One of Those Days, Until...
I'm having one
of those days where the best just doesn't seem good
enough.
You know, those when realize who old you are and then that there are people who are much younger and, in your estimation, much more accomplished. I've never been one to rush myself, or my work in pursuit of external validation - I must be satisfied and, mostly, even when others are, I am not when I know there is the potential for more. But, now, I feel myself growing impatient. I feel like I need a kick in the ass that is different that those kicks I've tried to give myself in the past. I feel like I've should be doing more.
I've been hit by a wave, which I'm cherishing, in which I've started a novel and my bohemia verse play, in which one of the characters will not speak to me. One night, before I went to sleep, I asked her why. She whispered simply: Just write me. When I come to it, her voice will be Also, I've picked up the tempo on my book of Star Trek poems. As a book, I definitely believe that those poems have a direction now. They, not I have charted their course. Though the end is not yet in sight, I do feel like I am holding onto something that has weight. That is something.
Edit: As I was writing this, the news was published that Heath Ledger was found dead. One of the few truly actors of my generation is dead at 28 years old from pneumonia. I've never been one to mourn those persons that I didn't know, but this is a very sobering instance. Rest in peace, Mr. Ledger.
I know that I've used his lyrics on my blog before, but I thought that it would be appropriate.
from the Brokeback Mountain Soundrack,
One more chain I break
To get me closer to you
One more chain does the maker make
To keep me from bustin' through
One more notch I scratch
To keep me thinkin' of you
One more notch does the maker make
Upon my face so blue
...
Oh Lord, how I know
Oh Lord, how I see
That only can the maker make
A happy man of me
You know, those when realize who old you are and then that there are people who are much younger and, in your estimation, much more accomplished. I've never been one to rush myself, or my work in pursuit of external validation - I must be satisfied and, mostly, even when others are, I am not when I know there is the potential for more. But, now, I feel myself growing impatient. I feel like I need a kick in the ass that is different that those kicks I've tried to give myself in the past. I feel like I've should be doing more.
I've been hit by a wave, which I'm cherishing, in which I've started a novel and my bohemia verse play, in which one of the characters will not speak to me. One night, before I went to sleep, I asked her why. She whispered simply: Just write me. When I come to it, her voice will be Also, I've picked up the tempo on my book of Star Trek poems. As a book, I definitely believe that those poems have a direction now. They, not I have charted their course. Though the end is not yet in sight, I do feel like I am holding onto something that has weight. That is something.
Edit: As I was writing this, the news was published that Heath Ledger was found dead. One of the few truly actors of my generation is dead at 28 years old from pneumonia. I've never been one to mourn those persons that I didn't know, but this is a very sobering instance. Rest in peace, Mr. Ledger.
I know that I've used his lyrics on my blog before, but I thought that it would be appropriate.
from the Brokeback Mountain Soundrack,
One more chain I break
To get me closer to you
One more chain does the maker make
To keep me from bustin' through
One more notch I scratch
To keep me thinkin' of you
One more notch does the maker make
Upon my face so blue
...
Oh Lord, how I know
Oh Lord, how I see
That only can the maker make
A happy man of me
|
Why France is different... #1 (draft)
11/12/07 18:37 Permalink
So, I've been
seeing a woman here in Paris. I'll call her S.
S. is from Sweden and like myself, she dreamed of living in Paris, so she came here to make a go of it. She'd studied and lived here before, so she knew something about Parisian living. Right now, S. unemployed and looking for work after her employment initial contract expired. Also, she's looking for a new apartment as her cozy studio just off the Champs Elysees has become expensive.
So, while we've been out being unemployed and adventuresome in Paris (and that is a great thing), there's been a lot of mobile phone ring-ring-ringling on our mobile phones about apartments and job interviews (moreso for her than I). S. is charismatic, hard-working and very marketable. There is no doubt that she will find something soon.
The other day, while she was out, she was called about a job by a woman who perhaps went too far. S. relayed to me that there conversation was something like as follows:
"Hello, this is S."
"Hello, my name is Mme X. I am calling about your CV."
"Oh hi."
(Insert random banter, job description things here.)
"So," Mme X. asks, "do you want to stay in Paris, S.?"
"Yes."
"What assurances do I have that that would be the case?" I might have made a snide remark, which would have ended the whole thing, but I might have been just as taken aback by the woman on the phone as S.
"I would really like to live here. I've worked and studied here. I left a good position in Sweden in order to be in Paris."
"Do you have a boyfriend?"
"Yes."
"Is it a stable relationship?"
"I'd like to think so."
"How long have you been together? Is he going to stay in Paris?"
This is where the desperation of a Parisian job search got to S. "A little over a year. He wants to stay as well."
"How do you know that? Does he have a job?"
"Yes. He has a four year contract with a university here."
S. had to lie. I only wonder what she would have said if the woman asked her to expound upon my work here in Paris (there isn't any yet). S. knows enough about me that she could have said, "something concerning literature, " or "he doesn't like to bring his work home."
All of the interviewer's questions would be considered illegal, impertinent and in bad taste in the United States. Now, I just looked out my window and all the street signs were in French, so I am reasonably certain that I am no longer in the U.S. However, most French hiring practices are unsettlingly alien to me. Many employers submit your cover letter for handwriting analysis and your CV must include a picture.
The curiousity could be cultural. Once, when I was staying in an artist community in the South of France and redesigned my website, using a template that did not include pictures (I hadn't linked to my galleries yet), the community's administrators went out of their way to find the older, cached version of my site so that my new French roommate and other arriving artists could see what I looked like. Perhaps the French might just like to know what they're getting.
Still, in huge signs on the Metro and in the newspapers, I've been reading about the problems that France has been having with employment discrimination and the lengths to which the government is going to end it. Perhaps not far enough?
Lately, I've been reading this book that my Jewish mother gave me called "The Nature of Prejudice. In it, the author relates an anecdote about a man who two identical letters inquiring to hotels about the same room in each hotel. One was signed "Mr. Greenberg" and the other "Mr. Lockwood." Mr. Lockwood was almost always offered accommodation (over 95%). Mr. Greenberg was offered accommodation about a third of the time. Granted this was decades ago, but the State of New Jersey as well as several others have recently done similar things with identical resumes and the results are pretty much the same.
But France is different. S. assures me that many of our daily ennui would not happen in Sweden. Still, in each place we have annoyances of our own. We choose to live here, because we feel that they're outweighed by living in the organism of Paris.
S. is from Sweden and like myself, she dreamed of living in Paris, so she came here to make a go of it. She'd studied and lived here before, so she knew something about Parisian living. Right now, S. unemployed and looking for work after her employment initial contract expired. Also, she's looking for a new apartment as her cozy studio just off the Champs Elysees has become expensive.
So, while we've been out being unemployed and adventuresome in Paris (and that is a great thing), there's been a lot of mobile phone ring-ring-ringling on our mobile phones about apartments and job interviews (moreso for her than I). S. is charismatic, hard-working and very marketable. There is no doubt that she will find something soon.
The other day, while she was out, she was called about a job by a woman who perhaps went too far. S. relayed to me that there conversation was something like as follows:
"Hello, this is S."
"Hello, my name is Mme X. I am calling about your CV."
"Oh hi."
(Insert random banter, job description things here.)
"So," Mme X. asks, "do you want to stay in Paris, S.?"
"Yes."
"What assurances do I have that that would be the case?" I might have made a snide remark, which would have ended the whole thing, but I might have been just as taken aback by the woman on the phone as S.
"I would really like to live here. I've worked and studied here. I left a good position in Sweden in order to be in Paris."
"Do you have a boyfriend?"
"Yes."
"Is it a stable relationship?"
"I'd like to think so."
"How long have you been together? Is he going to stay in Paris?"
This is where the desperation of a Parisian job search got to S. "A little over a year. He wants to stay as well."
"How do you know that? Does he have a job?"
"Yes. He has a four year contract with a university here."
S. had to lie. I only wonder what she would have said if the woman asked her to expound upon my work here in Paris (there isn't any yet). S. knows enough about me that she could have said, "something concerning literature, " or "he doesn't like to bring his work home."
All of the interviewer's questions would be considered illegal, impertinent and in bad taste in the United States. Now, I just looked out my window and all the street signs were in French, so I am reasonably certain that I am no longer in the U.S. However, most French hiring practices are unsettlingly alien to me. Many employers submit your cover letter for handwriting analysis and your CV must include a picture.
The curiousity could be cultural. Once, when I was staying in an artist community in the South of France and redesigned my website, using a template that did not include pictures (I hadn't linked to my galleries yet), the community's administrators went out of their way to find the older, cached version of my site so that my new French roommate and other arriving artists could see what I looked like. Perhaps the French might just like to know what they're getting.
Still, in huge signs on the Metro and in the newspapers, I've been reading about the problems that France has been having with employment discrimination and the lengths to which the government is going to end it. Perhaps not far enough?
Lately, I've been reading this book that my Jewish mother gave me called "The Nature of Prejudice. In it, the author relates an anecdote about a man who two identical letters inquiring to hotels about the same room in each hotel. One was signed "Mr. Greenberg" and the other "Mr. Lockwood." Mr. Lockwood was almost always offered accommodation (over 95%). Mr. Greenberg was offered accommodation about a third of the time. Granted this was decades ago, but the State of New Jersey as well as several others have recently done similar things with identical resumes and the results are pretty much the same.
But France is different. S. assures me that many of our daily ennui would not happen in Sweden. Still, in each place we have annoyances of our own. We choose to live here, because we feel that they're outweighed by living in the organism of Paris.
The Funeral, Part One... (draft)
10/12/07 17:46 Permalink
Only my
grandfather arrived to greet me at the Newark/Liberty
International Airport upon my return from Europe, where
I'd been to Poland on a Fulbright scholarship and then
to France on an artistic fellowship. My grandmother was
entertaining an old friend that way. The rest of my
immediate family, though I love them, have always been
too consumed by their own personal dramas to care about
when I entered, or exited the country. Generally, the
response when I call them from over a static-filled and
submerged sounding trans-Atlanic connection is: "Where
are you, now? I didn't know you'd left."
Once we had crossed the parking lot and stowed by bags in his car, my grandfather turned the key and while pulling out of airport parking: "Did they tell you about, AB?" From my grandfather's tone of voice, I knew that my friend AB was dead and that he knew also that no one had told me.
"We didn't want to tell you about it, because we know how you worry. And we knew that you would be home soon."
I had been traveling for the better part of two days. I was tired. My eyes began to swell. And I became briefly petulant in my exhaustion. While I don't remember exactly what I said before collecting myself, but I believe that it sounded something like: "Why I am I the only one left free?"
"Well, when is the funeral?"
"Tomorrow morning."
"Well, it's a good thing I got my dark suit," I said in an attempt to add some levity. In a family as large as ours, we often joked that it paid to travel with a dark suit. Someone was bound to die. And, then again and again. My family is old Southern, they believe that death comes in threes.
The truth is that I wasn't the only left free. Out of the five of us who ran together as boys, Hammy, Quany, Joey, AB - my nickname remains known only to family and intimates - the boy we called "Joey the Thief" was also free. The last I'd heard, he was married at 18, or 19 to a woman at least a dozen years his senior and a had had few children, before she met him and that they had added some of their own to that number. "Mr." Hammy, my best friend growing up and the boy we'd all have followed anywhere and who looked to me always for advice and counsel during our juvenile adventures and mischief, had made page 3 of the local tabloid newspaper for his crime "sprees" - and he actually was an impressive criminal, if you can understand that - was in prison. The same went for Quany, whom I loved as a brother because of how close our mothers had been and how closely together we were born - we shared our chicken pox - was imprisoned too, for a murder that happened during the course of a staged robbery.
AB - Arnold Poole, was one of my oldest friends, though we hadn't run together for years. Our families crossed in so many ways, that it would be difficult to explain here. Younger and smaller than all of us, he was also perhaps the most tenacious. We'd bonded almost immediately after an accident that the other three of us had caused when he was only 3, or 4. We expected to be punished, but AB was not a snitch. After that, where we went, he went also. Our lives had taken different paths over a decade ago, but we had still be children together. No matter where I've been, I've never been able to replace that feeling of those nights on the stoop under the street lights, all of us waiting to be older. We went back to the time when my tongue pronounced its vowels differently and only one way.
I'd known about his gang involvement, but I hadn't known how high and how quickly he'd risen through the ranks of the East Trenton Bloods gang. AB required his own body guards; the small boy had grown into a small man - but a man who commanded the blind respect of the larger and less brave. While his family mourned him, I wondered if I was the only one who thought about what he had to do to gain that respect.
The bodyguards, though, aren't always around. One day, while out one night to run an errand, AB was shot dead by a man with whom he and his crew had gotten into a brawl with earlier. At a week shy of 25, AB was dead.
The morning that AB was to be buried, I had my first fist fight with my 19 year-old brother. There's still a scar on my chest, between the opening of my collar that I hope will fade with time, but is visible. Gregory, my brother, said that he couldn't bear to go. He'd just seen AB alive and couldn't confront the idea of his own mortality, when he was neither as cunning or as charismatic as the dead young man.
Once we had crossed the parking lot and stowed by bags in his car, my grandfather turned the key and while pulling out of airport parking: "Did they tell you about, AB?" From my grandfather's tone of voice, I knew that my friend AB was dead and that he knew also that no one had told me.
"We didn't want to tell you about it, because we know how you worry. And we knew that you would be home soon."
I had been traveling for the better part of two days. I was tired. My eyes began to swell. And I became briefly petulant in my exhaustion. While I don't remember exactly what I said before collecting myself, but I believe that it sounded something like: "Why I am I the only one left free?"
"Well, when is the funeral?"
"Tomorrow morning."
"Well, it's a good thing I got my dark suit," I said in an attempt to add some levity. In a family as large as ours, we often joked that it paid to travel with a dark suit. Someone was bound to die. And, then again and again. My family is old Southern, they believe that death comes in threes.
The truth is that I wasn't the only left free. Out of the five of us who ran together as boys, Hammy, Quany, Joey, AB - my nickname remains known only to family and intimates - the boy we called "Joey the Thief" was also free. The last I'd heard, he was married at 18, or 19 to a woman at least a dozen years his senior and a had had few children, before she met him and that they had added some of their own to that number. "Mr." Hammy, my best friend growing up and the boy we'd all have followed anywhere and who looked to me always for advice and counsel during our juvenile adventures and mischief, had made page 3 of the local tabloid newspaper for his crime "sprees" - and he actually was an impressive criminal, if you can understand that - was in prison. The same went for Quany, whom I loved as a brother because of how close our mothers had been and how closely together we were born - we shared our chicken pox - was imprisoned too, for a murder that happened during the course of a staged robbery.
AB - Arnold Poole, was one of my oldest friends, though we hadn't run together for years. Our families crossed in so many ways, that it would be difficult to explain here. Younger and smaller than all of us, he was also perhaps the most tenacious. We'd bonded almost immediately after an accident that the other three of us had caused when he was only 3, or 4. We expected to be punished, but AB was not a snitch. After that, where we went, he went also. Our lives had taken different paths over a decade ago, but we had still be children together. No matter where I've been, I've never been able to replace that feeling of those nights on the stoop under the street lights, all of us waiting to be older. We went back to the time when my tongue pronounced its vowels differently and only one way.
I'd known about his gang involvement, but I hadn't known how high and how quickly he'd risen through the ranks of the East Trenton Bloods gang. AB required his own body guards; the small boy had grown into a small man - but a man who commanded the blind respect of the larger and less brave. While his family mourned him, I wondered if I was the only one who thought about what he had to do to gain that respect.
The bodyguards, though, aren't always around. One day, while out one night to run an errand, AB was shot dead by a man with whom he and his crew had gotten into a brawl with earlier. At a week shy of 25, AB was dead.
The morning that AB was to be buried, I had my first fist fight with my 19 year-old brother. There's still a scar on my chest, between the opening of my collar that I hope will fade with time, but is visible. Gregory, my brother, said that he couldn't bear to go. He'd just seen AB alive and couldn't confront the idea of his own mortality, when he was neither as cunning or as charismatic as the dead young man.