An American in Paris (Not the Movie)

Max was in Paris. He never wanted to go to Paris. He was not a Francophile. She wanted to go there… So, he went. He went to see Paris after she passed.

His hotel room was small but large for Paris. Big enough for a bed, a desk, and a closet for a toilet and shower.

It had a small balcony with a table and chair. He could sip the instant coffee provided by the hotel in small packets and watch people pass through a small corner park where young couples sometimes sat to make-out on the small park bench.

He was on the fourth floor. Above it all. He stood by the rail of the balcony thinking, “I would have to go headlong, or I might just be maimed.”

He didn’t want to kill or maim himself, and he was never good at diving, so he dismissed the thought.

She wanted to go to Paris. He did not. His friends told him she’d gone on to a better place.

He’d gone looking for better places…. to see the reconstruction site at the Notre Dame. The line was too long at the Shakespeare Bookstore, so he didn’t go in. He’d strolled along the Seine and passed several young lovers. Met and was passed by joggers and bicyclists. He saw the Eiffel Tower but didn’t join the cue to see Paris from above. He’d walked by the Louvre but didn’t go in. He’d walked by romantic sidewalk cafes but didn’t take a table but once. He did not find her in Paris. That was the only better place she wanted to go.

So, Max stood by the balcony rail watching young couples making out on the park bench from above it all four stories up and decided to see if he could find her.

No, Max didn’t jump headlong from the fourth floor. He took a cab to the Charles De Gaulle airport and flew to Biarritz where he met with an old friend. A woman he’d fallen in love with years ago and years before he met her. He went to her home… a beautiful place in the hills between Biarritz and Saint Luz. He remembered why he loved her and her… both hers. One unrequited and won fulfilled.

“One should be so lucky,” he said to her… both hers.

A neo-Francophile -

Max wanted to get back to Paris thinking it is a better place after all.

 

Paris Adventure at the Arche de Triomphe

It was my first full day in Paris.

I like to walk around when I am in a strange city and Paris is so damned surreally strange to trip around in. Every building and narrow side street opened up into another surprise.

My favorite incident happened as I accidently ended up at the Arche de Triomphe. I came out from around a corner and there it was. I stood imagining the stock footage of storm troopers marching through the Arche de Triomphe & thinking of Humphrey Bogart's Mr. Rick saying to Ilsa, "I remember every detail... The Germans wore gray, you wore blue."

A man called out to me from a parked car. I smelled a con. On purpose I played dumb, "No se habla er, uh.... non parle vous Francais?"

"You speak Anglaise. I am Italian." He beckoned me to near his window. I didn't know what to expect but this encounter could possibly be interesting. 

"Come look," he urged. "Ah, you are American. See what I have."

My first rule in a foreign country is to be open but aware... be aware but open to all... pickpockets, muggers, etc. I looked around making sure I wasn't being stalked by secondaries and leaned towards his open passenger door window.

"I have something I want to give to you. Just to show you I am not a pervert, here."

He hung a faux leather coat half out the window. Showing the label inside he said, "I work for this company. See. It is promotion. I give you."

At this point I am not committed to anything. I've seen enough... it didn't look like leather. Don't really want or need a faux leather coat. "I'm travelling light. I have no room in my luggage for anything more, but thank you."

"Look, I give it to you. Free. For nothing, "He reached into his back seat and took out a nice looking suede jacket, laying it over the leather, "and I have this too. Free. For you. Please. Take it please."

I'm thinking that it is free so why not? He hasn't asked anything of me and he began stuffing the coat and jacket in a bag with his Italian Leather Company's name on it.

I thanked him, "Do you have a card or something so that I can look you up you when I go to Milan?"

"The card is in the jacket. Now, if you please. I got very drunk last night. I drank two bottles of wine. Do you like wine?"

I laugh, here comes the pitch... thinking maybe he would try to sell me some cheap wine saying it is the best for an exorbitant price.

I explain, "No, I am in France but I don't like wine at all."

"I have no gas to get back to the shop. I was very drunk last night. I spend all my money. I am

ashamed to ask. Do you have a few Euros you can spare?"

Well, he had me. I admire a good con. I had no small bills in my pocket... some twenties and some fifties.... carried the way I always carry cash.... folded, small bills on top in front & larger bills in back.... I started to peel off a twenty thinking he would be happy with that. But he saw the fifties... oh, that twenty was not enough. I parted with the fifty thinking hell, it was a good con.

He was happy. I was happy. I wonder how many coats he moves each day with that workout?

The faux leather coat %100 polyester was shit, doesn't let the skin breathe... but the suede one was nice and I needed a light jacket that folded nicely into my bag.

Strolling afterwards down the Champs-Elysees with my new jackets I would've never bought made my day. I wondered whether he had a 100 euro bottle of wine yet to sell?

These are the reasons why I walk.

 

Chaos - Give up your Civil Liberties or Put Down Your Knives

 

The real picture stares us in the face disguised by pundits but easily seen past them with the right perspective.

If you are white and see through it you are labeled as a white supremacist. If you are black and see through it you are the blackface of white supremacy.

We never know for sure, but the common theme with corporate media and governmental policy has been to divide us into groups... (the Woke...the willingly naïve... and the so-called politically savvy, progressives vs trilobites or conservatives... some are even calling for the abolishment of the Republican Party for Chrissakes!), using racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, un-vacced vs vacced. It's all the same. As long as we have our knives out for each other they are able to shut down the few civil liberties we have left.

Antifa and BLM march the streets, burning and looting unrestrained while mythological white supremacism is the label pasted on anyone who opposes them.

Kyle, the kid with a rifle, was the latest most convenient example. Never mind that the three he shot were white. Never mind that all three had backgrounds of despicable crimes. Never mind that most people never watched the trial but got their news about it from the biased outlets that filter the news to their liking. 

Hasn't anyone noticed that the most violent activists like Antifa and infiltrated into BLM always always are white. It is another kind of racism that never gets called out because  corporate media is harder to oppose.

When I was an an anti-war and anti-nuke activist, we were taught to weed out those who called for violence. No such effort is made by radicals today. They are willing tools of the clampdown.

We never know what the real agenda is unless we look under the covers. Chaos.... economic and social chaos... run up inflation, fuel the flames of dissent... Chaos until we give up on our hard won civil liberties and bow to ORDER. That is how it worked in Germany and Italy in my father's generation. That is the model that is being exploited now.

The Path Paved with Blood from Saigon to Kabul

 I don't give a damn which President was in before and I certainly don't give a damn about who is in office now. None of the sociopaths we call politicians have ever had my trust... not even the ones I tacitly supported. I do give a damn about the men and women that are sent to remote places in the world with the purpose of pay-back to the premier assholes/tyrants who try to piss on our ideals & national security.

Yes, I know. There are lessons our brass never learned in Vietnam, Iraq, and now Afghanistan. There are analysts, pundits, and theorists who are writing that history. I don't give a damn about that either. I don't even care that our President has been on the wrong side of damned near every foreign affairs blunder or success in the past near fifty years he sank his ass in a chair in congress and now the White House.

I do care about and am maddened by, are those beribboned military officers who might have once put their own lives on the line until they advanced in rank through the political labyrinth of the Pentagon to pin four stars on their collars. Was kissing ass and playing the game in Washington for profit and for fun worth it for them? Was forgetting those who are in the field and allowing what might have started out as a just cause to become a sewer to dump munitions, blood, and money for the sake of their own ambition worth it? Can the General Milleys of the Pentagon covering their asses sleep at night while the nightmare of the evacuation goes on in Kabul? Will the next generation of officers learn anything from this fiasco for the next fiasco?

My heart sinks as much for the civilians who supported our mission whose fate we couldn't have cared less about. I can't imagine the fear and sense of betrayal they must feel as they mob the planes just as the memories of the fall of Saigon haunt us.

Oh yes, and then there's the pundits... the media monkeys who dance to and parrot the propaganda from overstuffed blow dried hair-dos of the organ grinders. They are all playing the same game.... the Washington circle-jerk of ambition. It isn't even about money to them. It is about sucking up to power and it doesn't matter to them what the power is about. Even the organ grinders don't care once they get their mansions on both coasts forgetting or vilifying the people in fly-over country who see through the bullshit though they are the ones paying for it.

This one is especially tragic because it began with our sending well trained and our best soldiers in for the right reasons but as soon as the morons in DC saw the profits, the mission sank into second place.... then third place... and then eventually buried in the deeps of the swamp.

I saw it coming. I hoped we'd get the people out. I sensed that we wouldn't. The Taliban was fighting Crusaders. We thought we'd just kick their asses and go home. It isn't like that. They have long memories and we forget what the panic was on cable news of last week. Islam is set permanently in the minds and souls of Jihadists. They die as martyrs. When taking them on, the West has never learned that you have to go in balls-on like it is WWIII. The whole nation has to be committed.

I remember the shock of 9/11. I remember driving cab the whole month of so. The parties stopped. The nation grieved. I had Iranian customers in my cab who apologized to me. We cried together. Then time buried the feelings, the parties gradually picked up. I became depressed as we engaged our military. The nation became distracted by shiny objects and ignored the blood and money Neo-Cons sacrificed as our attention was weirdly switched to Iraq. We were worn down and wanted to get on with our lives. After all, the numbers... the casualties only affected a few... not like Vietnam or WWII. The home front could go on as though there was no war going on beyond a few news segments now and then about how well it was going over there. A whole generation grew up, went to college, and learned nothing more than how racist, how sexist, and how homophobic we were for barring transgenders from whatever shithouse they wanted to use.

It's over for us. When the pandemic hit our hands were tied because all our pharmaceuticals were produced in China where the virus originated. We couldn't even get masks because they too were outsourced to be produced and hoarded in China. When Washington outsider, President Trump, tried to bring this to the public's attention, he was called an anti-Asian racist. That was when it really came to our attention who was behind the collapse of American power... It was Corporate multibillionaires, and political morons with major investments in China that gave up on us and sold us out. They sold us out on the so-called War on Terror too.

I moved to New Mexico where the California version of the Bi-Coastal Propaganda machine is weaker and settled in with my Pueblo friends and rancheros to watch the fall of Western Civilization. I'm far enough from the Tourist Trap of Taos where the machine hasn't quite taken hold. I'm out here where it is encroaching on lands that are still pastures for ranches and people are honest enough with themselves to help each other out in any crisis. It was a shock at first... well, not a shock, but I am pleasantly surprised that spirit is still here.

I'm just sad. Let me cry alone... alone with my fellow Vets.

Therapy Speak

The best article I've seen in the New Yorker for some time by staff writer Katy Waldman. 

 For Lori Gottlieb, the author of the book “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone,” the downsides of casual therapy-speak are more straightforward. “I want to be clear that there’s no reason why people who are not professional psychologists should be expected to use these terms correctly,” she told me. “But there’s a lot of inaccuracy.” Error can be introduced via colloquialism—“O.C.D.” for “organized”—or the actual misconstrual of a word’s meaning. (Someone mistaking “conflict” for “abuse” or labelling you a “gaslighter” because you’ve expressed an opinion that they don’t agree with.) As philosophers from Michel Foucault to Peter Conrad have observed, medical vocabulary lifts up the speaker—claiming that your intrusive neighbor has “borderline personality disorder” cloaks you in authority while pathologizing him. Using these words as bludgeons strips them of complexity; the problem with armchair therapy, or what we now might call “Instagram therapy,” is that it can transform a “deeply relational, nuanced, contextual process,” Gottlieb said, into something “ego-directed, as if the point were always, ‘I’m the most important person and I need to take care of myself.’ ”