20000 Leagues Out of my League

pas dans Paris, Texas

2010-06-13T12:08:00.001-07:00

elwoodrow.tumblr.com

El Pack-o, El surpasso, elle Paso, Mexico

2010-03-25T19:33:00.000-07:00

I don't think that I would have foreseen college coming at all, even the night before, months ago, so I can't quite tell you how I've ended up here or what I'm even doing. On Monday morning, I boarded a plane at DC National, that was destined hurtling towards Houston, which laid over to El Paso. Once again, I can't quite explain how these things work. The liaisons, the bridging, the transference, the progression of terminal conveyer belts, runway axels, time, Wendy's checkout lines, all escape me in a way that is possible if I had never even had them in the first place. With spontaneity, I commissioned enthusiasm and decided to spend my spring break at the Annunciation House in El Paso, Texas, a safe house and shelter for undocumented migrants.
Perhaps I've grown in myriad flutters throughout my teenage years, pulsed by the hot breath of hormones, slapped and chopped by the fear of finality and terror of commencement; and in Paris, alone, I felt self, and probed self, and bathed my hands in the amorphous, ubiquitous ooze of it, and saw life in its shuddering intervals; and I know that there will always be important things for me to do. I'll feel what I have to, and I'll say what is true and important, but I will never do what I need to do unless I understand that it is part of my growth.
I love books too often and often fear investing myself in their whole pursuit. I love music and often listen statically through a CD that I later gravitationally stumble into. I love people and I often look past them, or trace their approachings with glances of exhilarating radioactivity. I let experiences wash over me, but too often I derobe, and am dry in the face of the forward sun.
I love to write, but too often write.

My past month at Middlebury has been a blind sampling of the city on the hill, the American exceptionalist dream, and self-perceived nightmare of privilege. I have been blissful, and wrenched, pried, confused, excited, placid, flacid, tacit, and then there have been days where the world has exploded on my plate. And the propped buildings ahead, and the sprawling bust of the naked hills, and the autocratic sky have been a messy, belting, giggling morning dirge, a meal for me, a day. Everything has been beautiful, every morning a grin, some a smile. People exist as people, and they value things, and so do I. I feel in interaction with people. I even make quesadillas with steak in them.

So I decided El Paso was my appeal to the world that I have neglected for a lot too long. I was raised with an obsession for community and networking. I was raised with a romance and sacrament for cultural development and big ideas. I was taught to love things and know about them, and then to know things and know about those. If I can fault my mother and father for anything, it's for not propagating a blind consuming guilt about my privilege. I've been spoiled, and I realize that. My self-awareness makes no difference in the fact that I'm spoiled, but it makes it easier to come to terms with. And I do not understand the implications of my childhood environment, or worth, or whatever. I've just lived up till now- conditioned with my likes, dislikes, interests, disinterests, character, and sense of comfort. It has been really wonderful. And something has commanded me to change, and live dynamically, and work towards a sense of homeostasis, or perpetual motion, or connection with the outside world.

I make this assertion often that the human condition (if that makes any sense at all) is narcissism. And that what commands our actions, and searches for relationships with people and things and ideas, and motives, is a dream of self-sustaining approval. I think everyone experiences this to some effect, but I am aware of it, so in this post at least, it is mine.

So this trip to El Paso began an important idea to me, and became important. I left for it comfortably. Cascading down the eastern seaboard to the capital, tucked in beds and mats in between, and transferred on flights towards the boundary of Americanism. The border itself, as you land, appears obviously. Mountains, which herald divide, tear out from the ground straight to age, and the deserts are veined with irrigation, plotted with houses and inground pools, and then shrubs crawling with dying breaths towards gated wells, truncated by a chapel, stretched into obscurity down a long dirt road, beating as a figment even in its corporal actuality. The geography was noted, and I won't forget its power, its distinct information that this is a different land.

An ebullient friend of Danny swooped us from baggage claim and brought us to the Annunciation House, where we were introduced to the lot of volunteers, old and new, and we were given a tour. It was all remarkable, and yet I walked through it as though it were vacant, despite the smiling faces that terrified me in their powerful presence. I walked about with other faces in mind, and an obsession with disconnect. A need to understand things other than my haze in the desert, but a command to stumble lost in my own confusion. And a view I won't forget. At dinner we pray in a circle and sit. Once again I speak a different language, but this for now is okay. The guests have cooked with food that would otherwise be unemployed, and wasted, deported to dumpsters, deposed penitentiaries. And the guests begin their silent ritual. They seize their diagnostic dishes in the long light of the big country’s unrelenting grace: light, power, emptiness, a lack of focus, a sparce miseducated misguidance, fell behind the mountains, searching for a lost mother’s womb. And the barometric sparkling of the mountain seam of lights at the end of the night is the living vein that flings determination in some direction, bereft, longing somethingly. But for dinner they eat, and adjust the forks of the children- they serve eachother, and are solicited by volunteers to sign up for future shifts of cooking and cleaning. After dinner we take care of children in the Annunciation main office while the house members and volunteers have their weekly house meeting. The children are out of control and are programmed to smash everything. I make eye contact with the children as they dribble on me. On their chins, down their pant legs, from their cavernous teeth, sprays of saliva escape like a morse code plea. And they are beautiful. They hit each other and scream like any children, and in this pressurized blistered haven on the brink of America, they bond in ways that I will never understand.

The next morning, after a heretical dent of sleep, I wake up exhausted. Danny, Alan, and I rouse, eat, shower and proceed to Annunciation, where Alan, Amanda (a volunteer who occupied Danny's vacancy), and I sorted through an enormous heap of donated clothing. This clothing, donated from a slew of proponents of Annunciation, is sorted, folded, and offered to guests- who can upon their arrival and in increments of both time and necessity, select their wardrobes from the basement outlet. It is a hub of irony for an American, this wonderland of outdated, esoteric cuts of cloth, and because of that, is easy to rebuff. Much of the clothing smells of the most recent wearer, and various skorts, tank tops, mini skirts, blazers and mittens arrive gnarled and ravaged by the previous owners and means of transportation. Clothing that is indecent or unwearable (by shelter standards), is donated to Candlelighters, a NFP chain of thrift stores that funnels all earnings to foundations of cancer research. However, after a night of looking down at the playing children, with their standardly programmed stranger danger fear, recapturing two siblings in Buzz and Spidey shirts, and Raina, in a green jumper lapeled with a daisy, I began to picture shopping mothers, merchantesses of images of their childrens' youths, illustrators of a family portrait. It was no longer ironic clothing, it was what it was. Danny told me that once a black bag was donated to the shelter with empty pill bottles and trash in it. Families cannot wear that. Childhood wardrobes exist to solipsize your family in a world free from needles, guns and grass. Amanda, Alan and I hummed to soft rock while this all simply tip-toed in my peripheral psyche. I sniffed the clothing and whittled away at the astronomical pile toppling to the ceiling.

We spent the afternoon in the beginnings of contempaintion. Prep for the next day's job of office upkeep, we whittled away at irregularities in insulation and roofing, induced coats of paints, and listened to Shakira. At night, it was Alan's birthday. At Casa Viedes, the apartment that houses mostly women and families, Naomi and Alan had their joint birthday party. It seemed to be engineered a lot more for Naomi, as ", Alan" received a totally separate sign from "HAPPY BIRTHDAY NAOMI!," but it was authentic, and wonderful. There was a buffet, crepe paper, and two cakes- one was flavored pineapple, with a swirled ALAN, and one was funfetti with cherry icing, flowered in the corners with strawberries, with a peppy NAOMI. Dinner commenced in a piñata maming, during which I projected the tail of the donkey into an elderly woman, and then a dance symoposium, where I looked generally ridiculous.

Yesterday was overwrought with touches and touch-ups, hustling with frames of beds on our backs for the establishment of a new apartment, a dinner at the Tap- burritos and nachos!- and a ritualistic creasing and crating of invitations to a Voices of the Voiceless gala. In a blur, I was transformed after a nap into new ideas, where I hiccuped in repose till morning dawned in me.

Alan and I made a date for Americanized breakfast today. We found the only hip, exploitable coffee joint in the city, "The Percolator," and took in the surroundings over iced coffees. Then a ramble towards the far west of the city, where Alan's hair was cut. We spoke of French, of James Dean, of Alan's new French James Deanity, and then a day on shift at the Annunciation House.

time, more like bomb.

2010-02-02T21:41:00.001-08:00

It's been three months, and all of you inappropriately unacquainted readers must have wondered, where! when! huh? why? when did flannel stop being cool? MOMMMMM (hi D, u r the only one still reading this)

I came back to America and it was America like I had imagined, but it was more than America: it was a place. And "a" unusually holds a strong grip of centrality in that statement. It was a- equivalent to 'one' in meanings- place. For childhood at least, I've been doggypaddling in this enormous vat of goopy solvent, heaving in and out of the surface, dialed away from country, town, state, home, home, sandwich place, wrap place; unaware of being part of one conglomerate, a hollowed out quarry, being of place. And that is important.
I felt part of a place when I was 8, and my Mother, Aunt, step sister, brother, cousin and I went to the Palisades Mall. I was blindly excited about the Rainforest Cafe, a cafe that pretended to be a rainforest, but with Mexicans making the food that the angry white women brought to you. It made no difference to me. And then there was a carousel that day. I maybe slept through the ride home, rumbled into a lullaby over the weightlessness of the passage through tall space.
And when I was 9, at the camping trip, I felt like a poor boy. I didn't feel like a thoroughbred, or anyone who could jetski without wondering which side of my body to break on the fall. I wondered if there were actually savages waiting in the brush to kill me and my brother and if in the morning, after the lightning storm, my brother, my Dad and I would still know the way back to the summit.
When I was 10 I wondered about my Dog, and her dreams, and why she ran. I wondered if I did that when I slept, or if I just peed. I wondered if that could be waking life. A dream of running.
When I was 11, I fainted in the hall of my classroom because I don't think I drank enough water but I think I wanted to be saved. I auditioned to play the Nazi in the school play because it was a pretty song and noone else had tried it. I loved to watch all of the kids audition for the Artful Dodger. I loved it when they were all cast as him, even the Colombian girl who smelled like tuna fish on the bus to the Space Simulation Center. I sat in the nurse's office, and she gave me cupcakes: some were Freihoefer's, like the one with matted red frosting, and they had a hot tamale on top. She had doe eyes, the nurse. She had wild, tempestuous blonde hair that rested on her doll scalp like a triumphant poet. I shared secrets with Adam in his room and he wouldn't turn off his screen saver or music during the sleeping part of sleepovers. We rode by Fountain Square, and saw Taylor Mondshein, on a razor scooter, and Alex Bodor on a bike, and we felt hushed in our stomachs but didn't say anything. At the graduation dance, Alex Bodor stole my hat, but because I was mad at Brad Jacobson for accidentally colliding with me during a game of Ghost in the Graveyard.
When I was 12, 13, 14, I knew places. And 15, 16, 17, 18, rooms, sensations of lightness, heaviness, qualifications of different types of tinglings, their force lines, what to expect next. The sound of footsteps, the difference between a dark room and a light room, the turgidity of the frame of a good bottle of seltzer in comparison to the flaccidity of a deposed container of raisin bran. The oncoming flow of vomit, its prevalence and incongruous tendency to make you feel abandoned and terrified at a later stake in life. You remember baths for lice, your sister's chicken pox on christmas, and a trembling box at the door in the snow that isn't your's.
All of this brings Me here.

I left France on November 25th. I surprised my sister for her birthday, and she was upset about not getting attention. I tried to keep it a secret, because I wanted the truck to pull away to delineate my critical post-adventure mass, in an ensemble of clothes that I had owned for years, but now somehow fit. It would be like the end of "Dude Where's My Car?" I left because it was time to come home, and I was in love with Paris by the end, but in a way that only I think of as love. And I am a different person than when I arrived in Paris, clouded by fear of my sense of place escaping me, and I am different than when I came home, hoping for everything to converge into euphonia. It's because at the end of the day, this is my only skin. I have to do me, and any emotion that grazes in my passing, or any flowering emotion that molds on my sockets is natural, and constructive. I love people because I believe in them. I look forward to live in the present, I dream, I have to shake off the self-doubt, and some nasty instincts that sometimes make me feel lost and awful. But sitting in a cockpit, at the end of the day, reading the New York Times to try to just look at the world, feeling linens and sweating in whatever depths have those capabilities like some hero, I'm doing the best I can. I've begun to learn lessons, feel, and normalize in ways that terrify me. But I have to conserve the parts of me that keep me. I accept myself. I don't have to approve of myself but I accept myself, and any kind of wrangling that results from that has to be good. Charlie told me that I'm the same person that I am today that I was tomorrow, and I still have all of these people. Whoever you are, thank you. Thank you for showing me the things you all have, and thank you for teaching me how to live effortlessly even in the most awful times that require the most effort. I think that being Me is what I need, and thank you all for knowing that that exists.

I'll see you on the other side!

Afternoon delouvre

2009-11-22T12:39:00.000-08:00

I visited the Louvre today. Holy Godsplosion. Wowabunga. I've never been more invested in or intrigued by an experience in my life. And by experience I mean museum experience. But nonetheless. Egads!

I need to preface by bringing up the foremost thing on my mind. La Jocunde. The Mona Lisa is the most alive peace of art that I have ever seen. I spent 10 minutes staring at her- she not only actively pursued me, but deviated in expression as I thought towards her. I burst into laughter at one point. She squinted. She responded to me. I wonder so many things about the painting. Divinci had to love this woman. How can you see something so well, know it well enough to animate it perpetually on a canvas without loving it? It isn't in the least bit scary, but it is the eriest, most haunting thing I've ever seen. Museum thing. Once I saw a picture of a woman who had been run over by a train. That totally sucked. The Mona Lisa is erect against this defunct, heavy landscape, that she so nimbly smirks in front of, but it's the most internal-ecstaticism that you can imagine. It can't be replicated on a postcard- I looked all around la musée. It changed my life. How a painting can be a time-capsule, but not even of a message-- of an emotion. I looked around and noone else was as transfixed as I was. You have to look for her somewhere in her eyes and then she wraps you. Art is really good.

Lady Liberty is an unbelievable piece as well. In its quiet romanticism, the painting has such an honest, self-aware sense of nationality. Lady liberty is a nippless woman, and she leads a horde of disgruntled men with a child. Youth and gentle liberty confidently but vulnerably and almost blindly lead a nation. Traversing the flesh and ghosts of their countrymen. She is just barely lit, and the factories still are drawn up across the back, reasserting the heavy reality of the French.

Today, French paintings are what took Me. I traipsed through an enormous, 3-hour historical tour of French paintings, remarking the development of depiction. The credit to the human face, particularly the eyes and mouths. The mystery of nature, and our mercy at the barbarous stances of the unknown. Truly, we are not worthy. The French are beautiful, by the way. I will never be able to think I am attractive again- the portraits rattle of their blind confidence, their stately rationality, and their composed beauty. The women with the cheeks of babies and the eyes of deer. The men with the bones of caskets and the glares of forests. In America, we are vulnerable, and unsubstantiated at the center- it's something we have to conquer, a less obvious fear that's seeded in our collective genome. Sitting in front of the radio, praying tell of the men overseas, petrified but hopeful, we are infants searching for the warm barn of our fathers. In France, history is a proud trajectory into the harsh world, with determination and a total dearth of aggression. The oil pastures, the gently cracked portraits of young courtship, the scrupulous obsession with capturing the human soul, in a frame. It's mystifying. I wish I had the bravery and the energy for art. I think I could do something cool.

The fluctuation of a peoples morale throughout the history of their empire is also fascinating. I can't delve into the power of the ancient sculptures of Greece, Rome, Egypt, even France, enough, but I can note the impulsive human obsession with form, the power of muscle, and the angles that dismember our linear impulses is really cool. I hate that the body is so illicit to everyone in America. Look at how Michelangelo worked for weeks on another man's uncircumsized penis. That's pretty wild. The human body is beautiful. Sculptures frustrate me because I often get totally lost in their messages- I look for emphasis, and sometimes I see that statues are just supposed to be accurate depictions, encapsulated beauty, but I get frustrated. I want a story, or context, or knowledge. I think about the animated person. The lack of eyes in early sculpting is really interesting: the fact that people avoided the main indicator of expression on our bodies seems to dehumanize the humanism that's supposed to be perpetuated. I think that it's because it's hard to accurately carve an eye, and that the rest of the face is aesthetically powerful enough. The marble just makes the subject so cold- why winnow out of the body the most emotionally indicative contraption? Eyes are everything for me. One of my friends has the most beautiful eyes in the world, and they used to infuriate me because they were so powerful and piercing. That is what needs to be saved. Painting can do that. However, in the contacts of a lot of statues, statues get cooler individually. To see how the depiction of a person can change as an empire descends to entropy is so cool. The Romans humbly painted their leaders solemnly, and their nobility tranquilly. But as the prosperity of the empire dissipated, the figures stood even more erect, flailing their fingers and torches in the air, as if they were groping for a salvaging slab of driftwood in a suffocating ocean. It's got to be hard to be a failing empire. There's a lot to have fail. The romans went down pretty hard. Good for them, je suppose.

The Egyptians are so interesting because, I realize that with significantly fewer resources 4000 years ago, it was difficult to perfectly paste a portrait onto papyrus, but what's with everyone in Egyptian painting looking like wooden skeletons? It might be the fact that their form of polytheism was designed as a hierarchy of the dead over the undead. Therefore, living mortals must be homogenous and simply designed. But still, the only beauty you can note in Egyptian faces is on statues of Empresses. Otherwise, the crafts and trinkets are the disjointed trinkets that display true artistic realism, and beautiful realism at that. Egypt is cool because it is so far away.

The pyramid is remarkable of course, and the booming sun was muffled by husky clouds, burping patches of soft blue. The sun shone intermittently, but it only balked at the ghostly robot, the pyramids. The Louvre itself, antiquated architecture, puppeted by the sun, shied away from the postmodern gem, a New World embryo ensconced in the frightened old world, trembling architecture situated in a boldly unfrightened Old World. It will be hard to leave the Old World. It's so true.

Tonight, the family and I had des goutes with another American living in France, but a dancer. She was wonderful, and smart, and strong. She reminded me that you grow into places, and that the occupation of space only occurs when you focus on the forward motion in your life: the goals, the dreams, the tasks. I forget what the saying is, but I'm growing up and learning like most others do that clichés are clichés because they're true. But, here it is.

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
c'est vrai! bisous a tout le monde. Supér!

The Great Chocolate War

2009-11-19T10:01:00.001-08:00

I want to talk about World War 2 and if any of you don't like that then you can suck it because I have a blog and that's more than I can say for about 5 of you. Sorry Mom, Dad, Grandma Bobby, Davey and my lamp that I put googly eyes on so that I could talk to it. It's just true.

ML, a World War 2 Memorial in Paris, is some heavy shit. It's probably really heavy partly because it has a lot of things about a war that took place around the world and the holocaust, which has anyone ever remarked sounds just like an obscure Jewish holiday? JNSP, mais c'est un truc intéressant. Anyways, WWII, a la ML. La Deuxieme Guerre Mondiale. With means in French, the 2nd world war. For some reason, their translation of the name sheds so much more light on how ridiculous the war was: we managed to over-complicate things enough to get into a World War once. And that is really ridiculous because it is literally a war that takes place around the world. DO YOU KNOW HOW BIG THE WORLD IS? Since I think in terms of fruit by the foot, let me paint you a 'lil pitcha. a Fruit by the Foot is 3 feet. The circumference of the earth is 131479713.54 feet. So, that's, if you round up, because better to have some portion of a Fruit by the Foot- even if you traded a half a foot of it for your whole sandwich, your powerade, your banana and your allowance for two weeks- is better than no portion, 43826572 Fruit by the Foots. OH NO, OR IS IT FRUITS BY THE FOOT? OR FRUIT BY THE FEET? I would still eat a Fruit by the Foot even if it were by my feet. Sorry Mom, Dad, Grandma Bobby, Davey and my googly eye lamp, it's just true.

Anyways, a war with literally the WHOLE world happened once. And then, not even like 400 gigayears later, like 20 years later, they accidentally had a second World War. And they also let one person start it. Did you know there are rules of war? How is that possible? I'm not against war because it's awful, I'm just against war because it's such bad logic. Like disappointing logic for dudes like Churchill and Count Duku. But I can't get mad about it, because judging from how easy it is, I could probably start another world war. Whatever, I just do what I do. Spencer put an ice cream on his status today that was called "Magical Brownies," and its a Dave Matthews Band ice cream with Black Raspberry and Sweet Cream ice creams, with full brownies. How?
I don't know. But it happens.

So. World War 2. This memorial was powerful. It took you through a relatively terse, but really authentic timeline of French WW2 history- all headlines from newspapers, leaflets, primary documents, flyers, essays, photos and propaganda. They really simply weaved in the aspect of the Holocaust, almost making you feel as if you were a non-semetic, neutral French citizen. That's hard to affect two Americans- Hiltzon and Me- with. I'm Jewish and well to do, I look Aryan. She is Catholic and could probably glare at the Gestapo and have them retreat with self-loathingly. It was unbelievable though. The idea of watching a war unfold infront of you on headlines, that are half the size of the paper- these papers were incidentally more expensive due to their urgent nature, but does this make sense? half the front page is the headline-, and slowly realizing that real danger is posed on not just your safety, but your identity. The French weren't the French when Germany invaded- that never occurred to me. I mean like, sure, yeah, in a ridiculous, romantic way they were always the French, but they weren't, because Germany staked out their hood, so they were techincally German. Dig? Anyways, they lived in captivity under the Nazis for four years, were indoctrinated, oppressed, repressed, blinded. They had no choice but to be submissive, brave, and, for a brave few, tacitly rebellious.
I've heard the stories about the Jews hundreds of times from the URJ, Larchmont Temple, my parents, the media. But the countries that were invaded, that's rough.
Of course, because I'm lonely in France and an American. I thought, what about us?
Well first of all, invading America, if you're not 30 countries, is infeasible if you're gonna be smart about it. We are 307,971,393 people. Let's measure that in Fruit by the Foot. That's 102657131 Fruit by the Foot, a foot for each person. Our country is also fucking huge. I won't measure it in Fruit by the Foot because space freaks me out and I don't want to think of Fruit by the Foot as a three-dimensional object. Let me be a kid please. "Funeral" has already raped my bright, beady 20/20 vision and turned it into Mad Dog 20/20 vision. So let's talk about this. Afghanistan, the biggest country that would practically invade America, would have to literally occupy every township in America to guarantee complete surveyance of our land. Sorry dudes. Non. And we would also have to be fought from 4 directions. We'd be able to fight a dope war in organized legions, and a dope guerilla war as well- we still have militias, maybe a reason why Amendment 2 should just chill as it is.
That's nice and comforting. But let's think here. Why aren't you realistically repulsed by the prospect of us being occupied. Because it could never happen, right? It could never happen? Why, because we're so goddamn enormous? We're so goddamn enormous? Oh, so there are a lot of us in a lot of different places. Oh shit. What's our identity? If someone invaded America, what would we be losing? And don't say liberty, freedom or justice, because we've always had that to some effect-- with that kind of thing, you don't really know what you have till it's gone.
If we were invaded, we would all feel it in different ways. I could get all worked up and self-righteous about that fact that this means we don't have a unified vision of what America means, but that in its own right is what America means. Maybe we need a threat to our country to pull everybody closer and winnow out all the poopy ignorance and Hatanism.
Allors, we ascended to the second floor to a 10 minute video, soundtracked with music that was jaw-droppingly evocative of the Dark Forces ambiance music. It was powerful. It pitched the war in stages, biding the audience through every step. Watching the city be taken over, women being shot in front of Versailles, Nazi planes flying over the Sacre-Coeur, watching a nazi flag hung from the Arc de Triumph, and an anti-Russian advertisement plated on the Eiffel Tower was stomach-turning.

And then America came! We really saved the day there. I know we came late, but the Germans were weak then, getting bombarded from both sides- EIFFEL TOWERED, IRONICALLY. Anyways, c'est vrai. We hit the Germans when they were crumbling, with that last blast of gusto that shut it down. We shouldn't be treated as the heros, but some heros. The smiling American faces emancipating the city, the fraternity between the French and English at Normandy, the music playing ath the chocolate bars, it was a new Era!

And then I realized something. This is happening. We are doing this. I just don't read the New York Times articles about it. I know nothing. I am educated, and cultured, and compassionate, and I act like i don't care. I love America. I swear I care! I'm not saying it because I need to believe it. I just don't understand.
But this is different. Our allies weren't over there. The tiff represents nothing that we are morally obliged to defend. If you argue terrorism, that's not that doing of a particular government. We are only inflamming the issue: everybody hates us and we're posting ALL OVER THEIR FACEBOOK WALLS.

So I am going to kick back and figure this war out in a way that makes sense to me. We're too big of a world now to have the privilege/curse of being unable to avoid the news. The internet, the masses of passing strangers, they make hiding easy. We all live in cities, because the city is everywhere. This is the real age of the city. This is also My era, and it is going to matter to Me in a way that my Dad cared about his Fathers war and Oliver Gant cared about his nations war.

I have two more full weeks of class, and it's time to visit the museums and all of that junk. But junk is cool- you can go diving for it and make things with it. I will miss Paris, i know, but it is wearing me down. It's also teaching me the most as I'm peeling away. Maybe right now I don't know if I love it, but I am attached to it. A part of me needs it. Tonight is Katie Hiltz's last night. We're going to dinner-picnic on the Seine and try new seasonal wines. We're saying goodbye to a time that we were in. We always are, in a way. But these goodbyes and the times that they are saluting also keep making us until we are unmade.

Bye Autumn! I got a free chocolate bar on the way into the train this morning.

I got the Bradford Pox, and the general jungle fever.

2009-11-16T15:46:00.000-08:00

Bradford Cox made me feel like the prettiest girl at Prom tonight, even if I do have bad skin and sandbag fat pockets in the creases of my arms. I SAW ATLAS SOUND TONIGHT. HI! Well, that's not where it started. I ate dinner at a really weird restaurant that was garden gnome themed; it turned out not being just garden gnome themed though. It was garden gnomes giving peace signs themed. But it wasn't just garden gnomes giving peace signs themed. It was gay men in blue railroad overalls with predatory facial hair themed. And it was also not asking me how I wanted my burger cooked themed, and it was also bad dinner themed. But it was a nice atmosphere. The tables looked picnic-y, and the view was of Gare l'Est, I'd say one of Paris' primary 5 stations. It's actually a beautiful station when you walk by it, because it's an enormous alabaster tomb-ish mecca of transportation, with rotund windows and a huge courtyard, and behind it, as you walk parallel to its platforms, are train tracks that run out of the city in a gated off range, for what seems like miles isolated. Above the tops of the platforms are canopy roofs, and cresting those are apartments that are authentic in their homogeneity: some lights are incandescent and some are off, in what seems to be a tastefully Middle Class compound of spaces. It reminded me of China weirdly- probably because of its repetitiously binary arrangement of tasteful windows, impersonal, distant windows (literally) into peoples lives. The city is just like New York in so many ways. I mean, it's about as different as a city can get in most ways, but it still has the collaged, haphazard, irreconcilably diverse feeling that New York does. The black population generally dwells in a less strategized sect of the city, carrying out the same routineness that we suction forward in les Banlieues. It's an interesting city dynamic. You don't feel the anger here, or the restlessness. That's probably foreboding to Americans, who might see that as an acceptance of immobility. Regardless, it is what it is, and it's a city at peace. OKAY?
Okay. So I bopped through the slums to my favorite venue, Point Ephemere, where I made it to the front of the queue, having strategically purchased my ticket already, and I hunkered down front row center. I made a pit stop at the bar for a 50cl Stella, but they were sans gas. Still gets me. I made it up front though. And the opening act was on in about 20 minutes. They're called Choir of Young Believers, and they're actually really great- they're expressive, structured, dynamic-, but it's hard to really feel strongly about a band before you hear their studio material. They were really sweet though. They are Danish and all they could say was "Thank you very much," and "okay, you are good." You could tell they were grateful though. They reprised their time on stage by accompanying Atlas Sound on his opening song. It was fucking beautiful. The lead singer had a very Samuel Beam beard. There was a pretty blonde celloist.
But Bradford Cox, the solo-artist, a member of Deerhunter- a band that has recently assumed hiatus, is Atlas Sound. And he is so Atlas Sound. He used an acoustic guitar, a drum set, and a distortion set to create a concert that goes in my type five of all time.
My favorite five, off the top of my head:

1. Sufjan at Town Hall,
2. Animal Collective at ATP,
3. Dizzee Rascal, or Dark Was the Night. This is hard.
4. Sufjan for the BQE
5. Atlas Sound

Anyways. Bradford and I are friends. Boyfriends, but in the way that girls say it. Like, "she is my girlfriend!!" and then people make fun of her for saying that. Don't make fun of us. We are best friends. When he finished his first solo song, I whispered to him, "you're really good," and he laughed. Then I said something that he thought was funny and he laughed for ten seconds while the audience was quiet. He would speak to me in between songs and I would tell him things like, "even your flaws are perfect." At the encore, he asked me what he should play. When I suggested "The Screens," my favorite B-side, he spoke to me for a full minute on stage about how improvizing over music machines is so difficult. At the end of the show, he smiled at me and handed me his guitar pick and set list. Okay? It Happened. Sorry if you are having trouble dealing with that.

In my subsequent daze, I wandered through the worst neighborhood back to the Metro, accidentally boarded the metro that is supposed to connect my to my line, in the wrong direction. I didn't notice until I was at the end of Porte Cligancourt, which is the bootleg leg of the medena. Bootiful. It was because I was BBMing and I lost track of time. I BBMed Carly after I boarded the Metro heading south to St. Michel- this was unintentionally because my mistake was a Carly de Feis oldie-nor-goodie. Anyways, I picked up a Crepe au Nutella and plopped on the 10, arriving at the platform as the train was pulling in, and now I'm here! Happy! Going to a concert alone is lonely, but this one ended up being like Warped Tour, but for people who are alone and probably would get in a little too much of a nappy mood at warped tour.

My weekend was so great. Saturday is most worthy of mention though. I got my Eiffel wet (in three senses) with the VannaWhitious Katie Hiltz(on). The early afternoon? Hiking the Eiffel tower in a fucking typhoon, that we both got a couple of beautiful pictures out of, a lot of love, a couple of laughs, and a rainbow at the top. It was beautiful. When we peaked our heads over the railing, the sun tore through the clouds, settling the horizontal gradient from grey to blue evenly. The sun barked onto the Seine, which expressively, powerfully, but tranquilly whispered its redescent to relaxation. Then the rainbow, pouring onto the SacreCoeur. Katie and I made our way down, hesitant to wear out the good times that the tower was showering us with (heh), and, on our crossing over the Seine back to Trocadéro, we picked up popcorn with table sugar, strawberry ice cream and French Fries. We parted ways only to reunite for a fucking awesome evening. We met at Odéon, and bypassed Smelly Bar to clink Biere Sirops (grenadine, seltzer and beer) at Divey Bar, another main-squeeze of mine. We dined at a pub in Cluny, watched the Ireland-France match, made German/Morrocan/French friends, sang along to a bar performer who kicked it off with "Kiss," a la Prince, and ended with Elvis. We crawled back to Biere Sirops at Divey Bar (en route, indulging in some nutelligence) and kicked it for another hour. She's the best.

And Friday, I spent some time with Helene, who is Gelman's cousin. She's a sweetheart, and we had a really nice night of drinks and catching up. It's really nice to spend time in the city with a real Parisian who is my age. Here's the kookiest shit though. I was crossing the alleyway to meet Helene at the Cluny MacDo's (McDonalds' abbreviation in French), and as I passed through the crowd, someone in my counter-current broke loose and stood at me, with a gaping, familiar smile. Holy shit. It was Kevin, who is a Feb, two years my Senior. I met him when I visited Charlie. My visit to Charlie had an auspicious mama-mia moment when I flew next to Senator John Glenn (in a plane, I wished I could have showed him a better time, but what really would impress him at this point). Now in France, pre-Midd, I bump into Kevin and his Dad in the middle of a mystically Midd monde. Anyways, they were unsurpisingly so friendly, and we spoke for a little before we both had to break off. Later that night, when I called Gelman to tell him about this, I collided with Kevin and his Dad again mid-conversation. I don't know how the world works, but it does. And lately, I'm sure everything's gonna be just okay.

I'm off to Stooge-Snore. Love!

home videos, apartment cassettes

2009-11-12T11:47:00.000-08:00

DiC, more home footage for y'all. don't get excited, I've barely been taking pictures here.

every American who enrolls in the class that I'm in is a character out of a Christopher Guest movie. he responds to everything our teacher says with "exactement," (exactly- in French, I've found, and made good use of the fact that 'ment' means -ly in English) even though he is 6040404 years old and knows now just as much French as I do. He took the place of the lovely dutchess three weeks ago who had a family of four dogs and fed them wine in cheese on her wicker chairs in her Colorado back yard. Shalom y'all.

Update: music is back in!

ONE BAND ONE SOUND DRUMLINE

The Portrait of the Funkist as a FunkMan

corners! the harvest of American entitlement! pigeons!

2009-11-12T09:56:00.000-08:00

It's getting to the point that, if someone asked me what the one perfect symbol of my time in Paris has been, I would be sure in answering "pigeons." I didn't chose this. It's just that they are everywhere, and in general, although I know that in the mind of any American- and I know because it is in the Constitution- has a space in their heart reserved for hating pigeons. Hating their poop, especially when it happens on your head at your little league soccer game during the only five minutes they subbed you in; hating their oily quoffs of ruffled neck quill, that are sometimes pink and green, which is for some reason even more infuriating, maybe because that's a really archaic, out-of-touch color scheme; hating their uncertain, clumsy, explosive body maneuvers, whether they be aggressive kicks, or wing shudders that seem to begin a sentence but swallow the rest, or neck jerks that are, in a human form, that guy who only dances with the upper right region of his whole body and doesn't make eye contact with anyone, and when he finally does pretends that he's stopping because he felt like it. Pigeons also have googly eyes. The kind that you used to use elmer's glue to stick all over computer paper with feathers and glitter. Pigeons really just look like big, googly-eyed transvestites.
But I am having trouble hating pigeons here. My afforementioned pigeon friend, at SacreCoeur, was really charming. And I've met others, who really just carry on, and treat their awkward kinesthetic bullemia like the Locomotion.
Today, I saw about 18 pigeons brawling over two aluminum foil sandwiches. Which was funy, because either before or after, I was thinking of the smell of my brown-paper-bagged lunch in my backpack in Elementary School, and I still can't describe exactly what it is or how it makes me feel, but there two sandwiches, comically of ambiguous identity, like two mummies plummeting on the deck of a bucking pirate ship, getting gang-raped by about 18 peckers (well,). Sans bitterness, sans facetiousness, I profess with total satisfaction, that this is the most excitement I've seen since I've been here. The pigeons all had the most trippy coats of mail. One was a really bovine pigeon, and another was a sewage pigeon, but they all fought with equal dignity. All aggressive in suit of one of the two sandwiches, while the other, literally identical, hid behind the pack. It looked like a really bad commercial about a sale at IKEA, dubbed in pigeon. It all climaxed with the dislocation of a piece of crust from the guts of the tinfoil, spewing about eight of the pigeons in the direction of the vagrant white bread. The clump of pigeonsteaks vomited their wings forward like broken wind-up toys and assaulted the crust, considered by humans to be the Mustang of regions of sandwich bread. The interjecting tributaries of human boots, wrathful in their leather, abnormal enormity separated various pigeons from their honeymoon with the scrap of meal, but finally, a pigeon that looked like institutionally lit dust achieved the bread and stole it to solemnity, perched on the deck of the Best Western, or to a wise pigeon, paradise.

My day was great. I decided to skip class, which was not easy, because we had an actual day off yesterday, but I felt so tired when I was waking up. I know that's not a new weird fad that I started, but I made the decision, and because I made it, there was no point in regretting it. I ended up needing the sleep. I slept until 1130, tallying up 12 hours that left me still a little damp. I'm always fighting some sickness. I showered, put together breakfast, and then, intending to spend my first afternoon dans La Louvre, I hopped on the 10. Naturally, bumping into Shakespeare and Co, my day changed. I spent an hour in the store, which I left as a whole different guy. My first impression of it, besides that it looks exactly like my Dad's house, was that it smelled perfect, like lavender and old wood. The shelves are huge and imperfect, but still totally orderly and primped; like a weird genetically engineered child of my two homes. There was a shelf dedicated to "Lost Generation Writers" at the door, and beautiful Canadian/English receptionist, a hollowed out stone firepit canopied by a glass display table, and disjointed rooms, elevated at different altitudes, like a hiccuping staircase. I ended up buying "Look Homeward, Angel," with the intent to read its 500 pages in the next weel (I've read the first 5 and I know it's gonna be a big deal change in the way I look at everything) and come back.
I wandered back into the plaza, and was delivered out of a couple of alleys into place St. Michel. I coincided with the beginning of a show by Les Parpaings Perdus, a horn ensemble from the ETPS. Holy shit. I'm going to post videos later tonight, but it was so awesome. They were one sound, and it was a really pretty sound. They all dressed in construction worker outfits, which I discovered via the InternetMachine later was because they are architecture/construction students, and they choreographed each of their numbers with movement: jumps, walks, dances, and turning into a human snake.
Then I walked for an hour. I looked at the day, which wsa overcast and blue, like a yingyang. I ended up at Tabac, my new favorite cafe. It's a New York restaurant dropped in the middle of a plaza at the Sorbonne, with a huge tent and really reasonable prices. I had 50cl of Stella and Oignon Gratinee. Then a crepe before the metro home.
Some days just don't need the commentary. Some days teach you that beauty doesn't need to be anything, and you don't need to be anything to be with beauty. Smiling because you made room in your mind for it, and you can feel like morning is always touching you. You are able to smile because you are strong on this day.

i worry sometimes

2009-11-07T04:16:00.000-08:00

This is just definitely the biggest banana I've ever seen and I don't know what to do but eat it anyways.

To me the mind is a museum. I think that the way that we think of anything is a result of our desperate need to live and feel okay while doing it. I sometimes analyze my methods of thinking too much- it's self inflicted karma for being critical about most oither things in the world, incidentally, rarely of other people as an exception. But to me, the mind has to be a museum. Because if it isn't then what is it? if I think about looking at a museum, and really seeing it, and then having someone tell me, "no, that ain't no museum," then I'm confused. Because then what is a museum at all? One thing that I seduce myself to do way too often is to deconstruct every single thing thayt I believe in or love until it doesn't make sense to me. it's my own form of masochism, but it's also earnest, which I guess is okay I guess. Anyways, my mind, I am sure, is a museum. A museum is full of things that other people put there. The museum arranges it accordingly to its own view of each piece's ultimate place in the collection, whether it be in an ascending spiral ramp, or in a mass of interconnecting boxed spaces, or whether it be in an enormous palatial relic, embracing a postmodern glass pyramid. And it's also up to the museum what art goes where, which piece is juxtaposed to another, what message or feeling to coerce by ordering and mingling different portraits and installations with eachother, the sequencing, the trefoil of emotion that torrents in each room. A museum with wonderful art can't really go wrong- the art is all there; but the museum can severly subvert the potential posed by all of that coincident beauty in one place. If you hang a Picasso upside-down or put a waterfountain and faux-leather bench on a Rothko, it's still there, but I think that Rothko got his carpets at Bed, Bath and Beyond.
The mind can be a museum with wondeful management. Simple appreciation for the donated, purchased and acquired art; simple organization and logical design, consequentially; and a reasonable entrance fee, for those genuinely interested- without billboards around the city, exhibitionist offering of sacred creativity. There can even be a cafe in the basement with dino nuggets, a soda fountain, and frozen yogurt, or a tasteful gift shop.
But this is all up to the museum. And what is paradoxical about the analogy is that, the way I see it, we are unique to our own museums, because while we pay our entrance fees to foreign museums in our own ways, we manage to both appropriate or own museums, and visit them perpetually. That's the bone we have to pick as humans. Being critics of our own museums that we are also curators for. Even worse, most of the time, we are objective critics, and overly-conscious curators.
It's really simple, because I could write so much more- the critic need be a visitor that loves art, unconcerned with details. The museum needs to progress with its vision, its concept, its inspiration as times change, always paying homage to its rich history oto draw a vision from.
Sometimes, passing through the stark halls and keeping distance is beauty enough. Sometimes, staring into the thread count of the canvas is deadly.

It's just a museum. We can always go to Burger King on the way home.

By the way, things besides my stream of consciousness have been doing so well here! Most weeks aren't really exciting, they're more pregnant with quiet beauty. Gradual fulfillment throughout the day. Sometimes, a day can be so quiet, that I'll be searching and waiting for the beauty everywhere I walk: through the rose garden behind the Notre Dame (which I've visited seven times now, the SacreCoeur only twice, and no other tourist attractions yet), through the gayboyhoods, the Jewborhoods, the hoodberhoods, and finally always over the Seine, or next to it somehow, on the way back to the Metro. By the way, my main Metros, so that some of you more travelled-to-Paris-folk have an idea, are Metro Sevres-Babylone (for school, ETA per morning-750), Metro Odéon (for general rabble-rousing, ETA pour lunch in the afternoon- 145, ETA pour alcoholLunch and a leg of my tour at my favorite bar, which I have aptly named "Smelly Bar," due to its smelly nature, and more figuratively for its alacrity to serving underaged -keep in mind, this is below 18 in France- Italians that like to dance on tables that once in a while belt under their strapping masses), Metro Cluny-La Sorbonne (for Latin Quarter shannanigans, or a different route to Smelly Bar), and Gare L'est, for the majority of my concerts, including Atlas Sound a week from Monday!
Anyways, last night I kicked it off at Metro Odéon, where I met Izzy Kittenberg. We hopped straight to la Boite de la Smelly to renew our subscriptions to Jaegerbombs Illustrated, Jaegerbombs Teen People and Jaegerbombs Soap Digest. After our quick stint, we caught Allie, who suggested that we alter our bankrolls in the spirit of thrift-- I never say no to cheap fun. So, we swiped our Carte Bleus at a really weird convenience store with any type of liquor that possibly exists in the world, but only one bottle of each. I naturally threw down on some Desperado, which, if I can refresh the minds of any of you who are unfamiliar, is a potion of the DevilGods: tequila, beer, and what my Spideysenses have identified as Lime Fructose Syrup #5, a close relative of the glue they make out of horse hooves. This Cartel score was whisked down to the drizzly, crime-ridden left bank of the Seine, and some serious research was done on its contents. Especially on it's drinkable contents. You see, when you drink Desperado, the world becomes your friend. Not only do you feel like your stomach is a cheap jacuzzi, not only do you feel like you're getting felt up by optimism, but shit literally happens in the real world to confirm your weird nouveau-Absenthe induced high. It's like a Zip-a-dee-doo-da Mad Dog. Two French 20-somethings came up to us with a bag of either mouse food or gerbil food, and wished us "Good Health," and this was so nice! However, should we have been worried about this if they were most likely sex-offenders. The interaction deteriorated into me becoming very irregularly close with one of the men in a short period of time. His name was Tiebout, and I now know about his 50 second sex in the Red Light District that he swore he wouldn't have, but hey! When in Rome! Or I guess Amsterdam! Maybe! I also accompanied him in mooning a boat of tourists, which I did because he convinced me really well in a short period of time that it's a French tradition, so. It started to rain, but after a lot of lies about having a stirdy knowledge of what "Monster Garage" is and who Jesse G. James is, we left. That wasn't before my less familiar new friend asked for a kiss. So a handshake it was, and then we left. The rest of the night was crepes and good times with a regular old dream team of Chaps. Tonight I think I'm gonna head to the Cinematheque, which I love to do here. This morning was beautiful also. I walked for an hour, around the area, to Starbucks, and then had a really delicious brunch with my family (it was lunch for them). College is getting closer and closer: it's three months away at this point, which is the same span of time that existed between the end of High School and College for most people. I have to choose a First-Year Seminar sometime soon, which is a course that is intensive on writing and analytical thought; I'll be in it with 10-14 other Febs, and it will be the most instrumental experience on my reimmersion into academia. It also, by some secret order, determines which dorm I live in, which I don't find out until the week before I go to college.
Check them out, let me know your opinions, via comment, e-mail, carrier pigeon. http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/ump/fys/sp_course_desc.htm

Autumn here is more of the same than I had expected, and that gives me a lot of love. Safe!

Sweaty Crocker

2009-11-03T12:08:00.000-08:00

can't you tell I like to have fun? I love to have fun.

PS. I saw two pigeons today that were so pretty. That doesn't mean I like them yet. They were just so pretty and nice and cool.

Balliance, Shot-calliance.

2009-11-03T04:54:00.000-08:00

Four hours a day at least deserves secret video footage, bien sur.

Nothing tastes as good as being artistically profound feels: the Accidental Hunger Artist

2009-11-02T10:29:00.000-08:00

Today is very dark green. I couldn't sleep last night, which might be because I slept until 4 yesterday, but that is just because I stayed up late on Saturday night, which was Halloween in America, and was ubiquitous crucifiction for Me. I woke up at 730 this morning, an hour later than usual, showered, threw on clothing, and the beginning of a lot of events that were bookended by exhaustion and an all around, generally no-good, good-for-nothing, poopy mood. I sometimes think that I should buy like a Cat-Scan machine, because on days like this, at least I can test clear for cancer, and then even though I miss three subways because I have to buy a new one-month metro Pass but I can't because my card is maxed out and my parents recently put in enough money where I really don't think that should be the case, and even though my transfer Metro stop is closed for a month and a half and opens the day after I leave, and even though I get corrected and laughed at by the chubby half-asian gremlin who works at the only sympathetic bakery in the entire conglomeration of Paris, and even though I can't keep my eyes open during class, and even though I can't afford lunch because of my credit card issue, and even though I lock my keys indoors having forgotten them this morning, and even though I can't fall asleep when I finally do have time to nap, and even though I miss my time to run because I can't end up napping and I wouldn't be able to run without rest, and even though every part of my body feels like the way that bubble soap droops off of a bubble wand when you lift it off the dish but instead of with bubble soap with cellulite, at least I don't have cancer and the machine could tell me so most mornings. And I could listen to the beep-beeping like an ancient code that suffocates me under its gamy hawk wing, and close my eyes and see the ripples of LED lights that splash onto my eyelid, like a heart in a womb. I felt awake this morning, too. New music makes anything worth stumbling through. And I felt rough-edged and belligerent in a kiddish way, so that on the subway I played drums with my fingers and toes, like an undressed baby on linen. I wanted music that snuffed my insides and blasted from my abdomen. My bags felt like gashes and it was raining and I wanted to split everyone in half with thunderbolts. I might even go to Amsterdam to Berlin to Copenhagen. And get a free bread bun on the train. With butter probably. Not probably with jam but maybe. And coffee and no milk! I wonder how the train systems in Europe work. So many people speak so many different languages. On board, what do the stewarts and stewartesses speak? Maybe everyone speaks in binary code. Or maybe everyone just yells and barks and roars like animals would. That's funny to think of. Scary animals riding on trains in seats with the tablettes down in tweed suits and cardigans. I want to go the the Azores! They are scary and exciting. The water is boiling and I just want to roll on an animal hyde on the beach like my Dog but she's dead now. I have another and I love him.

Also, a song changed music forever for me today. "Fire Power," Wolfgang Gartner.

Adspace, radspace.

2009-10-29T15:31:00.000-07:00

A plug for another publication that I run: http://lolrorschach.blogspot.com . Yale socks, open book, Pier One imports candles, and macadamia snaCKADAMIa.
I'm actually exhausted and sans a Halloween costume. Popeye? Serge Gainsbourg? TSS?

Dog Day Autumn

2009-10-28T10:53:00.000-07:00

In those blinking moments, as you rouse in the morning, you can convince yourself of a lot. If your brain was more sensible, maybe it would convince you to stay more allegiant to that new diet, or maybe it would tell you to ditch all of your intimacy issues and finally make eye contact with the tall girl who works at the frozen yogurt store, or maybe it could even convince you to spend the day thinking in a bright, positive, chirpy way. But, at the time in your day, and tenuously, the times in your life, when you're most polemically apt, you choose to convince yourself it's time to sleep. I've been lucidly critical (surprise!) enough of myself on certain mornings to take a step back and observe this serendipitous persuasiveness- it's really a state of simplicity. I see it quite simply, actually. When you fall asleep, you hand your reasoning, energy, and processing over to the depths of your brain- to visualize it, think of dipping to what's below the mantle of the earth; the rumbling, the puking magma, the erupting earth, yet unbeknownst to us, who stand on this radioactively, violently unstable nucleus day after day, only buffered by some miles of soft padding. I think of dreams that way. Our brains dream all day. In the background, our dreams consort, and operate like tireless machinery, refining little duties, never resting, but exploding in cathartic euphoria, when at night they cascade into black box theaters. Dreams are simple explanations of what drive us to exhaustive contemplation throughout the day, and sometimes strangle us with self-doubt, but only when we are overwhelmed enough are they eruptive and explicative enough that we remember them once we wake up. In your most comfortable stages, you can go weeks without remembering a dream, yet you always have them. Whether you are happy or sad, fulfilled or empty, has no direct bearing on the impression that a dream will make on your night, on whether or not it will be rendered memorable in the morning-- it is simply whether or not you are overwhelmed. Many of us trip and skip through the day, ecstatic or bereft, but become used to it, and our dreams dissipate from our daily dockets over time. Some of us, and Me, who enter new cities, live in new families, unfamiliarly walk the street without companions, dream like a hot spring or hornets nest. When your body is unaccustomed, it pumps dreams through your head in the evening, a kind of involuntary mental exercise, an instinctive form of inactive contemplation. We really can't help but create. My dreams are awesome, and I've began writing them down. In the morning, I scribe the beginning and ending times of my sleep, the date and the dream. I don't bother analyzing them. If I put that all on paper, what really keeps dreams interesting? Worth having?
I have learned here that dreams are what keep you alive. Ironic, because dreams are a part of sleep, a part of times trajectory when you are considered unconscious. No, not ironic because the happiest people walk in dreams. I heard from a friend who I love really dearly this week. Regardless of our current familiarity, she and I always have a relative understanding of the others character, and what isn't remative is my appreciation for how she sees the world. She is remarkable. She dreams, and sees, and always has an idea about what she wants next. Everything enveloped in her little enormous universe is exciting, and worth explaining. I have to reply to her e-mail, but as I walked down Rue de Saint-Germain this afternoon- it was hazy, sunny in a way that feels like morning is seeping out of the atmosphere all day until it is night, and in one pane of light before evening comes, the sun sprints around the reaches of the city, kicking in windows and whipping you with its lithe fingernails; the air feels like cotton, and through the trees, you feel camoflaged, as if you're constantly camped out in an undiscovered, yet inobscure hiding place- I realized that the only way to be truly unfettered, is probably by living in a dream. When you wake up, and live too much in the present, unaware of what in the future might make the present so sacred, almost transient, you slowly lose the ability to dream. The present becomes inescapable if you reject dreams too much, and the present that you slowly become incarcerated in leaves parts of you chained to the past. Your only true hope is camping out in the future, and dreaming now so that making more dreams will be possible. My friend reminded me in her e-mail that, to want things, to have ideas, no matter how boastfully grand, about what will fulfill you, or make your future feel more special, is the most holy thing you can do. I love her for it. I'm going to write her an e-mail tonight, but I hope she is reading this. It's for you tiny!
Anyways, here is where I convert back to dreaming. I can't live any other way, I just try to escape the other ways. I have to live not only on my own team, but lost in my own head. It is me.

Anyways, I gave in to my Carl Rove brain this morning. I convinced myself that because I had a sore throat and a headache, school was absolutely unquestionably dangerous. I forget my logic, but it was so good. I should just hand everything over to my brain. At 11, I ended up waking up. I spent an hour in and out of dreams. As I drank more water, I realized that my throat was less of a problem than I anticipated. Then my headache died after a banana and a yogurt. It was beautiful, so I put on my shoes, my jeans, good ol' Harris Fever, my beanie, and hopped on the Metro to Odéon. Blocks later, I found a café with a lunch special of 11 Euro per une entree and un plat. Onion soup and lasagna, followed by a crepe and a Stella, and then a walk. From thrift store to boutique to Gap to thrift store in search of a winter coat, to no avail. It ended in a coffee and a donut at Starbucks. I've downloaded three albums in the past day that have totally enthralled me: "Psychic Chasms" by Neon Indian, "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" by Pavement, and "Slanted and Enchanted" by Pavement. I know the Pavement train has been long time coming, but it sure came. I'm ambivalent about "Far," Regina Spektor's new album. I had a total resurge of enthusiasm, residual from Sophomore year of High School, for her library while I've been here- namely "Soviet Kitsch," "Songs," "Begin to Hope," and various B-Sides. Here's the thing about album. Regina Spektor knows herself well enough, perhaps distantly enough at times, so that she can feign genuineness when it comes to songwriting. She is silly, intellegent and melodic, and older tracks are all indicative of this. But with "Far," it seems to me as if Regina may not have been in the place to write an album, yet, with an excess of b-sides and an urge to stay relevant, as well as pent up energy, she was easily misled into signing off on the production of an album. There are a bunch of tracks that are totally in the spirit of Regina, "Dance Anthem of the 80s," being my favorite, and "The Calculation," "Folding Chair," and "Two Birds" being really admirable compositions. But after so much performance, Regina chaperoned these pieces into the studio without a definitive image that she concocted for her songs. Instead, left up to very clean but seemingly forced, impersonal production of people who may understand her style but do not know how to enhance it or encourage its growth, Regina's songs like "Blue Lips," and "The Wallet," two of what I consider to be her most interesting and honest songs, completely deteriorate into what might scroll on the credits of "Desperate Housewives," gangbanged by elevating strings and crescendos of synthesizers as a cheap cop-out for meaningful emotion. Tracks like "The Genius Next Door," and "One More Time With Feeling," just don't do it for me- she employs her normal devices, roads to imagery and shrieking, giggle-inducing flirtation, even if it is somber and earnest, but never hooks me. I only designate a separate sentence to the final track, "Man of a Thousand Faces" because I always expect final tracks to make me feel like I've finished pooping out a Tyrannesaurus Egg, or I've just evolved a stage in Pokémon, yet I felt nothing. If anything, it's an impersonal, uninnonvative method of explaining how you can't really explain God. The album is all somehow about the loopiness of life, and how it is ultimately all chaotic enough that it is little, silly, and not worth understanding. Her creative process might have been tons more fruitful if she had set out, in the first place, with the mission of saying "I don't know" in the most beautiful way possible. Maybe she meant to, but I got a lot of disjointed insincerity from one of the most sincere artists ever. Even worse, a real lack of self-awareness from a goofy looking artist who woos the masses with her secret love affair with her silliness. But I definitely suggest the tracks that I mentioned. "The Calculation" is upbeat, earnest and excited, in a way that you hope Regina will dawn on you- she explicates love as a lifestyle that teleports you to another universe, one that deems everything outside of this connection irrelevant, like all else is in a foreign language. And "Dance Anthem of the 80s," in an almost polarized fashion, is goofy and playful in presentation, but twirls and bops in front of a backdrop of macabre disarray. At the end, where her voice devides mitotically and she seems to harmonize in a whipping, jaded, distorted profession of: "it's been a while since I've been touched/ now I'm getting touched all the time/ and it's only a matter of who/ and it's only a matter of when," reminds you of her actual maturity in reality, and her bluffed satisfaction, as she walks the street of a city solemnly: "I went walking/through the city/like a drunk but not/with my slip/showing a little." I would argue with anyone who thinks that this song is about a prostitute, which I've read commented on many blogs. She is a lost, desperate, out of place soul, with the same type of longings and obsessions as any solitary, urban itinerant. She sings as a sort of Clark Kent Regina as the song commences, playfully relating her affection for another to the way that others sexually fantasize eachother; as the song progresses, however, this fantasizing mutates into a desperate, Superman longing, a confusion, different voices harmonizing, overlapping, pleading, calling out. Fuck anyone who writes about this album like she's never written great things before- as if this was her only chance to prove her intellect, and the fact that the album has creative loopholes means that the rest of her greatness is unsubstantiated; especially Pitchfork, who shat on this album, but almost more heretically, impersonally. They wrote about "Far" as if Regina had no right to enter a stage of stagnance. They did the same with the BQE, dismissing it, not attempting to inhabit that dream that Sufjan gift wraps for the consumer. They should try reviewing three records a day with a little more heart. I wouldn't complain if they didn't dilute the popularity of the artist like mining runoff in a local resevoir.

Anyways, hi! I'm alive, here I am! More writing soon. All you need is glub.

here's the thing.

2009-10-26T05:45:00.000-07:00

In France the pigeons ain't scared of nothing.

Update: The pigeon above sat next to me for twenty minutes at SacreCoeur. I did not take pictures of Sacre Coeur, instead the pigeon. He eventually turned toward me and scootched a few inches in my direction, but didn't make eye contact in that phase. When the girl next to us lit up a cigarette, he ruffled his feathers and slumped his neck, not as happy as pigeons go when it comes to cigarettes. Then he schootched to the side when someone blocked his panoramic glimpse of Paris again. People were not very considerate to the pigeon at the Sacre Coeur. I doubt he is going back.
My favorite part of our time together, was when a huge flock of pigeons were terrorizing the mass of tourists crouched on the gradual slope and the pigeon ruffled his feathers annoyedly, as if those menacing teenagers were up to no good again. He didn't even consider flying in the direction of the horizon with all of them, he just retracted his head into his oily, tea kettle cockpit and darted his yellow eyes around for bits of barbeque ruffled chips.

2009-10-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

If you're wondering why I'm standing in a pile of medical waste in the middle of Chetchnya, it's because I just saw Fame. I feel like someone's water just broke on my head. I feel like someone connected my nipples, by jumper cables, to a Toyota Matrix or a Saab. I feel like my uncle touched me. I feel like it was actually me who starred in "The Truman Show," and I didn't mean to but now I'm on trial for the deaths of 50,000 innocent Armenians. I just need cough syrup or some sort of really quiet gun. Or electrodes, or Mexican lyposuction. I also want the lyposucted butt fat made into a really expensive shampoo that I can hug and cry with while I watch "Riding In Cars With Boys."
I hated "Fame." Not in a rational way. I can critique only really its lack of definitive plot, or structure, or organization, or conception of what is art and what sado-meanism, but that movie was an emotional-stability smear campaign. Like I didn't order the pregnant hooker with Cleft Smile Syndrome and I woke up and she was there. And I want to die. I just hated the movie because it was so messy, in a way that I can relate to, so I want to smash it.
The thing is, if it had been somehow fabricated, somehow distanced, from the realm of reason that I live in, I would have laughed at it and had a really satisfied, complacent release at the urinal after. I maybe even would have nodded at the guy next to me and said something like, "c'est bon, sarge," but I didn't because I walked out feeling like my legs were millimeters in diameter and my stomach was one of the Brick Ovens they have at California Pizza Kitchen, which weirdly makes me feel the same way. New World Order? But the movie depicted people my age, with 10 times more resilience and satisfied oblivion than anyone I know, getting literally raped and lavished by life, and submerging, not just happy, but totally braindead. None of the characters were any different than me. They just got less airtime than I give myself.
I liked the song at the end.

Rooves and Riches

2009-10-23T17:36:00.000-07:00

to cope with mein kampf, I had a bottle of table wine and three beers that also have tzquila and lime, but I feel good! not sick. I needed it . here's what happeend;
i wanted ;mexican food, so at Metro Bastille, I ventured down an avenue that was cobblestone tride and tru, and found a place where people looked at me with some scorn but not enough to mention. i got a burrito, flirted with the waitress to feel comfortable, and a pina colada and a mojito later, i had Sri Lankan friends who cooked Mexican in Mexican hats that made them look Mexican. Then I walked to the crepeerie, waited for thirty minutes, ate half of a fraise crepe and threw the other half out in the r ecycling bin. I IAM TERRORIST. Then. the night happened. First, two specters roller bladed by in Middlebury sweatshirts. I xould have chased them but I didn't have the drive and I didn't want to leave Katie haning, who was TZWO hours late to meet me BUT THIS WAS GOOD WHY? BECAUSE first a German girl and I bumped into eachotehr and accidentally exchanged numbers which felt like entropy was merciful. And then a Mexican man approached me and began speakibg to me in French. Itold him, je ne parle pas! he said, are you a pick up artist? I said, whagt? he said, are you a player? i thoguht i understoof but for clartification, what? he offered me money. Yes i was offered money for sex, but I waschosen! i only accepy compliments when they're offered in the most indirect dimension possible. I am the preferred gay prostitute even though I am not a gay prostitute! Call me Richie Rich or Jenny Humpfree. but not for free. I need water and sleep. sorry Thnks Fr the Mmrs.
Desperado

I wish I had a suntan I wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine

2009-10-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

I wanted to run all day. I sat in class all morning and didn't listen a bit. I wanted to run, and jump across Paris' European mansard roofs, and I wanted to kick in walls and yell at the sky. And I kept on thinking about that crepe I left alone yesterday. Not the man. My conscience isn't that extensive. Sry God, Sry Mom and Dad, Sry Rabbi Sirkman. The way mind works, he probably did something corky and out of the box with the crepe. Maybe he tie-dyed it and hung it behind the lava lamp in his living room. I hear tie-dye is coming back in. Or I predict it. I predicted it this summer actually. The next trend in minimalist fashion will be tie-dye, coincident with post-WW2 hollywood couture. I'm talking Katherine Hepburn, Clark Gable, Sean William Scott. Maybe he put lipstick on it and is going to break out of the crepe making business and break into the crepe puppeteer business. I am an enabler. My residual, forgotten crepes don't bear into the past, they change the world.
He was a bad person anyways. The Metro at Odeon closes on November 2, so he's ausched, clipped out of my life with those Crayola zig-zag vanity scissors.
This morning I snoozed the alarm for a supplemental hour. That would be okay if I showered, and I didn't, which would be okay if I ate breakfast, but I don't think coffee and an accidental fly counts, which would be okay if I listened in class so that I could provide myself with act two, "Lunch," but that didn't really work out because the money crops aren't high in these parts, which would be okay if I were running and not blogging and preparing for a nap now, but there are a lot of things to dream about. And my dreams are great. I wish you all could see them-- that's called a while lie; it's when I say something that's untrue, but the ineffectuality of the lie makes it okay to say. An example is when I pretend to understand a sentence that my professor is saying about the tense passe- so I guess, by syllogism, it's okay if I do it for every sentence she says, which is good, because I did. For four hours.
Judy, a friend of Mom and Robert, called this week, and very graciously extended an invitation to Fontainebleau. I posted a picture of Fontainebleau. Did you see it? Oh, you did? I'm so embarrassed! I didn't even realize that anyone could see it. Maybe you should've knocked. Well, it will be a nice way to get time away from the city, which I'm by no means craving, but perspective always mutates out of departure from a place. I am actually cultivating love for Paris, but the same kind of love I would with a human. Paris is sad because it's the human condition. I have so much love for it, and it really doesn't care that much about me. When I begin to peripherally admire it, perfunctorily worship at it, insert smiles of understanding in the film's inkblot, it huddles over me. The Tour Montparnasse is so phallic. Every morning it rips into the sky, sick with rumbling morning, and winks at me with its strewn illuminated floors. The ATM tells me to enter my PIN discreetly, as the digitized computer icon winks at me. The woman at the bakery pretends to have my order programmed so that I don't have to regurgitate yesterdays fluttering French. The roofs spout smoke and I pretend that they are new thoughts. My admiration for and fear of culture has always humbled me enough to treat concepts like people. It's an old city. With so much history that you accept it like worn beauty, or the smell in the crease of an antiquated book. Yes, it is prominent, but besides that, it is what it is. Paris tells me to take it as it is. I need to learn to say the same thing for myself. All European cities are somehow gracefully deceased. The city walls, like the wormy skin of a gnarled apple are frightening and uninviting, but the core is rich. It soils the world around it. Paris has reigned majestic in waves, but for over 500 years. America is new, booming with dysphonic melodies of different phases, a slot machine stuck on thirty bell icons, the anti-gravity at the peak of a centripetal amusement park ride, the second serving of a wedding cake. Paris is a Sunday walk at the bank of the river. It is the feeling you have when taking off your shoes at the end of a long day. It is relief and appreciation. You take it as it is or smile at it obliviously, a passer-by. Paris, to me, is an unfriendly giant, with tugboats and flower carts rolling on its back. When I first got here, I felt like a newborn. I hadn't idealized it in the human, perhaps healthy way. I arrived, and to me it was only a new place. There is no place I could have gone but central Nebraska to feel complete awe. But now, having established a saving period for every tourist attraction, at some point in mid November, I am making covert eye contact with the city's shuffling hands under the dinner table. The people are real. I should maybe appreciate my method of preparation- it disables me from translating people as animations. I have to probe them instead. I will probe Paris. It can probe me. A love triangle that flows in an agreeable current.

Love until I say so.
Peter Walker.

DUROC MUSICQS

2009-10-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

So, I am in bed, and after a long day of rain, and total bewilderment by the French tense passe, and Thai Chicken soup with pork, and French sushi (everything is some sort of Maki- they have separate menus for Americans here, which are definitely kids menus. Like, I think the Japanese restaurant was offering blue soda and a smiley face Mint Orea Volcano Sundae after), and a crepe that I didn't have money for so I ducked into the subway, and rain, and a two hour nap, I can't really bear rapping about all of this Paris jive for another thirty minutes, so I think I'll offer you a list of albums, thay I have gotten very acquainted with here. This will come in routine updates, with a few notes.

"XX," by The xx.
"Apologies to Queen Mary," Wolf Parade.
"Court and Spark," Joni Mitchell.
"Album," by Girls.
"Feels," and "Strawberry Jam," Animal Collective.
"Person Pitch," Panda Bear.
"Far," by Regina Spektor.
"Ys," by Joanna Newsom.
"Liars," by Liars.

I've been quite familar with all of them, probably excepting xx, but each has somehow blended into my Daily Routine, my Quotidien Quota very amiably. Nothing makes me more uncomfortable than when I go through phases in which the way that I approach listening to music changes, but it invariably tumbles out something worth welcoming.

With Pizza on a Baguette, you can have Pizza anytime (between 730 and 9, customarily)

2009-10-20T12:24:00.000-07:00

I can't take claim for my prepared dinner of baguette pizza for the family tonight. See, Stouffers really did all the work. Stouffers pizza rapes anyones tastebuds, it's a human weakness, like heart failure or a receding hairline; and when something called "French Bread Pizza" in America (geez, who knew that they were such a cultured organization?) can even please the same tastebuds that discern thirty year old Cantal as a delight, all I have to do is reap the benefits. Raping and reaping. Look out for my solo album. Je suis brotorious.
Allors, I cook dinner for the Vaillants about once a week- it's not cemented into the schedule yet, but it's probably one of the happiest parts of the week for me, at least a time in which I really feel like I'm somehow becoming part of the household. You give, you get-- it's funny that the only way that I can feel comfortably part of another family is by putting myself in as much discomfort as possible to premptively render the job unnecessary. Ah well. Anyways, week one was hamburgers, a special concoction of ingredients to add some class to my cumbersome, processed American mushiness. Week two was spaghetti carbonara, my first time attempting actually, but since it's France, you can't really mess up cooking. Not like it ends up delicious no matter what, there's just sort a ubiquitious Casper-the-friendly-ghost-esque presence coercing you to mobilize the egg yolks so that they don't congeal into a scrambled mass at the bottom of the griddle, which you've also never really actually used before. And tonight, straight up Pizza. And I haven't even brought up the Vaillants. This is probably because the prospect of living in a single household, not the kind of household that you see after you break your glasses and get spun around three times, is totally foreign (heh heh) to Me. My lifestyles have been absolutely schizophrenic, while consistently unbelievably affectionate and stable. It's not worth reflecting on here, really, because I have nothing much to say about it in pertinence to my voyage. But it will have a couple of volumes in my memoirs one day, written by whoever wrote Bunnicula. Really the only appropriate voice that I can conceive dictating my life.
Anyways, they are wonderful. The girls are all friendly, but in a really refreshingly real way. They didn't push themselves on me so that I would feel comfortable. America is full of a lot of insincere, energetic gestures that are for either the benefits of someones own id or ego, or else making someone else feel more comfort, indirectly for the sake of one feeling more comfortable themselves. And it's not all bad. I myself choose acquantince over obscurity, but part of me knows that this is to reinforce to myself that I have knack for getting to know people. Getting to know people, not getting to know people, in America it's all narcissism. Anyways, not here. Garrance and Marie speak really great English, and getting to know them has been gradual, but very real. We have time to slip into our own personalized comfort zones, so we slowly cultivate them- in big gulps and nervous ticks, but also in hiccuping laughs and arm flails of delight. It's like cultivating a taste in wine or cheese, ironically. Anyways, Garrance is really driven. In a way that I admire because it seems accessible to me. The French University system is super fucked up. It's centralized, and you realize that, along with the social benefits of complete government facilitation of quality of life, come the total fucked up things. For example, in Paris, you essentially get to choose which University to attend. At first, this is totally fucking weird because you figure, hey, if everyone could go to U-Paris 4,5,6 or the Sorbonne, wouldn't everyone? Hah, well, it works out. For the tough pre-professional programs, like Medicine and Political Science (doctors and lawyers), there are exams, antiquated concepts, that manditorily weed out contestants for degrees after a year of studying. A student will work for a year, and after blood, sweat, tears, and a little accidental poop, you might just get told "no, start over and do Art History." So when you don't get into a reach school, feel like a trillion space bucks anyways. Garrance has a fascinating work ethic. She goes to class, and goes to not-class-class, which is self-inflicted class, or studying as they might call it in some Spartan cultures. She tells me that she was lazy in high school, which I can relate to excruciatingly well. But seeing her now, working about 8/9 of her free time (the 1/9 including meals), is really inspiring. I hope you realize all of this Garrance! You are a fucking wonder! Her character is acerbic, earnest, no-bullshit, and totally refreshingly non-judgmental. Marie is slapstick, lively, straight-forward, sarcastic, intellegent and honest. She is wonderful. And Iris and I, suffering from a sort of language barrier, have also gotten to know eachother really well, considering the odds. She is a silly, coy, observant, keen, lively girl, who doesn't love working, but knows to do it anyways.
I guess it's no surprise then that the parents are wonderful people, which makes sense, considering how well their kids have turned out. Claire and I suffer from the same type of language barrier that Iris and I flail against. But she, from the first moment we met, was so nice to me. She makes me question all of the bullshit that people conjure to seem super friendly and happy. She is, at first, laid back, social, and funny. But you know that when you speak to her. She is self-assured, strong and cool. I would describe her as a really cool person. And we are getting to know eachother grudgingly, but joyously, I think. I just bought her a copy of "Blue" by Joni Mitchell-- it's My Mom's Paris album, and Claire has never heard it, so I figured it would be cool to see what she thinks. Little things like that, little smirking transmitions, smoke signals of affection in lieu of vocal coexistence, might mean something more meaningful. And Jean-Nicolas is a fantastic guy, who I really click with. It must be funny for him to have another Y in the house. He is silly, affectionate, unboastfully intellectual, unapologetically loving and unapologetically himself. The best Dads are the ones who see parenting simply: that being the best father you can be is a simple hybrid between being yourself and providing protective, loving fostering to others. He does that well and everyone in his family responds to it.
And Gudule, the cat, is a friendly beast. She is the most playful, interactive, loving cat I've ever known. She is a spritely Delilah. It's so funny how French pets are noticeably different in attitude than American. They see being an animal as such a privilege. I think that we guilt trip our pets too much in America in the process of domesticating them. All I expect from a pet is potty-training. The rest is their decision. They have characters. They are really cute and that's a character!

So, the family. I don't have much to say about the day. I slept through class, because Marais Marauding with Katie went a little overtime, after which came full listens of Dizzee's new album and "Far" by Regina Spektor. More about that later. I hope you're all reading this. Actually, I don't care- that's a little trick, watch, now you'll want to read it more because you can't have it.

Glub, PWK

Post-Phoenix Depression, or, Post-Pardom Phoenix, or, Pissedomania, or, Love is Like a Nuclear Sunset, or, 190fuck this.

2009-10-19T12:46:00.000-07:00

I love sitting in the Port de Pantin Metro station alone after trying to convince the French bodyguards (I don't speak French) that I am on the list (there is no list) while my Comjamion is 25 minutes south of the venue at an art Museum of the same name at the wrong Metro station, a metro station that probably has 56% less ex-convicts and undiscovered convicts au naturale. I've been doing it ever since I was 5 and I just love it and I do it so much almost like all the time, I think it's genetic, sorry you all have to miss out!!!

Well, another day another day another ripe Indie sensation. THERE ARE TONS OF PHOENIXES IN THE SEA AM I RiGHT PRImETiME NETWORK VIeWERS AGED 17 TO 24???? can I get a womp-womp?

Alright, time to get a nice blue-collar, weekday Labotomy Daniels.

Learning to Run before Learning to Walk

2009-10-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

I remember that a lot of people wrote their college essays about going running. And I always thought that that was such a cool idea. I mean, really, running is about the healthiest way to mindfuck mindfucks, and the most steady way to depress depression. I have weeks where I prefer naps, and I guess that I am aware of the way that this can gastronomically destroy any semblance of a good mood, converting it into static stagnance, the kind of self-loathing that you love to loathe when you aren't really doing anything else. My runs usually begin with the selection of a running uniform. Usually the shortest mesh shorts available, with either a bar-mitzvah shirt, sweet sixteen shirt, or a mesh crop top, which lets face history people, are all the same thing. Then a sweatband to top it off. I also make the asassination-attempt-worthy choice to wear these for vanity sometimes, but it is all practice for when I graduate to Vanity license plates: I'm thinking about having a California one while I live in Rhode Island that says "STARFCKR2." STARFCKR1 is for my teacup dogs side compartment. My France varieties are green and tan- and I actually do believe that certain days covet certain choices, but I really am not shamed to admit it because I've never worn lamé. No I like to pretend that Leighton Meester made Lamé and that it's short for her name and that noone really gets it. Anyways. My shoes remind me of something my dad would wear. They have an unnecessary layer of netting over their reflective silver surfaces, as if having a fashionable layer of navy mesh on your nike running shoes is superior in importance to having a reflecting feature that, I don't know, prevents you from getting hit by a car or run over by a horse drawn carriage. I guess I just really don't get modern logic. I stretch in the courtyard, totally in awe by the way, of how convinced Gedul (cat) is of his duty to defend himself from some sort of sleeping invader. He is probably the only cat in the world that has some connection to Vietnam, and shellshock is really hard to contract when you're three months old and don't have a frontal lobe. Just saying. Anyways, I stretch the arches of my feet, my outer gluteus, and my inner calves the most probably (don't tell anyone but they're my favorite!!!!! i know it's so baddddddddddj?ND?N?ASdaznd). My playlist is in order- what kind of creature created me that I'm actually comfortable with saying this and not committing myself to some type of institution after?:
"Keeps Getting Better," Christina Aguileria
"We Made You," Eminem
"Right Round," Flo Rida
"When I Grow Up," Pussycat Dolls
"Dat New New (VIKING Remix)," Kid Cudi
Cross, by Justice,
Feed the Animals, by Girl Talk,
The Britney Spears Definitive Collection, Volumes 2 and 3, feat. B-Sides.
And then to the street, where I start the jog. Down Boulevard Jean Jaures, straight into Bois du Boulogne. Le Bois is an unbelievably beautiful forest that is a seven minute run from my house. There is an area to ride horses, a huge field that crests the horizon- a huge hill, full with small villages like unwashed hair in the morning- and a wooded area, with about 10 miles of path to run through. I usually run about 3 miles in the park, to the lake, and another 1 or 2 outside of it. On the days that I pace myself, I last longer. I know that this sounds obvious, but when you're running, sometimes pacing feels like digression. I know that it's my first instinct to pressure myself to accelerate bit by bit until I am matching the beat of "Gimme More RMX W/ Lil' Mama," which trust me, is like power level 7. I wouldn't fuck around with that beat unless you were looking to get cockslapped by a pair of copper Bob and Jakob Dylans. Ah, one life to life I guess. But, the run twists into the woods until it starts feeling as dense and shadowed as a closed fist. At night, a time which I avoid, there are men and women of the trade (what do you mean? there's really only one trade), and I never make eye-contact with anyone as I get deeper in because I really don't want to wake up with a bindi and a Blade Runner trampstamp. The lake is beautiful. There is a terminally out-of-season carnival that rots on one of its banks, a post-modern housing complex that is carved into another slope, and then a kiosk, that looks like it would provide you with mini-golf or something boiled in canola oil, but instead sits, in a timid glory on the bank of the freeway. Almost as if it is a chaperone to another mouth of water. I stretch and pretend not to see the cool teenagers in flannel jackets with spliffs. I mean if I weren't running I would totally go over and be like, "yo dudefriends, what's chilling on your chill platform? Let's party together, like have a one-in-the-same party, dig? Do you guys like the book Holes by Louis Sachar? cool."
Anyways, I turn around and head back. When I pace myself, I'm really not tired at all. By the last block, I sprint, choking on the effluvia of cheeses and cigars. Then it's over. And today I love it. I kind of have the relationship with my run that Blair does with Dan. And I'm Blair. And my run is Dan. And I'm not Dan. I sit here, sans shower, trying to sound as polite as possible in explaining to the family that the last time I ate lentils, I threw them up, and also the things that weren't lentils that I ate- and I liked those things. Lentils and I have a history.

The BQE comes out tomorrow, officially. I have a lot to say about it, since I've had it since LiKeeEeE 2 years ago, but everyone should listen to it. God it's a complete sound. Totally panoramic, in such an inevitable vicinity. Dinner! I think I'll write more later.
I was supposed to see Phoenix tonight, but the ticket transaction fell through. I might still go. The opening act just went on, so maybe no, also.

Cheers! Safe.
Peter Walker.

Fascism, Nationalism, Fashionalism.

2009-10-18T13:05:00.000-07:00

Well I am certainly alive! And I won't say more alive than I've ever been because that doesn't make any sense. But alive with cool new features and a software update, maybe. And I don't know what shareware is, but that because it sounds really nice and fun. I haven't gone running in a week, instead I've eaten a crepe every day of the week- neglecting to even dabble in sundry varieties (Nutella we go hard)- from the same crepe vendor, I have not been as extraordinarily adventurous in expanding my palatte as I had anticipatorily imagined (not in a desperate, sad, 14-year-old dental way- in a taste way), and I've, to tell the truth, felt quite like one of those seagulls at the beach with a lot of sewage caked on its wings. Except a seagull that wants to break everything and needs to find somewhere to find reasonably priced pants (am I right ladies? But seriously, anyone have a tip?) The first half of this metaphor isn't supposed to sound morbid. In fact, I'm happy. And not in the crazy person way. I wake up and some days snooze my snoozer (the sound effect for which, in Paris, is "poph!"), stumble into the shower, lather Head and Shoulders (it's not even strictly for dandruff in Paris! Talk about liberalism!), rinse Adidas Menthe Sport Wash (heh-heh), and stand next to the space heater for about four minutes before I brush my teeth. In my room, I have a Middle-School Breakdown every morning about what to wear.

For those of you who didn't give birth to me or who haven't at some point forgotten to knock while I've been playing Magic the Gathering nude, I have a pretty much normal body. I'd say that my defining traits are my buxom bottom, spaciously muscular of course, and my weirdly bruting shoulders. The rest fills in accordingly. No matter what I eat, I don't really vary anywhere else. In eras of gym memberships, unsweetened iced teas (someone feel free to slip some cyanide in the next one I mention), and dry-swallows of multi-vitamins, I fill out quite well. Some core definition, maybe even a quelling of my tempestuous thighs, which have a Olympian wrath. And there are the times of routine drug-addled respites at the Diner (the order of mozzerella plain cheese fries and a coke float is exiled back to the delightfully epicurean kitchen of the Nautilus if there is any dissenting detail from my order), sensory bachannalia at Q, and Mad Dog 20/20. In short, I am a number of American Girl dolls. It really depends on the week. I ultimately arbitrate if I'll be naming my first child Kashi Go-Lean, or if I'll be substituting my medicinal regiment of fennel with funnel-cakes. Let's just leave some things up to science.

Anyways, it turns out that everyone here is tall and thin. It's kind of like Sparta, but instead of killing weak babies, they kill the ones that look like Me. And France is almost exactly like that scene in 101 Dalmatians where the humans resemble their dogs immaculately. Except in Paris, it's like guerilla resemblance. People can literally be anything, you just have to look for it. A woman was her Hermes bag on the train the other day, a Man was his wedding cake, and a woman was one of those lines on the street. In America, people seem a lot more like weird Rorschach blots or cluttered finger paints. Here, everyone is linear. Everyone here could be conceived in a bakery. Americans are hot scrap metal in a junkyard, stacked on eachother, their gnarled edges for the wind, maybe patched into an old Volvo. And the people that ended up being perfect are put on rotating platforms, with women who smell like something No. 9 waving next to them in Merangue dresses.
I think that I look like squash when I walk down the street, or a big penis. A big Francophallus. People compliment my eyes a lot on the Metro, but it is mostly fat drunk lesbians who see me as their only hope for breaking into the fashion industry. La Vie en Rose.
I usually arrive at some combination of my courderoy blazer, an oxford, a pair of jeans, my high-tops, and hat- a concept literally lifted from how cool Jack Nicholson looks in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest- Vol au-dessus d'un nid de coucou, en mon vieux. This ensemble comes together similarly, maybe even more riskily than many Parisians', yet I always noti
ce that the way that their clothing worships their viny, aerodynamic bodies is so much more powerful than what orbits my dense Kaplan bones. I walk the streets with a bounce nonetheless. I smile at couples on the train and then continue to stare at them when they look away. I put my finger in my ear, sometimes in my nose, and I shake hands when I'm to hug, and hug when I'm to shake hands. I am an American in Paris.

I make it to my Metro stop at about 715. The metro is literally right outside of my house. You descend my front steps, walk through a courtyard, under the trees which Gedul, the housecat, scales like a beast in a jungle, walk through a sort of thin garage, fall into the street, and the Metro in 25 feet to your left. I pretend to speak French when I don't have to speak. The men who push the paper in my face receive a fitfully giftwrapped "merci," which ends up arriving on their laps a carboard box, shabbily covered with three different types of four year old giftwrap, cinched with box string, containing something that smells like fish. The giftwrap is for Chanukah and it is Christmas-- Dad would be proud. I've never felt the type of bashfulness that I feel here. Bashfulness of culture, stinginess of style, ignorance of language. I am American and it is invigorating. I want to rip off my clothing some mornings and burp Appalachian Spring for the business men on Boulevard Raspail. Some mornings I can't look at people in the eye- in fear that they'll detect my discomfort. The word alienation used to be so funny when I was little, like, ALIEN? HUH? Like, REAL ALIENS? HA NO!!!!! But I feel like an alien. Like a real alien. I bumped into Americans during my first week here at Luxembourg. I could tell by their wrinkles, their squinted eyes, their wide smiles like embraces, their inability to every let their bones settle comfortably. I approached them and discovered that they were from Wisconsin. I pretended to be familiar with anywhere but Madison or Milwaukee. I spoke with them about America for an hour. They had only been gone for two weeks and yet, like two entities wandering for a lost mother's womb, we rediscovered our identity together. I know about their children, his pharmeceutical work, her interior design work and the time that her Thanksgiving sweet potatoes were salved on his tractor gears for lubricant, at first creating much distress and anger, but ultimately being the only reason that he could transport the minister with his broken leg to their house for a warm meal. Everytime I am reminded of America in some definite way, I liquidate. I've met some Americans who want to forget it some, but I think that this is their own way of immortalizing it. Drinks with a Tisch photographer, masochistically banished by himself to Europe, who was very cryptic about his nomadic American experience, proved that even in your cold understanding of a place, and total dissociation from it, you can love it with a baffling heat, one of total disarray and disorientation. He was "Losing My Edge" by LCD Soundsystem, in essence. He talked to me about his American Apparel patronage in 2001, when it was a business venture for NYU hipsters who just wanted to silk-screen, in a sort of post-ironic sinusoidal rotation of a vaster, much more frightening cycle. He lectured his girlfriend on Staten Island. What is was, is, will be (is).

Then breakfast. Usually at a cafe in close vicinity to the Alliance Francais, where I take classes. Pain au Chocolat, un yaourt, la fraise de fraichement presse, et un cafe au lait. Breakfast is leisurely, accompanied with my homework, with I withdraw like a plastic sword in a duel, or one of the pistols that discharges a "BOOM!" flag. I am on Level 1 of Alter Ego, my French book, which balks at my American inability to develop an alter ego.

Then Class. From 9 hr to 13 hr. Some days it is really hard to get through, and some days it feel like watching 10 Things I Hate About You, which feels, realistically, like 25 minutes long. How do they even do that? Madame Danielle Olivier est mon professeur. She is wonderful, and helpful, and has a really cute menopausal hard-on for Max, the 32 year old Cambridge University architecture professor. I'm speeding up now because dinner is soon, and I shouldn't also be using the main computer after dinner as well.

Class ends clumsily, usually prematurely noted in intervals of three or four minutes, in a way comfortingly similar to High School. The way that everyone in my class is ground down to their basest egos is really gorgeous. It is a bunch of 25, 32 and 37 year olds cracking weird, self-depricating jokes while they struggle to learn French like a room of four year olds covered in placenta. I have a lot I could say about it, but I should finish this up for now. I'll truncate the time table for some element of suspense. My writing will shape up as I quotidian keep this up. I'm always open for e-mails, HONEY, MY LEGS ARE BASICALLY IN STIRRUPS. But check in with me, and do that. PKaplan@Middlebury.edu. Facebook too! I miss all of you so much, and this will sort of serve as a comprehensive pulse for whatever it is I'm doing over here.
I have a job! Lock up your children and heirlooms, America.

All the love,
Peter Walker.

French Keyboards; The Discovery of What it Means to be Stevie Wonder

2009-09-27T20:56:00.000-07:00

This is zhqt typing on q >french Keyboqrd zith English experience results inM I jhqve not conception of zhqt is zhere qnd i refuse to look becquse ze zon the spqnish >Q,ericqn zqr.

The Discovery of What it Means to be Not French

2009-09-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

I've realized a monolithic contradiction in my character. It's always been one to terrorize me from either side, but it has never undressed itself in front of me until this morning. There are things that make us very happy; every human, strong enough to accept it or not, ought to realize that this is latent in the most permanent thread of our being (who's to say permanence is a part of the human condition- hence my employment of this superlative). We also fear much. We are certain of our incapabilities, but I'm sure that the "have-not's" that we own are all transient morsels of doubtfulness that barnacle our wearied souls. I've developed an existential parabolic mind-game with myself four the past couple of years: I've somehow germinated the belief that humans are capable, and every feeling, belief, characteristic, or repulsion that we own is fleeting-- depending on how intimately we become acquianted with a visiting characteristic in our brains, the longer it will stay. So, as part of my mensa puzzle, I attempt to define myself in relation to my theory that noone has real definition. It's masochistic, it's awful, and it doesn't help that I'm way too self-loathing, but you know what? It's working. Dayeinu.
This all seems very declarative. But all of you know that in my deepest nooks, I'm all about macroscopics. To the contradiction. I get the most joy and the most fear out of people. Everyone has this kind of contradiction- it doesn't make it any less corrupt or, as the French call Jolly old Saint Nick Sarkozy, fucked, but it's there. So what to do with it? I don't know.