The Presidential Debate (27/06/24)

 Yesterday, we had a Presidential debate. I wondered while watching it, did anyone change their vote because of anything they learned in that 90 minutes? What did the debate accomplish besides making the audience angry and depressed? 

I'm an old fart too, so age isn't a problem with me. I'd rather have seen younger candidates there because I came of age during the Kennedy/Nixon debates. That was when it was two intelligent young men debating their vision for the future of the nation brought about by well thought out policies. Debates since then have gradually deteriorated into what we got last night. What did we get last night?

Did anyone feel as though the President was lucid? Did anyone feel that he was way past his prime in cognicent decline? Can anyone expect him to hold his own in international implications with actors from Russia or China? 

How about this... Did anyone feel that the President has been propped up by people who should be arrested for elder abuse?

I have dear friends on the Left and on the Right... Democrats, Libertarians, Independents, and Republicans. Most are locked into their opinions/ideologies, and aren't listening to each other. The old saw is, "In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king." And I say, be careful, we get what we pray for.

That's about all I have to say without taking side as to what I am voting for.

Paris, Serendipity’s Angel

 I’m back in Paris a year later.

Avril/23

Tourists… I have nothing against tourists or tourism. I am, after all a lifelong tourist… a citizen of another country from my first day out of my mother’s womb, but I have fastidiously avoided tour groups. I have no problem with other people who enjoy being herded economically through highlights of foreign places where they are ushered through a smattering of venues; where to eat, what to see, and when to meet at the bus again, without ever having to worry about getting lost or missing a flight.

Yes, I’m back in Paris. It’s been almost a year since I posted last.

 I love this city because it is full of amazement. I love being amazed around every corner. 

I made sure I got to Shakespeare and Company Bookstore early enough to beat the crowd this year. There were so many books of interest in that tiny space that caught my attention while perusing the shelves I momentarily entertained the thought to allow serendipity to choose my purchase. Of course, I preferred serendipity would be a young woman… the next beautiful woman. I dismissed the notion as soon as it occurred and scrunched down on the bench built into the shelves to read a page or two of a few unfamiliar authors. I was startled by several books plopping dropping on the floor at my feet. 

A young Asian woman had somehow caused the interruption. Did it matter that she was Asian? No. Did it matter that she was young and gorgeous? No, but too young and too gorgeous for me at my age is what matters (though I could get cancelled by the thought police for these two micro-agressions alone without even mentioning her sex or ethnicity). Frankly, I am too old to give a shit. Yes, it matters very much every time I honor serendipity by an accurate description of the vehicle she sends my way when she awakens this aging man.

Please excuse my crass disregard for the new norms I must be careful of on Facebook and Google. I am aware that a vehicle is a strange word for it too but there is a difference describing Serendipity arriving in a 1967 Ford Taurus or a 2023 Tesla.

She repeatedly apologized under the misguided opinion that she somehow disturbed my solitude. Ah, but she could never have guessed that serendipity chose her to choose my purchase. I thanked her and helped her return the fallen books back to their place on the shelves.

She mentioned that the book I had been reading looked interesting. I hadn’t been reading it at the time of the sudden interruption but agreed when I looked at the title: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.

I don’t think I said thank you to the girl so I’m saying it now, thank you, serendipity’s angel.

I bought that and a nice copy of Hemingway’s The Movable Feast. Never saw the girl again but the clerk assured me it was a good novel as she stamped the interior with The Shakespeare and Company seal.

Briana's Apparition Returns

To see Paris on foot is so much better for me than a tour bus because my mind has permission to see the streets and by-ways of the route for what they are and for as long as I want to. The city came into being before cars and buses and I believe it was meant to be experienced... to get lost in... put the phone in my man-purse... resist the temptation to take pictures... absorb it. Coming around a corner, the Eifel Tower loomed in the distance. I decided I wasn't in Paris until I stood under its iron girders.... goal was to be there at least once.

A Faun statue created by a nineteenth century sculptor, Eugene-Louis Lequesne, greeted me as I entered Luxembourg Gardens. It evoked images I'd seen of the films of pre-WWI Nijinsky's Rites of Spring and how most of the public bronzes were commissioned during Napoleon III's reign. Never did like the guy's Franco/Prussian War that got the ball rolling towards World Wars I & II, and the Vietnam War, but who am I to badmouth the French? Especially a generation of the Second Empire that created so much fantasy of the fantastic. Memories are short lived on this side of the Pond of that era in Europe, i.e., like the colonization of Cochin China that my generation of Americans paid dearly for a hundred years later in Vietnam. The history of it is displayed throughout the city.

Chauvinism: the French invented the word, and because of it, became a humbler nation by 2021.

The people of France made the best of the horrors of that time by keeping the memory of the past alive but striding towards the future. How can I not think of the history of this city that survived wars, dictatorships (internal and from without), plus the brutal oppression brought about by Adolf Schickelgruber's Germany? They too have a National Anthem celebrating catastrophic oppression and revolt. I've listened to the Marseille's words whose violence makes our "bombs bursting in air" look like a weekend picnic.

Yes, I can't stop my mind from going there.

 Strolling through the Gardens down the same treelined pathways, had I known then that Hemingway did so, I might have hoped to meet my Gertrude Stein there too.

No, I wasn't seeing Paris through his eyes. I saw its romance through my own as I turned away towards the river.

Yes, I can't stop my mind from also going there.

I hadn't yet realized that I had met my muse in a cafe that day. I wasn't sure. Suspicion blinded me of what had transpired over breakfast the past two days. Serendipity... After all, Aphrodite tricked Paris in such a manner. A lovely young woman opened me up in ways that had nothing to do with her physical beauty... there was something improvisational about the way she spoke, her gestures, nothing pretentious. It seemed to me that she was used to being seen as the most beautiful woman in any room, yet it was simply a fact of life to her, like war, and suffering... so much was bundled withing that frame. I wanted to know more about her. Mixed feelings longed to be a young man again, but my curiosity wasn't that of a kid. There was a mystery that attracted me that only my age could explain.

I wandered past the sculptures of the continents at the Orsay Museum.A poster displayed on a colonnes mauresques of a Nineteenth Century Art exhibit was why tourists were cued at the entrance and I chalked it up to another place I would check out... but not then. I felt like Drake sailing past the coastlines of the New World without seeing the interior of the continent. There was yet more to see. As I drew away from the river, closer to the Eifel Tower, the neighborhood changed. People on the street appeared to be dressed better. It was subtle chic. The apartment buildings had a feel for this being a high-rent one. Adrienne had told me that her apartment was in this area, so it made sense. 

At the Eifel Tower the cue of tourists was long and organized into fence rails like cattle chutes. I had no desire to cue up with everyone. It was enough that I could marvel at the graceful girders from the ground.

Security was strict. Imposing men in fatigues... POLICE in bold print on their caps and backs patrolled the lines carrying automatic rifles. In one of the cues, tourist parted for a bearded long-haired man dressed in chamoes, police on each side and one behind, being escorted out roughly as he resisted kicking at all in foots reach. At first, I thought he was just a drunk until, shouting Allah-Hu-Akbar, he had been splayed face-down on the grass surrounded by a dozen police that suddenly appeared. Weapons, a knife and a pistol, were taken from his field coat and passed to the officers standing-by. These men weren't pussyfooting around, they knew what they were doing. It was a side of Paris I hadn't expected to see. Paris, indeed.

I had enough for one day of Post-Colonial Paris. Just as the French haven't forgotten the past, neither have those they colonized. I strode faster back across the Seine and past the Louvre into the heart of the city where the Notre Dame bridge crossed. The area was packed with people, and these were the kinds of places I usually avoid. Instead of wonder, panic greeted me on narrow streets and crowds... memories flashed back of crowded streets and ambush.

 My room was a welcome refuge for the rest of the day. I could breathe again there. I sat at the desk, fingers on the keyboard thinking. No words came to push my thoughts onto the screen. Pain, Sciatica... old wounds from Nicaragua... all of it relived the sources I had worked hard to live with. I was in severe pain, and I wished I had something to soothe it and the realities. Damned straight-backed chair! The thought of a drink... codeine... anything stood between my fingers and the console. I kicked off my shoes and took to the bed; my feet were tired from all the walking. No blisters. The shoes were good for new ones. They were broken-in now and I was relieved for that. My mind drifted off to thinking about the day I'd had.

I saw a dark hallway. Mora was talking to Briana. I wasn't sleeping but in dreamland. Briana's back was to me but I could see she was dressed in black... a turtleneck under a leather jacket, black trousers. Mora was facing me wearing a Vietnam era a field jacket with her name stenciled above the breast pocket and a blue and yellow Ukraine flag shoulder patch. Framing her pale face, golden locks flowed out from under a floppy Rangers hat. It wasn't clear what they were talking about, but I heard my name a couple times. 

Briana turned and nodded, "Mora will be your guide. The one I told you about... that you would help. Adrienne can wait."

I asked, "You mean a tour guide for Paris?"

Briana's apparition faded and was gone. I was alone with Mora. She said, "Tomorrow. Come my apartment. Near Champ de Mars."

I didn't hesitate but was puzzled. "What is the street... the address?"

"Rue Lèon Vaudoyer, you will find."

"Find! How?"

Dreamless, I fell asleep to awaken at dawn.

A Paris Notebook - On the Left Bank

Kalinka is now Mora... a work
in progress

Back in my room I had a soda water and ate my wrap. It was good enough. The straight back chair at the desk woke the pain in my back. I turned on the TV and laid on the bed fully dressed. CNN was the only channel in English. I watched it surprised that it had news without the usual hate mongering faces. Bored with it I surfed the channels. It didn't matter that I understood nothing of the language. One station had a documentary about history, and I could follow it... words matching up to the images... Churchill, De Gaulle, and the French Resistance. When Churchill spoke, the voiceover was in French. Distracting at first but I got the hang of it... The rhythmic cadence. It was thorough enough to go on for several hours.

I fell into a deep sleep but awoke with a strange dream. Aren't dreams supposed to be strange?

My fifth-floor balcony at sunrise was pleasant. I sat with a cup of coffee and looked out over the rooftops. Dazzled by the sight of old and new buildings painted with light, I wanted to go to the Left Bank immediately... to the Latin Quarter and google mapped the shortest route towards the Seine.

Down and over to a busy corner at Bld Montmartre, instead of a French cafe, there was a McDonalds. Hungry, but in no way would I have breakfast there, I turned away towards the Seine on Rue de Richelieu.

Random thoughts:

That was a familiar name from history. Yes, the Cardinal who had the ancient walls of cities and estates torn down declaring once and for all the Nation State of France (a good and bad thing). It was also his idea to introduce table knives... what a Clever predecessor of gun control, I grinned. Invitations to dine include instructions for those carrying sharp daggers, as was the custom, to dull blades and round the tips of their knives. It became bad manners when dining with the Cardinal and elsewhere in Paris from that day on. He had good reason besides manners to bring to the table any possible weapons. Sharp knives would present a threat to his power and his life by the nobles whose walls he'd demolished. So, when I butter my bread, it is the Cardinal to thank for not being able to use my Buck Knife in polite company. Yes, I think this way.

 

The serendipity of surprises began happening. One beautiful monument to Moliere, where Rue de Moliere veered off from the Cardinal's street, was one of many around each corner. What a treat... the nation that banned his plays and stories now honors its artists enough to have a monument built for him. I'm not a Francophile. I like the food, the women, the language, and the culture, but I don't go ga-ga over it all. I was beginning to be impressed regardless.

The street ended at the entrance of the Louvre Palace and once through it the glass pyramid was on the left and on the right, one of several Arc de Triomphes strewn willy-nilly throughout the city. I didn't have time for the interior of the Louvre. Paris, the city, had to be seen before the museums. That riverfront property housed more history than I could handle in one day or year.

Arriving at the Seine, I envisioned Ragnar Lodbrok's fleet of Viking long boats sailing up-river to sack the Ille de France. The river has more history than all the museums in the world and I wanted to go by foot along le quai de la rive droit on the same route towards the Ille de France as Ragnar's bold raid of the Norse Saga's. Fact or fiction didn't matter to me. The whole city so far had been like opening living pages of a distant and not so distant past.

There was romance along the river. Fishermen had several lines out while the couples, mostly young, arm in arm strolled, stooping every now and then to kiss for just a peck and others a full-on body and face melding. I didn't envy them, I simply felt what they were feeling. Hell, I had been in love once, and where else could youth do so with impunity and even admiration from old men like me?

Youth creates so much in the adventure of life. Yes, I was feeling old but the couples evoked memories of passion... and bliss is not an exaggeration for it; passion that rises above the hormonal flood of endorphins and evolves into love. Anyone who faults them for that is ready for the grave. It excited me with hope for the future, what little of it I had left. There was only a mild regret that I might never experience it again mixed with the pleasure of realizing I have had that sensation more than once in my life. I counted them as the river flowed by.. At seventeen there was Linda. At twenty-seven, Celeste. At thirty-eight, Katya. At thirty-nine, Kuka. At fifty-two, Adrienne. At sixty, Briana. And now it was on a whole magical detached bliss with Adrienne again. Six times, shit, I was indeed a lucky man who'd spent most of his time alone but still managed to fall for five women six times.

 

My thoughts turned to Mora. The young woman of twenty-one from my first day. Of course, it was almost an ugly thought, but I wondered. How did she see me... a fatherly figure? An uncle? A monk? Or could it possibly be, as a mark? Oh God. Don't allow me to go there.

 

Tourist launches shared the river with tugs and barges... working crafts plying the same waters. That is what I was seeing in Paris... it isn't just a tourist backdrop... like San Francisco or a Disney creation. It is still a living, breathing city with more wonder than a man can experience in a lifetime. Under the arches of the Pont de Neuf bridge, whose stones were laid long before James Town and Plymouth Rock were settled, gave me a sense of being the new guy on the block. A crane in the distance soared high over what would be the spire of Notre Dame. Sadness that it had fallen and hope that it would be restored jumbled through me... not for tourism but a symbol of the city. I was becoming more than fond of the spirit of this country. I didn't expect to feel this way.

 

I crossed over to the island at the Pont Notre Dame. Standing there awhile, the urge to go to the Left Bank towards the old Sorbonne was stronger. A Cafe there looked like a good place for breakfast as it had tables outside. I approached an empty one and walked past a woman seated near-by, blonde hair cascading over a long tan cashmere coat, before I noticed who she was.

"Max!"

I turned to see the most gorgeous welcoming smile on a woman that I could have ever have hoped to see. She waved and motioned for me to sit with her.

"Ah," I said, "A young woman in this ville antique!"

I was delighted to see a few heads turn at perhaps this old man's bad French, or more likely, her youthful beauty.

She stood, her cashmere coat opening enough to show off her long legs and short leather skirt. She asked, "Would you rather sit in the sun?"

She was taller than me and I'm six-foot. I looked down appraising her legs and to see if she was wearing heels. She was not. She looked at my feet.

I declined saying, "No, I would have to take off my jacket and you, your coat."

She laughed as we sat, noting, "We are wearing similar shoes."

"Yes. City boots for walking and they are leather for looking like shoes. You know, in case I must dine formal," and tapped the translator on my phone mispronouncing most of it, I continued, "avec une jeune femme chic."

I hadn't notice how pale her face was and how it highlighted the ruby red lip gloss.

"Are you going for a shoot?"

"No, I haf day off. I come... watch tourists."

"You too?"

A delicate forefinger's reasonably long ruby red nails pointed to a spot on the table. "I have new apartment here."

"Oh, but you no longer live near my hotel?"

"No. A gentleman thought I be mistress and bought for me,"

"Bought?"

"Yes, he put my name. Months ago.  Gone. He dump me. I think. Or I him." She laughed again. Not a nervous laugh but a guttural Eastern European one.

Her laugh turned tourists' heads again. An older man near the entrance nodded my way in approval.

The waiter came and I ordered the same as the day before with juice and coffee.

She ordered a salade au fromage de chèvre and it must have been a second glass of sauvignon blanc. I secretly wanted to taste it on her lips. Just a taste.

"It is my day off and I am, we say, je vais me saouler."

She said it slow for my benefit.

"I don't know that one."

"You want to get drunk with me?"

"Oh, I would love to, but no, I'm allergic to wine."

"Quelle pitié."

I understood pity but I would like to see how she was drunk. She seemed sober enough for me.

"No - no. I enjoy the company of pretty young women when they are drunk."

She laughed and smiled again, "You want profite de moi?"

"Are you flirting?"

"Oui, je le suis. Can't you tell. You aren't that old be my mistress."

We both laughed.

"I like you laugh like is impossible. Is common old men married have mistress heeer... not so much young ones. Parisian boys don't marry. They live with mawthers."

"Same with American youth. Hook-ups is all."

She grinned... beautiful lips showing teeth, "Hook-ups. I heard word before," and stuck out her tongue. "So, I don't go America?"

Our orders came and we stopped talking a minute.

She asked, "You like goat cheese?"

"Oh yes, I once lived in a goat pasteur."

"You old goat? I knew! Here, take bite." She loaded a fork and said, "Open."

Like a mother for an obedient child, she set the morsel on my tongue as I opened for her.

"See, you like?"

"Oui, I like anything you put in my mouth, jeune femme."

She set the fork down hard on her dish and smiled.

"Shit, I didn't mean it that way."

"J'espère ... ah, you do... you did eet?"

Oh my God. She must be drunk to make passes at me. I am fifty-four years older than she... Okay, I get suspicious. I have heard of such a thing. Hell, I wasn't born yesterday. Even as a young man in the services we know better... a beauty like this, hits-on you in a bar and you go to her room. You get your clothes off and she goes into the toilet. While she is there an angry boyfriend crashes through the door with two or three buddies and beat the shit out of you and take your wallet, watch, and rings. Happens all the time in port cities. A fool and his libido are soon parted, leaving with everything else of value. Insult to injury, the desk clerk comes to the door demanding rent... shore patrol is called, and your paycheck is garnished for the bill and damages... whether there were any or not. Never happened to me but it was common enough to be forewarned at muster before shore leave in a new port.

"Tell me, Mora, why do you tease me? I know I'm old enough to be your father."

Tears... real tears ran down her face to her pretty lips, but she wiped her face and smiled. "Max. Oh Max. You're old and be my grandfather. But I am liking you... how easy you laugh... how you came this city. You don't speak French. You have no people here. I see you on train. I say myself, this not fool. He is lonely man." She sobbed, "As lonely as me." Choking back her sorrow, she added, "I pray. I know will see him again. He needs my help... Uh... help me not be alone."

She was right. Can these tears be real? Was she more than a model but a fine actress? What is her game? I wanted to find out. Oh, brave Odysseus, naviguez au-delà de l'île de la sirène - sail on past the Siren's island.

So brave Ulysses plugged his ears and had his crew tie him to the mast and sailed on beyond the temptation to be devoured by the song of love and death. I had no mast to be tied to, no wax in my ears, or crew to row past her, I heard this Siren's song of sorrow and went willingly, eagerly but suspiciously, to her shoals. Oh Mora, you beautiful child, if only I could hold you now and caress you like we did in my dream last night. We were two people alone with each other. I was there with a lifetime of grief and she was there in her own world where her grief was hers and hers alone and where we lay in her twisted satin sheets, sun filtering through gauze curtains within the wonder of her apartment. The whole time I didn't think of Briana or Adrienne. She helped me take my time.

"There is no rush, Max. I am not hurry. You will fall in love me because that is how you are. You fall in love with it... not me, it. I will love you as no other for a time. My body pleases you?"

"You know you do."

"My belly will swell with your child. My body, like yours is now, will wrinkle and shrivel. These petite breasts you like will go old and sag, and my legs will have a roadmap of veins after you are gone. If I have you few years, I will be happy. I know that."

"Did I hear that right, my child?"

 "Yes, Max, I want you have baby. It has your mind and that pleases me. No, there are no wrinkles in it."

 

"I had a dream with you in it last night."

Her face lit up. "I had dream too. You were sables mouvants... ha, you say quicksand. I come save you and we both there sinking. It means something about change. Maybe we help each other."

"Mine was much better than that."

"Good, we dream together. We are friends now. In Ukraine, dreams mean something. I must go, mes ami."

We stood and exchanged cheek kisses. Her lips moved to mine and then she backed off. "I am sorry, Max. Embarrass you like that."

I watched her walk away with long strides...

 

 

 

An American in Paris - Briana's Ghost

Depression hit hard. So many of my old lovers and friends had died or moved away, and for the first time, I felt my own mortality... of my life waning... and then it would be just a poof and out brief candle. Guilt had me thinking the last trip killed her as her sciatica got worse and she needed surgery for it. That last surgery was brutal and then she needed a mitro-valve replaced. Even then she took one more trip. Within six months she was dead. I felt like I killed her dragging her all the way to Northern Idaho to see my family. My selfishness probably did.

 

I was able to put on a retrospective display in honor of Briana's lifework at a local gallery. The gallery's manager said it was the best showing in attendance and sales of any since it opened. I thought the success of the show would be a salve for my grief, but it depressed me all the more because I wished Briana had lived to see success. Recovering from depression enough to feel alive took time. Three years after the funk had lifted and, on a whim, I bought a plane ticket to France for the spring of 2020 to see Basque Country and hoped to reconnect with Adrienne. It was only a vague hope that she would want to see me, after all, it had been twenty years.

She replied enthusiastically to this plan and prepared a place for me, but it wasn't time yet. The pandemic hit me and the world simultaneously at the end of January that year. An acquaintance, a doctor, took care of me there in Cottage Hospital, but said I should get my affairs in order. I thought he was joking but Doctors stop joking when one must prepare their mind for lives to end on a ventilator with tubes and catheters. While comatose Briana's spirit visited and spoke to me. She commanded, "Go to New Mexico, you will begin to recover at last there, Max."

I always called her by my favorite cheese, "Brie-Brie, I can't go. Your memory isn't there."

Briana's apparition became Adrienne and spoke, "C'est égoïst, Max. I will see you later."

I protested, "Self-centered? No! I want to die in your arms! Fuck no! I mean you, Brie-Brie."

Briana's spirit took over, admonishing me, "Adrienne will wait for you. We have other plans. Someone else needs you, Max."

I heard other voices. Sweet angelic ones talking clinically... oxygen... pulse... blood pressure, adding, "His fever broke an hour ago. He's going to make it."

My eyes opened. Vision clear. A ventilator mask was on my face. Two very young sounding women... LVNs or whatever they are right out of city college... covered in surgical caps, masks, and O.R. greens... under clear plastic. I could see their name tags. LVN Alicia Gutierrez and RN Nadya Williams.

Alicia was petite and no more than five feet tall with the sweetest brown eyes behind her protective glasses like a child's. She could have been Brie. Nadya was just a little more mature... maybe thirty. Hard to tell under all that gear except that they were both very young or I was just getting old.

Doctor Farley came into the room covered head to toe wearing the same gear as the others. I recognized his voice and we had known each other for years from Briana's surgery. He was her general practitioner and our addiction specialist. We'd seen each other so often we might as well have been old friends.

"Good morning, Max. Did you have a good nap?"

I ripped the ventilator mask from my face. "Uh... I have to move my car, Doctor Farley. How long have...."

He checked the monitor next to me and asked the RN, "What do you think? His oxygen levels are normal."

Nadya answered with a feint Caribbean rhythm sounding French patois, "Yes. Blood oxeee-gen levels are good. We were going to take him off it now anee-way."

Doc Farley continued, "When you came in from the VA Outpatient Clinic you passed out shortly after I talked with you. Remember talking?"

"Yeh. I asked you to check about my car."

"I checked. Security assured me that your car's okay there as long as it takes. Don't worry."

"What, my heart gave out?"

"No, Max. I'm not your doctor in charge here. Infectious disease specialist Dr. Sullivan from Bethesda is, but I've kept track of you. Congratulations, you're our first Covid 19 survivor... Kind of a celebrity in the medical community of Southern California."

He ran some cognitive tests on me that doctors do... you know, asked questions to see if any brain cells were left, like my name? who is the President? What day is it? and so on.

"How long have I been here, Doc?"

 "Exactly one week, today."

"I had two visitors?"

The RN said, "You are quarantined, Mr. McGee. Visitors weren't allowed."

Alicia asked Dr. Farley, "Is Brie-Brie his wife?"

Dr. Farley said, "Sort of... well yes."

"He was talking with her and someone else when he started coming out of it."

A platoon of mask-wearing doctors in O.R. gear entered and filled the room. One sat in a corner recording stats that were called back by the others onto a laptop.

Death didn't happen as expected and I survived, puzzling over and forgetting the vision of Briana and Adrienne, until later. I was on my feet in three days, but I was quarantined another twenty days and kept in isolation as little was known about Covid 19 then and hospital staffs were overwhelmed.

Since I couldn't go to France just then I thought it was my idea to go back to New Mexico, but I felt as though I was being led back to where I first fell in love with the landscape, the people, and the legend of the area around Taos. With money in the bank, I packed what was left of Briana's furniture and art, the motorcycle, and honed down my belongings to fit in a moving van and a U-Haul. I felt old, at the age of seventy-four, and that there was far less time left of life than what had gone before; therefore, driven by a feeling of its rightness, I vowed that I must act my age and, obeying such whims, as foolish old men often do, I launched off on an insane change of destiny in May of 2020.

North of El Prado among the cattle ranches was the place I chose to live out my last years in New Mexico. It wasn't far from Arroyo Hondo where Risingstar had been fifty years before. I was a young man then and time moved on and the communes were gone and the people there had moved on decades before. I loved them but never knew any of them that well; not enough to stay in touch or make contact... just as I had with people my whole life, except for Adrienne and a few others. I was then, and now am, always a stranger in a strange land of my own design but the experience with the spirituality of the landscape, mountains, and people there touched my innermost being while I was near comatose.

It took a year and a half for the travel bans to be eased and my plane ticket was still good. October/November of 2021 was time to leave, and I was secretly superstitious that I was being led. My suspicions were confirmed that the gods were with me as the ABQ airline agent at booking upgraded the fare to Premium. It wasn't much but it was enough to validate the extravagance of such an adventure. I realize that the majority of working people were at least ten to twenty years younger than me and must consider me an elderly gentleman with a walking stick. They must feel that they honor old men like me and I'm glad they do. Elderly? I am, but by no means a gentleman by those who know my mind.

Others are used to travel but I felt like it was a privilege to be able to score a ticket and fly halfway across the globe to be there for a friend. From Albuquerque to Dallas and then a nine-and-a-half hour flight, I landed at the Charles De Gaulle airport... the French phrases that I worked on before had all walked out of my brain ... like a leaky faucet... and, instead of a merci, a thankyou would roll out of my lips, but I was in France... well not France exactly... not yet for I was in Airport World and was lost and I love being lost. I boarded the Metro with my luggage, which is awkward enough, a carry-on and a smaller bag. I was travelling light. A beautiful young Slavic woman with cupid bow lips and Botticelli locks cascading over her shoulders sat across from me with a small carry-on bag. Unable to explain in French my confusion, I showed her the printout that I'd bought online of the hotel's address on the Rue Bergères. She spoke broken English and we exchanged names. Mora explained that I wanted to get off at the Chatelet Les Halles end of the line and pointed to the name lighted above the doors as it scrolled by the names of all the stops.

Paris, as the Metro passed the stop at Drancy, I thought of the trains... the cattle cars leaving there, perhaps on these same routes, for places in Poland in the not-so-distant past; but Paris was still a place of wonder to me. I daydreamed knowing my feet would take me to places of history I'd only heard about in Hemingway's Movable Feast and other Lost Generation writers. I was told to read it but I declined. I hate tour guides, tour busses and the glossing over of places you get with them.

 Paris. Beautiful Mora opened my thoughts of Adrienne's sparrow brown eyes that framed an elegant Basque nose that some would think of as too large... lips pinched into her cheeks from the way French women need to speak. Back when I last saw her, she was at that perfect age that a woman's youth is in its last flourish... her tanned flesh tight ... and her ass... I thought, was an athletic wonder... a thoroughbred and a beauty I would long to touch. Not supposed to think this way about women in the year 2021. No, don't you dare speak it or the language police will cancel you before the type leaves the keyboard.

Had I known how easy it was for a taxi I would have taken one to City Centre straight to my hotel for 56 Euros. But I wouldn't have met Mora and any old man can still dream.

Getting off the train I didn't know how to get out of the station... didn't know that my ticket stub would get me through the turnstile and onto the street. It was modern inside with shops like any mall in the USA. Hell, I'd never taken a subway in any of the stations in large cities back in the States, so I was stumped. Beggars saw that I was confused and with their hands out asked for coin. Was the station's mall Hugo's alley of miracles where the cripples threw down their crutches somewhere in there? I loved it though I might as well be on Mars for all I knew until I saw Mora approaching.

"Are you lost? You have this?" She held up her ticket stub from the train.

"Uh, yes... uh Oui. I think." I reached into my pocket and I pulled it out as a two Euro coin fell onto the tiles. I started to lean down on my walking stick to pick it up but she was first and handed it to me.

"Follow me." She led me to the turnstile as I admired her soldierly stride in sneakers. She put her stub in the slot and turned on the other side. With a merci beaucoup and thank you I rolled out onto the streets, and there I was, in the center of the city of legend ogling the gate of the first young woman I had met in Paris as she walked away.

She stopped and turned, saying, "I hope you enjoy Paris."

"Oui," I said, "You too."

Towing my luggage on its wheels, I walked the distance up the Rue du Louvre and on up the Rue Montmartre marveling at all the stone facades painted with the patina of time, the traffic ... taxis, police sirens, bicycles, and motor scooters, navigating through insanely narrow side streets and wider boulevards where buses and trams shared the streets with all the forementioned.

 The concierge's counter at the Rue Bergères Astotel with its modernized glass and chrome lobby complete with a stainless-steel elevator, made it feel to me that it wasn't any such place the lost generation would have afforded. I tried my online French, but the young clerk replied in English with an American accent. Of course, everyone under seventy-five have made the world their oyster, I reminded myself. But the clerk was polite and helpful with directions to places to eat, including a restaurant through the back door to the lobby to a mall with a department store.

The room was more to my liking. It was large enough for a bed and had a small balcony outside the window. An electric urn for heating water, two ceramic cups, freeze-dried-coffee, four packages each of powdered creamer and thin paper tubes of sugar were neatly placed on the desk. I plugged in the laptop cord to the DC adapter. I hoped to find a cafe for real coffee within a short walk other than a mall cafe. I hadn't flown halfway across the planet to do what I could have done at home. 

Paris, I was tired from the flight, but it was still early enough to look around and walked out the door towards the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre. At first, I had to get used to all the traffic and people on the streets after living in the country... so much activity... the air was buzzing with excitement. I said to myself, "I am in Paris! I am an American in Paris!" I looked for a cafe and there was a restaurant nearby on the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre... it was closed.  It was too soon anyway. I wasn't as hungry for breakfast as I was for Paris. I kept walking past shops, each specializing... one on a corner... widow display for Confiserie/Desserts, another a flower shop with blossoming pots displayed hanging or on tiered stands as though glaciating onto the sidewalk. It wasn't too early to sell flowers and a Boulangerie pastry shop displayed a variety of tasty looking goods but not outside seating, so I kept going past scooters and cycles parked side by side at the curb. I learned to wait at walking lights on the corners of the most insignificant side streets too. It was smart to pay special attention to those signs and the traffic lanes for bicycles... miss-stepping but once and damned near run down... bicycles plenty going one direction while traffic lanes went the other for motor vehicles.... buzzing... had to get used to streets signs too and not pay attention to the direction signs for various attractions.... museums etc... the signs to look for were numbered name placards posted on corner buildings.

I found a cafe that looked like what my imagination told me Paris was supposed to look like. I don't remember where, but by then I was lost and it didn't matter, and I ordered a cafe au lait and croissant. Wearing my western style hat and Italian shoes, I knew I looked like an American, but I didn't care. I was now in Paris. I reflected, I am going to be what I am and treat everyone with courtesy and don't grin like a tourist but don't be afraid to be one. I am, after all, on planet earth and the same rules apply everywhere. Yes, there is one rule. Respect. I learned respect from Adrienne. I did.

There was always some reason to disrespect others for one reason or another. But she had no boundaries on that account. I'd heard that the French smelled and are rude to foreigners and that wasn't my experience. I found that they were no different than people elsewhere, unless elsewhere they were trying to kill you. But that was war and the French certainly experienced the worst of war and occupation. The memory of it lives on in the generations since, I believe. In some ways they overcompensate. But I won't go there.

Sitting at the table outside I watched people. Some were tourists; Germans, Americans, English, Moroccan, Africans from former colonies. Some were given the brush-off by the waiter. Others were respected. Writing in my notebook, I was there as an observer and was treated with quiet courtesy and privacy. I took my time and who was to show up? the Slavic girl, Mora, from the train. She saw me and smiled. She was taller than I thought she was on the train. I watched her walk, taking a table on the other side of the Cafe. Her back was to me, so my eyes drifted from the page where I did a quick model style sketch of her face, knee length gray woolen skirt, narrow hips, and elongated calves I'd observed on her entry. Satisfied with the sketch, my eyes returned to writing on the pages, I hadn't looked up in some time before I heard her voice, "Hello, Chatelet les Halles. excuse me, may I sit with you a minute?"

Oh my fucking god, yes. Am I dreaming? "Certainly," I said and pulled out the empty chair for her.

She sat, crossed those long legs and waved to the waiter. "I knew you are a writer or something like that. May I see your sketch?"

If I could blush, I would've. "I'm not an artist."

"You are writer then. Writers do sketch, don't they?"

I loved the way non-English speaking people try to make themselves understood in Pidgeon or in full sentences. She did both. Never in between. "Sometimes."

I turned back the pages to the sketch and handed the notebook to her.

"It is grid paper. Nice. I like it. You do that fast. I thought you would be sleep now. Your flying is long?"

I parade waved a hand. "Twelve hours all. Oui. I must see Paris."

I caught myself speaking abbreviated sentences and was embarrassed to do that. It's condescending.

"I remember first time too."

I am sitting in a French cafe chatting with a beautiful young woman. What could be better?

"How long ago?"

"We leave Crimea, Sebastopol, when Putin..."

 The way she said Putin was damned near a spit. I remembered when it happened. Counting on my fingers, "That was seven years ago."

"I was fourteen. I count in English. I speak okay French. It is better than English. I learn English, but forget moch."

I was doing the math in my head, not my fingers. She is twenty-one. "That's okay, my French is zip." Adding, "Oh, to be young and beautiful in Paris."

She blushed and smiled, showing the perfectly white teeth of a toothpaste model.

"Yes, I am beautiful modeel." With a broad smile and a guttural throaty laugh, she added, "I like old-dare men. They don't make at me."

Go figure, I thought, a model, and I wasn't nervous at all. I laughed, "Oh, Mora, be careful a fifty-years younger man lives in this old man's body."

And she laughed again, "I mean old-dare, not old."

I was relieved when she laughed a hearty laugh as only Slavic women can. They don't know what a coy titter is.

"Not true, creepy old men do. You not old creepy man."

"Merci beaucoup. That is the best compliment. Tell me about Ukraine and Crimea. Do you miss it?"

"I am ordering avocado pain perdu. Perdu like you in train station. See, Americans like it. You try? Ukraini eat big breakfast too. More than French, but this place serves best. You try, you will like."

I would have eaten her shoes if she had said try it like she did. We talked on for an hour over a modest breakfast of a sunny side up egg over avocado on toast. She told me about the invasion and how they thought Americans would stop Putin. But we laughed more than we bitched about it. She slipped off her short jacket revealing transparent fabric over her braless breasts. My eyes went straight to the chocolate chips under her blouse, and she saw that and laughed, puffing up her chest in an imitation of the way Putin sat on his horse bare chested holding the reins. I did a short one of Obama's professorial speeches.

We were laughing like we were drunk, and when I started blurring words, she said, "Give me your notebook, I write number in it."

I handed it back. "Now, you to go to hotel and get some sleep, I promise to meet you at the cafe someday."

As I was leaving, she shouted, "Come here. I think you to take picture... you know, a selfie us... send it me. I like a selfie weeth interesting man I met on train."

I did that and we nuzzled up like honeymooners, but she dampened my ardor adding, "I show my friends. I know beautiful old women too. If you don't see me, you can text where you be. Anytime, okay, American friend. Un American à Paree... like Cinema. Your adventures? Bon jour."

So, I posted the selfie to her phone when I got back to my room, and I knew I had been in Paris that morning feeling ten, no twenty, years younger. A message from Adrienne came through while I slept.

"Are you in Paris now? Call me or text me when you get this."

I texted her and told her my plan which was to stay in Paris for a week and then come to her in Biarritz.

She answered. "I'm at my mother's home. Have fun."

"I will call when I get more sleep."

"You could've stayed at my apartment in Paris, but my nephew is there. Sorry. It's okay if I call now?

"Yes, of course."

She called me sounding tired.

"Fu, how are you holding up?"

"Oh, it is a good thing you will stay in Paris a few days, I think. I am sick from the chemo. Maybe I will feel better in a week. I miss you, and want to see you no matter how sick I am."

" I can give you a chance to recover. I know it's hard."

"Je t'aime, Ciao - Ciao."

"I love you too."

I stayed in my room until dark before I stepped out after writing my experience of the morning with Mora. After Adrienne said je t'aime on the phone I felt a tinge of guilt. Hell, I hadn't seen Adrienne in two decades, what was I thinking. I realized then that, as much as I suppressed it and told myself the obsession was over, I was lying to myself.

Of course, I had every reason to believe that I was a free man, but my freedom was compromised by a tinge of guilt for being in Paris at all. My Briana wanted me to travel with her to Europe so many times, but I had declined. My pride didn't allow me to go on her dime as I was barely able to pay rent in Santa Barbara or keep gas in the car as it was. She would be paying for everything. This annoyed her as much as she admired me for it because so many men had taken advantage of her generosity before I came along. However, these refusals haunted the joy I felt even when I moved to New Mexico. That was one place she would've never gone with me to stay... visit, perhaps, but not to live. She was born and bred a Jewish Princess from Los Angeles and could've never tolerated living more than a short drive from a nail or hair salon. I loved that about her. Her last few days alive she still had her nails and pedicure done. Perhaps it was just my Irish Catholic mother that infused guilt into every pleasure, and I'd fought that guilt since my teens.

 

Paris at night became the city of lights but I didn't feel like staying out late. A walk around the immediate area to ogle was enough for the day. I saw a market that was big enough to have everything from wines, breads, and groceries to coolers of cheeses and sandwiches, so I dropped in and bought a chicken something wrap to bring back to the room. I broke a €50 bill for change to get used to handling the currency and got an assortment of €5 and €10 bills and various coins. I would have to become accustomed to the range of coins, their sizes, and values (1 - 2 - 5 -10 - 20 and 50 cent coppers and €1 and €2 coins). American coins don't go up to dollars and, having little need other than my pockets for coins, I could understand why most of those ahead of me in line carried a coin purse of some kind. The €2 coins felt like quarters and are at the current rate more valuable than a $2 bill, so it was a good idea to pay attention to and count my change more often than I would at home. I believe that nothing made me feel more like a tourist than the currency. Not knowing much French was one thing but coins were another. The cashiers could see me coming and treated me with remarkable courtesy. Maybe because I was older and looked confused most of the time but I could laugh easily at my ineptness so I had no real trouble with any of it.