I happened to be paying attention this time. 2016 proved beyond a reasonable doubt that each human being is really unique.
Not namby-pamby unique, but really, tough-Charlie, unique.
If this uniqueness were not so, how then would we explain so many inexplicable events?
Also, the uniqueness of be is why the very good Fifi is so good and why I still do perversely love, have perversely loved, will perversely love, the very bad Karine instead of the so-good Fifi and vice-versa and so on.
Perversities induced by uniqueness are the root of comedy and of tragedy, Aristotle might have said if he'd known quantum mechanics as well as I have come to, without which perversities there would be nothing to ponder and get fussy about over past or coming years.
As well as no worthy entertainment. No, not even animal documentaries.
So, here’s to l’unique universel:
A tough-looking woman smokes a cigarette, gravely blowing the smoke into the morning mist, earphones artfully stuffed into her ears. She swings, very, very slow to some secret song that almost imperceptibly softens her features. She notices me with rather obvious neutrality. It’s not our first time together at the bus stop. I think she’s attractive. We get on before and behind each other, then quickly find a casual way to exchange a noncommittal first-time word or two. As we turn casually to resume looking neutrally out the window, I notice a little gold star of David around her neck. I wonder what she’s found out about me?
A little girl of whom I see only the mother’s laughing face is noisily hidden in the part of the madding crowd packed in behind me. Somewhere under my knees, she’s now singing a French version of The Farmer in the Dell, a radical switch from a flow of interesting questions and pertinent observations directed at her wide-eyed mother – O, this child does adore words, words, words. Words will do anything if only we will let her keep shaping them, firing them, laying them out for all to hear…
A guy dressed in cheap gym pants, tee-shirt and baseball cap. He’s decorated with gang tattoos. He sports an “Islamic” beard. I am reminded of the story of Enkidu, Gilgamesh’s savage counterpart and friend. Most, most delicately, he plucks a newly-arrived baby from the arms of its mother, ritually taking possession. Growling softly, he presses the tiny body against his chest, closes his eyes in ordinary ecstasy. The story goes that seven days with the temple prostitute did to civilize Enkidu.
A little English-speaking boy perched next to my ear sings a loud counterpoint to the Frenchified Farmer in the Dell. I recognize it as an Army boot-camp marching song: Ain’t no use in lookin’ down, he cries, Ain’t no discharge on the groun’. I twist my head. “Big boy”, I say in broad Ohio, “Where’d’ju learn that?” At camp, he says, rather coolly, I think, as if, along with I wanna be an Airborne Ranger, I wanna live a life of danger, kill, kill, killllll, this song is today’s real thing. I am, perhaps, his tone seems to imply, one of yesterday’s unreal things. “At camp,” I repeat and study the parents from under hooded eyes.
A homo giganticus. A rugby man. At least, even in jacket and tie, it’s hard to imagine him as something other than that. A Haka-challenge expression presides over an overhung brow and great bulging shoulders: this is a man who hates getting up in the morning, hates riding crowded buses. A lustrously grey-haired woman, formerly blonde, slim, lively, laughing, has got hold of his huge ear, asking to use his cell phone. She gets Haka-face to slap his pockets, stretch and strain his mighty muscular body, strenuously extract his miniscule cellphone. An earlier incarnation of the girl singing beneath my knees, this woman can hardly stay in her seat as she explains to giganticus that her daughter is waiting, that she (both of them) could be late, and that the daughter cannot know she’s forgotten her cell phone and that he’s such a fine, nice, sweet, excellent fellow passenger to lend her his cell… He puffs his cheeks in the French way of a sigh, hands the phone over. She calls, explains, presumably to her daughter, that she’ll be on time and not to expect her to pick up her phone, etc. She hands the phone back to giganticus, with thanks that seem to make him want to disappear into his seat – not that these thanks are insincere or even that effusive. She declares to anybody who wants to hear: Some days everything goes off kilter, like, as if, Atlas had a crick in his back and that, as he tries to get comfortable, reality starts sliding this way and that …
A lady who has her hands so full of stuff she can’t even press the “Stop” button, let alone open the door herself. She has learned from the cats: if you squat in front of a door and watch it intently, it will open. It might take time hers and other peoples’, but what have we got if we’ve got no time? As I stand scrutinizing her, smelling the perfume of her existence, I understand that she has adopted the manner of cats in all things, not just in this. The bus stops. I press the “Open” button. She steps out traceless into the crowded street.
A cheese shop along the street sells truffled Brie cheese. While I personally believe that Brie cheese was a proximate cause of the Peasant Revolt and has been implicated in many atrocities since, I think of the pleasure it gives Karine. She’s right wild about it and I have never hesitated to kiss her when she has wanted that. She smears it on tiny pieces of bread which she then very slowly grinds and mashes with her teeth and tongue. She is embarrassed by her avidity, her gourmandise; she flushes slightly and shrugs when she sees I notice it.
A smirk and jaunty wave from a fellow fitness enthusiast as he passes me on his way to work. He knows Karine; he witnessed the significant squeeze I gave to a certain Sabine’s very attractive hand before she skipped off up the stairway on the passage des Soupirs. I would like to be better than I am, but I know now that I never shall be any better than I should be, especially as long as I provide so much good entertainment for so many and as long as they provide so much good entertainment for me.
Once – this is long before the tragic events of late 2015 – Karine and I were walking up or down this same street, probably to do some shopping, perhaps to walk her to work, most likely for the hell of it. We were chatting, holding hands. She suddenly turned and flung her arms around me, pulled me very tight to her, put her mouth to my ear, whispered excitedly to me, “O! Joyeux Noël. Joie. Joyeux Nöel, mon amour, joyeux Noël.” She struck me dumb, so instead of speech, I hugged her tight to me, felt her, I really felt her, felt a trembling sob of her joy rise within me. Merci, Karine. Joyeux Noël.
Merry Christmas to all of you, too.
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