking my then-stepkids trick or treating.

The fourteen years before that I was hosting or attending Samhain. Samhain I know what to do with. You dance naked around a fire, and if you're not with naked people, you're at least eating your pomegranate and talking to dead people. Samhain's all about the dead or the naked. With apples sliced across and caramel for dipping. That's been my element for most of my adult life.


This was technically Beltaen one year. -->









Me with merlot-colored hair and A at semiannual Melting Pot shindig sometime around Samhain 4? or 5? years ago.

And before that, I was in high school going to parties and haunted houses. But as a teenager, I didn't wear costumes, nor did my friends. Because that was kid stuff.

So all this talk of where the "coolest" and "biggest" parties are, and "they don't tell you the location until 24 hours before" and "getting on the VIP list" .... and trying to figure out what I'm going to be ...the only two years as an adult I dressed up for Halloween (because I know how to dress or not for Samhain) I went as northbound I-25 once and Shelob once, made all these armatures with fuzzy legs and everything. Oh, I went as a smiley face one year, too.

I've been told I could go as a nurse, but why wear workclothes? Also told I could go as a witch. Which either means "go naked" in my mind or wear my robe, and it feels very wrong to wear that to a secular party.

What an adult like me is supposed to do is find something that is fun and sexy and manage to not freeze to death. Cos this is Denver, and though the sky is blue and mild over Denver, there is an iron grey wall over the mountains that will no doubt be here by nightfall.

I have no idea what to be. And I'm back 4 lbs heavier than I was before I had to work bloody day shift this week.

Halloween. Just awkward.

My house has been decorated for fall since I got home from Europe. Complete with the spider lights going down my bannister. And it smells like cinnamon. Always. Really, what I want to do is light candles and eat my six pomegranate seeds. I don't necessarily want to talk to dead people, but it's impossible to avoid the feeling of them being close this time of year. It's heavy and thick and difficult to ignore dreams.

I will go out and drink and be merry and wear some sort of costume.

Maybe tomorrow night, I will light all the candles in my house and cut the pomegranate sitting in my apple bowl on the table and .... be with some echoes.

Addendum: Apparently, expensive VIP parties with celebrities, so no cameras, please, are not on the agenda this evening. That's a relief. Light rail to downtown to avoid the throngs of cars (and cops) because of Halloween parties and the World Series. It's not warm enough to wear my corset and merrywidows. Which is okay. I didn't buy them to be a costume, anyway. Off to the Halloween store to search for inspiration.

The horrifying thing happening to my country.

I have been disturbed by George W. Bush's agenda ever since he created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, which I think threw the whole separation of church and state to hell.

After 9/11, I flew a lot. As the National Guard began patrolling security checkpoints, I used to holler at the top of my lungs about my civil rights as they searched my bags and felt me up in case I was hiding a boxcutter in my bra.

(Would you look at my cleavage! Do you seriously think I can get a boxcutter in there?!? What're you lookin at, soldier? That's right, c'mere, I might yell about my civil rights even louder? YOU GONNA SHOOT ME FOR THAT?!? Yeah, WHO'S the bad guy?)

But I got quieter, and fell into the American torpor of get up, get your Starbucks and go to work in the morning/evening.

Naomi Wolf was at Tattered Cover last week. She wrote a new book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. And if you are an American citizen (or live here), you need to read it. You REALLY need to read it.

See. I'm like the 71% of Americans surveyed to don't like the current administration. I was holding my breath until 2008 when I can storm the polling both and vote the hell out of any politician with the faintest whiff of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld on him. Hell, the way Bush is going, he'll be working on making it legal to run for a third term.

(If you're one of those Americans who "doesn't vote" cos it "doesn't matter", move to China or Zimbabwe, where you will not be inconvenienced.)

But this scary thing that is happening to our country? Where torture is now legal. Where the president can easily declare a military state "in response to a natural disaster (Katrina, anyone?), a disease outbreak (Avian flu?), terrorist attack or any other condition".

any

other

condition, people. Fiscal Year 2007 Defense Authorization Bill. Find out if your congressperson voted for that horrifying piece of effluence that's weakened our democracy and go scream at them. I'm going to.

Is this my country?

Where your goddamned stuff is searched when you get on an airplane. Where people like you and me are detained at the borders. Where your emails, my emails, our hard drives, are searchable without warrant. Where American citizens can find it difficult to speak to their attorneys because somebody within the government decides that citizen is a "national security risk" and those facts DO NOT NEED TO BE PRESENTED IN COURT.

.....

I hated the PATRIOT act. I felt powerless to stop it. So I stuck my nose into my navel and said I'd wait it out until 2008.

I'm not so sure that's an option now. Go to the American Freedom Campaign, whether you vote Republican, Democrat or Independent. It's a conserative issue because they're trying to protect the Constitution as the Founding Fathers wrote it. It's a liberal issue because these scary laws being passed are whittling away free speech and free press and free assembly.

We can't let this happen. For fuck's sake, this is AMERICA.

And if you are not a citizen of the U.S., you should find us scary if you do not already. Don't just hate us cos we're botoxed, fat, and oblivious. Pay attention and hold onto your own parliamentary/democratic systems and civil rights for dear life. We could get scarier. Very quickly.

God, I feel sick.

I think I need to wake up.

Paris, Night 1: en route, Champs Elsyees and the Arc de Triomphe

I apologize for the fact that I cannot turn my photographs on this laptop. At some point, I will ask somebody to help me do so, but in the meantime, just turn your head sideways, okay? --Ed.

9/23
il treno a Parigi, Torino

I'd hopped into the wrong carrozza on the Eurostar from Milano so I had to change seats in Torino. I like this car better, though. I had been facing two older Italian gentlemen that stared at me constantly. They weren't even sly about it. I think it annoyed them when my eyes were open and I looked back at them with "What?" face. That made them look away for roughly 30 seconds each time I did it. I do not even look good today. Boring and annoying. At least younger Italian men will talk to you.

The rest of the car was packed with some teenage French class, off to Paris for a few day. Squealing girls in braces in designer T-shirts. (Remember, these are Milanese teenagers and Armani and Versace are simply "clothes".) (Nobody in Milan dresses badly.) (Except my mother.) Anyway. They squealed. A lot. It was great.

This carrozza is much better. I see mountains as we head north, though it is still hazy. And I'm sitting beside a polite trilingual Frenchwoman with a book (Arthur Conan Doyle in French) and an iPod.

I slept poorly again last night...how does one sleep when one is travelling with morning people? My parents went to bed at 2100 for fsck's sake. Dinner with my family doesn't take several hours as it should with civilized people. We scarf our food and (bizarrely) then immediately want to go to bed. I fall into line with this plan to maintain the fragile truce. (And by the end, it WAS fragile.) I stare at the ceiling and wear earplugs to blot the noise of lovely Milan at night. I liked it better when Dad and I were getting drunk and stumbling around various citites. We didn't do this in Milan, which was a bummer.

Do have to say, though, the Italians make wonderful food and art and clothes and cars and shoes and jewellry and a host of other things. However, they cannot make a pillow for shit. You know those "pillows" that they used to have women use in China and in Egypt that exist to preserve the complicated hairdos? The Louve conveniently has some of these in a case, and I took a photo of them. to be uploaded

Yeah. The only difference between that and an Italian pillow is that the latter is covered with very fine linen (or cotton, depending on how many stars your hotel has been rated).

I think a nap would do me some good, don't you?

***********************

9/23
Dusk, Paris

I am at a tiny cafe table in front of the Bastille monument. I have ordered acqua limone and some-word-vegeterienne under the "salad" section. I think the waiter thinks I'm ridiculous for asking if I could sit down at a table (in neither proper French, proper Italian or proper English, though what I said was an amalgam of all three). But he was bemused and indulgent with me.

Am beginning to think there's an element of truth to the constant reminders from my parents (well, my mother) that I'm blonde. You'd think that this is a retarded thing to remind somebody about, but my mother persisted. People either just forgive me for stuff or maybe they just assume I'm stupid. My dad says "You're blonde, and you can get away with murder." (Jeffrey Dahmer: blond murderer who did not get away with it. Why do we not think of these things, huh? Huh?) At least he only said it once. My mother was a broken record about it. Annoying, really. (My Dad is blond, my mother is a brunette.)

Crepe stand at the Bastille

This lemon thing is good. I got water, too. Thank god I got it without asking, cos I wasn't looking forward to saying 'j'e voudrais .....eau.'

This. Is a wonderful city. It is half shut down, as it is Sunday. But many, many people are out and about and the few cafes and restaurants that are open are packed. Le Paradis du Fruit is the name of this cafe. Isn't that fabulous? You couldn't do that in America and have straight men walk into the place.


Oh, I went to a bookstore (because this is my sickness) on the hunt for a dictionary. "Dizionario" is not the word in French, just so you know. However, the clerk (who spoke perfect English) was polite and humored me, too. See? Books. I come to Paris and I go to a bookstore. It's a sickness. We have books in America, and this is where I go first.

Traveling with my parents was deeply weird for many reasons. That early morning business. Having to wear ugly clothes to bed. But the weirdest thing by far is the fact that I KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MY IDLE TIME:

I read.

If I am at home, I might make art or quilt. Napping is nice idle thing to do at home, too. (Sex is much better than napping (or at least nice before a nap), but sex requires the effort of finding somebody to have sex with.) (And that means finding out whether or not said parter is a serial killer, has sexually transmitted diseases, is going to stalk you later or will want to move in with you and bring his two legitimate children and/or slobbering bulldog.) (Which is often more work than worth the bother.) (Ergo, I nap.)

Idle time out and about is spent with a caffeinated substance in hand and again with the reading. Or writing. Drinking alcohol is good, too, if you are with other idle people.

That being said, and since I have run like a madwoman across Italy for the past two weeks, I am going to sit. And read. And eat whatever vegetable substance that I ordered. Yay for me.

****************

Since I arrived at night, I decided to go see the primary night sights, of which the Champs Elysees is one of the paramount ones to see. It stretches from the Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe. The Champs Elysees is an important boulevard, and a tourist thing, and jammed with American stores and expensive 'French cuisine' restaurants. It's okay. It's where to go if you need Nike Paris. And I suppose somebody does. It's not really the point because if you're in Paris, this is one of those places you should go. It's a beautiful street full of strolling beautiful people.

Speaking of beautiful people, it took me all of 15 minutes of arriving into Rome's Termini station before I got hit on by a lovely Italian boy (too young) and all of three hours until I picked one out that I decided was really a lovely Italian boy (smart, too, spoke 5 languages). I have yet to find a Frenchman that does ANYthing for me. I do not know why this is.



I'm getting bothered by a butt-faced Frenchman as I walk down the boulevard. They must lay in wait for tourists. I'm over it with wanting to know the polite way to say 'Fuck off' in French. A swat of my hand in the air and a very English 'Bugger off!' crosses the language barrier adequately.

I bought my Paris magnet here. My refrigerator is going to topple over with all my travel magnets on it. By the time I'm 50, I'm going to need to buy a new refrigerator to fit all my travel magnets. It'll be worth it.


Near the end of the Champs where it almost intersects at the roundabout surrounding the Arc de Triomphe is the Publicis Cafe. I've been thinking of Aaron a lot here in Paris. This city does suit him. (I write this a week before he emails me to look for this very cafe.)

Melissa and Douglas warned me to cross the roundabout to the Arc de Triomphe via the underground passage, and so I take a picture of it so they see I didn't dodge traffic to cross over like those dumb Japanese tourists over there.





I climb the steps up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe and I can see the whole city and it is WONDERFUL! The Eiffel Tower is lit up green and yellow (something to do with rugby, don't ask me), and the city is like a necklace of light. It is phenomenal.



I know you can't really see much of me in this picture, but here's me, happy and standing on Paris at night.

Paris, Day 2: Holy Places, the Primordial Paris Waiter and cafe crawl

9/24
cafe, corner of Rue du Louvre and Rue Montmarte

Yay! I got my rude as hell Parisian waiter! I didn't get a picture of him, but I did get a picture of the view from my table. This is the corner of Rue du Louvre and Rue Montmarte.

The service industry is different in Italy and Paris (and for all I know, all of Europe) in that it is not the employment for young twentysomethings who struggle to make the rent. It's closer to a profession here, and as such, the service industry employs adults of a wider age group. Some of these waiters and waitresses have been obviously waiting tables for a very long time and in Italy, there were many who were exceptionally good.

My rude Parisian waiter is in his early 50s and he has iron-grey hair and a physique that speaks of a lifetime of living on very good French food. He did not roll his eyes when I didn't understand at first whether I would simply like something to drink or whether I'd like lunch. I could see those extraocular muscles twitching, however.

Every other table in(side) the house has a tablecloth but mine. I didn't get a bottle of water like I asked. I got a 4 oz. demitasse cup of tapwater. I do not think he spat in it because I am not worth the effort to him. But I also think this little 4oz glass of water and 3oz espresso will set me back at least E5.

I'm paying for the fine Parisian rudeness is what I'm paying for.

My feet are tired and it is raining. I'd hoped to sit somewhere awhile. Here I am, on Rue Montmarte and Rue du Louvre on a rainy Paris Monday afternoon. With a rude waiter and everything. Life is merde! Vive la France!

I should be reading Hemingway or Sartre...or even Che Guevara. What I have is the most recent installment of Adrian Mole adventures and Noah Levine's Against the Stream, his book on Buddhist practice.

******


I went to the Ile de Cite this morning. This is the heart of Paris, 1st arrondisment, where Notre Dame and the Palais Royale resides. The Palais Royale is now the main courtrooms, and they'll actually allow you to tour during proceedings. Gotta hand it to the French on that one...they are rightly proud of Libertie Egalitie and Fraternitie.


Notre Dame is magnificent, by the way. I was there this morning. I think I love it better than St. Peter's and it may tie with San Francesco for me. It is heavy. Dense. The light from the stained glass comes in like eyes allowing light into the soul, housed as space inside the thick bones and joints of the pillars and arches and flying buttresses. Yes, that's what it's like.

Notre Dame makes you feel very small, the way St. Peter's does...but St. Peter's...the part that you see when you walk in is very rationalist Renaissance. It's headspace. Notre Dame is heartspace...the irrationality and mystical presyllabic gut-ness of the Dark Ages. The pillars feel like ribs and you sit in the heart, beneath the double rose windows. They play music in Notre Dame, too, beautiful choral music. And there you are, this tiny person who sits in the heart.



That's what Notre Dame is like.




Saint-Chapelle has a different feel.

Saint Chapelle is a small church in the Palais Royale, also on Ile de Cite. Magnificent. It is a building of stained glass, built in the 13th century and as such, an astounding example of Gothic architecture at its very finest. It is also a monument to the French royals, the symbol of the Palais and the fleur-de-lis carved onto the pillars holding up the arches and into the walls, surrounded by that beautiful French blue...not quite pthalocyanine but not quite cerulean, a mix in between. I was struck stupid walking up to the ground floor, and this was even on a cloudy day. I did that thing that everybody does when they walk into the Sistine Ceiling, I stopped right at the top of the steps and just gawked at the jewel-colored walls.









******************
Another cafe, rue de Something

Okay, this is my fourth cafe today. Guillame is the name of it. Waitress is polite and spoke to me in French. Is a 4-cafe day excessive?

Non.



I'm in PARIS for fsck's sake. When in Italia, you eat gelato and pasta and drink chianti and when in Paris, you cafe crawl. I love this town. The cafe au lait is neither American cafe au lait nor true cappucino. True Italian cappucino is creamy and small and as like an American cappucino as a platypus is to a peacock. French au lait is simply watery espresso and very hot milk. The milke is still richer than any available statesite -- we pasteurize the flavor out of everything. But French express is not Italian espresso, either. The latter can hold a packet of sugar floating upon it until the sugar melts...that's a strong drink. Express is not that stiff or creamy (odd word for espresso, but accurate). But a cafe au lait is nice, too. Has a ritual to it kinda what British or Japanese tea might be like. Don't know yet.

This cafe is dark with brown leather or red vaguely velvet chairs. Plain glass ashtrays sit upon the dark wooden tables. The French do not do nonsmoking. A blonde girl with curly wisps and pouty lips comes into the cafe, smiles at me. She stands near my table and applies some lipgloss using the mirror on the wall. She smiles again, now glossy, and catches up with her friends further back in the cafe.

I have found Parisians to be no different from New Yorkers or Chicagoans. I don't think they are rude. They are simply in a hurry and the universe revolves around this city, not around wherever the hell you're from. I've been addressed in German, overheard someone say of me: "Hey, look at that Spanish girl." When I have worked on speaking French to people, they will answer in French. After I look stupid because I'm unable to understand what they just said, they'll switch to English.

I was consulting my map on the street and an older gentleman in a perfectly cut grey suit stopped and asked, in French, if I needed help. It startled me and I said, "Non, merci, I'm okay, merci." In unaccented English, he said, "You're sure?" (Note the contraction use...obviously speaks English well.) I smiled, "Yes, I'm sure, thank you very much."

They're not rude...just the one waiter today. They're mostly just in a hurry. Until they park in a cafe.

SPEAKING of cafes, know what else is fantastic about this city? Everybody seems to read. Sure, the cafes are also full of couples and friends of all ages and a handful of families. But there's a large chunk of just random individuals sitting and reading. Some writing. They are not reading Clive Cussler or its French equivalent (whoever that might be), either. This is Paris. Parisians are aware and proud of their heritage of churning out good writers. They read them.

There are many liberia too. Found one in German, spoke to the trilingual clerk. (Yes, another bookstore and I spoke NEITHER language. It's a sickness.)

I went shopping this afternoon, too. E20 cheap boots, flats, just need them to last the week. My right heel hasn't healed yet, though it's scabbed over. (I wasn't kidding about the bleeding feet.) Umbrella for E5.

I found nothing interesting I'd want to wear except a black sweater-coat. The family that sold me the E19 coat were Chinese. Daughter sold me the coat, but I could see mom and grandpa in the back, sewing. Ah, Paris. (I went back two days later and bought the same thing in grey, and son sold it to me...son speaks Mandarin, French, English and some Deutsch.)

I know Parisians are supposed to be on the cutting edge of fashion. But either fashion this fall sucks or I just came from Milano, where the real hub of fashion and class resides. Or I just have no fashion sense and wouldn't know it if it bit me on the butt. Always a very real possibility. Nothing I see on anybody on the metro (and everybody rides the metro) is something that I'd want to wear...it's all a cross between the 80s and grunge. It's ugly. (Some French women are a little overweight, just so you know. Not America fat, but it's not like that stupid book.)

So instead of coming home with some expensive fancy outfit from a Paris designer, I bought two inexpensive sweater-coats from a Chinese family who happens to live in Paris. Might be a fashion troglodyte, but I'm a happy troglodyte.

Paris, Day 3: the French laundromat, Very Important Museums and Jim Morrison's grave

stuff

Paris, Day 4: Moulin Rouge, sex shops, da Vinci and the Louvre

something here