Paris

I did my favourite thing: commandeered an armchair and a chair without arms for my feet and sat in the Luxembourg Garden under two sequoias facing the orchard, on the left, and beehives on the right, with the last of the dark-eyed Susans and some blue delphiniums on long stalks. The sun was going down behind an apartment building on the Rue d'Assas. The students from the Lycee Montaigne had all gone home to do their homework. Around me were others reading or having conversations I eavesdropped on shamelessly.

It is, or was, a beautiful day, the chestnut trees are turning colour and the plane trees' fingertips meet overhead, making the allees into tunnels with light at the end. Something was happening in the Orangerie: that section of the Garden was blocked off and guarded and on the other side of the barrier paparazzi milled round with long lenses on their cameras. Pairs sat around tables playing chess, usually with a few onlookers. It was blissful.

Moving

Going to Paris on Monday, but here we are moving too, to an apartment downtown, so I am packing my books into boxes, which will be moved in my absence, and I am wondering how I will find everything again and how long it will take to sort my life out into physically manageable proportions when I come back: ie, the dish towels in the kitchen, the poetry books--where will I keep the poetry books and how long will it take to find them all again? There are bookshelves in the new place, built in, so will I leave my little black Ikea bookshelf here? Here is furnished, there we will need furniture.

Disorder distresses me. I fear that if I let a little disorder sneak in, soon I will be submerged in disorder. Papers will go missing. Just the thought of it makes my pulse speed up, my breath grow fast and shallow. Quickly I get up and jot a note on a post-it. I wake up covered with post-its. 

Untidiness is the flip side of  tidiness, as procrastination is the shadow of punctuality. Marianne Moore, I have always thought, judging by her poetry, must have been a person obsessively neat. Obsessive, period. Elizabeth Bishop perhaps not quite so much. I am not going to draw any conclusions from this.

Loose Ends

I am tying them up before migrating to Paris a week from today, and trying not to think too much about the middle seat that was all that remained when I booked my ticket. Two days ago I finished watching "Breaking Bad," and breathed a sigh of relief. Now maybe I could get back to reading. But last night, at a dinner with friends in Berkeley, someone said "The Wire" was fantastic (and someone else said her brother-the-lit-professor was teaching a course in "Breaking Bad.") Sure, it's violent, but the form of the thing is fascinating" the quick changes of register, the humour, the characterisation in which verisimilitude is not the point, the landscape shots, the credits, the veerings into pure cinematic abstraction, etc.

What to read on the plane? I think I'll download the kindle version of Louise Penny's latest thriller--that should keep me from screaming for a few hours and maybe I'll even sleep, given my intensive course in meditation. It's the arriving after a white night that's worst, the metro trip, the lack of an escalator at my station, the opening of the shutters, the empty fridge, the body adapting to all this.

Had a problem the other day. I was about to order a new Italian novel to be delivered in Paris, but when I went online I discovered it was half the price on Kindle, a serious difference, something like $11.00 as opposed to $24. And I'd have it immediately. It's not as if I can find it in a bookstore, unless I go to Italy, which is out of the question. Still dithering.

Finishing up the final draft of a Bonnefoy translation, and first draft of a new Cixous translation. Reading a biography of Penelope Fitzgerald, not in itself an outstanding book, but interesting especially about her life after she began writing and publishing.

Normality

In lieu of other cities. The dryer is spinning away with a reassuringly repetitive hum. Normality. Nothing but normality. Even the front page, normality. And the harping on atrocity of one kind or another (beheadings, the domestic abuse of various heroes of popular and money-making sports, the war cries, Scotland, the stock market). Normality. I mean the sky is blue, without a crack. There are birds chirping. The campus prepares for the onslaught of new and returning students by painting bicycle lanes with one-way arrows in front of the library, and shifting a few palm trees around. I'm going to make lunch, fold the dry laundry. Normality. What could go wrong?

Back to School

Just found this found poem in my Work in Progress file, which provides mostly horrors to trash and a few gems. Since this "poem" is in fact almost entirely (I added the spacing) a math teacher's back-to-school note to parents, I think I can, without immodesty, call it a gem. The school in question was no doubt the one I taught in, an English school in France.

Mathematics is

“Mathematics is
     a useful and important discipline,
which offers many opportunities
     for pleasure, satisfaction and wonder.

Pupils, however,
     may spoil exercises for themselves
and others when they forget equipment.
     So please ensure your son / daughter

has a pencil case
     containing: a compass, stubby pencil
and ruler 20 cm long,
     a protractor, an HB pencil

and a sharpener
     (with reservoir), eraser and a small
safe pair of scissors. These things must come
     to school each day, and we advise

they be kept away
     from the coloured pens and pencils, keys
and marbles, jacks and other items
     children bring to school.’

Park City, Utah, Notes

Two large black dogs. One can no longer hop back into the back of the car. Lift front legs, lift hind legs. Push.

A child's first spelling test. A list of words, some of them tricky: mask: m-a-k-s. Picnic: p-i-k-n-i-k (take two cats on a picnic). The French spelling (pique-nique) doesn't help. Sandwich. Samwhich. There is is in his, I say. Ask the mask, I say.

A flock of wild turkeys crossing the road. Elk bellowing on the other side of the hill. Hawks.

Leaves turn colour. A bow and arrow. The cold of the ground, and the nights.

from Downtown Abbey to Breaking Bad

A year ago my daughter turned me on to Downtown Abbey. I don't have TV and I only agreed to watch because I'd read so much about it in the paper that I felt I should see at least one episode. Totally addictive, of course. I've even watched most of Season 3 (4?) twice, on my iPad. It got me across the Atlantic on at least one flight without complaining or standing up and screaming Let me out of here!

Then, in a rental up in the Sierras, while we (daughter, son, us) were hiking the Desolation Wilderness, I asked to see an episode of House of Cards on Netflix (no self-respecting rental in the backwoods would not have Internet, cable tv and Netflix). That was the same weekend I tried my luck at Candycrush. It took me about two weeks to watch all of House of Cards. And now I'm in the middle of Breaking Bad, which is truly extraordinary, so extraordinary that I wouldn't miss a minute of the credits even. I turn the sound down low or use headphones because I would be embarrassed if any of my neighbours heard all the shooting and screaming and wondered what was going on up here.

Delete, delete, delete

There is a story in the Times this morning about how scientists have figured out how to turn off the memory function in mice. Well, I exaggerate, a little. It involves inserting fiber optic wires into the brain and injecting a virus containing a protein. Thanks to this the scientists can switch neurons on and off and the mice forget all those bad mice memories that keep them from sleeping at night. This makes them happier mice.

And since we now know that there is only the slimmest difference between how mice work and how human beings work, in the not-too-distant future we too should be able to decide what and how much we want to remember. No Joyce, no Proust, no Kafka. 

I link this in my mind to another study I read this week, about how people tend to remember bad things much longer than good things. This fits my personal experience to a T, and I've often wondered why I was so perverse. We shouldn't take such experiences personally, I see--I often see, way after the fact--because they are hard-wired. One thing I have learned is that if you resolutely DON'T think about your setbacks, your failures, your humiliations, your tactlessness, you can ensure that these memories don't come back to plague you at 3 a.m. Wish I'd known this sooner--or maybe not. 

Would you rather be Socrates or a satisfied pig goes the old question in Philosophy for Beginners. I once thought the question was rhetorical. I'm no longer sure.