incidents and accidents

The Lingo

Everyone needs a friend like Ashley... someone you've known for so long that you've developed a language all your own. To the untrained ear, a conversation between the two of us is undecipherable. So the following is a brief dictionary of pertinent terms.

1. Collar-to-cuffs- when a man has shaved and/or waxed the majority of his body hair, a la Fabio. Usage: "The guy was basically gleaming. Collar to cuffs."

2. Balls- Argh! Alas! Noooo! Usage: "Balls! I just backed into a parking meter!"

3. Gnarly on a Harley- unbelievably cool, or crazy, or amazing. Usage: "Dude, my birthday was gnarly on a harley."

4. Basically...- a multipurpose declarative question. Conveys myriad ideas, thoughts, issues, emotions. Usage: while waiting for a plane delayed two hours, roll your eyes and say, "Basically..." Or while trying to decide between nine equally unappealing menu items, wrinkle up your nose and ask, "Basically..?" Or before revealing that no one has offered to sponsor our radio show, offer a dry chuckle and smirk, "Basically..."

Why I Love the Band Me First and the Gimme Gimmes*

1. There is just something so touching, so fitting, about a thirty-five-year-old man, covered with tattoos and wearing two studded belts, singing "The Rainbow Connection" from The Muppet Movie. Complete with Kermit imitation at the end.

2. Who can beat a group of similarly bedecked men singing four-part harmony on "Blowing In The Wind"?

3. When these same guys break into "Stand By Your Man", it brings the house down.

4. I never realized that "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" could actually rock! Remember Patty(i?) LuPone on the commercial for Evita? Well, rev it up, turn Eva Peron into an American man, and add distorted guitar.

5. Somehow, the original version of "My Boyfriend's Back" just doesn't have the same ring.

$24.00 for two CD's: money well spent. Visit http://www.gimmegimmes.com for more details.

*Hi, I'm Romy's sister, for those of you who were confused.

The Rules

In the days before I met my darling husband, some friends and I became aware of the apparent refusal by our exes to follow what will heretofore be referred to as "The Rules". Now, I did not make these up. They are simply common sense guidelines for your behavior after we break up. The Rules have become most clear in their being broken or even ignored by men I've dated. So since there clearly has been a lack of understanding of The Rules on their parts, and since this is an issue which demands ultimate devotion to each and every component, perhaps I need to clarify.

Rule One: You are to retreat into obscurity. Once I have moved on, you are to be neither seen nor heard from ever again. A doffing of the hat, a slight wave... these are acceptable, as long as they are followed by your swift and complete disappearance. Preferrably into some cave-like environment.

Rule Two: Does the phrase "One Hit Wonder" mean anything to you? Well, adjust to it, learn it, love it, know it. That's all it was... just one hit. Under no circumstance are you to go on to write more hit songs or albums. There are to be no videos on MTV or FUSE, no appearances on major radio stations, no teenage girls singing words or melodies you've written.

Rule Three: You shall never get your big break. Your ship is permanently out at sea. A leg up? I think not. This means no feature films produced by Warner Brothers, no US tours with wildly popular bands, no medals at the X Games. You see, you are to be a loser. By no means will you get richer, smarter, cuter, or more successful than you were. And who let you out of your cave?

Rule Four: Do I even need to say it? I was the best you'll ever get. The fact that you would even consider dating again seems futile and pointless. But if you must, you had better make damn sure that whomever you date reflects this fact. There will be no successful executives nearing the top of the corporate ladder, no published authors skilled at witty repartee, no interesting and well-traveled humanitarians, and most certainly no Playmates. No hot chicks whatsoever. They should be awkward, with misshapen heads, odd odors, limited abilities to converse, think, or write, and no sense of fashion. I want to see acid washed jeans pulled up above the ribcage and cinched with ill-fitting belts. Think 1991.

Rule Five: If ever you do crawl out of the cave I expect you've grown accustomed to, you must look like hell. Pale, drawn, confused. Your life without me is to be a tale of woe which begins with the words "Right after we broke up" and ends with "So that's when I decided to be a hermit." Be awash with misery. Pine away. Stare at my picture with a wistful glazed eye. You will not be seen laughing, partying, or moving on. Regress, my friend.

As long as we're clear on these. Oh, and yes, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is, in fact, out of the question. Period!

The Week in (P)review.

Monday I used my neighbor's vacuum for about the 11th time in 2 days and managed to shift the piles of boxes and papers around enough to see the floor I wanted to clean beneath them.

Tuesday I painted the toilet* and refinished the baseboards. It now gleams in there. It's impressively white. I think it might just be gleamier than when I moved in.

The piano, shrouded in mauve woolen blankets and industrial-strength Saran Wrap**, was hefted by two burly men and carried down all five flights of spiral staircase. (Seriously, these were the most muscly muscle-men I have ever seen in my life. They had muscles in places I didn't know muscles could be had. I'm pretty sure those extra bulges meant their muscles had muscles.) As of Wednesday morning, 8h15 Romance Time, the piano had left the building.

Thursday brought three things. (a) Matthieu with his family station wagon and a great smile, and between the two of us it took only 3 trips up and down the stairs to get rid of the bed. (b) Jean in his car. And (c) a HORRIBLE PISSING-DOWN THUNDERSTORM that left me shivering and soaked in my overalls and too-thin cotton cardigan. At least there was box-hauling to be done. And boxes were hauled, oh yes they were hauled, all the way to the freight department at the Lyon airport, where they were registered and put into "decompression" (48 hours of carton-quarantine, to make sure they contain nothing untransportable). Turns out they leave 2 days before I do, if all goes according to plan. So when I get to Boston I may have no

1. friends.
2. money.
3. idea what the fuck made me move across the Atlantic.

- but I will at least have 181 kilos of books and papers waiting for me.***

Friday I vacuumed again, scrubbed the toilet**** and sink, delivered a suitcase of books and picture frames to their various recipients, defrosted and cleaned the refrigerator, made guacamole, and ran around buying alcohol and snacky things for a party last night. Had a migraine by about 14h and the first guest showed up THREE HOURS EARLY. Fortunately I have a full box of fuzzy***** aspirin and was functional by the time the second guest showed up, only an hour ahead of the others. The apartment, clean and gleaming, and with tons of floor space, gradually filled up. There was music and laughter, polite people smoking out my kitchen window, and even - what you wish for when you invite all your friends from various parts of your life together in one place - the exchange of mobile numbers. No dancing, and not nearly enough alcohol was consumed, but otherwise it was a good evening. I didn't take a single picture.

Today I am shampooing the carpet and clearing out the cupboards. I need to finish burning CDs to copy my hard drive, make photocopies of Franck's Veni Creator for my choir, and pack one suitcase. A priest is coming for coffee around 16h. And this evening I go to my friend Hélène's for a barbecue.

Tomorrow I am invited after Mass, then invited again for dinner. Monday I have to finish packing and cleaning the rest of the apartment, and get rid of my sofa. Tuesday the landlord comes in the afternoon for the exit inspection; the water company comes later in the afternoon for the final meter-reading; Brontë has a vet appointment to get her certificate of good health for travel. Wednesday I have to be at the airport with luggage, cat and qualms all ready for travel, by 7h. The days are going by far too quickly.

All of which is to say, dear Reader, that I may not have time to post anything here for a little while. But! I leave you not bereft : I leave you in the very capable hands of Miss Lissa, my delightful sista, who has generously agreed to blog in my absence as I move. I know I can count on you to give her your very best welcome******.

Enjoy the interlude, and I'll see you soon from a different time zone ...

Ta for now,

*Bathroom, for you literal-minded Americans.

**I don't know why there had to be Saran Wrap. Especially Saran Wrap that is nearly a meter wide. Who needs to refrigerate meter-wide leftovers? Because we all know the refrigeration of leftovers is the true point and purpose of Saran Wrap.

***Plus, in one battered green suitcase, all my winter clothes and a bright yellow saladier that I bought from the funky pseudo-Provençal shop across the street. Really, everything a girl could need.

****Toilet, for you abstraction-prone Europeans.

*****Fizzy, for anyone who isn't Julia.

******Comments. I mean, c'mon people, it's all about the comments.

Unsaid.

I haven't told you about the guy. It's nobody you know. There's probably no reason I should tell you, except I feel like talking, now, in the hum of silence between absurdly late and ridiculously early.

It seemed I had known Tim forever. When I was 15 he was 19 and the cutest guy at summer camp. The kind of guy you would see in some hokey colorized television series from the 1960s, the next-door-neighbors' kid : clean-shaven, tan in the summer and vibrant with health, the boy who cut the neighbors' grass on weekends for a dollar. Gidget would have gone out with him. He was newly a counselor that summer and had his circle of counselor friends. I watched him distractedly from behind the blind of adolescent-girl camp life.

When I was 19 he was 23. We sat in the counselors' cabin after Taps and played cards. He drank beer and tequila, smoked cigars with the other guys; I giggled and shared a six-pack of Diet Coke with another girl. Ross had his guitar and played everything on it, from the Femmes to that new U2 song hidden at the end of side 2. Every now and then we left the camp grounds and headed into what we called "town" in Tim's car. There was a bar there, where we could play pool or pinball, and a local keyboard-player who sang "All My Exes Live in Texas" but ended the refrain with "Running Springs," and every Tuesday night there was country-western line-dancing. Coming back, at 2 or 3 in the morning, we would walk in a group down the hill toward the campers' dorms, shushing each other and giggling as we stepped on twigs that snapped like cracks from a gun beneath our stumbling, tipsy feet.

When I was 22 he was 26. He was a teacher, at camp that summer as part of the general kitchen-and/or-maintenance staff. I was leaving California for graduate school. We sat on the bench above the dorms, talking about everything. He said something, and I said something, and we watched a star drop gracefully from its place in the sky to disappear between the branches of the broken tree, and then I moved toward him, or he moved toward me, and that was our first kiss. My heart leapt like a rabbit and I knew only two things : that this was right, and that it would likely end with the morning, if not sooner. I knew a third thing : that I didn't care. His thumb traced the curve of my jawbone in a caress it still gives me goosebumps to remember. I followed him up the hill to his cabin - a special cabin, set apart from the counselors - and did not fall asleep in his arms. I left with the light, but I don't remember why that seemed so important except that it had a certain melancholy poetic ring to it.

Are you listening? Are you asleep? Almost? I can feel your knees against my back, your hands crossed at the wrist : you sleep like a cat. Your limbs twitching, just slightly, as you dream. You dream like a dog.

At the end of the summer, before I left for Boston, we had a date. We went to see A League of Their Own (I didn't tell him I'd already seen it). Afterwards we went somewhere like Coco's or Polly's or Hoff's and shared a piece of pie. The next time I saw him was down the mountain, at Christmastime. We drove down PCH in my father's sky-blue Honda and had milkshakes and cheese fries at the Harbor House Café. I had written long detailed letters, some with illustrations, during that first semester of graduate school; he didn't write back. Another evening we got together to watch TV at his house and ended up in bed. I drove home at 4 a.m., leaving him snoring gently in the dark of his bedroom.

I want to tell you about the guy in bed, but that sounds cheap and despite my melodramatic flare it never was cheap. It was something more than sexual. He made my senses sing. His touch held both urgency and tenderness. I was never afraid, when he touched me; I never felt insecure or fat or awkward. He released something in me I didn't know was free-able. He brought something to life, a joy, a generosity - and oh, yes, a sensuality - I didn't know was missing. It wasn't just about bed, either. He had plans, and hope. He encouraged me. He was a refiner : he made me gold.

It's hard to remember, now, why it didn't work between us. Distance. Seeing each other twice a year isn't enough for a serious relationship. Reluctance. I never felt like he wanted to define my role in his life, and imagining myself as "Tim's girlfriend" somehow wasn't enough. It frightened me to realize how much more from him than that I wanted; it probably frightened him, as well. At least, I always thought it did. Fear. I was in a dark phase and despite how well things worked between us I was convinced he could never love me. That I wasn't good enough for him, not really, underneath it all. That I was too damaged, too brittle, too scarred, too dark. In fairness, that's probably all true, if only because I cultivated it.

The last time I saw Tim was a December in California. I left his house, as usual, around 4 a.m. The night was dark and solemn the way only the hour and time of year can be. I had an early flight to Boston the following day. It was our last chance to see each other - it turned out to be the last time we did. I remember getting dressed and sitting down gingerly on his side of the bed, fluttering a hand over his sleeping form. I touched his shoulderblades, the nub of his neck, his cheekbone. I laid a hand in his ruffled hair. I leaned down to kiss him goodbye, and he reached up to pull me closer. The kiss was long and deep; I broke away gasping. At the door I said "I love you." I leaned on the door, the dark hallway folded around me like a womb; I left.

He accused me, later, of running away, which I suppose I was. I accused him of cowardice. It was likely true, but unfair anyway. His silence spoke volumes, I said. But you didn't know what was in them, he told me, a shot. It didn't change anything about anything. I got back to Boston and within two weeks my world turned inside-out. My house burned down. I sort of fell in love with a woman, who sort of dumped me. A year passed. A close friend died. I got married. I moved to France. I moved back. I stopped wondering where Tim was. (Almost. Most of the time.)

As years went on, a friend from camp, a fellow counselor of my own generation, gave me the scoop on Tim's subsequent life. He got married. He sold his house - the one I'd known, with the covered patio for his old Cutlass, and the 4-foot-high illuminated Bakelite Santa he put on the roof every year the day after Thanksgiving, and the Christmas lights blinking in color-coordinated synchronicity around the mantelpiece - and bought one closer to his parents and big enough for a family. His dad died in 1999, and he called to tell me. It made me realize, he said, that time is precious with the people you love. I'm sorry it took me so long. He sent me a picture of his family. He and his wife have two beautiful blonde girls. Healthy girls, pretty next-door-neighbors'-kid kind of girls. The kind you might see in a television series from the 1960s.

Did I wake you, thinking out loud? Sorry. I was just thinking about this guy. Nobody you know. I'm not going to tell you about him, the story would bore you. Go back to sleep. Or - kiss me now instead, because I can tell, by the way the corners of the room have gone violet-grey, that I'll be leaving soon.

A Brief Dialogue On Sex, Culture, and The Importance of Stressed Syllables.

Him : My spermatozoa are the Rimbaud of the reproductive world.
Her : They write poetry and prefer men?
Him : [blinks.]

***

Him : My spermatozoa are the Rambo of the reproductive world.
Her : You know, it's nothing to be ashamed of, having them be Rimbaud. I can just picture these sperm, in effete nineteenth-century hats, ...
Him : Effete!
Her : ... sitting moodily around in cafés, drinking Absinthe ...
Him : Rambo, not Rimbaud!

***

Her : It's kind of endearing, actually. Cute. Of course, the alcohol content of the Absinthe is reducing their numbers one by one ...
Him : It's not "cute".
Her : I bet they smoke, too. Yep, look at them, under a blue nicotine cloud, vanishing moodily from the table ...
Him : [pinches eyes with one hand]
Her : I think one of them is writing a manifesto.

***

Him : As I was saying ...
Her : Oooh, look! A fight's broken out between the remaining spermatozoa!
Him : [drops head into hands] Oh, my God.
Her : Potential people do crazy things under the influence of Absinthe.

Texto redux.

People, people, people, you are disappointing me. I announced a week ago that I would send an

to 10 people in the month of August, fully expecting your cell-phone mobile* wireless numbers to rush in a veritable flood into my inbox.

To date, however, I have only 2 phone numbers on my international-text-message dance card.

Maybe I didn't make the prospect as appealing, dare I say as sexy, as I should have done. I mean, I didn't tell you that Tarkan, Thierry Lhermite, and Kyle Secor all want an

I also didn't mention that the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are slated to star in the TV miniseries, whose soundtrack will feature Hillary Duff on 6 new songs.

Furthermore, I didn't tell you that the closing remarks of the DNC were upstaged not by terrorist threats but by the promise of an international text message. Both President Bush and John Kerry want an international text message. Barack Obama wants an international text message. The forces of the G-8 are already planning their next colloquium around the reception of an

The month of August is ticking away.

Get yours now!**

*I've been told that what was once cellular is now wireless, in MMurica.

**This post has been brought to you by Microsoft Paint, Kyle Secor, SFR and the Primary Colors.

Docteur Martin.

Every now and then I get into what I've taken to thinking of as "the hospital mood," when some memory strikes me and I need to put it into words. Sometimes I think I write these things as a kind of purgatory attempt, as if setting their words on the page will put more distance between them and the me I am now. Sometimes, especially lately, I wonder if I'm driven to write them before I move, as if I could get rid of them that way : memories, like clothes and books, donated to charity shops, as I divest my self and move away to start over. And sometimes I know that no matter how far I go from this place, these things will never be far behind. They are part of my life's cast of characters.

Usually I find myself in the "hospital mood" because I've been thinking about one of the people who shared that perennially-lighted corridor, the TV room with the dirty mauve cushions, the orange plastic chairs attached to the tables on elbowy pivots. Memories of Marie-Eve and Sabrina and the others compel me into a specific frame of mind, and each time I write about one of them I remember a little bit more, learn a little bit more about me. About how far I have come since then. About how far we can go.

Today, though, I'm thinking about someone who never saw me there. Today I want to tell you about Docteur Martin.

You, Doctor Martin, walk from breakfast to madness. Late August, I speed through the antiseptic tunnel where the moving dead still talk of pushing their bones against the thrust of cure. And I am queen of this summer hotel

I met Docteur Martin about a year and a half ago. I had been out of the hospital not quite a year, waited six months for an appointment (the public mental-health clinics are disastrously overbooked in France), had a relapse or two, and finally begun to think I wanted to live. The only thing is, when you've tried for a decade to not live, you need help to sustain the wanting. And still, sometimes, I missed it, missed life in the hospital - the daily routine, the yellow rooms, the way condensation beaded up on the window panes and light fell across the lawns. Having someone to eat lunch with; having to eat lunch with someone. Even the procedural routine of morning rounds, when the cleaning staff would make us stand in the hallway while they mopped and aired out the room - large square windows thrown open to the autumn morning air, patients chatting beside the doorways, not allowed in the rooms while the windows were open because we might jump out - took on a faintly pleasant hue, something treasured. That nostalgia was the trigger : the reason I picked up the phone. I think we all, to greater or lesser degrees, and in various situations, have this moment of realization : the horrifying I can't do it alone followed by the even more horrifying and I have to find someone to help me.

I found Dr. Martin, who I'm only calling that because of Anne Sexton, because of her poem about the dedicated-yet-distant therapist. The poem, in fact, is not about a therapist at all, but about Sexton's experience of hospitalization, the demeaning loss that comes from being denied the right to choose your food. Go grocery shopping alone. Wield a knife to kill yourself. When you are a depressed overintellectual member of a relatively privileged class and find yourself denied these petty, essential rights, specifically as Sexton describes them, it is generally because you have earned the deprivation : it is your punishment for trying to escape your life. Sexton's poem is about the loss of small daily comforts and the frustration of replacement : the therapist is incidental.

We stand in broken lines and wait while they unlock the doors and count us at the frozen gates of dinner. The shibboleth is spoken and we move to gravy in our smock of smiles. We chew in rows, our plates scratch and whine like chalk

Dr. Martin is incidental to my hospital experience in that he never came to the hospital while I was there, though he works for a mental-health cabinet that feeds into the hospital, and into which the hospital feeds in turn, in a system of mutual referencing and sociopsychological demography. It was an administrative accident that matched his name with mine in the appointment system. He saw me first about three months after I had "broken up with" my previous therapist (a psychoanalyst who charged 150€ per half-hour to clasp his fingers, smile brightly, and nod his head at most of the crucial moments).

I started by informing Docteur Martin I didn't want to take medication anymore.

The no-more-medication gauntlet is, by the way, tailor-made to send up a psychiatrist's signal flags. I'd already used it on one or two in the past, and been delicately but firmly talked into continuing to swallow various psychotropic cocktails, on the pretext that I didn't know what I wanted, or at least didn't understand that what I wanted didn't correspond with what I needed. That, given time and persuasive in-depth discussion of the subject, I would return to a fuller appreciation of the glory of modern chemistry. (And, to be fair, all of that may very well have been true. But I can tell you with utter conviction today that spending ten years on anti-depressants did more toward reinforcing the idea of my depression, than it ever did toward fighting off or, God forbid I pronounce this un-PC thought, curing the disease.)

Dr. Martin didn't try to talk me into staying on the combination of meds I'd had since leaving the hospital. He gave a thoughtful half-nod and suggested I cut down the dosage slowly, and phone him if I noticed any side effects, or a drastic slip in mood.

Encouraged by his reaction, I decided not to mince words. I told him I didn't want a nurse in the appointment along with him, that it made me feel interrogated. I told him I had issues with my weight, with anger, with cutting. I told him I was tired of wasting time not getting better. I also told him I felt I was probably wasting his time, that I felt so much better on the whole that I wasn't sure therapy was what I needed. And that even if I wasn't strong enough to be better all the time I could keep on dog-paddling my way through, and someone more needy, and most of all more deserving, could benefit from his expertise. He raised an eyebrow.

Dr. M. : What do you think people get from what you call my 'expertise'?

Me : [A shrug.] I've done the therapy thing before. I know what's in it for me, so to speak. Someone who won't judge you. Someone who knows how to hear what you can't quite say. Someone to help figure things out. But mostly, it's about having someone to listen.

Dr. M. : You think you have to deserve having someone listen to you?

Me : Well. When you put it that way, it does sound thin.

Dr. M. : You put it that way.

Me : Oh.

And that's how it started.

There are no knives for cutting your throat. I make moccasins all morning. At first my hands kept empty, unraveled for the lives they used to work. Now I learn to take them back, each angry finger that demands I mend what another will break

I saw Docteur Martin every two weeks for just over a year. Sometimes, especially when I started teaching and had to take the bus to the ends of the bloody earth for a miserable hour-and-a-half of pay travel for a course, I cancelled at the last minute. (This, too, is therapy modus operandi. Rescheduling is one of my fortes, especially when I'm feeling fragile.) I realized with some surprise, as time went on, that I had become unwilling to do this. I started demanding my class schedule have a regular rhythm, pushed social engagements aside for my appointments with Dr. Martin. Turned my mobile phone off.

And I noticed he put me at the end of the schedule for his day. Instead of 30 minutes I would get closer to 45. It was a small kindness, and a mark of mutual respect : he made more time for me, and I made more time for him. Which came down to making more time for me, as well. If I mentioned that I felt bad about giving him such a long day, he waved one hand : Ne vous en faites pas.

One evening as I was leaving I turned at the door. You know, I said, I panic before I come here. Every time. Because I can never think of anything to talk about, and I feel like I'm not working hard enough or something.

Dr. M. : [a small, wry smile] It's hard work, certainly. But if it makes you panic, that's less desirable.

Me : Yes, but, the thing is, even when I have to turn my brain inside-out to find my words, you ask some question that puts everything in focus and I end up with a thousand things to say.

Dr. M. : That's a good thing. After all, your being able to speak is the goal.

Me : So, thank you.

Dr. M. : [shakes head] See you in two weeks. Bonne continuation.

Of course, I love you; you lean above the plastic sky, god of our block, prince of all the foxes. The breaking crowns are new that Jack wore. Your third eye moves among us and lights the separate boxes where we sleep or cry.

At the appointment that ends up being my last we speak about the usual topics. Automutilation, self-confidence, recidivism. Trying to find joy instead of depression, hope instead of shame. Forgiveness of self. I have told him that sometimes I think I have too badly damaged my soul, that it is a charcoal scar left by a burned place, nothing more.

Me : Do you think there is such a thing as a "good" person? I can't decide. I feel better now, but there are still moments when I think I'm lost. When I think about what I've put people through - my family, my friends, my priests, you. And being "good" doesn't depend on feeling good.

Dr. M : I would say the question isn't about whether or not you are "good", but about why you need to evaluate yourself according to that criterion.

If he spoke English, or I could translate spontaneously, I would quote Lewis Carrol. "'I'll be judge, I'll be jury,' / said cunning old Fury ..." But he doesn't, and I can't. So I have to use my own words.

Me : Well. I am binary, after all. I like to have things neatly defined. I like good and bad, and right and wrong, and everything in its place. But I've spent so much time in the grey areas that sometimes it's hard to know what's true and what's just ... relative. And I can't get over the knowledge of all the bad I've done, and been forgiven for. I can't get over how little I deserve the forgiveness, and the kindness, and the friendship and love that people show me. Everyone is so generous.

Dr. M. : Do you mean that having done a bad action makes you a bad person? Encore faudrait-il que l'action soit mauvaise. And it seems to me that what's more important is understanding the reasons for the action, not labelling it.

Me : ...

Dr. M. : You have a kind of lens you see yourself through that shows only the bad parts, and none of the good. You may not be the best person in the world. It doesn't mean you have to be the worst.

Me : Let's just say I'm taking the tally.

Dr. M. : Ok. How does it add up so far?

Me : Encore du chemin à faire. In American we say "the jury is still out." So ... the jury is still out.

Dr. M. : Maybe the jury can try being lenient, as they deliberate.

Me : They don't have much experience with leniency. They are much better at condemnation. So you see what I'm up against.

Dr. M. : I do see. And of course there are no jurors, just you.

Me : My point.

Dr. M. : And mine.

Me : Oh.

What large children we are here. All over I grow most tall in the best ward. Your business is people, you call at the madhouse, an oracular eye in our nest. Out in the hall the intercom pages you. You twist in the pull of the foxy children who fall like floods of life in frost.

I wonder if Sexton, writing her poem to her Dr. Martin, realized she was writing first and foremost to herself, to the person she was in the hospital and the person she was once she left. Even the title - "You, Doctor Martin" - is only an apostrophe of tacit comparison, and one of only two sentences that situate Dr. Martin as the subject; the rest are all subjectified in the first person singular or plural, with two instances of second-person possessive ("your third eye"; "your business") that are not really "about" Dr. Martin. In fact, Sexton's Doctor Martin appears in the title/first line, then effectively disappears until 8 lines from the end of the poem. And when he does reappear at the end, he is no longer a figure of power but a reminder of grammatical complication, a pronoun caught up in the turbulent atmosphere of the hospital ward, a strangely precise phoneme surrounded by recurrent near-rhymes and fricatives ("fall"; "frost"; "life"; "foxy") like fronds or tentacles to blur the verse. Dr. Martin is exact in a world of imprecision, he is lucidity and vision in a world of bees and foxes, a confusing nest of volatile suffering. The stanzas build up to this grammatical reminder, the return of Dr. Martin's subjectivity, at the almost-end, in a swirling rhythm of rage and frustration. I wonder, reading the end of Sexton's poem, if her sonorous word choices in the penultimate stanza spring from a sort of foggy compassion for Dr. Martin, in the way the last stanza's confessional style demonstrates a clear compassion for the "I" who speaks.

I realize, writing this much less poetic post "about" my Dr. Martin - my "Docteur Martin" - that of course I too am writing not to Dr. Martin but to Romy. Writing as much for the Romy who sits in front of the computer tonight as for the Romy who sits, somewhere in memory, at the end of a locked yellow corridor, slightly apart from the smokers, clutching a Victor Hugo novel and pretending to read. I have begun to have compassion for myself, not in the third person ("the woman I was then") but as myself, then integrated into now and at least partially forgiven, partially hopeful.

I have enough self-awareness to know I want Docteur Martin to be proud of the progress I've made, as if he were a father-figure or a teacher in this process; I have enough distance and experience not to speak the thought, to content myself with being proud of my progress myself. And I have had enough jobs, in so many different thankless functions, to wish I could offer him adequate thanks for the work he does. His work with me, yes, but also his work as a mental-health counselor in the public sector, one of the harbors in which the formerly hospitalized find themselves, blinking and agoraphobic, relieved and ashamed. I have come to think of him as a place of safety, as someone I can trust. There are days when I can tell he is weary - once I had to wait 15 minutes after my appointment time, and I'm pretty sure it's because he was asleep in his office - but even bone- or soul-tired, he gives energy to the person before him. And he listens. Carefully, impartially, attentively. I have never, even crying or angry, even cancelling at the last minute, even swearing, felt judged. He remembers the details of what I tell him - and what I can't quite say - and asks calm, probing questions. Most of all, without lecturing or preaching, he inspires kindness.

Before our last appointment I argue with myself about the appropriateness of bringing him a gift, a token, something to thank him. In America I imagine this would be considered weird behavior, or some kind of suspicious transferral, but I am not - yet - in America, and so I decide to be simple and stop debating the question. I manage to find a bottle of California Zinfandel, an offering from my first home, and choose a card with the evening skyline of Lyon. I don't want the gesture to put him ill at ease. Je ne veux pas que ça vous gêne, I say. He is visibly embarrassed and says Mais ce n'est pas du tout nécessaire, and I shake my head and say, simply, Je le sais. Mais si.

He shakes my hand and I push open the glass front door. I am not teary, but my heart is full. Of memories and possibilities. I have said goodbye, and I step outside into the world.

And we are magic talking to itself, noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins forgotten. Am I still lost? Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself, counting this row and that row of moccasins waiting on the silent shelf.

Me : J'ai des nouvelles, some big news.

Dr. M. : ...?

Me : I have a job in Boston. I'm leaving at the end of August.

Dr. M. : [after a pause] And is it what you want?

Me : I don't know. It means leaving everything I love. And I really don't feel ready for my life here to end. But on the other hand, it's a great opportunity and a new beginning. So I'm glad about it. But I'm sad, too.

Dr. M. : De toute façon, la vie n'est faite que de commencements et de fins.

Me : C'est beau, ça. Vous pourriez le re-dire?

He does. Says it again. "Life is made of endings and beginnings."

Me : Et de continuations, entretemps.

Dr. M. : Oui, il ne faut pas les oublier non plus.

As he has done for 18 months at the end of each appointment, he shakes my hand and wishes me "bonne continuation."

Making Lunch Out Of Nothing At All.

Moving means many things, but one of the things it means is that you do a lot less grocery shopping. Like, the other day, when I ran out of Herbes de Provence, I just threw the jar away and didn't bother cleaning it out to re-fill it with replacement herbes. It's a small step toward cleaning the apartment out entirely, but hey, every step counts.

In my refrigerator currently reside a kilo of tomatoes, a package of tuna, half a brick of feta, a really old onion, some leftover pasta, a jar of mayonnaise, a mostly-empty jar of pickles, and a Valencia orange. And if you think I can't get a salad out of those ingredients, you are so wrong.

Untranslatables Taken Literally.

French has a host of wonderful, spoken-language expressions that just don't make it into English. English, of course, has its own wonderful spoken-language expressions, but they are not the same. Of course, even when the words exist on either side of a translation, you can't just transplant them without creating some strange creatures in the interstices. The book "Sky, My Teacher!" (which has unfortunately gone out of print, such that even Amazon.fr doesn't have a working link to it) explains the tenacious untranslatability of English and French idioms. And that is great fun.

Does that say itself?
Jeanne had to stay at school all weekend - she was glued.
You speak!
Does the idea boot you?
He posed me a rabbit.
They have broken themselves to Perpignan.
No, but I dream!
We were completely torched.
I am quailing myself so much it makes cold.
You can't do that - it doesn't do itself, what.*
Oh, you're posing me a glue, there.
Your muzzle!
We are barring ourselves - at plus.
I break myself.
I file.
That stuffs me.
Stop making shit.

*In français parlé, many sentences end with "what" [quoi]. It gives a kind of explanation and added emphasis to the phrase.

Go Lightly Down Your Darkened Way.

All my life I worshipped her
Her golden voice, her beauty's beat
How she made me feel
How she made me real
And the ground beneath her feet.

And I can't be sure of anything
Black is white and cold is heat
What I worship stole my love away
It was the ground beneath her feet
The ground beneath her feet.

Go lightly down your darkened way,
Go lightly underground
I'll be down there in another day,
I won't rest until you're found.

Let me love you
Let me rescue you
Let me bring you where two roads meet
Ah come back above
Where there is only love ...

(Thanks to Salman Rushdie for this poem, and to Bono for setting it to music for the soundtrack of The Million Dollar Hotel. It sounds like a bloody dreadful movie, and the story has nothing to do with the story of The Ground Beneath Her Feet, but the soundtrack is awesome, and the song has raised my spirits after losing a whole passel of writing in one unlucky stroke of the "alt" key.)

More Reasons to Love French TV.

The names. You just don't get names like these on American TV.

Clovis.
Marie-Ange.
Helmut.
Yva. (A man? A woman? French? Italian? German? I still don't know.)
Katja.
Jehanne.
Wolf.
Clothilde.
Isabelle-Jeanne-Françoise. (Make sure you get all your saint-bases covered ...)

And today's winner is ...

Detleff.

Points Carré Rouge.

As part of my moving-to-America odyssey, I have notified my mobile phone service that I will no longer be contributing a fortune to their beer fund requiring their services as of the end of this month. The process of cancelling mobile phone service in France, I have learned, involves several phone calls to someone who answers the phone "Allô, 900?" - I think they think it's my name - as well as documentation. (The usual documentation, and in triplicate, of course : mobile phone number, contract number with the service, letter explaining reason for service cancellation, bank statement, tax records, copy of passport front page, birth certificate translated [they didn't specify "into French" so I've decided to go with Old High Norse], copy of driving license, authorization to sell financial records on the Internet. The usual.)

All of that is simple enough, but it turns out that because of my 3 years of service with this particular company, I have accumulated a fair number of points carré rouge [red square points], which are the service's mobile-telephony version of frequent-flyer miles. (When I say "a fair number," you can imagine the population of a small Baltic state. Yep, about that many.) You can redeem your points carré rouge by changing your old mobile for a new one. You can redeem them by "spending" some of them on mini-forfaits - small packages of options you wouldn't normally get because they cost too much. Things like extra minutes per billing period. Extra textos*.

In order not to lose my copious points carré rouge, I have thus invested in several mini-forfaits, including the one that lets me send 10 textos overseas. This option - quite logically - doesn't take effect until 5 days before I leave France. That gives me 2 international textos per day. So if you want a texto, between 20 and 25 August 2004, email me your mobile number, and then watch out, because I plan to paint the wireless universe scorching red.

*Texto = SMS. Yes, this is official French technical language.

Dialogue.

She is sitting outside my flat, eyes hooded, when I get home from taking Brontë to the vet. I can smell her cigarette, hot and angry, as I climb the stairs.

Me : Ça va?

Pauline : He told me he hit his girlfriend. That's disgusting. He said he did it because she showed up drunk to their date, but that's not a reason.

Me : No.

Pauline : There is no reason. He can't even try to understand why she might show up drunk, he has to hit her. For me he's a guy with no heart. You know what? For me he's not even a guy. He thinks this makes him strong. It doesn't make him strong. Even Drunk Girl is stronger than he is.

Me : Yes.

Pauline : He tells me he's going to make all this money and buy an apartment, buy a car, buy all kinds of cool clothes, and a new watch, and then I'll be proud of him. I told him I don't give a fuck about that stuff. I want to be proud of him because of who he is, and I want who he is to be someone who doesn't need all this shit on the outside to make him feel good enough that he doesn't have to hit women to make himself feel better. You know?

Me : Yep.

Pauline : When I saw him, this afternoon, he told me right away he fucked up, and I thought to myself, I don't really want to know what he did. Is that horrible of me?

Me : No.

Pauline : But then I realized, once he told me what he did, it's not just that I don't want to know what he did, I don't want to know him. Do you think that means I have a heart of stone? 'Cause I can't think of anything worse than treating people the way he treats people, like they don't mean shit, like they're stupid and small and worthless. And I wonder how long it's going to be before he realizes he's the only one that's true for.

I am struck as always by her eloquence and maturity. She knows things at seventeen that I am still working out at twice her age. I want to hug her but I don't. I want to tell her you can't save your friends but the wording isn't right. I want to tell her you can't save your family, either, but I don't say anything because I know it's not enough. So instead I promise to make her pasta she won't eat, and we go inside.

Pauline.

Two years ago, when I was in the hospital, she came to see me. The first couple times, she called my room beforehand to make sure I was there and awake. Then, realizing I was capable of committing any violence to the truth to get out of seeing people, she stopped calling, started just showing up. She refused to let my world reduce itself to the population of the psych ward and the TV screen. She came on Wednesday afternoons because she was out of school early.

*

A year ago, she showed up at my front door, red-eyed and reeking of cheap alcohol, the kind you can buy in quantity here and the épicier won't even turn his head to watch you leave the store. I made her sit down and eat - peanuts, cookies, cheese and peanut butter stacked onto crackers. She rolled her own cigarettes with trembling fingers and spent two hours criticizing the city, the Church, her family, my family, my apartment and the entire French Foreign Ministry before she asked if she could live with me. I don't mean live, she said. I mean stay. At nights. It would just be for the year, she added. She was on her fifth cigarette and almost out of leaf to roll into the thin matte papers. What, every night? I said, a bit ungraciously I'm afraid. She nodded. Sweetheart, what do your parents say? Have you asked them if you can stay here? She nodded and shrugged, that one-shoulder thing the French do so well. They said to ask you, she said. It's OK, she said, a post-script, watching my face and getting up to smoke out the window. I can see you don't want to say yes. I corrected her : I don't want to say no, I said. But I need to think about it. I'm not sure I'd be doing you a favor, really. She shrugged again. It's OK, she said again. And smoked, trembling, out the window.

I thought about it. I talked to a priest. I talked to my mother. Anger grew in me, anger against parents so preoccupied by the addictions and violence of one son that they could justify letting their 17-year-old daughter move into the studio apartment of a woman twice her age and whom they barely know. Anger and a bit of fear - I am not a mother. I was unemployed at that point, in the grip of the French Administration's decision-making process about my visa and whether or not I could stay in the country. Could she contribute to my rent? (I answered that fleeting question with a quick and definitive NO.) How would I feed us both? I thought and thought and planned what I would tell her when we spoke about it next. And in the end I gave the coward's answer - which is to say, I gave no answer at all. I didn't call her back, though I'd promised I would. I didn't call her parents, though I thought I should. I tried to talk about it with her once, a month or so later, and she shushed me. She never brought it up again.

During the year our paths crossed few times. Usually we spoke on our mobile phones - hers, with its ring like a bouncing ball; mine, with its synthesized Mozart. We met once or twice in a café - she ordered a demie, I ordered coffee. She smoked and did not talk about life at home. I listened.

Other people talked to me about her home life, not just the usual mauvaises langues (who talk about everybody's everything with a certain measure of smugness, glee in the misfortunes of others) but friends, even a priest. The brother closest to her in age was dropping out of high school and returning to junior high, would start a new school in the fall. Her older sister failed English and might have to repeat her year. Pauline lost weight, a kilo here, a kilo there, jawline and hipbones sharpening under the planes of her face, the cool cut of her trousers. The younger siblings came to class with sad, hollow faces, sometimes bruised, until their father finally kicked the oldest brother - the violent one who "hid" his stash in the battery compartment of his boombox - out of the house. The parents were partly at their wits' end, and partly seemed like they couldn't be bothered. Offers of help were rebuffed. The family was closing up like an anemone, each child a delicate frond turning inward for unrealistic protection.

*

I wonder, thinking back over the past year, if I could have lived through its events with a teenager, if I "should" have told her yes. I know she saw my apartment, my foreigner's life in Lyon, as a kind of refuge from everything she knew. (Even the cooking was different : complicated pasta sauces, recipes with tofu, breakfast for dinner, Diet Coke in the place of water; and I still, after 4 years living in France, forget the bread, which ubiquitously accompanies everything here, from salads to rice.) I don't know if it would have been the "right" thing, to take her in. I don't even know - if we take right and wrong out of the equation, and settle for better and worse - if it would have been better.

But when I think back on my life in France, two things stick out among all the others - the generosity of a fifteen-year-old French girl with the perspicacity to see through my depressive excuses, and my own later selfishness and unbravery in return, a sin of omission.

A Jubilee Collage (some images of my life since before the year 2000).

The last time I moved back to Boston, five years ago, I had no inkling of where the next five years would take me. Here are snapshots of some of those places. And here's hoping the next five years are every bit as much of an adventure.

*

1. In the fall of 1999, I had just moved back to Boston to resume my Ph.D. program. After 3 years in Washington (state) and a research grant in Paris, I was letting my hair grow out and grappling with turning 30. My mother took this picture. She used to have a copy of it on the cork board in her sewing room, with a pin stuck through the place where you can't quit see my nose ring unless you know you're looking for it. (My mother isn't big on piercings. She is especially small on my nose ring.)

*

2. New Year's Eve, 1999-2000. After an evening of cocktails and highly detailed intellectual arguments about when the new millenium actually began (2000? 2001?), Julia and Chris and I made nachos and played games. (We might actually have played Scrabble, though I couldn't swear to this fact.) Several bottles of champagne later, the makeup came out. Lesson #1 : Red metallic lip-liner painted onto the eyelid leaves a strangely raw mark the following day. I would like to take credit for the fact that, even drunk, I managed to bring out the gorgeous violet color of Julia's eyes, but I think it has more to do with her genetic beauty than my cosmetic skill.

*

3. New Orleans, April 2000. My hair is still growing out - is, in fact, in an exceedingly awkward phase - but thanks to some fortuitous synthetic braids you can't tell. We visited this souvenir shop after some serious drinking and before more serious drinking; that is, after the two bottles of wine in an Italian restaurant, but before the discovery of a local delicacy called a "hurricane." We bought dozens of necklaces of shiny multicolored beads. (This was before I learned the procedure by which women in New Orleans normally procure these necklaces*.) I was drunk enough to buy my hat; Julia was drunk enough not to. By the way, that postcard held up between our chests does read "home grown eggplants."

*

4. My family in January 2003, The Madison, Long Beach, California. I am between my parents; my brother and sister fill out the left half of the semi-circle. We went out to celebrate my completed thesis (and therefore Ph.D.). Phred-D, known in some circles as Bebo and in other circles as Fred, mixed highballs in the limo on the way to the restaurant. Dad bought each of the women in the family a long-stemmed rose from one of those people who walks around nice restaurants selling them. Later there was dancing. (I fox-trotted on my father's feet more than once, but he says he forgave me right away.)

*

5. My sister and me, January 2003, sans red-eye reduction, celebrating our various degrees and luxuriant tresses.

* If you follow the link to the Mardi Gras information page, I do hope you'll click on Wikipedia's very informative link labelled "breast."

Wedding #3.

Backless black dress from the Gap : 45 USD.

Black strappy sandals from that cheap place on the Cours Lafayette : 15 €.

Velvet-and-silk rainbow-colored shawl worn over backless black dress : 75,000 lira, back when the lira was still in circulation.

Ink cartridge for the express purpose of scanning and printing 10 pages of sheet music for 10 singers : 35 €.

Péage, Lyon to Mâcon-Sud : 8,50 €.

Time spent rehearsing singers : an extra 2 hours each of the past 2 weeks, plus 90 minutes before the ceremony.

(Time spent reassuring traditional Catholics that the Anglican priest in the Roman collar would not give them communion : about 20 minutes.)

The bride mouthing "Thank You" behind the altar when the last chord of "Ubi caritas" had faded into the stones of the cathedral nave : priceless.