Late Hit
One of the reasons the Gotham Office failed to produce the regular mutterings yesterday is that we were busy being Laid Off. Our former employers tapped us on the shoulder yesterday and before you could say "reliable solutions that allow our clients to move quickly from concept to value," we were out on our editorial kiester.
Apparently the permanent office in New York is being dismantled, and the programmers who have been asked to stay will mostly be working out of their homes or on the road. We tried to explain that we were perfectly capable of coming up with new e-buzzwords while sitting in a bathrobe on our couch -- offering "profitastic" and "incentivity" as free samples of what the firm was fer chrissake throwing away here -- but our arguments were drowned in a sea of details about COBRA.
Since most of the people who made the job more than just a means to a paycheck were laid off a few months ago, we don't feel much personal regret in leaving. Also it has more and more frequently occured to us of late that We Really Ought to Be Doing Something Worthwhile Instead of This E-Nonsense. In that light, the inevitable was simply hastened. Let the cost-cutting begin.
And if you're a prospective employer...
Dry indeed. Dry like our old chum Robert Salsbury's Overheard in NYC site. E.G.:
woman sitting at the bar at the ear inn (spring street/greenwich):"you know who's even more of a badass than madonna? TINA TURNER!!"
FYI -- Re Laura's call here today for an end to the Starbucks reign of oppression: there's a good bit more on the subject over at MeFi. While we suspect that this had to do with a less-than-with-it staffer's error (and not with any corporate evilness), who knows what officially manadated parsimony might lead a coffee-kid to mistakenly believe they must do?
That said, Starbucks has employed at least one member of our family for some time, but that cannot excuse them from their true crime, which is working alongside crappy delis to drive all the decent pastry and bagels from the streets of New York. The pastry in Starbucks is so wretched that one might require the obscenely large Venti size beverage if only to re-hydrate ones oral cavity after a vain attempt to grapple with the stale thing one has just plunked down three bucks for. (See, by the by, this illuminating discussion of the goal and limits of the Super-Sizing of beverages, by our good friend Grim).
For this and other related reasons the editors don't object to Laura's proposal -- let us give the company the heave-ho from our shores, so long as local coffeemeisters Oren's are ready to take over the duties.
Recently Surfaced in Memory
1996. Springtime. Walking down Henry Street, past the cheerfully filthy front of the C-Town. Encountering the front of a typical example of postwar development in South Brooklyn: squat apartment building with a narrow rectangular concrete space in front surrounded by iron fence: a little sovereign aisle just wide enough to be a miniature run for the large and slightly quizzical canine who stands at one end, regarding me inscrutably. Out of my mouth, a reflexive utterance, in the kind of voice one adopts with regard to dogs. "Puppy," I address him, this the lone word I speak but my Aren't-We-A-Good-Boy voice conveying the full imbecility of my desire to insinuate myself into the heart of nearly every quadripedal mammal I see.
His eyes follow me with a blankness that bespeaks exactly nada. His presumed owner sits in a housedress on a folding chair on the stoop a few feet away. As I pass her stoical dog, she takes her Marlboro Light from her mouth and bestows upon me a broad smile which contains two long rows of tiny yellow teeth, pinprick-pointed as if filed that way. He'll take yeh hand off, she says with a quiet and prideful joy.
Time for a NYC Tea Party - let's kick the bastards out once and for all. We are happy to serve them their comeuppance, petards, et.al. I spose i'm ruffled because i have NEVER voted for a winning candidate - not even in the stinkin' NYC Mayoral Primary! Not even my councilman vote won! (Rocky Chin.) At least Norm Seigal's *maybe* in the runoff! And okay, George Spitz got 1% of the vote. Too bad Bill Clinton didn't get himself on the ticket.
Somehow, Bill, the star story makes me think of Kris Kristofferson and Babs Striesand REAL hard. Neat!
I don't know if I'd noticed the handsome portrait of Dr. Stukas on his Latrobe faculty page before.
I'm stunned by how easy it would have been. I hope I don't have to say that again any time soon.
I don't really know why I mention it, as it's just a miserably uncreative use of a familiar template, but at least I now have a marginally useful personal homepage up. Includes a few links to dull writing one can't access from here.
Soapbox
It's a grey Gotham Monday, and we've hit the first challenge to the notion that Rudy Giuliani has been transformed from divisive authoritarian to unifying leader. We understand the need that many people have -- having watched him rise beautifully to the desperate occaision -- to see him continue overseeing this city that feels suddenly, horribly insecure.
We've never been term-limits fans here: it's always seemed like an overly artificial restraint on the basic idea of electing whomever we like. But given that it's there, we're not sure we agree with the sudden chorus that says we need his firm hand to remain on the tiller because we've come to depend on it, to see his grave, doggedly calm face on the screen, patiently holding a press conference -- Rudy, patient with the press, patient with what even we recognize are dumb-ass questions, questions the Giuliani of a year ago would have cut off at the knees.
We're rambling here, but everyone we know has a tendency to do that lately. Our point, sort of: nobody's inspired by the candidates running for mayor, left and right. But is a massive upheaval in NY election law a good idea right now? Do we need him that badly? Instead of clinging desperately to what Giuliani has been to us, could we, instead, use what we've seen in him as an example of how to lead ourselves once he's gone?
Hysteria
Read this harrowing account of panicky racial profiling this past week-- and how the media handled it. (And be happy that people like Mr. Kottke are paying attention).
Then check out how a major airline gave into a mob's bigotry.
Tell a friend.
Via MetaFilter: Pakistan Starts to Heat Up. Talos, who posted the link, remarks, 'Previous BBC reports dramatically highlight the folly of having a leader who is not well read enough to recognize the historical connotations of the word "crusade."'
Punditry
Andrew Sullivan is rapidly expending his credibility with yours truly. I've always paid him the compliment of taking him seriously. The argument he now insists, however, on making-- that we should not merely "stand by" the President because it's the right thing to do in a moment of crisis, but interpret his scraping-after-competence in the past week as the mark of a Churchillian leadership -- is one of the strangest and silliest I've recently seen.
As usual, some of the best responses continue to come from outside of the mainstream media (and I say this as a committed and feverish consumer of same). Rory's discussion here is a particularly good one which takes an Australian and a student-of-history perspective, both insightful. And here's Laura's story, which contains some insights about the towers' physical history and (dual) uniqueness.
* * *
I am rapidly becoming the last person in this
shaken city -- and certainly the last person who maintains a website -- who
hasn't yet set down a personal essay about my experience on September 11.
I don't know that I'm going to. My experience of the day doesn't make much of a story. I will offer this: the one moment which stands out in memory -- which seems separable, as it were, from the hard-to-distinguish glob of the Collective Disaster, the composite experience of all of those of us who weren't flying for our lives or desperately trying to contact someone who was -- was the moment I heard about the very first crash. I was about to step on the subway, and I had just switched on my walkman's radio. I don't know why -- I hadn't been listening to it on my walk to the train. I must have thought that I might be waiting a few minutes for the train and would catch the news, but as I turned on the radio a train was just pulling into the station. I heard the WNYC announcer say "An airplane has just crashed into one of the World Trade Center Towers." And then I stepped into the train and lost the signal. I stood, wondering if I should tell everyone what had just happened -- but at the time I didn't have any conception of its magnitude. I convinced myself that it must have been a small plane, a Cessna or some such, a terrible accident. I wondered how many had been killed.
I didn't imagine a number higher than ten.
Everyone read their books and newspapers, quite serene and unconscious of what was unfolding above us as we passed through the downtown area. By the time I got off the train at Grand Central, my concern had quieted to curiosity. I thought about a book review I was working on. And then I came up the stairs and put the radio on again, and discovered that in that subway ride I had passed, along with everyone else, into a new world, where there seemed to be nothing else but a black flower that bloomed and bloomed and bloomed.
Laura Miller's Salon interview with writer Jason Elliot on his experience of Afghanistan and the role of the U.S. in its recent history is worth checking out.
Well, how do you like that. Guess I had access to my favorite Bloggie all along! Hey Bill! Hey Gavaloni! No wurries, Stuke! Two things: Very interesting book by Doris Lessing about the US betrayal of the mujahadeen (leading up to the Taliban's hatred?) and also to point out that ObinL is Yemeni. I spoke at a political rally for a right-wing group in Lahore, somewhat against my will (long story involving the Lahori Special Police Force Cheif and a judo match) - everyday people are way politically aware there. Perhaps more than us. It gives me faith and fear simultaneously.
sorry to interrupt your convo, boys - soldier on!
A particularly ill-informed analysis of the bomber/fliers' motivations is that they are poor, ill-eduated, and stupid enough to believe that they be serviced in heaven by seventy-two virgins.
Actually, they were all quite intelligent and many were highly educated. As readers of the Chicago Tribune know (you don't hear that often), many spoke English and they were all smart and educated enough to learn how to a Boeing. Neither is easy. And, while we're on the subject, it's worth noting that almost all of the leaders of these groups have PhDs. It would be easier, and less troubling, to think that we were hated by ignorant yokels.
Should you share my sensation that "God Bless America" a less-than-satisfying choice of anthem in a bad time, this suggestion was made for you and me.
Following up on MG's post below -- I looked at several of the Afghani news sites linked to by Winer; they represent, for the most part, an (implicitly or explicitly) moderate, anti-Taliban part of the Afghani exile community. Of course, it's probably more complex than that. Still, interesting to read what so many Afghan-Americans (or Afghanis living abroad) have to say about what's going on.
It's also cool to read the news from Karachi -- though I don't have a clue about the politics of "Pakistan's most widely circulated English language newspaper."
The Trib has kept relentlessly pounding away on the normalcy, even niceness, of the bomber/fliers* while they lived in the US: "Model tenants now neighbors' worst nightmare." For reasons unclear to me, I find it one of the more interesting angles on this awful story. See if you agree.
*By the way, what's the verb -> noun appropriate to describe them? "Terrorists" is too much like "warriors" to describe soldiers: it's too generic.
Meanwhile, Dave Winer has decided to pull his head out of our collective journalistic navel and has started a directory of Central Asian newspaper sites. Very revealing in very many ways. Highly recommended.
Returning to our usual area of expertise for a moment: about an hour ago I overheard a little girl sweetly asking her mother the following:
"Mommy, when you were little did you watch '90210'? Was it good? What was it about?"
The reply was incoherent.
This letter from Tamim Ansari, an Afghani-American writer, on caterina.net, is worth reading, if you're not exhausted by the subject already. Found via anil dash.
If you need a target for that unchannelled rage, you can check out Ann Coulter stuffing on some jackboots over at the always-groanworthy National Review. Thanks to textism for links to this and other recent examples of right-wing lunatic posturing.
Letter from Chinatown
Equitorial Mike sent this into the Gotham office today. We offer it, unedited.
I live in Downtown Manhattan. Chinatown, specifically, on the other side of the (narrow) island but as far down as the WTC. Pretty much every day, at least once and usually multiple times, Laura and/or I would round the corner of Henry Street, and the WTC was there.
And, no shit, no matter what my mood there was a moment where the freakin' Sinatra would start playing and I was shooting a downtown scene with Scorsese. So that's gone. And, you're right, that absence may, from time to time, be forgotten, but I suspect that as long as I live here and walk down my street, the absence is gonna scream out -- ironically, from a sometimes very pretty sky, from behind nice buildings in their own right. I feel like one thing that has, at least temporarily, been lost is the ability to mourn small losses (like am I really seriously getting choked up here over my freaking view!?!) in the deluge of suffering without feeling inadequate, selfish, unfeeling, dumb.
Laura had jogged right by the buildings about ten minutes before the first plane crashed. I'm not sure she fully yet realizes everything that that means. How (as she often does) she could have chosen an ultimately more perilous route, or just left to run ten minutes later. How her more than average (entirely admirable) curiosity and empathy and courage might have held her on the scene; how easily we could have lost her. But she did come back. We went out to watch the first building burn. It seemed an isolated catastrophe. Later, I was telling my mother on the phone (in Ireland) that she was going to see coverage of a plane hitting a WTC tower, but to not worry, we were fine, when the second plane hit. I still didn't feel in peril, and even, I know this will sound weird, headed out to find a way to work.
I had the incredibly dubious honor of seeing the first building collapse. I might as well have seen it on TV (I *did* see the second one fall, though only 1/2 mile away, on television), 'cause there was no understanding at that point as to what the images I was seeing meant. No possible understanding of how many people had just died. No understanding really of what that meant for all the architecture and infrastructure below and around it. Even as I saw the building fall, my mental image of the downtown around it was as a region mercifully spared further damage ("Like, it came straight down, didn't it?" I should have my head examined). I heard someone saying something about the Pentagon being bombed, and thought they were full of shit. For almost twenty minutes, some of which were spent hurrying home to assure Laura I was OK and to see that she was OK (she had threatened to try to get closer to check it out), and some of which was spent watching the aforementioned television, for almost twenty minutes we pondered how odd it was going to be to have only one tower.
About fifteen minutes after the second fall I remembered that (a) Aaron Schnore worked at the World Financial Center (next door, basically, and a huge building complex in its own right which is pretty much not going to make it) but that (b) maybe Tuesday was the day he was flying to Germany. Aaron is fine, but possibly only because he took his daughter to school before setting off for downtown.
And basically right now I live in a police state, and I don't mind at all (I never saw that coming). I have to show i.d. to go home, and having friends down is against the law. The last two days have been an 8-mile round trip walk to work, sometimes through the asbestos cloud (luckily the gods of the wind spared Chinatown most of that, at least visibly). And I'm basically doing all of these things that would in ordinary times seem like the most horrible of inconveniences, and I know that I'm amongst the luckiest people in the world. You've seen the stories. You know that there is too much, that we will never see orhear every story, that it is every kind of loss imaginable. And this is all before our war gets under way, under the command of people I'd really rather not be in command right now.
I'm trying hard not to be provincial. I know that there are more people dead at the Pentagon than were killed in Oklahoma City. I know that the plane in Pennsylvania (not terribly far from where most of my extended family lives) was full of heroism and ended in a noble human effort that doesn't bring those people back to their loved ones. I know that people all over America can basically feel the nukes coming. It's a sad fucking mess is what it is. For me, the oddest thing is the way the news, or even the talk of the people on the street, switch from discussions of world-wide fear and loathing to local devastation and back as if it is all the same thing. How do I think about 5,000 dead people lying in a pile so close to my house on one hand and contemplate the fear of every other thinking human on this planet with the other?
I have lost no one directly, but co-workers have (probably, I mean --officially we're "still holding out hope"), and it seems next to impossible that someone I know, at least a little bit, has not died. Maybe some cop I used to resent being in my field of vision (I'm so pro-cop right now I'm scaring myself a little bit). Maybe people I dealt with at previous jobs. And I'll quite probably never know.
The numbers are difficult to fathom.
I feel socially inept, and don't know when that will go away. When is it OK to crack a joke again? When is it OK to do so in a public space? Is the person on the subway next to me over this, or very very far from over this? Why do I long to hear the usual garbage about sports and the weather and garbage news about sexual impropriety of the rich and powerful? And how much art, how many movies, how many shows, how many photographs, are going to have those fucking towers in them and break our hearts again?
Our phone is out for probably a week or so more, but we do have electricity, unlike a lot of downtown. We may do odd things in the next couple of days; maybe say something we immediately realize was a dumb thing to say under these circumstances, maybe start crying in the middle of a mindless comedy. But I think we're fundamentally undamaged. The bastards who did this can't have our lives. Not all of them. And they can't have this city.
-K.
This is a somewhat illuminating piece about the Palestinian reaction to the attacks from the Washington Post. I actually got there through the Palestine Daily.
I can't, just yet, formulate an adequate reply to/extension of MG's
post earlier today, but I'll essay a few disconnected squibs for now:
Spiraling as we are into quasicoherence, the Gotham office bids you all a quiet and softly-dreamed night.
People of Faith
I received this piece of spam yesterday from an amazingly chowderheaded bunch at the website Faith and Values.com:
Dear Concerned Faithful,
We share in the grief of our nation and the
world following the recent terrorist acts. We invite you to please join us in
prayer...
What follows is an unexceptional and in itself inoffensive (to monotheists, anyway) text, followed by two hyperlinks asking whether or not I "prefer" to receive further information from FaithandValues.com.
If there is a god, no doubt she has prepared a special hell for those who graft together e-marketing, saccharine piety, and opportunistic attention-getting following the deaths of thousands.
Choire at EAST/WEST has photos and on the street reportage from around Manhattan.
The Chicago office communicates its heartfelt joy at hearing that the New York office is safe and well. Words fail this office but the feelings are genuine. (The CO also apologizes for having failed to do its part to keep your internet Tamagotchi alive while you were on the continent. We tried once, but the net, she was a stormy lass that day and Blogger was a cranky ole ... you get the picture.)
Now, on to a topic where I have words aplenty: politics.
There has been quite a lot of bumpf about how we are at war and how we need to steel ourselves for the difficult struggle over the long term and so on and so on. There has been precious little detail on what exactly that will involve and how it is to be accomplished. I think that is for a good reason. The most obvious, and perhaps only, thing the United States can do as its next step in this war is to invade Afghanistan.
I don't need to remind anyone that this has been tried. And that it was not, um, a success. And that it was exceptionally brutal, as was the companion invasion of Chechnya. And that the end result was, well, the Taliban.
There's always the possibility of embargo: starve the brutes, take the first-born and second-born too! Let's get Old Testament on their asses! Except there is already famine in Afghanistan. And Osama Bin Laden is still there, oddly enough. Iraq too.
Lest this seem hyperbolic, I recommend this story from the International Herald Tribune. The IHT quotes the recommendations of "defense experts" as:
To restore U.S. credibility, they said, the Bush administration may well need to commit American armed forces to ground attacks to capture or kill terrorist leaders and overthrow regimes that help or harbor them. 'Washington has to be ready ultimately to send in forces - probably airborne - to seize and temporarily hold the capital of a hostile regime or the center of power of an organization, sustaining the inevitable percentage of U.S. casualties,'
To say nothing of casualties among those unfortunate enough to live there.
Open U.S. support for foreign surrogate forces to make war on regimes backing international terrorism.
Hmm, I seem to recall this strategy having been tried before. In a similar vein, I heard someone say on TV last night that the US has to "get behind the democratic opposition in Iraq." Hey, good idea! They're rarin' to go, I'm sure.
Revealingly,
Now we have to worry less about Chechnya because peacetime standards are not going to stand and you are going to do things you wouldn't normally do," the official said.
That is, we are going to start behaving as Russia did in Chechnya.
But can't we just "take him out"? Please, there's no 'just him' to this sort
of thing.
"To be effective in killing people, you need cluster bombs, even napalm, not cruise missiles" of the sort designed for pinpoint accuracy and minimal casualties among nearby civilians, according to Mr. Gerecht.
Ah, but we'll have ALLIES!
Coalition warfare against terrorism is an overriding threat. British, French and other European leaders seemed to foreshadow strong allied support for a new, bare-knuckled U.S. war on terrorism.
I don't mean to be snotty. On the contrary, I'm sure each did everything that human ingenuity, will, and cruelty could do in order to win. And they did not win. In short, I don't see a war that is winnable. I'm not even sure I understand how it is to be fought, except with unimaginable savagery towards civilians. It reminds me more of the "war on drugs" than World War II.
But we're in a war whether we like it or not, no? I don't have a good answer to that. Would it be a war if we didn't treat it as one? Well, yes: if the US loses a major building every couple of years, that's a war, or, close enough to a war that whether it's "really" a war is a merely semantic point. But I can't help thinking that the US and the world as a whole is going to be significantly worse off if the US insists on keeping up its part in this war. By all means, fight back: I'm no pacifist. But let us recognize that we have been at war for some time: the United States blows something up in some other country about once every six months. And let someone, please, think in terms broader than war. World War II ended with the Marshall plan. Perhaps this one can end with some serious effort at justice for the Palestinians. It surely isn't going to end with someone "surrendering" and everyone else going home.
My apologies for going on. I'm just trying to work it out.
It's a surreal, balmy afternoon in Brooklyn. There's a kind of stunned silence combined with the Sunday-like activity of a bunch of suddenly-off-work people: all of which is punctuated by the presence of people actively grieving their sudden loss. The blood centers are working at capacity here, so the suggestion is to go tomorrow or the next day. Heartening news.
Dean has found this weird convergence on MSN's news page.
The Gotham office is lodged again safe in Brooklyn, where the ash and smoke still come in waves from over the river. Am relieved, by the way, to report that Mr. Edwards, after an exciting morning, is well and safe uptown.
I'm in the office -- I got here just when the unbelievable started happening. It's not to be processed, not to be comprehended, and right now not to be commented on.
Here among the concrete clifftops it is raining like a punishment. If you are stranded in your office you could go read some of the stories in Mr. Beller's Neighborhood. (thanks to MeFi.
Gotham Citizens Arise!
Tomorrow comes the primary. If you don't have any idea how to execute your duties, this Guide for the Last Minute Voter may help you join the Wombat File staff in moving from Completely Uniformed to Dangerously Ill-Informed.
Vote early and often.
Lightening Strikes Again
We've said it before and we'll say it again: this misspelling is fast becoming America's favorite.
"On Sept. 1, 1967, the Directive Committee of the World Federation of Fighting Arts declared Count Dante the "Worlds Deadliest Fighting Master" in recognition of his having defeated the worlds foremost fistic and grappling arts masters in 'no-holds-barred' fighting matches."
You know, they just don't take the kind of time and care selecting World's Deadliest Fighting Master that they used to back when guys like Count Dante earned the title. And I hear you can get on the Directive Committee just by showing up to the monthly meeting with brownies...
(via memepool)
Hoarder Kicked Out of Her Home
The weirdest thing about this is that the Fairfax County authorities have a Hoarding Task Force. (The moderately dreckish local Fox news coverage of same is here.)
Credit to Grim for sharing, and not hoarding, the news.
Calling Agent 99
Last weekend, while we were eating in a restaurant, Theresa noticed the diners next to us each had a cell phone flanking their place setting, like a big fish fork covered with buttons. At first I thought it was just confirmation that the same phone addiction that characterizes life in Manhattan dominates Parisian social life as well -- until I saw this. Now I bet they were secret agents.
We Get No Kitschy Nostalgia Pleasure from the Following
1. Sanka
2. The Brady Bunch
3. The Very
Best of the Eagles
4. Camouflage clothing
And now that the jetlag clears from the collective editorial consciousness of the Gotham staff, we would like to acknowledge with gratitude the joint Edwards/Stukas maintenance of the File over the past near-fortnight. I would like to add one important item to the list of meanings of the two-finger-gesture discussed last week:
6. The person standing next to me in this photo either a rabbit or a martian, and I am undermining their photographic dignity through this gesture.
I would love to know when the earliest recorded instance of this was.
Four Short Essays on a Trip to France
Passports
Go right now, dear reader, and find your international travel documents. Examine the expiration date. We failed in this, and on the day we were scheduled to depart this continent for a bit of La Belle France, we found we had some begging and pleading to do with the U.S. Department of State.
The people who work for the U.S. Department of State are, some of them, mindful of their petty-bureaucratic power. They are, some of them, the kind of people who greet a request for a last-minute passport renewal as they would a rum-soaked leper asking for a twenty and a hug. They have little, scabby hearts and piggy eyes. I wish upon them the following: heat rash, amoebic dysentery, and a thorough tax audit.
A twenty-hour period described in vehicles
Arecibo car service Fast, cheap, and a little scary. Boeing 767 jet (a calm flight memorable chiefly for the showing of off-putting CBS programs inflight, particularly a horribly depressing episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, in which the brutal family infighting represented, along with the clearly psychotic repressions which characterize the tragic figure of Raymond make for a harrowing televisual experience no one with a shred of humanity could call "comedy"). Paris RER train.These trains are not air-conditioned.Paris Metro.The transfers between Metro stations have been wickedly designed to foil any attempt one might make to use those little wheels on the bottom of the suitcase. TGV Atlantic line (which runs over the rails like some hypertechnological flying carpet. Until we get one in the U.S., all railroad men should wear veils of shamed mourning). Auray-Quiberon TER train (which chuffs primitively through the scrubby woods and fields of the peninsula as if to mortify one after the exultation of the TGV; which is, in its own way, pleasant. You can see the menhirs of Carnac from the train as you go by). A short hoof through the tourist-port of Quiberon, down to the Gare Maritime. A 45-minute ride on the Vilnius ferry to Belle-isle-en-mer. A ride in a red Citroen to a house in a field in the middle, precisely, of nowhere.
Island
Windswept, flat in the middle giving way suddenly to steep and tricky man-killing cliffs at all sides, pocketed with cunning beaches, water green and blue and translucent and a wee bit cold at first but get in and AH, bliss, two towns (on the landward side), Le Palais and smaller Sauzon, plus a bunch of villages, cows everywhere and surprisingly cornstalks (producing I am told France's pig fodder), lanes lined with wildflowers in colors of pale yellow, sun- yellow, purple, blue-purple, pink-purple, white, off-white, yellow-white, and so on. Blackberries fortified in their brambles. Mussels on rocks. Grouse and seagulls. Lizards. Hitchiking backpackers.
The cottage design, for vacation cabins like the one we were in, as well as for most of the other dwellings on the island, are in traditional Breton style: whitewashed stone (or modern cinderblock) with blue wooden shutters and sharply peaked roofs.
The weather changes moment to moment and kilometer to kilometer. Chill wind, blazing sun.
Climb up on the cliffs over the plage at Donnant (the bigger, popular beach) or Herlin (the little one near us which you get to through a spooky hike in the woods) and look down at the bathers like dark frogs in a bowl of jade.
Paris
Because we are good people and beloved of the gods, when we stopped in Paris for a night on our return home the end of summer and the beginning of autumn sat down together cordially for a little while, and the yellow moon hung over the Marais as we ate our dinner, and in the morning the river was lovely and the Pantheon was quiet and weird and grand and a crisp little breeze pushed us along on our walk and it was a damned shame that it was over.
Return
Back from Europa's western limit; this old New World is refreshed in my sight.
Various narrratives to follow shortly, including a Heartrending Tale of Passports Expired and Brief Excursus on the Charms of Belle-Isle-en-Mer.
