This anecdote is perfectly true. This morning a guy with a white hussar-style mustache and heavy East European accent grabbed my arm as I was passing under a soaring concrete viaduct. Pardon, M’sieur, the hussar said, But has this viaduct always been here? I said, Mais, oui. He replied, I have passed here every day for 20 years and, do you know, Sir, I have never noticed the thing before? He strode off and I continued on. As I passed the passage des Soupirs (Sighs), also this morning and as I also do nearly every morning, I noticed that it is quite deep-set, set back away from the rue des Pyrénées. Suddenly, I realized, the passage of sighs might be more profound than I had thought.
I haven’t been publishing much in this latter half of the year now dying. You could be wondering why.
Of course, I certainly wouldn’t be the first to walk these fabled streets of Paris with words sticking in my head rather than flowing onto some handy foolscap.
Still, I would hope you would be wondering – if only because I’m one of those hearts whose cockles warm when someone says, “O, Good to see you; I’d hoped you weren’t sick!”
You may be thinking – even Karine, even she – may be thinking, “Surely, Nervous-Nelly-Tracy-wacy is all upsetty-wetty, what with the election of you-know-who.” (The other day I saw her unexpectedly, unsteady on her high-high heels, picking her way down the steps of the Opéra Garnier – that would be just after three pieces by Jiri Kylian.).
Also, she might think, I’m put off the public pen by the disheartening prospect of more political boobery blowing in on me from the Gallic, or, even, Teutonic, political territories. But, as Richard Nixon and his aides famously added to every bright idea, that would be wrong.
Karine would be wrong. (Her high-heels are no joke, especially if it’s slippery. She almost missed her step as I watched, too far away to catch her arm! Boy, what a disaster that might have been; she loves dancing so, a limp of any sort would devastate the woman. I’ve always loved her thin, muscly, almost stringy arms, her tough made-for-work hands – she might very well have really hurt her back as I looked on.).
Certainly, none of this can explain nonpublication, can it?
As long as I’m still out of Hell and can know it, neither that American man of the little winkle and disinflatable ego, nor that exceptionally coarse Madame Marine Lepen of the République française nor the oddly-but appropriately-named Frau Frauke Petry of the Bundesdeutschesrepublik have dominion over me or my imagination.
The rhetorical pitchforks of these political demons break no bones, you see, and, even if, here-below, seem is so often be in waiting, their sulfurous words are no brimstone; there is a diabolic reek, however.
Also, remember, I am a philosopher; Voltaire is my tinhorn god. I therefore expect very little from a species that, among other inexpressibly dumb things, destroys the bees that ensure its vital food crops and smugly congratulates itself on abolishing slavery among its own kind instead of asking itself what sort of species would invent it.
Count on it, the relatively small crowd of political cretins presently taking up considerably media space do not occupy even a tiny fraction of my waking-up thoughts, believe me.
I don’t wake up wailing because you-know-who’s election is a moral and political disaster whether he’s just a particularly wrong’un or an ordinary imbecile.
It is surely bad that from here forward, any namby-pamby objection one may have to cruelty or cruelty-based systems can be blown off with a careless wave:
“O! Stop your infernal worrying, Tracylein. Once he’s in office he’ll drop all this foolish hater stuff as surely as he’ll shave off the toothbrush mustache. He’s just talking to his base.”
His base? His base? His base, Friedrich?
For just a moment, consider that American office-and-emolument seeker as a human being rather than a mere political cartoon. What sort of human being – can you tell me? – wants to curry favor with a base who needs to be fed a diet of paranoia, anger and hatred?
Bad, too, is it that the booby belligerence – the lyin’, dissin’, flictin’ – of the new “movement” has become the general political mode. I really do fear that this loose, bad-tempered pushing and shoving, may actually bring about the Turner-Diary-like fantasies of confrontation that underpin so much of the politics of you-know-who’s boob base.
Why not? America has had a civil war and contrary to what we’re always trying to tell ourselves, a lot of the popular passion for it was based on paranoia about the “Slave Power”. Just because ending slavery was a good thing doesn’t mean the means of doing should thrill me or you.
I’d have preferred a vote in the House after reasoned debate and an agrarian program distributing 40-acres and a mule to ex-slaves. I’m sure many of my political friends would say they would’ve too. Yet, I hear very little of re-reading Thoreau, studying King’s campaigns or rationally determining what circumstances merit putting one’s precious body-self on the line. I hear a great many things which it seems to me are just opportunities to gain bully points through booby belligerence…
The absolute worst thing about the whole vile mess was actually pushed right into my snout the other day and in an entirely unexpected way. And this, the worst of all things that might upset me enough not to publish, has not, as might suppose a certain female person whom I suppose is even now nervously tressing up her frizzy hair in her princessly tower, the while pretending her stubborn refus is firmness of cosmological purpose or some such…
As you may know, Karine’s sister, Fifi, is un être à deux pieds sans plumes, a mensch, a good person, one of Yahweh’s few real successes. So, the other day, when I needed a shoulder to whimper on, I naturally went to impose on Fifi.
After all, what with work and children, Fifi has little time for such stuff. But, just as her womanly scent and resemblance to her sister subtly inebriate me, so does her patient sacrifice of her precious time seem to give weight to my feelings. And I am not so obtuse as I don’t sometimes wonder if my esteem is compensation enough.
Such feelings in respect to my own sentimental circumstances as I may have or may have had have already been of course properly mulcted by passing time, which, by the way, is also supposed to mulct me. I have as yet had no sign of it.
Anyhow, a tête à tête with Fifi does me a power of good and has done. Why stop?
I ring the bell, crack open the door…
Before I can holler, “Bonjour!”, Fifi looks up over the pile of paperasserie heaped on her worktable at the far end of the little room, her little violet-framed, half-moon reading glasses, stylishly perched on the peak of her nose, yells, “He’s a wrong‘un, Trace.”
You understand. She’s referring to you-know-who, that American man with the little winkle.
Now, I am really taken aback.
Fifi hates, despises, deplores all politics; she counts only on non-virtual humans, cottons to no avatars. Naturally good, Fifi is the political base of the One Just One, should this being actually exist and need a base.
So why don’t I love Fifi and why – can you tell me? – do I love her very, very, very bad, bad, bad sister?
My stomach knotted.
“I saw Rapunzel on the steps of the Opéra,” I say in stunned reply.
- Did she let down her hair?
“What?”
- Did you talk?
Of course I didn’t talk to her.
I explain that I was with a woman. How could I possibly drop her to talk to “Rapunzel” – Fifi mockingly calls Karine “Rapunzel” these days, taking a tone that does sting, a bit.
On the steps, Karine was all alone.
“It was like seeing her in her tower, pouting, tugging at her stupid, curly hair, Fifi, not a glance to one side or the other, let alone, out the window… Christ, she must have been sitting near us,” I say.
“I wonder, did she see us?”
- Are you sure it was her?
“For Chrissakes, I told you I saw her wobble all the way from the top of the steps.”
I explained to Fifi that it was good show, too. Jiri Kylian doing pieces called Tar and Feathers, Bella Figura and Symphony of Psalms; the first and third being new in the repertory.
Together, the three pieces were a sort of mixing classical dance with contemporary choreography, contemporary dance with classical choreography and mixing it all up again.
“I’ll bet Karine really liked the second piece,” I say, “But, personally, I don’t think it worked well.”
Karine thinks classicals can do contemporary, but I tell you that expression and narrative just can’t be done by anybody who’s really expert in the other; for Chrissakes, she and I saw that when hip hop folks started prancing on tippy-toes, didn’t we?
Karine’s probably going hog-wild with opinionated vaporings right this moment – she’s probably lucky she didn’t fall right down the steps or that some careless citoyen didn’t elbow her down as he rushed blindly forward to light a cigarette.
“Why wouldn’t she wait, Feef?,” I say.
“I would have come across, eventually. Sure. What are these fantasies, anyhow? Useless. Useless. Pointless!” I pause to catch my breath.
“All the same,” I continue, “I’d bet she likes that Bella Figura one. It’s full of contradiction, tension...”
I consider Fifi a moment – she’s resting her chin on her fist, gaze lightly upon me, expression bland but smiling with her eyes – Why do I have the feeling she might cry?
“As for me, Feef,” I continue. I feel somehow less sure of my words.
“There’ll be no more mooning about, admiring her, your, pert nose, her frizzy hair! I am not to blame.”
- Does she blame you? O! So you’re that man Dylan was talking about?
She laughs.
“No.” I frown.
“Not at all. A manner of speaking. I was talking about something else. I guess you think things might go to the wall?”
- Am I saying that?
And so it is, even with Fifi. Apparently, there’s no talking to her, either.
There seems to be so much repairing to do and I’m just not le type who can do it. This is what I say. I was never good when cars were mechanical, Rapunzel, so I just don’t see a way forward now that they are electronic.
Maybe you aren’t sulking; maybe your sadness, it’s for real.
The time that has passed is for real really.
Maybe she is not wondering why I’m not publishing. Maybe you aren’t wondering. Maybe she knows that I am wondering. I hope so and don’t.
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