Blasey-Ford and Kavanaugh

I watched Blasey-Ford on tv at my downstairs neighbours on Thursday—was it (still a little blurry from jet lag)?—then came upstairs, made myself some dinner and watched Kavanaugh’s opening statement, which was enough to give me nightmares, apparently, since I woke myself up in the small hours, struggling to cry ‘Help, help!’ but not making much noise—not enough to bring the neighbours running. Was I reliving Blasey-Ford’s experience? Maybe.

Yesterday I ran errands again, to the SNCF to print out my Amsterdam tickets for Tuesday’s trip, a newstand to buy a magazine, then, though it was cold, through the Luxembourg Garden where I found a comfy chair near the duck pond and read for a while before returning home for supper and early bed. In fact, I fell asleep over a detective novel I downloaded to my ipad for the plane trip, but, to my annoyance, find I’ve already read. It shouldn’t matter, should it, since the plots of this series are all pretty much the same? That reminded me of the time I wanted to buy a copy of the previous day’s Le Monde; the newsie allowed as he had a copy, but ‘it’s been read.’ I bought it anyway…

It looks like a sunny day outside: sharply angular shadows on the buildings across the street. But the air is cold.

Paris noises

I arrived here yesterday late afternoon, and did the usual things that need to be done: getting some food in the house. Stayed up until 11, took my melatonin and went to bed. Listened to the street noises, which are very different from what I’d hear in Palo Alto—no commuter train whistle, but church bells, cars, people walking and talking under the window or on a nearby street. A concert of some kind down the street, impromptu, I think. Right now young voices laughing together, maybe coming out of the dental school a few doors away. When I woke up at 3:30 am, there was a couple talking and walking, her in high heels. Earlier I noticed, as I have before, that everything grows very quiet from 1 to 3 in the afternoon, when people are eating lunch; the same thing happens from 8-10 in the evening. That is very different—just the fact that lunch and dinner are quiet periods of the day in the centre of the city, and that they last more than half an hour.

Monday September 24

I have just printed my boarding pass to Paris tomorrow evening. Was hoping to possibly change my seat, but all seat changes (for my class of passenger?) at the airport check-in, so that means I have to go by airport check-in. Perhaps I would have anyway—I don’t know yet whether I will need more than a carry-on.

Meanwhile, the sun is out and I am going to take my last bike ride, up Sandhill, on up Alpine to Portola Valley and, if I can, the ‘green gate.’ If I can, because the last bit is quite steep. Still, it would be good to do it once more before I leave. Lots of walking in Paris, but the only biking—without getting out of the city—is flat on city bikes and I’m not sure I’m ready for the dangers of Paris traffic. Years ago, when I learned to drive a car in the city, I ended up quite comfortable circling the Etoile (Arc de Triomphe) and the Porte Maillot, remembering not to make eye contact with any other drivers, unless I wanted to be edged out of my place in the race. If they think you aren’t paying attention to them, they give you a pass. Of course, out of the corner of your eye, you have an eye on everything going on around you—the insults, the fingers, the rudeness, which, frankly, I have never learned to enjoy; ie, not to take personally. Once, I recall, I told my dentist that taxi driver had shouted obscenities at me in a traffic jam, and he thought that was funny. Not me, as witness, I’m still traumatised. ‘What did you want me to do?’ I asked him, ‘Tell him to fuck off.’ Well, that shocked him. That was the good part.

Book Party

A wonderful, friend-filled party thrown by my friend Marguerite on Saturday afternoon. Old friends, going back to our first years in San Francisco and a carpool up and down the city’s steep hills) and new (Marguerite’s neighbours, Tian, the poet-breadmaker and her husband)—really it was such a pleasure, though also nervous-making because I never look forward to reading, to being the centre of attention. But afterwards, how glad I am it happened, and how kind of Marguerite to propose to hold it, not once now, but twice.

Sunday a baby-Q in Golden Gate Park with crowds of my son and daughter-in-law’s family and friends, and tents, and burgers and dim sum, and children’s games, then over to Berkeley for the poetry group, a small gathering, with three participants off eastwards—New York, Italy.

Sunny afternoon

cool breeze, the leaves are turning red and bronze, there are clouds across the blue sky. Rain? It seems not yet.

I could take my book to the Brazilian hammock ordered from Amazon and strung across the porch above the building parking ‘pad’, but no—because Chuck is on the ‘pad’ unloading 2 x 4s from Greg’s pickup, tying them to two ropes, which Greg pulls up to the roof and drops with a loud crash on the roof above my head. Hey Chuck, I say, ask Greg if he can set the wood down gently, I feel like the ceiling is coming down. No problem. Thumb’s up. The wood gets set down more gently and further away. Later, leaving in the pickup, they will have a laugh.

So I’m inside reading, because it would really seem rude to be lounging in a hammock (Brazilian red and orange) when they are working. And the sun will still be there, when they call it a day.

I am again reminded of when I was a young woman teaching in a Ghanaian school and went to Kumasi, the nearest city, on Saturday on a mammy wagon. There was no schedule: the drivers waited for the wagon to my village to fill up; when it was full it left. So I always had a book, but the other women looked at me curiously, wondering why I spent my time reading a printed packet of paper when there were so many other more exciting things to do. Like buying bananas off the huge hand of bananas a seller was carrying around on his head…

The Roof over my Head

Two workmen are doing some work on the roof over my head. On and off for a year now they have been reroofing. Last summer there were workmen (all men) up there every day doing stuff, usually a couple or three or more Spanish-speaking folks with large straw hats, like strawberry pickers wear, and a radio set to Latin American music. If the radio bothered me when I was working they’d move it to the other side of the roof, over my neighbors, who weren’t there, who worked all day, one at Facebook, one at Google. Until I got tired of the boards slamming down over my head, I’d take them supermarket pies for lunch. Sometimes. My nextdoor neighbor took them soft drinks.

The workmen today are Greg and Chuck, and they are replacing boards in the eaves. They hang over the side, attached by ropes to a beam, like climbers on El Cap. I prefer not to think about that part. And I’m trying not to mind the noise.

Reading a book by Dominique Rolin (1913-2012) called La Rénovation (The Renovation) about her apartment building on the Rue de Verneuil in Paris being renovated, gutted basically. She lived through it, She was a tenant, but because of her age (80 +) because of a postwar French law known famously as the Loi de ‘48, they couldn’t evict her. So they tried to kill her instead. She held on, and even wrote a few more books.

It seems

I have lost a library book. You can’t imagine how guilty I feel. For x years I have been going to this or that public or university library, and returning my books on time, terrified of the tiny fines and the losing of a book. I swear I returned it, to one of the bins outside the library, on three sides, or to a slot at the check-in desk. But if I did it didn’t get recorded. I have searched my shelves—just in case I shelved it with my own books—and my husband’s—occasionally he doesn’t put a book back where he found it! He didn’t grow up in a country with excellent public libraries the way I did, where my library card was my first card for anything. I still think that a house or apartment near a library will probably be as expensive as waterfront property (though I understand that, given rising sea levels, that is no longer quite as desirable as it once was.

Well, maybe I lost it. Or maybe the library has misplaced it, in their huge cataloguing system. It actually was vanned over from the East Bay where there is a warehouse for books that hardly anyone ever checks out. They are searching: four times they will search. They will inform me of the result after the first search (done) and the last…and then I will have to pay for it. That will be $75: the price of the book and the cost of a new one, re-bound, re-entered in The System.

She lost a library book.

Today

Lots of women out biking today. Around 3 pm I headed out, after going up on the roof to see who was stomping around over my head and what they were doing. It was Greg and a helper, replacing the rotten wood around the eaves. We said hello, goodbye, have a good afternoon, and I betook myself to the garage, my bike, my helmet, my lights—now you look like an ambulance, said my husband, adding yet another flashing red light to the back of the bike seat. So be it. 45 minutes, steadily uphill to where Alpine crosses Portola Valley Road. Stop to catch my breath, let my heart rate calm down, drink. On up to the top of Alpine, another slow half hour on a winding uphill road, narrow, little traffic, more bikes than cars, and once there are no more houses, at least visible, a gorge with a stream chuckling along over and around large, smooth stones, woods, sunlight through leaves. I stopped at the wood fence, I stopped again just before the intersection with another, steeper road, then I got to the top. Oof! A young woman came along, we chatted, she was wearing a Mont Ventoux shirt, had been up ‘the easy side.’ She sped off. I waited a minute or two, and then sped after her. Was home around six. Read Milosz, Dominique Rolin, downloaded the Woodward book. Should keep it for the airplane but can’t wait.

I’ve started. It’s true, he’s a very dull writer.