Tandem writing is so hot right now.

I remember when I was just a lad and my father told me of this future invention, a place in electron-land where you can make files, write stories, and store them nowhere and everywhere at once. That place is Google Docs where Annette and I are co-writing about a recent trip we took to Lyon and being trans-genre chamelion wonder-bloggers... Enjoy!

A Slow Ride to Lyon


It all started with a great deal, the five o'clock train to Lyon at the unbelievably low price of 19 euros. Then Europe had to come and trip up some perfect trip planning with its functional efficiency, ironic in the same country where banks and public offices spend more time lunching than working. We all know that they've gotten rid of inches and feet, replacing clunky units of twelve in favor of the easily-plugged-into-any-math-equation metric system. In the same spirit, "The Europeans" have semi-abolished the 12 hour a.m./p.m. in favor of its military reincarnation, the 24 hour clock. Of the many things I've learned in this new language, it's one of the hardest things to get along by telling people that it's fifteen twenty o'clock when it's really 3:20 p.m. Therein lies the secret of a cheap trip to Lyon: try to go anywhere before the sun comes up and you'll pay in yawns not euros. What I had assumed was a 5 o'clock post-meridiem train was actually a brisk 0500 and there we stood in the Avignon Central station, sweating from our power-walk through the sun, wondering why our train had not been posted. Perhaps it was posted somewhere, perhaps in Paris by then, perhaps I felt unworthy of all those stamps in my passport for having booked a train that left twelve hours ago.

Annette filled me in that perhaps I should have acquired some 17 o'clock tickets, but since there were some more trains she wouldn't kill me for my novice traveler mistake. We took our newly issued tickets and sat down in the bar in the station. I ordered a coffee. Annette ordered hers with whiskey. Unfortunately, the barman didn't have any whiskey on hand (I suspect that he really did, but was in his late afternoon slump, or was not going to do anything outside of 'on-the-rocks' with whiskey, or was just not going to serve a flitty young American hard-A, or 'spirits' as the English say, or, what is most probable, just hadn't understood my request in the stilted French I speak).

What started as a mistake (Steve's total amateur move with the tickets) turned into possibly the coolest part of the whole weekend. Let's call it a gift. Luck favors the procrastinators in the world and good company comes to meet those who don't really seem to know where they are yet. Also: compartments! The trains we're usually taking around the PACA (Provence Alpes Cote d'Azur) region have boring, uninspiring seat configurations. All they inspire me to do is...talk really loudly in English and avoid looking other passengers in the eyes. Geez, all they inspire me to do is talk to old ladies about their sons and how they speak fabulous Anglais. But compartments! They're so old-school, so Hitchcock, so Anastasia (the animated Fox film, an old mild obsession of mine). I say it looked like the orient express. Exactly! If we were going to take the slow train to Lyon (3 hours versus 1 hour...consider it 'taking the scenic route'), we were going to sit in compartments!

Before we got to take in the scenery from our old school 8-seat compartment, the train rolled in like Chinese New Year, all fire-crackers and hell... louder than my American friends. I have never heard such an unnecessarily loud and obnoxious racket in my life (well, apart from me and Zandra chatting...anywhere...we are helplessly loud, and American, two points against us)! Apparently we were celebrating the final trip of our trusty conductor, we thank him for getting us here and there safely on those iron rails, and for bursting our eardrums while coming into the station. Getting to blow the horn for as loud and long as he liked, like a final 'fuck you!' to the man (and us). He was on a personal grève, maybe, but soon the racket died down and we climbed in, searching for a place to talk loud 'Merican and see the sights. The only unoccupied compartment had a single bag sitting on the bench. As the 'orange alert' airport lady played in my head to report the unattended baggage, I thought to myself, je m'en fou and we took up residence in our very own cabin. Yeah, and what's a bomb exploding in return for our very own corner sans Frenchies? If the owner ever did come back, I was pretty sure they wouldn't be able to stand being in such a cramped space with two loud (and awesome!) étrangers.

Soon enough the mysterious bag's owner came back to claim his spot, one of those guys that wears his 'does-everything' phone on a band around his neck. We clammed up and committed faux pas number one in France. That is, to not greet every single person in the room you enter is just so uncultivated. He stared in return at us aliens. Actually, more at Annette than me. I wonder if his "This is so much better than an iPhone" phone slung round his neck got a few good pictures of my traveling companion... it sure looked like he wanted one. It was a little disconcerting, but 9 months in L'Isle sur la Sorgue has gotten me used to pervy guys staring and making unwelcome comments...just practice for when I'm famous someday! Finally the staring became too obvious not to ignore, so one of us (probably Steve) opened the floodgates.

It went something like, "Bonjour, vous-etes d'Avignon?"

"No, I'm from the town where they bottle Vittel water." I wondered, is it like being from a town where they bottle a famous wine? I guess I'll never know. Well, you do live just a few kilometers away from Chateuneuf de Pape... Oh heavens, bring me my tire-bouchon, toot sweet! But back to our story. . .

"But I know where all the cool clubs are in Montpellier and I'll take you there!
"And you can meet my friends, they're famous footbal players!
"Look at my phone!"

If I know anything about pro soccer players and cool nightclubs in Montpellier (which I don't), I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be as eager to entertain us as this guy was. The last time we tried to get into a club with a dresscode they gave us the once over scan and decided the club was full. They had opened 15 minutes prior. Maybe it was the felt flowers I had attached to my lapels. Or my $7 Goodwill dress from the '70's! Which should have been an instant 'get in free' card if you ask me! No. Somebody in the group was wearing. . . des baskets! Rubber soles are death to cool.

As it turns out, this Sylvain (I'm only guessing from the email address he gave us) was a very chatty fellow. I'm currently using his email address as a bookmark...forecast for ever getting around to actually emailing him? Unlikely. We talked our way down the tracks as I worried we were on the wrong train (some inexplicable signs proclaimed loudly that our destination was Marseille, the opposite direction).

"I'm going to Miami!" For what he was (obviously cool and important enough to wear his social life around his neck like an Olympic gold), Sylvan was an easy going fellow. He loves his clubs, he loves playing dress up to go visit said clubs, and he loves Miami (which he's going to go visit this summer with his ex-girlfriend, he made sure to point out). IMHO, Miami is an imaginary town, whose population is 1/2 Cuban, 1/2 French, from what I've heard. I will believe it when I see it.

Fortunately Sylvain's stop came up about a half hour into the journey.

Tune in some other time for part deux: The Foreign Legionnaire OR Where The Hell Did You Pick Up an Accent Like That?

Letting others do the heavy lifting

Check out this blog by my friend Annette for an excellent write up of last weekend's adventures.


Bisous!


I'll post slideshows over there ---------> to accompany Annette's narrations.

The Experience

For a while now (since I went to India and people couldn't stop noting to me, "Well, that will be . . . an experience.") I have had an uneasy relation with that particular word, experience. I hated how vague it sounded, how people used it to say you have no reference for the feelings you are about to experience.

That was until I realized that experience is all we have. The feeling of the sun on your shoulders, the beating of your heart felt on your upper lip, the recognition of a song you love in a beautiful voice are all experiences. The memory of an embarrassment in the past an experience. The pain of watching crowds of people walk past savoring scoops of gelato when you've sworn to eat better an experience of its own. I recently took ten days to live like a monk at a Vipassana meditation center in the Burgundy region of France and it was an experience.

Waiting for the bus that would take us to the rural center, I met an English pilgrim in cat-eyed glasses. Talking to her of a pilgrimage trail called the Camino de Santiago, I asked her how it was to walk for miles on end on a pathway traveled by millions throughout history. "It was many things," she responded, the exact response I found myself giving moments later as she asked me how it was to travel in India. The same must be said about the Vipassana center, it was in fact, many experiences, and certainly different for every person who attends.

On arrival I was required to surrender my telephone, my wallet, any and all reading and writing material, food, drugs, and finally, my power of speech. Ten days is relatively little time, but count as your one and only activity the observation of breath and everything becomes bigger. The ten days I spent at the Dhamma Mahi center allowed me little respite despite my apparent inactivity and never have I truly felt so much experience was going on in, around, and through me.

I found the vow of silence easy, no longer did I have to watch my words trip around like wobbly toddlers, no longer did I worry the silence with idile talk and happily, nobody else did either. I didn't find the technique of meditation particularly hard, I like a well thought out method. I liked eating less and eating healthier. I liked waking up at 4:00 a.m. to the full and gentle sound of a gong approaching from afar in the dark. Washing my clothes by hand gave me an unforseen pleasure, especially since I had so few things to wash. Other people didn't take so favorably to the things I enjoyed. Expressing themselves by farting because they couldn't talk. Stealing food and hiding it in the room because he was hungry. One ground his teeth so loud that I could feel my bones vibrating in the night. Some cried from the misery of old memories, new fears, or the physical pain of sitting for hours on end. Another literally climbed the walls one night, waking me from a half sleep in his monkey impressions to turn off the emergency exit that shone like a nightlight.

Some didn't make it through the full experience, not content to walk the grounds (yes at times it felt like living in a retirement home), to listen to the thousands of birds singing in the fields and forest, not content to watch and see the myriad wildlife that lives at our feet, scarab beetles, spiders, and slugs that slowly feast on fallen apple flower petals. Often though, the hardship is easiest to recount, that is the first Noble Truth of Gautama the Buddha's teaching, life is lived in the realm of suffering and misery. Yet the moments of quiet, not labored by the birds or a distracted mind, the moment where truth simply rises up and fills you up, yet only recognized in the moment where it escapes forever, are beautiful. Freedom surprises you, so far I've only felt it on its way out the door.

By the time the tenth day came around (about 100 hours of meditation, a few pounds lighter, assured by the gentle, true, and reassuring words of Mr. Goenka) we all discovered again the world of words. We spoke softer, more carefully, and the silences deemed acceptable. Returning to Paris on the train I watched the rich green landscape roll by and I felt, quite unmetaphorically, my eyes were wide open. Even in the big bustling city itself I didn't get caught up in its chaos but sensed myself moving through in complete understanding of how I belonged to the moment and the movement swirling around me.

In this same peace I returned to my apartment in Avignon. My posters, my computer, my books, my bed, my clothes, my things, my things, my things! Suddenly a version of myself rose up and stood looking me in my wide open eyes. For ten days I cultivated my consciousness of being in the moment, of identifying only with the waves of ever changing sensations that washed through my mind and body. Now, these objects which for so long had been infused with my identity cried out to me with all their heart, that is, I felt that old attachment to them I had left behind. What can I do? Just remember that more than suffering, the world is the realm of change, annicca, this too will pass away as new things arise, to pass away again. This is the meaning, the experience.

Divertissement

Birch branch reaching out
Dangles in sky over the river
Scintillating leaves in the breeze
Dazzling green and silver
Fish scales in the sun

In a forest. . . .

More words from my journal.

May 4

Writing is very often difficult when we think nothing seems to come. Yet a writer, any artist who is true, can only try to frame what arises, take the the gems and the crap that falls into your hands and treat it for what it is before it passes on to something else.

I am in a pine forest in the Alpilles just south of Saint-Rémy, eating lunch between English lessons. Normally, that is to say up till about 2 months ago, I would be at La Grosse Galine with my ex-boyfriend's family I had tried to adopt, sharing lunch and circular conversation. I had hoped that even after the "I can't be your boyfriend anymore" talk that I would be able to continue sharing the Monday lunch hours with them while he was away at work. For whatever reason, maybe I was now a freeloader, someone felt awkward, I cannot say, but the last time I was there, A. in her delightful and well brought up manner uninvited me back for the next week's lunch. So subtly did she say it, insisting on forwarding my mail to Avignon because "it's so much more convenient for you," then inviting me to return at some unspecified future occasion, that only after I had returned to work did I realize I was not to return without explicit instructions to do so.

I at once admired her skillful coercion and detestd her for it. Betrayed! I thought, Do I not exist outside of the relationship I shared with their son and brother!? The short answer is yes, but to be fair to my adversaries, I should qualify what I have said.

I now know that it was a show of refined manners, not coercion, to ask me to kindly see the door. I cannot presume to be welcome in their home today just because I was yesterday. Whether knowingly or not, A. did me a favor, handing me two hours of every Monday to follow and saying, "Take back your life, go be yourself." Truthfully, I was never myself in their home. Being an individual who is probably quite far from self-actualized liberation, the surroundings of my environment play enormously on my spirit, pushing and pulling me. Where I had once stood a straight and true tree in a forest of my peers, the winds of this new climate started to bend me over. I sought not the light of truth or sustenance above my own head, but only to evade the gusting new windI encountered, bending down to lessen its force and hopefully I would not fracture. Now I feel freer, I have been handed back to myself and what a lovely chance I have to sit in the woods among the pine trees, themselves bent as they protect me from that same Mistral, whispering to each other, anicca, anicca, this too shall pass, this dance of wind will blow away and we will again stretch our limbs as we seek the sun above with clarity and strength as the old think trunks have learned to do.

Feeling pretty good about myself and the world, I gathered my things and went back down to the school to finish up my work. As I motored north to Avignon the wind pushed back determinedly, yet I made it home where I emptied my pockets, finding that my wallet had taken this chance to test the strength of my serenity by leaving my pocket unannounced. I scanned the road all the way back to Saint-Rémy where the boulanger had picked it up in front of her shop after I left, the Mistral scattering fifteen euros to the wind, what lucky person caught it? I was so thankful to have gained the time back I might have spent canceling credit cards and getting replacements that I celebrated with a pain au chocolat. Light hearted and relieved, my scooter chose this moment to ask me to slow down by refusing to go past half throttle. In the face of all these lemons I am rethinking my trip to Italy. New plan, walking. It took Julia sending four rapidfire emails to convince herself that it is indeed an excellent adventure. I think I will call this Rome-Avignon journey "The Schism Trail". Little to carry, no scooter to break, lots of time to savor. Life gives you lemons, you make limoncello.

Silence

This is mostly from my journal today.

May 3, 2009

Now in less than two months I will be on a trip with Julia through Italy and hopefully writing down the experience all the way. I have put a stay on any writing for a while as I have been experiencing many extraordinary things my life has been handing me. This is also convenient for someone whose natural state errs toward sloth when there isn't a fire under my butt, a blade above my head, a carrot on a string, or any number of motivational tactics based in fear, aversion, desire, or craving. It has also been hard to write because of my love for artifice in language, which I so often confuse for excellence or beauty or truth. Most of my writing I have taken very seriously is accompanied by the thesaurus, bricklike in my sea of thoughts as I try to express myself; I have tried to take my thoughts and stretch them onto a grander, more gilt framework. I have been going through a writers version of analysis paralysis, some call it writers' block, but I treat it more as a shedding of old habits that weigh me down, give me fear of words like "content," "style," "legitemacy." Many of the experiences I have been living through urge me toward the truth, what I see before my eyes. My old love for inflated, make-up painted words like tarted up prostitutes is a lot of deception, and far from the truth.

I am now sitting in the same spot where I started looking for an appartment in Avignon. The cafe in front of the Utopia Cinema, same table, same chair, same sense of calm quiet in the shadow of the towering Popes' Palace. A little over half a year from the last time. I am quieter now than I was last time, no longer trying to read the thoughts of my lover and in the process completely losing control of my own. What I am coming to realize in many ways (intellectually, experientially) is that I had attached myself to a person, wise, if at times unpracticed in compassion, who rather than indulging in his own experience of my uncontrolled emotions and reactions to them, held up a mirror, perhaps to guard himself but nonetheless illuminating my own distressed and anguished mind. In this sort of awakening to my own self, it should be noted that last time I was here there were four others, I am here sitting alone now. I don't know if this marks a full or a partial revolution in some cycle but I feel (emotionally) that this is a significant moment, undisclosing its future issue or incarnation, but vibrating there, calmly, giving no direction, only asking to be felt.

Avignon has woken up. The air is getting hot even though the wind still blows and some days the hoards of tourists move like crowds of fall leaves, collecting in piles at the gelato stands or blown up into chairs on terrace cafes, but all purposeless moved about by the winds of their own whims. Tomorrow I return to the enfants and their handlers and I'm happy because I can scoot up to the lac de la barrage in the Alpilles and watch the reflection of the peaks in the still water, sit among the buzzing myriad insects, and write down what happens.

Tunesia (remember that?)

So, I should get back to recounting the trip I took to Tunisia with Annette and Jennifer last November.

After our visit to the Prado Museum full of Roman antiquities, we hailed a taxi back to the center of town. No haggling, no arguing, what a pleasant surprise. Perhaps the most surprising part about the taxi ride was that I got my very first listen to Britney Spears "Womanizer". The mix of third world chaos and the cool, engineered beats of Ms. Spears threw my head for a loop but it's definitely a sign of Tunisia (or at least Tunis') situation as a crossroads between east, west, north and south. After a short rest at the Hotel Salammbo, named after Flaubert's fictional preistess and protectress of Carthage, we met up again with our hosts par excellence for a trip to that ancient metropolis.

At the modern day gates of the ancient city (now an UNESCO World Heritage Site) we met up with a couple of professor friends of Laura and Kasim (our hosts, two professors at Oregon State). Taking a tour of an ancient site with four History professors is an experience not to be missed, especially if its at site like Carthage, which looks like it was sacked and burned just yesterday. After its founding by Queen Dido (an ancient incarnation of Secretary Hillary?), Carthage became one of the most powerful cities on the Mediterranean. But three Punic Wars, a Muslim invasion, and a failed Catholic Crusade has taken its toll on the rich port, and most of what is left is piled along the edges of a ruined neighborhood. I wrote this limerick (for Julia) to commemorate the ruined city:

Carthage was burned to the ground,
And salt sprinkled all around,
And now ev'ry fruit
That's taken root
Is pre-seasoned as it sprouts from its mound.

After our tour of the ransacked capital, we made our way to Sidi Bou Said for some more of the ubiquitious mint-tea with pinenuts and a view to-die-for. The little red flags in the picture are the Tunesian flag that has been strung up everywhere in celebration for November 7th. Everywhere means lamp-posts, trees, balconies, telephone booths, car antennae, even the giant clock in town nick-named "Big Ben-Ali". "What is November 7th?" I hear you ask. No, it is not the national holiday of independence, that's March 20th. November 7th is the day when the leadership of this Arabic Republic was taken over by Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, currently serving as president since 1987 and miraculously re-elected with Soviet-style unanimity ever since. His awkward going-stag-at-the-prom picture smiles benificiently from behind the counter of every restaurant and office. Its not required by law to show the picture, but the police are nicer if you do.

Sitting on a terrace overlooking the mediterranean, it's easy to imagine taking a long stay in this place. The cool breeze from the clear blue Med, the scent of jasmine flowers and apple scented tobacco floats around you, the tea gives you that extra stimulant rush of caffeine and it feels a little like heaven, then walking back to the taxi stand you happen upon an armless guitar player, plucking out weird melodies, the Europeans on vacation march past and change the topic.

By the end of the afternoon, Annette, Jenn, and I were craving some Tunisisan fare after eating pizza and pasta since we had arrived. Spotting a couple of police officers, Annette put on her best charms and sashayed up to the two uniforms, "Um, nous ne sommes pas d'ici" We're not from around here. To which they replied with shock, "No!" We convinced that we were actually not nationals of the Republic of Tunisia and asked them where we could go to get some good Tunisian grub.

"One-hundred percent Tunisian?" they asked us, laughing like teenage boys

"Uh, yeah," we replied, missing the joke, "Cent pourcent Tunisienne!" In the end, they pointed us in the wrong direction, but with the warm feeling that the police who often carry submachine guns and scowl are really just folks doing their job, we didn't even have to show them the portraits of Ben Ali we carried in our wallets, just in case. Full on hefty plates of couscous and lamb that were drenched in olive oil, we called it a day.