Halfway To France...

"All That's Left Behind..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 21:47:42 PDT

The Cheshire Cat begins to fade away, it's his smile the last to go...

"We're Not In Kansas Anymore..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:01:00 PST

...'bout time...

a second Valentine's card from Paris...
le 15 fevrier 2010

a virtual toast to a shared future
in a hexagonal landmass
more or less the size of Texas...
18 fevrier 2010

a key to a queendom...

the first of many no doubt...

one could do much worse than to watch this clip...

"Put on Your High-Heeled Ruby Slippers..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 06:41:44 PST

The blahg Halfway To France was launched on April 6, 2008, flung out into the ether as a psychological safety net beneath the highwire act of a FrancoAmerican couple, Les Framéricains, moving back and forth across the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, the Atlantic, l'Hexagone, and between their equally compelling hopes and misgivings about giving up gainful employment, shipping everything they owned to central France, and pulling the plug on la vie quotidienne in the USA.

California dreamin'...

In fact, the first post at Halfway To France was written while Le Framéricain was in France receiving the 20ft ocean freight container that, with the help of friends, we loaded and had trucked from Costa Mesa, California to the freight forwarders' yard in Los Angeles on March 17, 2008. By April 6th Le Framéricain had safely landed in Paris and made his way to the geographic center of France to wait for the Customs House Brokerage to clear the container with French Customs and have it trucked down to the small house on the one-way street in the historic center of Le Blanc, France, some 45 miles east of Poitiers.

Leavin' on a jet plane...

When he returned to Southern California at the end of April '08, after his receipt and unloading of the container, we hunkered down to do the last two years of completing the time necessary to officially retire from our jobs, make a visit to mid-America to say our farewells, and take a trip to Mexico, which is "in the neighborhood" as far as California goes. That brought us up to mid-January 2010.

Le Framéricain's definitive departure for a semi-new life in France got ratcheted up due to his younger brother's near-fatal heart attack on January 24th. By January 26th he was winging his way to France for good with excess luggage packed in haste. But his return went flawlessly and he has now been in France for 5 weeks.

Today it's my turn to take to the friendly skies after 5 weeks on my own to finish up the logistics of making an international move after 57 years of being born into the American Dream, almost 22 of them as Mrs. Framéricain.

I hope that you come along with me...

an exit pass here...

she's got a ticket to ride...

a hexagonal skymass, if ever there was one...

repeat after me...

Downtown Las Vegas, Nevada...

not that there's anything wrong with Kansas,
but all my props are in France...

a work of art on Neon Row...

shifting clouds...

an entrance pass there...

Sous le ciel de Paris...

Si Jamais
Les Compagnons de la Chanson

Pour fuir un horizon chargé d'ennui
Vous direz apercevant le ciel de France
C'est ici que j'aimerais passer ma vie

Si jamais vous connaissez la peine immense
De perdre un grand amour qui vous trahit
Vous viendrez chercher l'oubli de vos souffrances
Dans les bras d'une jolie fille de mon pays

Dans mon pays il y a tant de belles filles
Il y a tant de filles pour consoler les gars
Dans ma vallée il y a tant de fleurs jolies
Que le bonheur sourit à chaque pas

Si jamais vous délaissez la ville immense
Chassé par les méchants lassé de tout
Vous aurez pour croire encore à votre chance
L'aube claire d'un dimanche de chez nous

Dans mon pays il y a tant de beaux dimanches
Tant de tonnelles pour boire à nos amours
Tant de clochers et tant de robes blanches
Que ceux qui s'aiment s'y marient pour toujours

Si jamais vous traversez la mer immense
Pour fuir un horizon chargé d'ennui
Vous direz en abordant la terre de France
C'est ici que j'aimerais finir ma vie

"A False Dichotomy..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:07:39 PST

be sure to look for the missing pieces before giving up on the puzzle...

I spent a lifetime hardening myself to the man, hating him as a form of self-preservation––because to love him would mean to hate my mother, who was my lifeline to sanity, the outside world––and if I learned one thing from my parents, it was that you could not love both of them. ...were simply not allowed to do it. And so we split ourselves, our lives. We cleaved ourselves. Cleave: to split, to make something split, especially along a plane of natural weakness. In the cleaving, my sister chose my father...

...I, on the other hand, worked hard to hate him. It was hard work, because he transgressed so many times against my mother's impression of him. In those moments he offered gestures of love that made the hating more difficult. And there was deep intelligence too––the incisive commentary on the world that formed my own, whether I liked it or not.

...I didn't get the birthday gifts from him I wanted, ever... But he gave me gifts I cannot deny. It wasn't just knowledge or fire he passed down, it was also pedestrian, poverty-stricken attempts at love; a trip to a trendy clothing store; cash handed over one afternoon... He wanted us to be proud... Those gestures thwarted my hatred, but it always came back; I found a way to see that nothing he offered would ever be enough. My mother's...rage––I took it on as my own so that nothing he did or purchased would ever be enough to make up for that debt.

...I accepted his gifts, the fury and the fire, but I wanted..., and because he failed to give me this, I could not thank him for the rest.

Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
Danzy Senna

"Be Mine..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 13:21:15 PST

Arizona, Old Route 66

July 17, 2009

"In the Tradition of Chant and Refrain..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 07:54:19 PST

It was never my intention to enigmatically post only the lyrics to Burt Bacharach's heartfelt song, soulfully sung by Dusty Springfield, but I completely forgot that I had been working on a post because I was distracted for 8 hours yesterday by the hard, physical labor of preparing the room in which I have been living off and on since last August for my departure for France.

My hostess had allowed me to move things around in her office/guestroom last August–before we left for the month of September in central France–to accommodate two people for six months of in-and-out trips to France and to Mexico, always leaving us a place to come back to to continue our uprooting at a pace we could tolerate. And the time has come to start putting things back in order for her return to having her house and office back full-time.

Le Framéricain bolted on January 26th, over night, after we received the news of this brother's heart attack in Paris. He's been in France since January 27th doing the work associated with having a loved one in need and things are going extremely well. My brother-in-law was transferred to a convalescence hospital for cardio rehab just yesterday where he will stay for 3-4 weeks. All the doctors are delightedly stupified at his survival...

A House Is Not A Home
written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David
performed by Dusty Springfield

A chair is still a chair
Even when there's no one
sitting there
But a chair is not a house
And a house is not a home
When there's no one there
to hold you tight
And no one there
you can kiss good night

A room is still a room
Even when there's nothing there
but gloom
But a room is not a house,
And a house is not a home
When the two of us are far apart
And one of us has a broken heart

Now and then I call your name
And suddenly your face appears
But it's just a crazy game
When it ends it ends in tears

Darling, have a heart,
Don't let one mistake
keep us apart
I'm not meant to live alone.
Turn this house into a home
When I climb the stair
and turn the key,
Oh, please be there
still in love with me

I am still busy with last minute logistical projects such as the preparation of the 2009 tax return, which will be complete by February 27th, and a series of hypnotherapy sessions associated with both weight loss and the continuing transition to France, which will wrap up on Februrary 26th. My bags are actually packed and now I have only to purchase my ticket to France...

"A Silly Poem..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 11:09:12 PST

one of the centers of the universe...

My House

I only want to
be there to kiss you
as you want to be kissed
when you need to be kissed

cause it's my house
and i plan to live in it

i really need to hug you
when I want to hug you
as you like to hug me
does this sound like a silly poem

i mean it's my house
and i want to fry pork chops
and bake sweet potatoes
and call them yams
cause i run the kitchen
and i can stand the heat

i spent all winter in
carpet stores gathering
patches so i could make
a quilt
does this really sound
like a silly poem
i mean i want to keep you
warm

and my windows might be dirty
but it's my house
and if i can't see out sometimes
they can't see in either

english isn't a good language
to express emotion through
mostly i imagine because people
try to speak english instead
of trying to speak through it
i don't know maybe it is
a silly poem

i'm saying that it's my house
and i'll make fudge and call
it love and touch my lips
to the chocolate warmth
and smile at old men and call
that revolution cause what's real
is really real
and i still like men in tight
pants cause everybody has some
thing to give and more
important needs something to take

and his is my house and you make me
happy
so this is your poem

–Nikki Giovanni

reflection in a silvered eye...

"The Crux of the Matter..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:50:37 PST

"Today, my father and I have a distant, cautious relationship, not unlike that of many women I know with their own fathers, especially when divorce is in their history. My father and I are cordial most of the time.

...I wondered if I would ever be able to rise above the past, to let go of my rage against him, my mother's rage against him, long enough to feel proud of all that he had pulled off: ...a real marriage in a new land with a good woman, his ability to keep reinventing himself, even now.

...yet I felt it, the old snapping anger in my brain, the rage that can go into remission but is never really gone. I still wanted him to pay me back for the childhood that was long since over."

"Where Did You Sleep Last Night?"
–Danzy Senna

"Happy Birthday, Eugene O'Neill..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 07:57:00 PDT

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
16 October 1888 – 27 November 1953

from A Word To The Reader

"The phenomenon of blaming the person who died for abandoning the survivor is a common one. If the bereaved is still arguing with the lost person, he or she in effect denies that the loss has taken place. Fighting with the dead is made simpler when the lost person lives exclusively "in one's head," rather than partly in the outside world. Even so, a death may not be the hardest loss to understand or resolve, simply because it is something we know to be universal and fundamental that forces the separation. Not all losses result from death. One cannot blame death when the lost person remains alive, as in the case of a loss through divorce."

–Stephen A. Black

"If You Can't Stand The Heat..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:15:26 PDT

Lest there be any confusion, in the time honored tradition of the wonderful Standard American English idiomatic expression:

"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

apparently put to good use by Harry S. Truman, meaning that if you can't take the pressure, then you should remove yourself from the situation.

duly reported:

12 July 1942, The Charleston (WV) Gazette, pg. 7, col. 6:

as:

a favorite rejoinder of Sen. Harry S. Truman, when a member of his war contracts investigating committee objects to his strenuous pace. "If you don't like the heat, get out of the kitchen."

...please be reminded that Halfway To France, established on April 6, 2008, numbering 380 posts–375 published, 5 in draft–having had somewhere upwards of 16,000 new and repeat ~~offenders~~ readers (do deduct 25%, Gentle Reader, just to be safe, as representative of my own visits to Halfway To France) –if you believe Site Meter–is the personal blahg of a 57 year old, Anglo-American, U.S.-born, female, non-toy human being that, first and foremost, without a doubt, serves the function of self-psychoanalysis and, secondly, the deliberate creation of a future where there is none predestined.

I did not consult with anyone prior to launching Halfway To France. I don't consult with anyone prior to updating it, any more than another would consult with anyone prior to taking a pee or praying. I am not a stenographer, nor His Girl Friday, and I don't take dictation.

Anyone other than I who shows up in my musings, strivings, rememberings, or self-delusional thinking-out-loud here is strictly a bit-part player, a walk-on, a cameo–respected roles, one and all, in the history of theater, film, television, and private lives–including, but not limited to, Le Framéricain–bless his oblivious little heart and inherently generous spirit.

une cible emouvante...

If, perchance, anyone currently reading this missive-to-myself is looking to star in a blog of his or her own, I can recommend a good template in Blogger. But the starring role in this blahg has already been cast. And out of all the starlets clamoring to play the part, I chose myself. I did so as an unadulterated act of will and a concession to emotional and psychological survival at a particular turning point and critical juncture in my own life. Having done so, there is little likelihood that I will concede my hard-won part to an understudy.

never let 'em see the whites of your
typing fingers' knuckles...

So, on the off chance that–not you, of course, Gentle Reader–someone you know has gotten Halfway To France conflated with MAIL BOXES ETC.®, may s/he please refrain forthwith from using my personal blahg to triangulate conflicts, settle accounts, or "play telephone."

I'm not asking for permission to exist Halfway To France. I've simply decided to accord it to myself in black and white and living color.

woman with a cameo role in the life of a kind,
generous, friendly, respectful, good-humored,
non-judgmental, and non-hyper-critical group
of human beings in Mérida, Yucatán, México...

Now, for those of you who might be interested in such things, future messages-in-a-bottle hurled from this particular no-woman-is-a-cyber-island-unto-herself will include reflections upon "Eugene O'Neill: Beyond Mourning and Tragedy" and "The END of the WORLD AS WE KNOW IT."

"Better Late Than Never..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 06:10:45 PDT

I had a father once and had he lived longer than 58 years he would have been 79 today. He's already been dead for 20 years but, for all the time I actually spent with him when he was alive, he could simply be on a traveling salesman's trip, "at the office," or still drinking himself to death alone in the living room of a rented house in a suburban satellite of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

He wasn't easy to get a handle on and I've had to construct much of my understanding of him in his absence via the archive--the photographs, the official documents, and the snatches of remembered conversations with dazed ex-wives, bewildered parents, and saddened siblings. I don't think that he can be apprehended except in the context of his earliest days as a little boy whose mother had already died before he reached his 3rd birthday and his younger brother barely 4 months.

my great-grandparents
on my paternal grandfather's side,
Effie Estelle Wallace
May 30, 1876 - November 17, 1964
Frank M. Marshall
August 17, 1871 - April 24, 1946
1st generation Texans

my great-grandparents
on my paternal grandmother's side,
Franklin Randolph Noe, II
October 19, 1881 - September 10, 1932
Cecil Anita Price
circa 1880 - September 10, 1912
1st generation Arkansans

When one has experienced repeated ruptures in conventional family relationships and the upheaval of moves between parents, with all the complications that those events imply, one is obliged to stop listening to what people say and start looking at what they do and what they did.

my grandparents,
on my father's & uncle John's side
Jerry Williamson Marshall
July 13, 1906 - June 16, 1981
Carroll Aneita Noe
July 17, 1908 - June 29, 1933
wed April 6, 1928
preparing to start first generation Oklahomans

Both sons of Carroll Aneita Noe Marshall died of complications from chronic alcoholism. My uncle John died, at the age of 42, of a heart attack and, two months short of his 59th birthday, my father bled to death from an upper-GI hemorrhage. They both died in their living rooms, on their sofas, alone. I do not believe that there is anything remotely coincidental about the nature of their deaths.

It took me a long time to realize that what they did was to pursue women, marry them, mistreat them for a sufficiently long time, and, then, find themselves abandoned, once again. The drama of my uncle's alcoholism was more animated than my father's but I think that that was due to the fact that my uncle actually believed that his birth had killed his mother, which was, of course, not true. She died of pulmonary tuberculosis having never reached her 25th birthday. But, somehow, he had it wired up that her death was his fault and he punished himself and everyone else for it until his own.

Jerry Franklin Marshall
Chickasha, Oklahoma
October 12, 1930 - August 6, 1989

Carroll Aneita Noe Marshall, 23yrs
Jerry Franklin Marshall, 18mos
Chickasha, Oklahoma
circa 1932

Jerry Franklin Marshall
Chickasha, Oklahoma
circa 1934-35

John Carroll & Jerry Franklin Marshall
Chickasha, Oklahoma
circa 1936-7

Jerry Franklin Marshall
Chickasha, Oklahoma
circa 1947

Jerry Franklin Marshall
Chickasha, Oklahoma
circa 1953

My father's profound alcoholism was achieved a bit later than my uncle's, but my father kept himself busy being physically abusive to my mother, my brother, and my second, of four, stepmother in their turns, even without alcohol to fuel his inchoate rage. Once his last wife and her three sons left him, it seems like he settled down to, more or less, seven years of relentless drinking before he finally succumbed to his wounds. He would have doubtlessly died much sooner had he not had his stepbrother, my uncle Jim, and Jim's mama, Lil, looking after him and making sure that he ate and was hospitalized from time to time over the years.

John Carroll Marshall
Chickasha, Oklahoma
February 26, 1933 - May 20, 1976

John Carroll Marshall
Chickasha, Oklahoma
circa 1950

John Carroll Marshall
U.S. Navy
circa 1953+/-

My father and I never had a conversation about his birth mother. And the only grandmother that I ever knew was Lillie Lorene Jolley Marshall, the mama of my uncle Jim and his little sister, my aunt Mary Lou. Lillie attempted to do well by my father and my uncle but she was obstructed from the outset by her mother-in-law, Effie Estelle, who made her life hell for 30 years. But that, as they say, is another story, although, of course, it is not. It is part and parcel of the stories that would turn out to be the truncated lives of my father and my uncle.

my Daddy, Jerry Franklin Marshall
Alberta Creek Resort
Lake Texoma, Oklahoma
Summer 1964

Nevertheless, being unable to do anything about the choices that were made by either my deceased father or his brother, I determined this year to do something about the grievous lack of attention that had been paid to honoring the brief life of their mother, whose untimely death was, I feel, pivotal to the outcomes of the lives of her sons. I firmly believe that actions taken in the present alter the nature of apparent facts in the past. So, with the help of Le Framéricain and his colleague, Suleman "Memo" Memovich I prepared a headstone for a 76 year old grave in Seminole, Oklahoma and lugged it from southern California to central Oklahoma where Le F and I cleaned up the old one, smeared it with thinset mortar, placed the newly carved one on top of it, and applied a coat of sealant to help it weather the Oklahoma winters.

It probably was & they probably were...

A sincere thank you to B. B. Hunt for this little gem...

Obituary that appeared in a Seminole, Oklahoma daily paper
that was carefully clipped and saved for more than 76 years,
waiting for me to come along and breath life back into it...

Before...
76 years of invisibility

Funeral announcement for Carroll Aneita Noe Marshall
whose body was accompanied by her husband,
my grandfather Jerry Williamson Marshall
to her final resting place near her mother, father, & sister
in the Maple Grove Cemetery in Seminole, Oklahoma

Le Framéricain
Maple Grove Cemetery,
Seminole, Oklahoma
June 26, 2009

Perhaps in having done so, in some minute, decidedly magical, way, I will have set in motion a reverberation that will resonate both backwards and forwards in time to soothe some of the terrible anguish, self-doubt, self-hatred, and impulse to self-annihilation that is still at work toppling perfectly viable human lives in my own family-of-origin.

After...
setting the record straight
with help from a man from Paris & a man from Sarejevo
everything's in a name...

Happy Birthday, Daddy.

Who's Gonna Know But Me?
performed by Kathy Mattea

On the top of my desk 'mid the clutter and dust
Sits an old eight by ten black and white
It's one of my favorite pictures of us
I'll carry with me all my life

I must have been about five or six
Mom's hair was still brown and dad's was still thick
But to look at it now sometimes I get scared
To think that someday they might not be there

'Cause who's gonna know but me
Who'll help me recall those small memories
When I'm all that's left of this family of three
Who's gonna know but me?

Down in the cellar under the steps
Sits an old box of junk that I've saved
Newspaper clippings letters and cards
Even some Code-A-Phone tapes

Slices of life I can hold in my hand
And show to my kids so they might understand
In those years to come when they ask me some night
What grandma and grandpa used to be like

'Cause who's gonna know but me
Who'll help me recall those small memories
When I'm all that's left of this family of three
Who's gonna know but me?

If life were a video I could rewind
I'd go back and slow down each moment in time
Then I'd disconnect the fast forward button
So I'd have forever to tell 'em I love 'em
The older I get I can't get enough of 'em

'Cause who's gonna know but me
Who'll help me recall those small memories
When I'm all that's left of this family of three
Who's gonna know but me?
Who's gonna know but me?

"Toy People..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 05:18:09 PDT

Bouville, France
September 5, 2009
Photo concept: La Framércaine
Photo: Nicolas

"It's the topic of all my books. I believe that literature always goes precisely there where the damage to a person has been done.. I didn't choose this topic, it was thrust upon me."
–Herta Müller, 56
2009 Nobel Prize in Literature winner

There was a moment in September, in the midst of a banal, fairly brief, visit to the stifling office of an automobile insurance sales agent–oddly attired, from my perspective, in a purple short-sleeved (understandably, based upon the sweltering, un-a/c'ed, un-fanned, un-ventilated, and virtually airless atmosphere of his workplace), buttoned-down, sharp-collared, dress shirt, a pair of slim-lined khaki-colored slacks, a pair of black lace-up dress shoes, and an incongruous pair of white cotton, Ped-esque, demi- sport socks–who had the singularly most beautifully-enunciated, vocabulary-rich, moderately-paced, precise, warm, and tenor-toned French voice that I had ever heard in my entire spoken-French-hearing life–that I noticed, as I was half-listening to the routine exchange of information between him, Le Framérican, and, occasionally, myself, that my mind thought that French people were toy people.

I was bemused by the sudden, slippery, half-conscious awareness that my mind thought French people were toy people and I began a monologue about it, peppered with questions, to Le Framéricain on the drive home. I told him that I had noticed myself watching the mature, not at all unattractive, though curiously prim, in spite of his slightly schizophrenic attempt at "office casual" attire, insurance sales agent, while listening carefully, in an out-of-body way, to what he was saying, and very clearly feeling, even though I understood perfectly everything that he said, that he was not real.

Le centre ville, Le Blanc, France

Of course, I was not having a psychotic break. In my estimation, I was having a peek behind the normal mode of thinking, brought on perhaps by heat, lack of oxygen, fatigue, frustration, and uncertainty, where reality is not quite so concrete as we are trained to assert. He was real. He even had a job which, I might remind all and sundry, I do not. And he was helping my husband and me to enter into conformity with the laws of the Hexagon as concerned automobile driving, ownership, and insurance. But, say what you will, he was a toy man to me in that moment. And I was aware that I felt so. Prior to that experience, I would have vociferously insisted that I did not think of individual or collective human beings as toy people. But, in that curiously plastic, expanded moment of weariness and oxygen deprivation, I saw that, in fact, I did. At least sometimes. And, perhaps, more times than I was consciously aware of.

The experience occurred approximately one month ago and I have frequently revisited my mind's attempt to put the realization in context by labeling its feelings, reactions, or thoughts as those of having conceived of the French insurance agent as a toy person, with the intention of eventually writing about it here. This morning I woke up from complicated and detailed dreams, now residing just outside the grasp of memory's reach, left only with the thought that it was quite possible that I also perceived of myself as a toy person.

I am just as happy to have had this sleight-of-thinking on my part revealed to me last month because I have always suspected, intellectually and emotionally, that the capacity for being able to consider individuals–others and one's self–as toy people lay at the root of all acts and conditions of intimidation, extortion, blackmail, fraud, confidence scams, identity theft, linguistic-chauvinism, slavery, sexual objectification, psychological and sexual abuse, torture, murder, religious intolerance, contempt, colonialism, racism, war, jealousy, vindictiveness, lack of empathy, and hate.

Come to think of it, even as I type, I may also feel that it lays at the root of some instances of suicide. Not all... But assuredly some.

Book Review, Calendar
Los Angeles Times,
Friday, October 9, 2009

"It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions, and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again."

...the often incompletely quoted phrase from
The Diary of Anne Frank/The Diary of a Young Girl put into context

"Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife"
–Francine Prose

I have not finished with this subject. Or, perhaps, more accurately, it is unlikely that this subject has finished with me. I plan to continue to try to notice when I'm experiencing the Other as a toy person, as well as when I am having the decidedly injurious experience of being considered, by others or myself, a toy person.

"One Down... A Few to Go..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 08:10:13 PDT

Pre-massive LAD cardiac arrest photo...
It had to be some kind of arrest photo, n'est-ce pas?
He was not chubby.
It was edema.
I do not like edema.
Edema is not our friend.
A pox on edema!

Each question that Le Framéricain answered incorrectly
was a reflection of his fundamentally polite and caring nature.
He should have gotten extra credit points.
Whatever...
Goal!

Now, you must excuse me. I have to rise from my bed of jet lag- and Santa Ana Winds-induced lethargy and congestion in order to go tackle item #2 on my To-Do list:

1) Le F's driver's license renewal exam. - Check!

2) Le F's face/nose/eye-intersection basal cell carcinoma treatment consultation with the dermatologist. - Check! (effective 10:30am PST)

3) Les F's trip to San Francisco to revisit the scene of her (don't kid yourself... it was totally one-sided love at first sight... which should come as a source of great encouragement to some...) coup de foudre and his foray into the first year of total, hellacious culture shock in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Did I ever tell you that Le Framéricain had a duodenal ulcer brought on and sustained by the Helicobactor pylori bacterium for 16 years in the USA, not counting the number of decades that he had it in France, and that he tolerated the agonies of Hell intermittently with the classic symptoms of said ulcer until the May 2003 Friday evening in the cinema, perhaps seeing Monsieur Batignole, when I asked him, as any spouse worth his or her salt would, "How's your caca?" and he replied, "Black." ?

Of course, I went on to opine that black was not a good color for caca or merde, as you prefer, and began mentally scheming on how I was going to get him into see the doctor ASAP. I took a gander of my own at the excrement in question–"It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it!"–on Saturday morning and by Sunday morning I had imperiously ordered him not to eat anything because we were going to the ER.

Once we got him checked in to the ER, the usual suspects were as kind, concerned, focused, and professional as a Kaiser Permanente crew has always been in our experience. Dr. Stanford Gertler–His name alone gives one confidence, doesn't it?–performed a fairly speedy endoscopy–all things considered (and because I refused to allow Le F to eat anything on Sunday)–took a biopsy, and, shortly thereafter, stated that the pathology report confirmed a bleeding ulcer of the small intestine caused by H-pylori bacteria. It only took 10 years of extreme pain, misdiagnoses, mistreatment, upper-GI X-rays, and useless TAGAMET® to get that out of a slide smeared with bloody duodenum tissue.

The treatment of an H-pylori-induced ulcer of the small instestine is fairly straightforward:

The standard first-line therapy is a one week (at least 3 weeks in Le F's case) triple therapy consisting of a proton pump inhibitor such as omeprazole and the antibiotics clarithromycin and amoxicillin. (from Wikipedia)

However, never one to be lax on hospital duty, I begged Dr. Gertler to admit Le Framéricain to the hospital, then and there, for the colonoscopy that was to come. Initially, he wanted to send him home and have him come back–NOT!–in a few days for the procedure. But, since it took 20 years to get him in there, I wasn't going to take any chance of the test not getting done promptly. So, we spent the night in the hospital together, him drinking the magic potion to eliminate everything but the pipes and me making the walk back and forth with him to the men's room all night.

By morning, Dr. Louis Hernández, a nicer man you will never meet, and his assistant brought their traveling colonoscopy show right to Le Framéricain's bed, did the diagnostic test, found and removed a polyp, gave Le F a clean bill of health, prescribed a return visit in three years, and we were free to go to the pharmacy, stock up on the meds to treat the ulcer, drive back across Orange County from Anaheim to Costa Mesa and get the H-pylori eradication project underway. You will be happy to know that the ulcer has not returned. You will be as sad as I was to know that if I had read up on the symptoms that he had been having for a decade and a half, I would have been intelligent enough to know that he was presenting symptoms suspiciously similar to those of a duodenal ulcer:

A dull or burning pain in your stomach is the most common symptom of peptic ulcers. You may feel the pain anywhere between your belly button and breastbone. The pain often

starts between meals or during the night
briefly stops if you eat or take antacids
lasts for minutes to hours
comes and goes for several days or weeks

Other symptoms of peptic ulcers may include

weight loss
poor appetite
bloating
burping
vomiting
feeling sick to your stomach
Even if your symptoms are mild, you may have peptic ulcers. You should see your doctor to talk about your symptoms. Peptic ulcers can get worse if they aren’t treated.

Call your doctor right away if you have

sudden sharp stomach pain that doesn’t go away
black or bloody stools
bloody vomit or vomit that looks like coffee grounds
These symptoms could be signs an ulcer has
broken a blood vessel
gone through, or perforated, your stomach or duodenal wall
stopped food from moving from your stomach into the duodenum

These symptoms must be treated quickly. You may need surgery.

I hadn't ever mentioned that, now, had I?

Well, believe me when I say that today's trip to the dermatologist Dr. Robert Langer's office, which was, in fact, an appointment for the actual procedure–unbeknownst to us–of performing a curettage and cauterzation of the offending bit of scar tissue from the original excision performed by Dr. Yang on August 26th, before we left for France, was a piece of cake compared to the bleeding ulcer schlep of '03.

First of all, after the consultation and the berating of Le F, by the doctor not me, for ignoring his wife's admonitions to wear a hat and sunscreen at all times when exposed to sunlight, I was summarily dismissed to the waiting room while Dr. Langer and Le Framéricain retired to the operating room where, Le F later testified, he, the patient, was given an injection that stung like a mosquito bite and then the room smelled like roast pig–the goal of the procedure being that of removing sufficient skin tissue to leave a cancer cell-free margin around the site of the original little red, innocuous-seeming bump (Le F asserted, more than once, that it was just a pimple and that I, by default, was a neurotic, Baron Munchausen Syndrome-by-proxy-with-her-husband-and-not-her-children, nag) that had been on his face for some time period during the entirety of which I insisted that he would have to be seen for it because it was a skin cancer, period.

I know I told you that I had ESP about that stuff, right? Secondly, I didn't have to obsess all night about how I was going to get him into the right hands. We already had the appointment. Thirdly, I didn't have to stay up all night in a hospital feeling worried while I held on to him and the IV-pole on the rutted path from the bed to the toilet and back.

On the way to the waiting area, after my summary dismissal, I ran into the doctor, before the procedure, and I informed him that if he preferred to be alone with his patient for the procedure then he would be obliged to repeat every aftercare instruction that he gave to Le F post-op because those types of instructions were routed directly to The Twilight Zone by my husband as a matter of routine. The doctor assured me that the instructions would be in writing and that I could go along to the clinic pharmacy to pay for and pick up the magic sauce that would need to be applied to the post-op wound nightly for 5 nights per week for 6 weeks, which I did post-haste.

I'm planning to try to get an appointment
for myself in "Dematology" in the near future...

I barely had time to submit the request for the prescription and sink my mind's teeth into a fascinating New Yorker article before Le F was once again by my side. We waited briefly together for his name to show up on the lighted board that signals patients when their meds are ready for pick-up and we headed to the counter to pay up, which, on MEDICARE, is always a blood pressure-elevating enterprise.

It bears mentioning here that when I was a full-time employee of well-known California institution of higher education, if not higher learning, I kept Le F on my company health insurance policy until long after he was 65 because I simply couldn't cope with running two separate systems of coverage associated with medical care. Thus, his office visit co-pays were the same as mine, $5, then $10, then $15 over the 12 years of my employment; his lab tests were "free"; his prescriptions were $10 for generic and $20 for name-brand; his ER visits were $50; and his hospitalizations were $250.

Since he became a MEDICARE recipient, his prescription drug costs are all over the price map i.e., a drug called TRAVATAN® (eye drops to lower excessively high ocular pressure and prevent glaucoma and associated vision loss) which used to cost $20 for 2.5ml and saved, without a doubt, Le F's vision during the past 18 years, now costs $35 per bottle. The 24 packets of magic, creamy Aldara® (IMIQUIMOD) sauce, "Net Wt. Per Packet 0.25g" that we were to purchase to inspire Le F's immune system to kill off any remaining cancer cells that dared continue to lurk in his face's epidermis were quoted to cost $70 bloody somolians.

Don't get me wrong. I'd pay it... But not without a lengthy inquiry into how 24 packets were going to cover 5 nights x 6 weeks, which, in fact, they were not. And because the pricing is done according to periods of dosage--one month, two months, three months--we walked away having paid only $35 due to the perspicacity, attentiveness, empathy, and caring of one young pharmacy technician.

Goal!

Patient,
24 applications to be stretched to 30

Pharmaceutical Industry Executives and Stockholders,
$35 instead of $70.

"Next errand, please."

Just for the record:

8 Ways to Prevent Skin Cancer

1. Reduce Sun Exposure

Especially between 11 am and 4 pm, when the sun’s UV rays are the strongest.

2. Shade your Skin

Seek shade under trees, or create your own shade with a hat, shirt, or umbrella.

Wear clothing to cover your arms and legs. Make sure the fabric has a tight weave. Fabric that is wet or has a loose weave will allow more light to penetrate through to the skin.

Wear a wide brimmed hat and sunglasses with UV protection.

3. Beware of clouds

Up to 80% of the sun’s rays can penetrate light clouds, mist and fog. You can still get a sunburn on a cloudy day.

4. Remember about Reflection

Water, sand, snow and concrete AND FRENCH LIMESTONE & MARBLE can reflect up to 80% of the sun’s damaging rays.

5. Slop on the Sunscreen

Use sunscreens with an SPF of 15 or more that contain both UVA and UVB protection.

Apply sunscreen 15-30 minutes before going outside, and reapply every 2 hours (more often when working, playing, or swimming).

6. Avoid tanning salons and sunlamps

These lights emit mostly UVA radiation – up to 2 – 5 times as much as natural sunlight. UVA radiation causes sunburn, premature aging of the skin and skin cancer.

The UVB radiation from tanning lights is the main cause of sunburn and skin cancer and also contributes to premature skin aging.

7. Protect Children

The most harmful effects of sun exposure occur during early childhood. Keep babies under 1 year out of direct sunlight. Once infants turn 6 months of age, begin using a sunscreen for added protection.

8. Spot Check Your Moles

Examine your moles and freckles every month to check for any changes. See your health care provider immediately if you notice:

any new growth

a mole or discolouration that appears suddenly or begins to change

a sore that does not heal

*You win a virtual gold star if you noticed that there were no instructions for using "magic, creamy Aldara® (IMIQUIMOD) sauce" in the Department of Dematology's written instructions for Post-Biopsy Wound Care. That's what happens when you let people to into rooms with doctors alone. I knew it would happen but I also knew that I could play catch up if necessary. Been there, done that.

–Baroness Munchausen to you

"Thank Le Camioneur for Small Favors..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:26:14 PDT

9/28/2009, 11:00am
Le Blanc, France
Before...

9/28/2009, 2:00pm
Le Blanc, France
After...

"All Roads Lead To La Creuse..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:07:45 PDT

Wherever you are is the center of the universe...

A bridge on the river Creuse en Ciron...

La Creuse runs through it...

"Good-bye and thank you! It is not prohibited to come again."

"Once Upon A Time, Upon A Time, Upon A Time..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 23:48:37 PDT

contexts...

Le Framéricain's paternal nexus...

there's always something underneath...
it is, however, doubtful that it is bedrock...

the beginning of a potential for the existence of Le Framéricain...

Le Château Naillac dans la haute ville...

the maternal back drop to 72 years of memories...

a rabbit's warren of memory...

so much going on behind those façades...

the setting for schooling during the war...
across the street from la maison de la maman de la maman...

Love Comes From The Most Unexpected Places
performed by José Feliciano

Love comes from the most unexpected places
In someone's eyes you've never met
Who wants to get to know you
In someone's smile you can't forget
And if the music plays on in your mind

Take all the love that you can find
And if love takes you in
Take all the love that you can find
And hope it comes again

Love comes from the most unexpected places
A love song on the radio you never hear enough of
In bars that thrive on loneliness
Where people sell their sorrow for your time

They take the love that they can find
And if love takes them in
They take the love that they can find
And hope it comes again

Love comes in many ways
In lovers' arms and sweet bouquets
But if nothing's said than nothing's ever heard
So here I stand outside your door
And I'm trying to tell you just once more
That I love you
I still love you

Love comes from the most unexpected places
Alone again I search a street of unrelated faces
Where strangers look the other way
They're so afraid my smile might say come in

And take the love that you can find
And if love takes you in
Take all the love that you can find
And hope love comes again

"Los Angeles-sur-la Creuse..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:13:15 PDT

the view upon turning left onto The Bridge Over The River Creuse,
after having secured auto insurance for the year in St. Savin...

the view upon turning left yet again to park our own fully-insured car...

local orientation tool...

the scene upon returning to the scene of the accident...

a barely scraped bystander in the whole debacle...

one of Le Blanc's finest flanked by reflections of the Roman Empire...

glimpse of a man with his auto insurance folder tucked securely by his side...

rubber-necking French-style from the comfort of one's own balcony
overlooking the entire theater of a civics lesson in action...

cars and trucks and vans and ambulances...

studying the situation...

and systematically setting it to rights...

at the crossroads, in more ways than one...

the never-fully-appreciated-tow-truck-until-you-need-it...

"Reflections in a Silver Helmet"

Rest assured, Gentle Reader, that this particular SNAFU had absolutely nothing to do with Les Framéricain as anything other than small town lookyloos with a digital camera slung around one of their necks. The accident itself had already occurred and was in the process of being dealt with--with both professionalism and alacrity. We were simply on our way home from the most recent trip to visit, very coincidentally, one might conclude, the auto insurance man in another, smaller, town a few kilometers away when we made a left turn onto the bridge across the river separating la ville basse from la ville haute and ran into a genuine traffic jam smack dab in the middle of the main street into the center of town!

Having spent more than 20 years in the fertile cresent--located on the West Coast of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave anywhere between the borders of Mexico and the state of Oregon--of traffic jams, I have to admit, upon realizing what I was seeing, to un frisson de mal de pays. The homesick feeling passed quickly but once we were waved through the dysfunctional intersection, by an in-the-flesh, black-booted, blue-outfitted gendarme français and got our car safely parked in the public lot near the house, we walked back to the center of the action and looked around.

According to a lovely lady in passing, French, conversation, the white car settled on its roof on the wrong side of the road was simply trying to drive across the bridge, down the main street, and into the middle of town, when a green car started to lurch out into the road from a parked position on the right, also headed down the main street into the middle of town, without benefit of turn signal. The man driving the white car--no doubt driving too fast for the precarious conditions of center-of-small-town-France--over-corrected to avoid slamming into the green car, managed to scrape that silver car, and, probably ended up with life-altering injuries for his efforts.

In loose translation, all the humans had been picked up and transported to the hospital by the time we arrived and the logistical nightmare of cleaning up the street, documenting the messy events, watching out for the onlookers, and keeping the vehicles moving at the singularly most highly-trafficked intersection in Le Blanc was all moving apace when we came upon the scene. And, like a good 21st century citizen, I automatically started to document the experience photographically. I actually wasn't paying attention to whether or not anyone else was taking pictures. I was just looking at the scene as an opportunity to be observant.

After having taken a dozen or so photos, I observed that a very tall man in blue was approaching me with a look of consternation on this face and his hand out, while I simultaneously heard him saying something in French to the effect of "Let me see your last photo!" Whatever... After having seen my last photo, which included his very own contenance, he demanded that I delete/erase it. Determining that the next photo was only of firemen, he stated to me that I could take photos of the emergency firemen and towing crew, but that it was disallowed to take photographs of the national police officers.

"Well, shut my mouth, Toto..."

When I get back to town in 2010, I think that I will need to pay a visit to the local constabulary and see if, in fact, what he said is true. It could be. It even makes sense in a small country where someone might need to go undercover at any moment. However, it also seems like it would be quite difficult, in the digital, high-tech, age, to control such images. And in a purported democracy... Do you suppose that any gendarmes were captured digitally in the course of documenting the death of Princess Di? In any event, he wasn't too unpleasant about taking my photo and he did not try to confiscate all my images, including the other ones with pixels of him in them...

Learn something new every day, n'est-ce pas?

Postscript: France is a country, by the way, in which there are specific laws against "swearing" at the police. It is possible to level charges at an individual who cusses out one cop or a roomful, no matter. I learned that by watching TV5 Monde documentaries on the legal system in France.

"Cogitate on that little nugget for a while..."

"What, Indeed...?"

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:28:08 PDT

The Percheron...

the Salon of the Draft Animal...
be there or be square...

What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?
performed by The Bill Evans Trio

What are you doing the rest of your life?
North and South and East and West of your life
I have only one request of your life
That you spend it all with me

All the seasons and the times of your days
All the nickels and the dimes of your days
Let the reasons and the rhymes of your days
All begin and end with me

I want to see your face in every kind of light
In fields of dawn and forests of the night
And when you stand before the candles on your cake
Oh, let me be the one to hear the silent wish you make

Those tomorrows waiting deep in your eyes
In the world of love you keep in your eyes
I'll awaken what's asleep in your eyes
It may take a kiss or two

Through all of my life
Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall of my life
All I ever will recall of my life
Is all of my life with you

"Un petit voyage à travers le gris, le vert, et Le Blanc..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 01:29:36 PDT

La dernière séance
performed by Eddy Mitchell, 1977

La lumière revient déjà
Et le film est terminé
Je réveille mon voisin
Il dort comme un nouveau-né
Je relève mon strapontin
J'ai une envie de bailler

C'était la dernière séquence
C'était la dernière séance
Et le rideau sur l'écran est tombé

La photo sur le mot fin
Peut faire sourire ou pleurer
Mais je connais le destin
D'un cinéma de quartier
Il finira en garage
En building supermarché

Il n'a plus aucune chance
C'était sa dernière séance
Et le rideau sur l'écran est tombé

Bye bye, les héros que j'aimais
L'entr'acte est terminé

Bye bye, rendez-vous à jamais
Mes chocolats glacés
Glacés...

J'allais rue des solitaires
A l'école de mon quartier
A cinq heures, j'étais sorti
Mon père venait me chercher
On voyait Gary Cooper
Qui défendait l'opprimé

C'était vraiment bien l'enfance
Mais c'est la dernière séquence
Et le rideau sur l'écran est tombé

Bye bye, les filles qui tremblaient
Pour les jeunes premiers

Bye bye, rendez-vous à jamais
Mes chocolats glacés
Glacés...

La lumière s'éteint déjà
La salle est vide à pleurer
Mon voisin détend ses bras
Il s'en va boire un café
Un vieux pleure dans un coin
Son cinéma est fermé

C'était la dernière séquence
C'était la dernière séance
Et le rideau sur l'écran est tombé.

La dérnière séance
hosted by Eddy Mitchell

"She Wanted to Be Peter, Paul & Mary..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:10:31 PDT

13 years old
May 1966
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Early Mornin' Rain
by Gordon Lightfoot
performed by Peter, Paul, & Mary, 1966

In the early mornin' rain
With a dollar in my hand
And an achin' in my heart
And my pockets full of sand
I'm a long way from home
And I miss my loved ones so
In the early mornin' rain
With no place to go

Out on runway #9
Big 707 set to go
But I'm out here on the grass
Where the pavement never grows
Now the liquor tasted good
And the women all were fast
Well, there she goes my friend
She's rollin' down at last

Hear the mighty engines roar
See the silver wing on high
She's away and westward bound
Far above the clouds she'll fly
Where the mornin' rain don't fall
And the sun always shines
She'll be flyin o'er my home
In about three hours time

This old airport's got me down
It's no earthly good to me
'Cause I'm stuck here on the ground
Cold and drunk as I might be

Can't jump a jet plane
Like you can a freight train
So I'd best be on my way
In the early mornin' rain

You can't jump a jet plane
Like you can a freight train
So I'd best be on my way
In the early mornin' rain

13 years old

May 1966
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

"Company Was Coming..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:15:49 PDT

"No*ldilocks et les trois lits..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:45:04 PDT

August 11, 2009
Fleischer Freight Services
Los Angeles, California, USA

Today, Thursday, September 17, 2009, is the day that the last two pallets of our worldly belongings, nos effets personels, are due to arrive at the northwestern French seaport of Le Havre where they will clear French Customs and, hopefully, make their way rapidly to the center of France.

We are to call the customshouse broker in Le Havre tomorrow to see if, in fact, the ocean freight container ship upon which the palletized boxes of our personal belongings were loaded, on April 26th, in Houston, Texas--after traveling cross-country by train from Los Angeles, where we had personally delivered them by truck on August 11th, as part of a container load consolidated by the lovely people at Fleischer Freight Services--has docked.

Palletized personally by Bobby at Fleischer
and ready-to-load

If we get lucky, our part of the container load might clear Customs within a few days and get trucked down to Le Blanc before we need to be back at the Charles De Gaulle International Airport for our return flight to SoCal on September 29th. I really should say, "If we stay lucky," because gawd knows we've already had way more than our share of good luck in this "World's Most Time-Consuming Move To France."

Given the impending reception of our shipment, I was inspired this morning while still in my jammies to go into the previously arranged, pompously named, "Guest Room" to rearrange the daybeds with pop-up trundles in such a manner as to insure that the bedroom could accommodate Erin's Double Bed, which I unreasonably, stubbornly insisted on shipping to France simply because it was a wonderful bed that had been given to us on "indefinite loan" (a special name developed for gifts made in my family, especially between my mother and me--gifts that could be recalled at any time and save the loaner from being called, politically-incorrectly, bien sûr, an Indian giver by the loanee) by Erin, a delightful, horticulturally-oriented, PhD candidate in Spanish who is currently teaching in Portland, Oregon--thus, Erin's double bed, lest you thought Erin was like Serta or Ortho.

Une femme dans son lit, 1895+/-
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

As is as likely to happen as not, when I am forced to do a domestic chore, my mind entertains itself with flights of fancy and it occurred to me that Goldilocks could now come to visit us in Le Blanc because, while I did not have three bears, I did, indeed, have three beds for her to choose from in our guest room! It did not require an enormous leap of imagination to envision myself as Goldilocks, but, having no locks, I could only aspire to No*ldilocksdom EXCEPT that I did have some ersatz blondilocks that would work in a pinch and it just so happened that I came upon them this morning while trying to find something resembling autumn, if not winter, clothing in which to dress myself for the day. Problem solved!

Who said there was a problem?

Les trois lits...

No*ldilocks decided she was exhausted from all this activity and needed to rest. “Ah ha!” she said. “Beds!”

The largest bed offered a stool upon which to climb, so No*ldilocks scurried up and laid her pretty little head upon the feather pillow. No sooner had she pulled the quilt over herself, though, than she realized this would not work at all. “This bed,” No*ldilocks said to herself, “is simply too hard.”

So No*ldilocks slipped down and out of it.

The middle-sized bed was lower, and easier to climb into, but much, much more difficult to climb out of. “Oh dear,” said No*ldilocks. “This bed is far too soft for me!” At long last, she managed to free herself from the soft folds of the doughy bed.

Breathless, No*ldilocks eyed the last, littlest bed, and flopped down. “Now this,” said No*ldilocks, “this is just right.”

This one was too big...

This one was too small...

This one was just right!

"Cindy Sherman, eat your heart out!"

Just My Imagination
performed by The Temptations

ohhhhhhhhhhhhh ohhhhhhhh ooohhhhhhhhh.
Each day through my window
I watch her as she passes by,
I say to myself
you're such a lucky guy,
To have a girl like her,
Is truly a dream come true,
Out of all the fellas in the world,
She belongs to you.

But it was just my imagination
Running away with me,
It was just my imagination
Running away with me.

ohh,ho,ho,hooooo

Soon we'll be married,
And raise a family, oh yeah
A cozy little home, out in the country,
With 2 children, maybe 3
I tell you well I,
I can visualize it all
This couldn't be a dream
for too real it all seems.

But it was just my imagination,once again
Running away with me,
Tell you It was just my imagination
Running away with me.

Every night on my knees I pray,
Dear Lord, hear my plea,
Don't ever let another
take her love from me,
Or I will surely die,
Her Love is heavenly
When her arms enfold me,
I hear a tender rhapsody
But in reality
She doesn't even know me

Just my imagination once again,
Running away with me, ohhhh,
It was just my imagination
Running away with me.

I've never met her
But I can't forget her,
Just my imagination
Ohhhh yeah,yeah,yeah,yeah
Running away with me, ohhhh
Just my imagination
Running away with me
Running away with me

"Cultural Preoccupations..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:50:47 PDT

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
SW 74th & Pennsylvania
June 2009

Chateauroux, France
Grands-Champs, Le Forum
septembre 2009

"Wondering Around Le Blanc..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:46:22 PDT

La rue qui longe la rivière et son brouillard...

Le refuge, sa flore...

et sa faune...

"Let Your Fingers Do The Walking..."

halfwaytofrance@gmail.com (La Framéricaine) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:07:46 PDT

Peter Turnley
Les ponts de Paris, 1991
the first year that I traveled
with Le F to the city of his birth

The Reading Lesson

I have a particularly vivid self-defining memory that concerns reading, that, consequently, never leaves me because I am a Reader. In spite of what the existence of this blahg might lead you to believe, Gentle Reader, I have not historically thought of myself as a Writer at all, but rather as a Reader.

The memory itself is firmly lodged in my 6th year of life, in a first grade class in Tulsa, Oklahoma's Celia Clinton Elementary School where I recall making progress in reading for the first time. The delightful thing about this progress was that it was confirmed by having been assigned to a reading group called the Parrots and, having mastered the required reading for that group, being elevated to the reading group called the Red Robins, and so forth throughout the reading year. Somehow that collision of birds and words just thrilled my little 6 year old imagination and self-perception something fierce! To this day I cannot think of "reading" without the wafting memory of that claustrophobic classroom and the excitement I felt related to moving through that aviary of accomplishment.

Thus, it will come as no surprise to you that on a sunny day last May when I was left to my own devices in the City of Lights, I wandered into a bookstore sur le boulevard du Montparnasse– down the street and around the corner from la Créperie de Josselin sur la rue du Montparnasse where I had enjoyed a quiet lunch alone at a small sidewalk table–and walked out with La leçon de lecture among other wonderful postcards whose only purpose in life was the sheer aesthetic joy that they gave me upon gazing at them in contemplation.

Literature:
a strike of an axe
to the frozen sea that exists within us

It has been a very long time since I inhabited a home that allowed for books to hurl themselves from my very own bookshelves in my time of need. My books have been in boxes for ages, as most of them still are. But, last night having decided to close my laptop at a reasonable hour, listen to Paul Horn and R. Carlos Nakai in Canyon de Chelly, relax, and read, I found my fingers feeling their way across the tops of the few books I have managed to unpack and stow upon the shelves, strategically located as close to my bed as possible without actually being in the bed with me.

I had earlier in the evening had a stray thought about reading literature, as in a novel, rather than detective fiction or psychology, but my hands had other ideas and brought to me a book that I had purchased from a stack of remaindered books in Los Angeles out of simple curiosity and free-associative thinking. The strange thing about that book was that the author had written A Border of Blue: Along the Gulf of Mexico from the Keys to the Yucatán, a book that had set the gold standard for road trips in my imagination, and at the time that I was holding his newer book in my hands in the discount bookstore in LA, I had no inkling of the importance that it would take on in the future. But, I trusted my fingers' logic, cracked open In the Land of Temple Caves by Frederick Turner, and hurtled headlong into:

No meaningful journey is ever quite what you thought it would be when you embarked on it–and shouldn't be. Your physical departure, in other words, often is accompanied by a psychological and spiritual one as well, leaving you open to revelation, epiphanies large and small, surprise, and the revisitation of the past as offered by your encounters with the new in the present.

Atop a filing cabinet in a corner of the room I'd place a wine crate from Maison Daniel Querre and atop that a scientifically exact replica of one of the Cro-Magnon skulls accidentally unearthed at Les Eyzies, Aquitaine, in 1868, when workers were laying out a railroad line. Behind the skull I'd propped a copy of the gorgeous book The Dawn of Art, which describes the 1994 discoveries at Chauvet Cave in the valley of the Ardéche. These discoveries not only extended the locus of the known temple caves into a new, potentially rich area, but they also doubled the age of highly accomplished Ice Age art, from Lascaux's +/- 16, 000 to Chauvet's +/- 32,000.

The idea of my little installation was simple enough: that Art has a very long history, almost as long as that of fully modern humans. And not just "primitive" art, either. What better way, I'd thought, to display that heartening fact than on the top of a crate given me years ago by Alain Querre, who lived in the landscape of so much of that history. For me writing in that room, there had been a kind of existential comfort in having the installation looking over my shoulder, silently regarding my efforts to be a small part of the vast continuum of human creativity that stretched back to the Paleolithic past and beyond it, too. It seemed to assign me a place in the story, to tell me my efforts were justified, maybe even sanctified, by 100,000 years of scratching on the face of Time.

It had been a while, though, since I had actually looked at my installation. Gradually, it had merged into the steadily accumulating midden of the study. But now, in this instant of entering the room, I suddenly saw it again. I mean, really saw it. It practically leaped out of the dusty disorder of its surroundings: the shelves jammed with papers, books, and photographs; stones picked up in the Kansas Flint Hills; at the Steinbeck family ranch below King City, in the wheat field above Auver-sur-Oise where Van Gogh shot himself... And in that instant of re-cognition it became clear to me that my shock, bewilderment, and literary paralysis had really been a failure of vision, a failure of the imagination. I hadn't opened the lens of my mind wide enough to see the awful events of 9/11 for what they were.

They weren't after all fundamentally about the Taliban and Al Quaeda versus America, any more than they were fundamentally about Arab versus Jew, or the Muslim world against the godless, colonizing West. They were about all of these antagonisms, yes. But beneath them, like ancient, buried history itself, they were about the battle between the Life Force and the Destructive Impulse, its dark and immortal adversary. On that September day in 2001 the Destructive Impulse had had the upper hand, and things were terrifically out of balance–as they are every time we are in the presence of human slaughter. When you stand at Thermopylae, on the shrapnelled soil at Verdun, in the killing fields of Cambodia, the specific causes for which humans died there drift away like the smoke of old battles, and we are left with a clear vision of horror: that it should have come to this. Here was the real news of 9/11, news as old as those ancient skulls found at Atapuerca, Spain, bearing the telling marks of cannibalism; news so current it forms the bitter bread of our daily lives that we keep trying to digest.

In The Land Of The Temple Caves
from St. Emilion to Paris's St. Sulpice
Notes on Art and the Human Spirit

–Frederick Turner

My intention for the evening had been to pace myself, making room for rest and contemplation and sleep long before midnight, as I had not done the previous night and for which I paid heavily throughout yesterday, and I succeeded far beyond my modest goal because, in addition to stumbling upon a reaffirmation of my own feelings about my long personal journey toward France, I was reminded of the nature of my own feelings about the heart rending events of 9/11 in this season of remembrance, but, additionally, entirely by serendipity, I had come upon a writer who understood, in a way that perhaps he has never even imagined, what it is like to survive the suicide d'un bien aimé:

...left with a clear vision of horror: that it should have come to this.

Because, for my part, one of the first thoughts that I became aware of having after the suicide death, by gunshot wound to the right temple, of my own mother at the age of 58, two weeks after her March 17th birthday in 1991, was that I had not known that I did not know what the word horror meant. As one who loves words, I am acutely aware of the moments in which I discover what they actually mean and, of course, as the words themselves are only pale, feeble approximations of states of being and awareness, the discovery of their true, experiential meaning is transcendent, mind-blowing, consciousness-raising, or earth-shattering, depending upon the word for which you are in the, joyful, or painful, as the case may be, process of finding out that you do not know the meaning of–regardless of how cavalierly often you have used it in the past.

I now know what horror means and, as a result I am loath to use the word lightly, or in casual conversation. I have been chastened. Oddly enough, I also now know the meaning of earth-shattering, although, to tell the truth I had not given that much thought until this very moment. What I had seen in my mind's eye in the aftermath of that "hav(ing) come to this", however, was the earth exploding, and it was at that point that I realized what the words Mother Earth meant for me. I had not known, experientially, prior to her death, that my mother was my emotional personification of the Earth up to the day she killed herself.

"Well, shut my mouth..."

Never Miss A Real Good Thing
performed by Crystal Gayle

Sittin' on my bed a thinkin'
Thinkin' that my heart is sinkin
Everyday the world goes by
With you gone

All I do is dream about you
Livin' ain't a life without you
Honey, can you find it in you
To come back home

Never miss a real good thing
I know what it means
Never see the light of day
Til it goes away
Never want a drink of water
Til the well runs dry
Never miss a real good thing
Til he says good-bye

I guess you must a had your reasons
Maybe you were right in leavin'
I know you never found yourself
In what we had
Honey, you've a right to blame me
Maybe even time would change me
Can't you see the good that's in me
And overlook the bad

Never miss a real good thing
I know what it means
Never see the light of day
Til it goes away
Never want a drink of water
Til the well runs dry
Never miss a real good thing
Til he says good-bye

Never miss a real good thing
I know what it means
Never see the light of day
Til it goes away
Never want a drink of water
Til the well runs dry
Never miss a real good thing
Til he says good-bye

Tournesols, 1888
Vincent Van Gogh
a full-sized reproduction of these sunflowers hung in
my mother's many homes for time out of mind