A walk to the comic book store

Wherever I am, particularly if I'm flying solo, I seldom make it a priority to check out the museums, the top restaurants, the interesting stores. Mostly, I just walk ... and Paris provides the most interesting walks of any city I've visited. This is a typical walk for me on a day off. In fact, I'd been on all these streets before, seen all these sights, although I hadn't photographed them. Without any planning, the route from my apartment near the Folies Bergeres to the comic book store Album near the Sorbonne covered the spectrum of what's out there, everywhere: an odd little store, something new and striking, a moment of "what the--?", a historic building, a historic sculpture. On a good day, sights like these make me glad I'm in Paris. Even on a bad day, they provide a welcome break from the routine, like a couple hours in the exercise yard.

One of a pair of dragons, Saint Michel.  

The Institut de France, across the Seine from the Louvre, at the foot of the Pont des Arts. The most famous of the five institutes is the Academie Francaise, the "immortals" who decide what is and is not proper French. (When the word "spam" entered the language, the immortals decided whether it was masculine or feminine.) The building was constructed in the 1600s and is far from the oldest in the city. 

There were a couple dozen of them, on their way from here to there. Something you don't see in New York or Washington. 

Rue de Rivoli. I don't know who they were, but I'll find out.  

Scaffolding detail. 

Art deco scaffolding, Place du Lieutenant Henri Karcher. 

Elvis My Happiness, Paris's pre-eminent magasin for all things Presley. Rue Notre Dame des Victories. 

Current events

I have this transformer that will knock France's 220-volt current down to 110. I don't use it much, since my ThinkPad and peripherals can munch on either voltage (except for the Tungsten, which would fry on French current), and the small appliances I've bought in France -- an electric toothbrush, a hand blender -- are, of course, happy with the local cuisine. But I do have the Tungsten, and the motor on the air mattress needs 110.

Since the air mattress is the only piece of furniture in the new apartment, I figured I'd blow it up to make my wait for Darty less excruciating. But ... nothing. I tried several outlets. Then noticed the lights didn't work. Nor the refrigerator, when it arrived. I found what looked to be a tripped circuit-breaker, but it wouldn't untrip. Just flopped back and forth.

I made another trip to the new apartment just now, unplugged the transformer, then tried flipping the circuit-breaker. Worked fine, lights came on, refrigerator hummed. Plugged in the transformer -- blooie.

Why this should be so bears further investigation. If I can't use the transformer, my plans for cultural domination (plugging my U.S.-spec television, VCR, DVD player and stereo, when they get here, into the transformer and creating my own little American Media Zone) are undone.

As well as being Continental in appearance and generally pleasing to the eye, the courtyard provides an alternative light source when the electricity is out in the apartment. (View from the salon. That's "living room," to you.) 

Qu'est-ce que c'est?

I'm on the third day of a two-week vacation. Originally, S. and I were going to spend this week moving her belongings into our new apartment, and then next week vacationing somewhere not-too-expensive to recover from this week. But in May I awoke in a classic alternate universe scenario. You know the drill: change one pivotal event (the South wins the Civil War, Oswald misses, the Supreme Court hands the 2000 presidential election to George Bush) and explore the ramifications. So, I'll be moving into the new apartment by myself.

I suppose "the move" has been in progress for close to two years and won't be completed until my belongings, which I put into storage when I moved to Paris in October 2002, complete their leisurely trans-Atlantic crossing. In the meantime, I've lugged over the astounding number of books I've bought since I blew into town, which has made my current abode, a furnished studio apartment, a bit more roomy. S. was kind enough to set up accounts for me at Electricite de France and France Telecom. I bought a microwave oven and brought it over on my little luggage cart, and today two young mecs from Darty brought over my new refrigerator. Because an unfurnished French apartment is really unfurnished.

Unfortunately, the new refrigerator is not humming away because the electricity is out.

I can puzzle my way through written French, which is how I was able to check out the refrigerators at Darty, order one off their Internet site, and figure out that they were going to deliver it today between noon and 8 p.m. And I can grasp enough spoken French so that when Darty called shortly before noon today, I could grasp that they expected to be by in about 20 minutes (although, by the time nearly an hour had passed, I wondered if they had said they'd be by at 20 hours, which is 8 p.m.). I probably even have enough French to call EDF and ask what's up with the lights. I'd sound like an idiot, but I think the sympathy that tends to engender among the natives is my greatest asset. But I certainly don't understand French well enough to puzzle out an EDF representative's reply to my pidgin inquiry.

Which is how life is here. I can bump along for days without incident, kind of skimming along the surface of the culture. I can order at a restaurant, buy movie tickets, navigate the bus and Metro. In a store, I can ask where the shoelaces are (if I first look up the word for "shoelaces"). But if I have to go one level deeper, I start floundering.

There's ways around it. If I walk to the EDF office, bill in hand, I will certainly find someone there who knows at least enough English to understand me. Odds are, in fact, it'll be someone (either customer or employee) who speaks perfect English. I can ask someone at work to make a call for me. I could even ask the gardien at Rue Bleue for a hand. She doesn't understand English, but I can flick the light switch, point to the circuit-breaker box, wave my paid-in-full EDF bill and look defeated.

My plan now, though, is to read a couple more chapters of Jane Kramer's fine collection of New Yorker columns, The Europeans, and hope the problem kind of goes away by itself.

That's one off the list

I have a little list. Several. Many. And a Tungsten T3 to contain them. One of the lists is "France," reminders of things to do while I'm here. I add to the list occasionally, strike items from it very occasionally. Most days, I get up, I go to work, I take the Metro home, I watch the BBC or CNN or surf the French-language channels. I write a few paragraphs. I read. Eventually, I get tired and go to sleep. I don't take any items off the list. Or, if I do, it's off the list called "Shopping," or the one called "Books" or "Music." (It's easy to knock something off those lists, and you do get a fleeting sense of accomplishment, although all it takes is spending money.)

But yesterday I knocked an item off the "France" list, by taking a L'OpenTour bus tour. A lot of big cities have at least one such service; Paris has two, the other being Les Cars Rouges. Both services run double-decker buses through the more interesting neighborhoods and past the big landmarks, with pre-recorded commentaries delivered in several languages. Les Cars Rouges has one route; L'OpenTour has four, one of which, of the Montmartre and Grands Boulevards neighborhoods, has a stop a couple blocks from my apartment.

I'd recommend it for the rubes -- sorry, "the visitors" -- but for me it was kind of a bust. I've been here for 20 months. Apparently I've seen all the sights, at least from the outside. Oh, look, there's the Opera. There's the Gare du Nord; been there a half-dozen times, to catch the Eurostar to London or the Thalys to Brussels or Amsterdam. There's Gare de l'Est, went through there maybe every other weekend, on average, when I visited S., who lived out in Champagne country. Oh, look, there's Printemps and Galleries Lafayettes, where I've dropped a bunch of euros. And there's my neighborhood again, time to get off.

I'll have to review that list.

I did see one sight that was new to me, a Conran's Habitat store that appeared to specialize in office gear. I made a note of the address (on the Tungsten T3) and will be going back soon. I'm not sure it was worth 22 euros to discover it, though.

Last night I saw "Le Jour D'Apres" -- that's "The Day After Tomorrow," to you -- in English, with French subtitles. It was not as bad as many of the reviews I've read had suggested it would be. It was even engaging at times, though annoying at times as well. There are a couple "wall of water chasing us" scenes that are twins of the "wall of fire chasing us" scenes in "Independence Day," also directed by Roland Emmerich. And there are a couple "Run! Run! The cold will catch us!" scenes that are just silly. Even granting that the air temperature could drop 5 degrees per second, running into an enclosed space and slamming the door won't save you.

I believe this was only the second time in my life I've gone to a movie theater by myself. The first time was to see "A Boy and His Dog," released in 1975. Back then, for a high school nerd, it turned out to be an acutely lonely experience. This time it was okay. I'm made of sterner stuff now, and starved for English-language entertainment.

"You bid me rouse myself...."

"Blocked," an article in The New Yorker by Joan Acocella. Published in the summer fiction issue, which must be some sort of meta-irony. Informative and entertaining. Entertaining, that is, in the same sense as a really bad car wreck you've just avoided. Take Joseph Mitchell, who joined The New Yorker in 1938, wrote a series of brilliant pieces, culminating with what was thought to be his greatest (about a blocked writer) in 1964. After that, he continued to come to work as usual, day in and day out, for the next 32 years, but never submitted another word. Two thoughts immediately come to mind:

"Wow, at least I'm not that bad."

And:

"Wow, what a great job that was."

Acocella cites Ian Hacking, a philosopher, who has written about "dynamic nominalism." That's when you invent a category, and people "sort themselves into it, behave according to the new description, and thus contrive new ways of being. Possibly, some writers become blocked simply because the concept exists, and invoking it is easier for them than writing."

I haven't read Hacking, but it wouldn't surprise me if he notes the influence of society in this phenomenon: you not only sort yourself into the new category, but you're accepted by society as a member of the new category. When people discover I've published, and then how long it's been since I have published, the usual response is "Oh, writer's block?" No one's ever said, "Oh, lazy fucker?"

Lever, coucher

Okay, so the photo uploadification process works, courtesy of Hello. This is software from the folks who brought you Picasa, a photo-handling package I started using a year ago. It's wonderful, except it can't do captions. For that, I have ACDSee. And for quick editing, I use Microsoft Digital Image Suite. (I bet there's a photo program that can do everything. And I bet it's exclusively for Macs.)

So, yes, the photo, although you have to click on it to make it big enough to read the sign in the window. But you can click on it, which is cool.

And yes, it's a little after 6 in the morning. Until I moved to Paris and got a day job, I had no idea I could wake up and actually function at such an hour. Most newspapers publish in the mornings, which means they're put together in the evenings, so that's when the production editors work. I worked from around 4 p.m. to midnight most of my life, would get to bed around 2 or 3 a.m., wake up at 11. The IHT has a shift like that, too, for the European edition, but I usually work on the Asia edition, so I'm on a Hong Kong schedule.

The day shift is not the problem. The problem is axial tilt. Sunrise was at 5:47 today. Sunset will be at 9:53. It's still twilight when I go to sleep. Or try to. Still, I'd rather deal with too much sunlight than the Stalingradesque winters, with their short days, perpetual overcast and frequent rain. (For those of you humming "April in Paris," try November here.) Most people don't realize how far north Paris is -- farther north than Halifax. Although not as far north as Saint Petersburg, Russia, which I have ruled out as a retirement destination. I'll head for someplace closer to the equator.

"Here We Talk English." Rue La Fayette, Paris, May 31. 

Without haste, without rest

Especially the "without haste" part. My last short story, "The Mercy Gate," was published in the March 1998 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. After six years, you'd be forgiven for thinking it really was my last publication and not the most recent. When I came to Paris, in October 2002, I figured it would be a good opportunity to hunker down. This was the city of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and all that crew, after all. I'd shake off the dust, clear away the cobwebs, pick up some new material and maybe some fresh perspectives. And, despite it being Paris, there'd be few distractions. I didn't know anyone. I didn't speak the language (and still don't speak it very well). Most of the television was broadcast in French, oddly enough, and CNN and the BBC compromised most of the English-language programming. What was there to do but write?

But, you know, when you're having trouble writing, there's always something to do besides writing, even if it's just sitting around, staring at the walls, and thinking about why you're not writing. I did a bit of that. Also, watched CNN and the BBC for hours on end. Read a lot of books and bought a bunch more I haven't gotten around to yet. Did some traveling. Had a volcanic, inspiring and distracting love affair. Negotiated the French bureaucracy on various matters, such as the all-import visa and titre de sejour, which is a part-time job in itself. Oh, and worked full-time at the International Herald Tribune.

But I've been writing lately. No reason for it, just as there was no reason, really, not to do it. I'm not going to write about the stories, just as I don't talk about them, because if you talk it out you don't have to write it out. But they're there, reeling out word by word, and now so is this.