The Desert

Took a bike trip to Death Valley last summer, and from that grew this online thing. Here is the After Action Report.

I went for the silence, the stars, and the dark, and got only a little silence - maybe none depending on how you read the experience - and dark. Well, not with the stars. And yet, I got all I came for.  The wind stole the silence, but the wind is beautiful, and but for the wind there was silence. And dark - there were no mankind lights except for a little string far down and away, the settlement of Furnace Creek built around the national park visitor center. I didn't mind them. They were easy not to see. And the stars; god, they were astounding.

You stand there under the force of the sun on the bones of the earth the sky intense blue and clear in a full circle of hills and ridges each its own soul and you want to open and raise your arms to the sky  and drop them slowly to the earth and raise them again in a sun circle. And I did that every now and then and it felt fine to do.

There were a hundred and six campsites in Texas Springs camp, and but for three fleeting incidents mine was the only one occupied. My tree was also the only shade in the whole range of the camp beyond the Tents Only (no RV's) line. So I was alone.

Bear the heat in mind. Around 117°F. Dangerously hot. Not like Baghdad but still.

Flora; scarce, but likable; scrub of two or three species - one a bluey-white leaf that seemed to glow and sparkle in the sun - and a few short willowy type trees outside the border road. Except mine; and mine was also the only one I saw whose branches didn't arch all the way to the ground thus making it un-lean-againstable. I pulled a flat rock up to the exposed trunk and had a shade haven. A little home. Mildly amazing that no one seems to have done that before. Maybe they bring their own camp stools, but I saw no sign in the dirt.

Fauna; ants, lizards, a hummingbird, a mule-eared jack rabbit, a raven, a tiny fly, a wasp or hornet - hornet or wasp - one small insect I forget and that's it. Oh no! the dove! Not to forget her.

That was a big humping raven. On the dun hillside it looked as big as a man but distances are hard to read in the desert; when it landed on the aluminum picnic tables it was a couple feet tall. It dominated the northeast quadrant of the camp. It knew how to turn the standing water pipe on, and, off.

Ants. The ants were a trip. They got me thinking. There were two colonies, little volcanoes, each ten or twelve feet from my sleeping bag, one south, one north. Morning and evening there were thousands; from one to three there were none. Late morning there were few enough that I could track individuals on their missions; I watched one run four missions from South Hill to the other side of my bedroll, to her assigned destination. She would nose around until she found something she could carry - she had to give up on a flake of my bread roll - and wobble it up and over and around all obstacles back to base where she would vanish into the hole and then, hardly a breath later, out she comes and does it again.

The foragers are female. I looked it up.

I looked it up because I was impressed by their life - how did they know what to do, where to go? Who gave the orders? Not the queen - some colonies have queens but they don't issue commands - how do they communicate? They move so quickly, don't they tire? Do they ever rest? They aren't out foraging for themselves; they don't eat what they find, they take it to the home base. They seemed like smart little guys. How do they do that? How does it work? Short answer; pheromones. And, science is now concluding that an ant colony is an Intelligence.

Funny thing. The ants from South Hill went out got food went home. Ants from North Hill did that, but some of them went down into South Hill, got food, took it to North Hill. Does South Hill know what they're up to? And that dove? It went pecking all around my camp, at first just finding what it could on the dirt, then one time it sees a tasty gobbet bobbing along toward South Camp - an ant had it - and it pokes down its beak and pops that little white blob for itself. Ant runs around confused for a second then orients back to its destination to get another. I watch the bird curiously to see if it's a fluke. It pecks around some more, then finds another loaded ant and plucks his booty right up, not touching the ant itself. After that it quits working for a living and just robs ants. What a trip. It didn't know how to do that - or had forgotten - when it came, but it learned.

Silence: the wind stopped one night and there was nothing but the sound my body makes in my ears; a rush, a ring, a pulse, I couldn't nail it; but there it was. There was no real silence. I can see how that might drive a man mad. If he sought true silence. I couldn't replicate the phenomenon later; too much breeze.

The heat. First day I went blithely about, drinking plenty of Gatorade and water but otherwise unsupervised, and got a touch of sunstroke. A headache, mild but ominous. I had serious heatstroke as a kid and it was as bad as it gets, so I lay down, popped a couple non-aspirin tabs and hoped it'd go away. It did around dusk but it would threaten to come back every time I started to push the limits. I learned from the park handout to soak my shirt and a bandanna for my head in water in the hottest hours. The water would come out of the pipes more than luke warm, almost soup-hot, but when I put the shirt on, it was almost too cold to stand. That's how hot my skin temperature must have been.

That's how hot it was. Hella experience. The heat and the magnificence. At night I'd lay on top of my sleeping bag naked with the stars wheeling overhead. I brought a star finder on my smart-ass phone (still couldn't figure anything out) and spectacles but I didn't need them. They were awesome in the deepest sense. How is it that I don't live where they are?

Yes, I asked myself that, and what came upon me then was a mighty fear of death. You can forget that living in the city where life is noisy and gray, but in all that stark beauty, all that lush minimalist rock-and-sky-and-wind gorgeousness, it drops you; or me; how could I leave that behind? The world without me, that's how I've played with the picture of my own death, and that's cool; but I missed the real thing: me without the world. Always hoped I'll have the wherewithal to off myself when I become non-functional, when I can't carry a thirty pound pack for five miles, but that sky and rock and view west said no, you'll never have the guts. There's this fear of death. And loneliness. The moment of such a choice would carry an unbearable loneliness. I don't know why, what the logic is, but it has always been there.

Now, I didn't go there looking for that thanatopsis (Yeah! I get to use that word!), it came naturally from the experience of being there and in among it. At night laying bare on the picnic table under the stars I ran through that and something - I'll never recall it but such twists come to me - made me laugh. And I concluded: the answer to the question of loneliness and fear is laughing. Is laughter. Is humor. Is a sense of humor. I made a song out of it and yelled it at the top of my lungs - since I was all alone - anyway my voice is all hoarse and old now and not so loud - and filmed it on my flip cam. It isn't lovely but it's on record. And yes, I recorded too that sometimes it just doesn't seem funny. Which seems funny.

Solitude. I came there for silence, stars, dark, heat, and solitude. Those were all missions. All beloved commodities.

I was alone there but for one man off to the west who came in after dark the first night, didn't disturb much, and left shortly after sunup. The next day was different; I was laying about tout nu when an adult couple parked their RV next to the bathroom structure a few campsites, say half a block, away and began unpacking to a table a few yards from their vehicle. Right off came the question not to be ignored; do I put on pants? Well, it might be neighborly but they were parked in TENT ONLY territory, NO RV territory and DAMNED IF I WOULD. These thoughts and their emanations and penumbra, as Justice Douglas wrote, dogged me until to my joy an hour later they pulled out and left. They were only there to eat. And the degree of relief was revelatory. What I derived from it was, no, it's not me being perverse, it's just the pleasure of not having to answer to the presence of other people.



Now, every once in a while a vehicle - usually a Park truck - would make a circle around the camp. I'd give a little wave to rangers which they'd return. Once, at night, a bicycle went around, fast and quiet, turning its light on only when it had to.

Third morning around dawn there was a solitary figure in silhouette on the west end of the south ridge, swinging its arms in some exercise or ritual; its arms and something longish in its arms but too thin to see. Numchucks, I thought at first, those kung fu sticks; then, no, batons, cheer leading practice; or, is that a hula hoop? Or a lariat? Is it a girl or a guy? A slim figure. I stood with my hand on my hips, watching, then felt self-conscious, can they see me? If so, won't this pose look, I don't know, provocative, or dumb, or something. So I put my arms down. A minute or so later the figure stopped its ritual and stood facing my way, hands on its hips.

Go out on the bike later, at the far end of camp near the entrance, a young guy and girl had a camp. Our eyes met, their look was vaguely unfriendly. Was one of them the ridge runner? The night bike? Did they hear my song?

The trip back started with a faint awkwardness, just an inept feeling as if the heat had affected my judgment and coordination - as if I couldn't do things quite competently with my hands.  I'd checked the coolant coming in and it looked a little low; I'd tried to fill it but it just ran out the overflow tube, so that nagging insecurity colored the ride. Through the mountain passes I was particularly aware that I haven't really learned to take the curves at speed, I'm slower than four-wheel traffic, that I don't know how to judge the speed of the turn. In a parking lot I kicked at the kickstand and got off the bike, which fell over dead. The kickstand hadn't gone down, obviously. I was in my armored jacket, okay riding but way too hot standing. I was wasted from riding and disoriented. I tried to lift the bike upright, got it most of the way there, had to drop it back down. Tried it again. I'd only had to stand that 600 pounds upright once before, in good weather when I was rested and feeling strong. Then I eyed the situation, figured the physics, and succeeded. This time I couldn't think or act and couldn't get. It. Up. There was a strapping mechanic in the station garage and I figured he'd come to help and he did. Together we stood it up. Without him I'd've been there hours until I could marshal the force to accomplish that feat. Done, I was sweating like a horse and panting like a hound. Also sheared off a mounting bolt for a saddlebag so I had to jury-rig that to keep it from scraping the wheel as I rode.

Then I was counting the miles back - the ride was okay now, it got cooler going north on Five; I was making good time. About forty minutes from the end of a twelve hour ride the first drops of rain hit my windshield. I’d bet against rain - visibility tanks when rain hits that plexiglass. It seemed harmless at first but in ten minutes I had to stop, twice, to wipe it clear. The rain picked up and so did the traffic on 580, high speed rush hour; I had to slow to 50, squinting through the drops, trying to make out tail lights, then 30; then the rain totally filled the windshield. I was blind. I couldn’t see the lane lines - I’d thought I was in the rightmost, slow, lane, but two more lanes had fed in on the right and vehicles were slamming in front of me from over there. I was crawling at 15 mph, they were doing 70 or 80; I signaled right but they kept coming. For a few breaths there I thought I wouldn’t make it. There was a brief break and I pulled to the shoulder in a construction zone. I stood in muddy water, soaked and cold, and took stock. Finally I just removed the windshield and hid it behind a bush. The last twenty-five miles rode by all right.

What a story, what a movie, a guy starts out on a journey and it feels just a little off, a little cursed, and stage by fateful stage it turns from a mundane off-day into a hellish ordeal.

But we all get home where food and bed and music and temperature control are and now we're back in normal life.

Great trip. Full of stuff, intense, varied, rich, flavored, what life should be. Except alone.  But that’s another seminar.

Paris at Nightfall Fugue

I took a walk out to see Paris one more time instead of hunkering inside on the mac, didn’t know what for, nowhere really to go; and every step got more beautiful. It was eerie. At first, in Passage Ramey, the filth and detritus of the alley, suspicious guys leaning on a car, then the regular street, then open pizzarias and restos where people gathered, then Ramey came into Clignancourt and there were brasseries, bars, on every corner, sidewalk tables full of voices, of bodies, faces and hands and - people; people talking freely.

I leaned on a pole and looked for a while; then I took a street uphill, and found myself at an intersection I’d photo’d before, or tried to, with the toy-colored round tables in one cafe and three other bistros on the other corners alive again with Sunday night folk - and every step was more imbued with the magic of dusk and of this living city - and I went up from there on Rue Paul Albert and found myself in front of a tableau I despair at describing, an old half-timbered ivy-covered dwelling, opening inwards to angles and shapes, with lights glowing from darkened windows, a deep ruby, slivers of amber, a point of indigo, and there was still daylight enough for the eye to pick up the richness of color on the buildings on both sides and behind; I stood for a long time, and my loneliness imperceptibly faded in the face of this wonder, I knew this city is unmatched in my life; no such scenes as those crowded sidewalk tables were possible anywhere in America on a Sunday night, or any night, and this town has hundreds - hundreds - of such corners with their living cafes - most full inside and out, some strangely ignored - and of places like 17 Rue Paul Albert - then I walked up the street and saw that through the grill - the mosaic of grills - beneath my feet came light, there was a lighted room beneath me - just a grotty utility space but in the dusk and the ambience of the lights around, it was another note of deep effulgence. And took out my notebook and returned to the glowing house to get that street number, not to forget.

And went on up, around the corner, and the basilica was just above - a Ghormangast of a complex - people now, blond girls, up ahead, all around, in flocks, guides speaking in some nordic tongue, and around the corner suddenly colored lights were floating down in the dark blue sky and laser points were sliding off the high facades of the medieval stonework, and there was music ahead, and crowds shifting and interweaving in the half-light, and the skyline of Paris over the edge - tour groups and hawkers of these chem-light parachutes, and a man in a corner with an amplified acoustic guitar - I followed the crowd to see if there was a vantage from which the Eiffel could be seen - on the sidewalk novelty models of her jeweled in multicolored lights - and yes, past a blocking structure, there she was, all luminous and alight. I wound among the crowds to see for a while, then hooked back to look at one of the floating lights that had landed among the kids and launchers, to see it laying on the flagstones almost surprised that it didn't vanish into mist - then gave some change to the guitarist, then retraced toward the darkness, and between two domes I saw Venus like a jetliner headlight against the deepening blue. And I went down past girls in antic photo poses, down past a street with inviting lights back to Rue Paul to re-see 17; for a moment I thought I’d never find it again, still; there it was. Then turned back to check out that street I’d passed, and noticed that beneath me, Paul and its feed-onto street were cobblestones set in expanding arcs, curves on curves on curves, not famous, not a world heritage attraction, just a street open to traffic, but another crescendo of awesome hallucinatory enchantment on this walk - and I took that street past three inside restaurants of warmth and elegance with their people leaning on glowing soft white tablecloths - I had an urge to go in but was already satisfied - I’d notice coming down the stairs from the basilica, it had grown on me as I passed the ancient walls, that the loneliness had transformed on this walk, had turned inside out, and was self sufficiency at last. And at the end of that street, at the corner, I could see down a short block to the cluster of colorful sidewalk bistros I’d passed before, and was glad and satisfied to see them and hear them again. 

And then back by Ramey and Clignancourt, and then along by still-open boulangeries and closed specialty bookstores, and I forgot what street I was on; and venus still between the buildings; and saw an open patisserie with squares of pizza-like panini - I brought one home with a baguette last sunday when all other bakeries were closed but I’d seen a girl coming with a long loaf under her arm in it’s napkin and backtracked her steps to this place - and ahead, the circle, that meant my street, I was a block from home.

The nightfall had built in an unworldly beauty to the summit of the evening star and gently receded until I was here on this dark couch with the screen too bright in front of me and the people in their hundred-and-forty-year-old windows across Rue Marcadet. 

And I thought on the top of the hill, and coming back, and coming in, how would I write this? I couldn’t describe it for the web, even for my best friends it would seem wrong. This one would be for myself. Yes. This one is mine.

But here it is.

It will be a while until the experience of that city sifts down through the cells and finds its level; its comparison with every other place and state of mind; but this is clear: 

Paris isn't illusion. It's a forward point in the direction the human thing wants to go. My days on earth would be thinner if I hadn't been there.

The Mirror Lies

Mirrors lie. Ever catch your reflection unaware and see someone you didn't think you were? Whenever you knowingly approach a mirror you start the subliminal process of configuring your face and posture for the camera and your mind for the impact. You're ready. But if you're not braced, if you get ambushed, it can be a shock.

Sometimes I like how I look and sometimes not. These days I'm good, more than usual - I think there's a feedback thing going on with the drift of mood. Still, caught myself in a Walgreen's store cam screen today and couldn't fix my mouth to save my life. It looked like George C. Scott's. 

Now, people are going to see you one way all the time or the other way all the time or they're going to mix it. First impressions are heap big medicine. You don't want to blow it. More to the core, you don't want their response to kill your smile.

Particularly when you're young, you get this negative feedback thing going, you get self-conscious about being self-conscious, you know it shows on your face, and you know the fact that you know shows too. Even now in certain social situations - say, a gallery opening reception, I can start feeling spotlighted and my eyes turn intense and people shrink from me. 

You know Burns' thing, right? "O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!"

The best you can do is try not to lay faking it on top of whatever else is wrong with you. So see ya.

All Part of a Day's Work

...thanking people. A guy I used to know said that.

Gratitude is kind of a pain in the ass. Sometimes it seems I'd prefer a world without its presence. It smells of servitude. Maybe I should stop participating.

And yet, I am thankful. For what people bring to me from their lives. For artists whose work the world would be otherwise never see. I'm thankful that I'm lucky, that I'm happy at all, I'm thankful that I'm thankful.

That's something that happens. You feel thankful. So how is it "a day's work?" I guess it's in a distinction between the stuff you feel and stuff they tell you to feel. 

When that guy made the statement above, had he ever consciously felt the real thing? Maybe not. He was a young man and disaffected. Maybe all he recognized was the imperative from on high. Still, I know what he meant. If you stop thanking people, what will they do? What will it cost you?

Take the old song Greensleeves, "I delight in your very company." But Henry VIII, or whoever, felt owed by the fact of that delight, of having loved her so well. He had a good brisk thanking coming. In this, I'm for Greenie. She should not be encumbered by his delight or his love. No one owes loving a goddamn thing.

I just Googled "thanks" and you know what I got? Among the hearts flowers and clip art, pics of babes who look like they're about to put out. What does that tell you?

Directive: Never fuck out of gratitude. I never have, and it's not because I didn't owe. Nobody ever owes that.

I mean, obviously, if the way in which I saved you from the monster makes you want to fuck me, that's cool, that’s biochemistry, the limbic system. But, you have to want to.

I don't know.

Sometimes you can just say, “I like it that you...” instead of “Thank you for...” But not always.

I did get through a week without thanking anyone. The trick is to say "great,..." or "I'm happy that..." Unsophisticated forms, but I'm new a this. I notice how rarely other people actually use the word.

Another week. I thanked onebody, one word. Just didn't have the time to not. Like Cicero, St. Augustine, Pascal, Sam Johnson, Twain, or whoever is most responsible for the line that goes like, I'd write you a short letter but I don't have the time, so I'm writing you a long one.

A new surrogate today - "Very kind of you." Veddy kind indeed.

That's sort of it. This time I think I won't even pretend to resolve anything. That all right with you?

Thanks.

And while we're at it, we might knock off saying "sorry," quite so often. Or "excuse me." Like when you pass within two and a half feet of someone in the hall. Unless there are mangled corpses and significant property damage, just nod and walk on by. If you feel like smiling, then do so, a little. Maybe.

Illusion

In the early 1980's, an artist set up a laser projector on top of the Transamerica Pyramid and projected a light show onto the cloud cover over San Francisco.

I was driving cab that night. I was was prepared, I'd read it it in the papers, but when I saw it, a delta of colored lights sliding smoothly across the night sky, recognizing it for what it was, my mind still perceived a solid object, a spaceship. It didn't care what it was told, that's what it saw.

From Plato's Cave through Descartes' Mauvais Génie to the film Matrix, it's an old idea, that we can be tricked into accepting illusion as reality. That two-minute demonstration made it real to me.

In 2001 the USAF Institute for National Security - that's the Air Force - published a 64-page paper titled Nonlethal Weapons: Terms and References, edited by Robert J. Bunker. There are a lot of line items. One, letter K, is Holograms.

The second of three is Hologram, Prophet.

"Hologram, Prophet. The projection of the image of an ancient god over an enemy capitol whose public communications have been seized and used against it in a massive psychological operation [609]."

The light show I saw was by some local artist on a shoestring budget with 1980 off-the-shelf tech available to any civilian. It was enough to fool my senses. We're way beyond that now, and it's said that military technology is always ten years ahead of what the public is told.

So: if a government chooses to deceive its population, however absurd the proposal, we will believe it. Your eyes, ears, and skin will tell you it's true. If CNN reports that a White House Press Release has announced that giant singing jellyfish are landing all over the globe, and supports it with high tech production values, you'll believe. If they project Jesus wrestling Godzilla a hundred miles high over Fresno, and you walk out onto your deck and see it happening, and the president interrupts regular programming with an official announcement, it will become your life. Whatever you believed to be absurd three minutes ago is nothing. You'll think, "I thought they'd  try to cover it up."

This isn't a conspiracy theory - Serge Monast did pimp the idea in the 1970's and 1980's as NASA's Project Blue Beam - I'm just saying it could be done. We have the ways and means. Let's hope we lack the will.

From INSS Occasional Paper 15:

K. Holograms

Hologram, Death. Hologram used to scare a target individual to death. Example, a drug lord with a weak heart sees the ghost of his dead rival appearing at his bedside and dies of fright [149:4].

Hologram, Prophet. The projection of the image of an ancient god over an enemy capitol whose public communications have been seized and used against it in a massive psychological operation [609].

Hologram, Soldiers-Forces. The projection of soldier-force images which make an opponent think more allied forces exist than actually do, make an opponent believe that allied forces are located in a region where none actually exist, and/or provide false targets for his weapons to fire upon. New concept developed in this document.

The Corot Quest

We go back in time now to somewhere around 1912. An Englishwoman  in Paris has a crush on a pastoral landscape by the early impressionist superstar Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (Kor-OH). It is titled L'Etang, the pond, with woods, water, cows, a guy fishing on the bank. She is Evelyn, she's of an age to have been at the Sorbonne, and, per family legend, a habitue of the art scene. Someone, we don't know who, did her in an exquisite little sketch. She is, however, about to marry.

Her mom, Julia, as a wedding gift for her girl and new husband, is copying the painting onto a bedboard.

Now, in these times there are no color photos, no faxes, no pictures in magazines - to reproduce this painting she had to go where it was and sit in front of it with her brushes, oils, and that piece of plank. 

She might sketch it and make notes as to the color scheme. She was of a family educated and of an artistic bent likely to frequent Paris, and to to know the piece. London and Paris were, even then, as close as San Francisco and L.A. and people in her class got around. There were renowned actors in the family, and Julia did a pretty accomplished copy of that landscape.

The young couple slept in that bed, lived and died. The bedboard passed down and down again, to an English-born engineer in Canada, thence to his daughter, who befriended me, and one day wondered where the original of that bedboard copy had come to. 

I undertook the mission. She sent me photos of the bedboard, I ID'd the painting online, and, tentatively, traced it to a place in the Département de Basse Normandie in France; Le Musée des Beaux-Artes et d'Histoire. 

So I went there. Knocked back some Calvados and had a crepe. The museum didn't open until Wednesday afternoon so I spent a day kicking around Saint Lô breathing the northern air.

The docents recognized me from my recon mission the day before and wouldn't let me pay the entrance fee, walked me to the right room. Sure enough, there it was, blam. The real thing. A big feeling. I took some cell phone snaps and caught the train out.

Didn't have to abseil through the skylight into a multibillionaire's mountain fortress, disable the laser-web security system, roll the painting into a tube, evade the vicious dogs and rabid security staff, and rappel down the mountain with a shattered femur and severe frostbite. 

What I did do was track the original of a painting through four generations and three countries to bring them together. Or, in a less grandiose mode, download some pics from the web, burn some vacation time on France, email some cell-phone snaps back to Vancouver. Took a ride on a choo-choo train. 

Detail, original:

Detail, bedboard:

The Capital of Ruins

Saint Lô, Normandy. Samuel Becket called the place "The Capital of Ruins."

There are monuments all over town - a leaping Poilu caught in the peculiar expression of the Gloire de La France and the realization that he's just been shot; a memorial to Foreign Legion, another to those who died for France in Indochina and Korea - there's the gate to the old military prison dedicated to the victims of Nazi Oppression. Two French flags there, and two US. No British or Canadian. I wonder what that's about? One to those who fell in the Résistance.

But the one carved into the cliff face overlooking the main intersection, that one goes out to the victims of the bombardment that destroyed St. Lô on June 6, 1944.

That was us. We did that. US General Omar Bradley decided to eradicate the town to deny its use to the Germans, and not to warn the civilians in order to maintain surprise. Destruction is generally given at 95%. An "unknown number" of locals were killed. That technique is described as "carpet" bombing, or, in the larger view, "strategic."

There's this contrast. The city center is built on high ground buttressed by medieval stone retaining walls and towers, but the town itself is all new construction - some of it looks like a mall in Marin - in traditional Norman architectural style but nothing older than 1944. 

So, to look at it, it seems that the commune of Saint Lô, Département de Normandie, memorialized the perfidy of the Nazi regime and the brutality of ours in about equal part. They don't seem to hold it against me personally.

If you've walked in a New England town in early fall, you'd pick up some of that feel in the air and the ground and the people. Built on hills, maples and evergreens, fieldstone walls. These walls go back to the twelve hundreds though, and were defensive ramparts against marauders. They didn't work too well against 8-inch naval guns and B17's.

I'm enjoying the town. It is interesting and pleasant. The people of Normandy have a reputation of being rather like down-easterners; taciturn and slow to warm, but good friends when they do. I find them more volatile. If I approach them with my usual laconic anti-socialism (if I want to buy something I just point at it), they are closed and may show resentment; but as soon as I meet their eye and speak to them in my wretched French, even just to say "merci," they light right up, very warm smiles. More so than Parisiens. It's as if they expect you to snub them and love you if you don't. It's not that they come on simple or pathetic, they don't. They just respond quickly to certain stimuli. 

There's a museum I'm here to see, then I've got to catch the train. I changed departure times twice to meet the hours of that museum - the skinny young guy in the guichet ("ticket window type thingie place deal") ratted me out to the girl who did the final change, in French, telling her that I "had already changed my ticket twice." He thought I was too rudimentary to catch his drift, but I picked up on "deja," changé," "billet, and "fois." Smart-ass little punk.

The country between Paris and Saint Lô is something like the American mid-west, flat, deciduous woods, fields; but the architecture is more like California, pale yellow stucco. They keep a tight rein on their their look, everything's built to the old style - but where the pre-war buildings were plaster over field stone, now it's over cinder-block. You get some American mall design on downtown commercial street fronts, but where you live, residential building, you don't play around with Norman tradition. Rich or poor, your house remembers when you sailed down from the fiords and found this better land to raise your brood and keep your kine. Every soft green field rolling by your train window has been cultivated since before Caesar divided Gaul. Peasants learned to shrug off the contempt of their masters here, until the aristocracy learned to shrug off their heads. These are a free people. As far as any governed people go.

The Fall of Paris and American Self-Deceptionalism

France chose not to join our connerie (bullshit stupidity) when we went went stiff-dicking into Iraq without a thought for what we were really doing, so we turned on them, calling them pussies, growling, like George C. Scott's character in Doctor Strangelove, that they are cowardly "surrender monkeys."

This slur is based on two wars, the Franco-Prussian and World War Two. In the first, France blindly needled Bismarck's Germany not noticing that they, France, had no viable military and that Germany had built the first effective modern war machine. The French paid for their arrogance. They had to buy back Paris. In the next war they fought like demons and Paris never fell. In the next, they trusted their Maginot line and the Germans laughed their way around it and tsunamied the French army - who had plenty of guts and no chance. We brag about saving their ass in WWII; we didn't. Russia did.

Here comes the meat, American Macho; you think the cheese-eaters gave in too easy? Look at yourself. When the Japanese hit our colonies in the Pacific, we caved like little girls (sorry, little girls). We outnumbered the Nips in the Philippines, with our allies - where the locals fought harder than we did - now we complain that we were low on ammo and hungry. So we quit. The Japanese fought with sharp sticks and starved to death in tens of thousands but still didn't give in. On Guam we never fired a shot. Wake Island? Wake up. We were winning when we surrender-monkeyed there; Devereaux and Cunnigham lost their nerve, and after the war blamed each other for the white flag. The job of our military was to protect the civilians; most of our soldiers lived to be shipped off to camps in Japan; ninety-eight American civilian workers were lined up and gunned down in the absence of their guardians. You think the Japanese would have yelled uncle? The Pacific war was a series of Alamo's and most of the few captured were Korean slave laborers. Face it, Tex. The French fought harder than we did at the kick-off of double-you double-you two.

Here's the hard line: American soldiers aren't respected for their courage in the world at large. We're so insular that we don't know that. And those that do know don't say it out loud in public. We're seen as using ordnance - artillery, naval guns, bombs - to pulverize a target before we'll send the infantry in. We're afraid to take casualties. That's why we're so despised in Iraq and Afghanistan; we'll send in gunships to level a block of civilian apartments before we'll risk a sniper or two taking out one of our three-million-dollar techno-bot suburboid Nintendo dudes. So we lose the respect and potential affection of our allies and enemies.

Ordnance and tech - we load our guys down with expensive night goggles, digital comm gear and body armor until we look like snowmen from another galaxy and we're still afraid to go into the bad neighborhoods alone. Against guys in jeans and t-shirts.

We don't much walk anywhere anymore - no marching songs, just road trips lip-synching "Teenage Dirtbag;" and we won't go hungry or thirsty for half the time most other nations' soldiers will. We become "combat ineffective" instead.

That's how the rest of the world sees the American soldier; their military professionals and their civilians, where they've seen us work. We're scary because we've got all that tech, the best armor (as long as we don't fight Germany again) and all the gunships, B2's, fighter-bombers, smart missiles, digitally guided artillery and drones controlled from like, New Jersey. But we're not brave. We're known as soft, self-indulgent, racist, solipsistic bullies and brats, and afraid.

Take away our boots and we're helpless. We don't have a rep for being versatile or resilient, for improvising - our guys play by the book, we take orders, and our enlisted men are not trained to take over when our officers are down, whereas some, not all, other armies are.

In World War One, when we were still an agrarian people, we were lean, tough, and ballsy. We earned honor at Belleau Wood. After that we look good only if you don't compare us with anyone else. Like the French.

Compare US Marine Corps training with Le Légion étrangère, the French Foreign Legion. The Marines bulk up, their basic workout is the pushup. They slam the calories into you to make muscle. They yell at you and make you want to go home but you're always a foot short of your true limit.

The FFL runs, that's their core exercise. And throughout their basic training - 15 weeks to to the USMC 12 - you are always hungry. They keep you lean. You are trained for endurance, to become accustomed to serious hardship. Put a legionnaire in the bush without food or water, push them on a forced march for five days straight, it's nothing new. They've been there. Do that to a Marine in combat and he's puzzled and resentful - what the fuck is this shit? Where's my MRE's? What fucking pogue* officer runs this chickenshit outfit? The legionnaire laughs. They're built for that. And they still got whupped by the Viet Minh. Those guys knew skinny to the bone. Farmers are always better soldiers. We haven't seen a mule's ass in four generations.

So get off your flaggy porch you fat-bellied dick, go inside and watch the game. Oh, and take that flag in at night, and when it rains, Jesus, don't you even know that? If you're going to wave it, respect it.

And get a little perspective.

*By the way jarheads, pogue doesn't come from "Persons Other Than Grunts," that's a neologism (new fucking thing) - the term goes back to the Philippines in the 1920's, at least - Marine Corps historians think it came either from a local word for whore, or for candy. We didn't use the term "grunt" to mean foot soldier until the 1960's.

Les Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys and The Fat-Ass Consumer Farm

There’s no skyline here, no tall shiny modern structures; I wonder if any other major city in the world can say that. Everything cuts off at about eight stories. The whole city was rebuilt from scratch around 1860,* sparing only some cultural or religious heritage buildings - cathedrals and the like - so it’s all of a piece, like it or not. I've heard there's some sort of latticed metal contrivance to the southwest that was once the tallest human artifact, but I haven't actually seen it.

In Paris there are no big humping SUVS. Cars park on three or four-way intersections by nosing up to the corner. Motorbikes park on the sidewalk in clusters, out of foot traffic. Most are scooters. 

Not one Sports Utility Vehicle. Is there an easier way to be happy? It’s like the Anti-Texas.

On the other hand, restaurants - the ubiquitous corner bistro/cafe type - often don’t have menus. You have to work off the chalk boards, some of which will be for drinks, others breakfast, others lunch, others...well, I don’t know, I haven’t learned how to decode them yet. Then again, you don't have to tip. There's peace of mind.

Was on the metro, trying to figure what to say about French men, studying the crowd, including this dude in front of me all in blue, with his blue pointy shoes, spiked synthetic pants, v-neck sweatshirt, shapeless knit cardigan, when it came to me that the first thing you can say is that compared to us - to the theoretically diverse, open and eccentric SF Bay, there is no center to Paris fashions. Guys dress like they’re the last man on earth. Let’s say that that characterization doesn’t exactly nail it; this you can quantify; guys in the US, in the Bay Area, have a much narrower range of dress. And each element is symbolic of something. Here, these French mecs, they have more individuality. It’s not that they come on outrageous - we’d to that here, as a statement of how far we’re into whichever tribe we wish to represent, or more accurately, we wish to represent us. In Paris, they just don’t care.They might as well be in their basement drinking Artois and watching some weird European sport.

The women are prettier. I know that's a truism, but there it is. I don’t know how they do it - think they just know how to hold their face, to move. Much, much less makeup. Really gracefully sexy clothes without showing much skin; flippy little lace skirts over black tights. Sorry ladies, it’s true. Home, I spot a truly beautiful woman once every couple of years; a really pretty one a few times a year. Here, I’ve seen three or four beautiful women in seven days, and fifteen or twenty - maybe more - really lovely chicks. I say again, I don’t know how they do it. If I figure it out I’ll let you know.

The Parisians don't run, that is, jog. I've seen maybe two joggers in the eight days I've been here. If they don't run, and they eat all that cheese, how come they're not fat? I've seen fewer fatties here than cowboy hats. Really.

In Paris they don't say "oui" like "we," it's more like "way." I'm no doubt missing the nuances, but of course, they would have their own way - oui - of proving that they're not from the provinces.

Anyoui, I'm going to try this Roquefort - ohhhhhh - not now, Angelique, you're interrupting the cheese - then see if any of those pix will do the job.

Man, trying to get cell pix on the metro, I don't know how to do that - I felt like a pervert or a thief, and people knew what I was doing. Uncomfortable. Next time I'll wait until there's one good shot and just stand and take the fucker, instead of surreptitiously chipping at it.

Alright. I'm going to have to subject you to an unfortunate procedure. Since I couldn't get one good photo to post, I'm going to have to post three or four poor ones, with captions. Brace yourself.

Nah, I'm better than that. Yet...okay. You get two blurry scarf pix. In truth, the French are no blurrier than anybody else, but I hadn't learned to wait for the stop to click the shutter icon. Anyway, failing all else, here are those scarves the trendy guys are wearing. And one of those puffy black plastic jackets. But these don't show the individuality I was trying to describe.

 We don't crop the one below to showcase the guy in the jeans. Jeans are everywhere. We have left our mark on them for sure. On one street corner I saw two cowboy clothes stores.

If I get better photos I'll get rid of these diseased weasels.

*A prodigious wink to big sis Rhea for the history