After a time he began to wander about, going lippity-lippity, and not very fast.

i spent a very pleasant monday morning in the children's book section of shakespeare and company...the windows were all open and i sat on a tiny chair and read. the world melted away as i remembered countless hours on countless armchairs and couches and beds listenting to my mother and grandmother read to me, and later reading to them, and even later reading to myself in the hollow of my favorite tree or in the green room at the theatre or at my father's dining room table.

below is a list of some of my favorite books. it's so funny how instrumental they have been in the life i have created for myself...from madeline in the streets of paris to the bowls of blueberries and milk in the boxcar children to harriet-the-spy-like the careful observation of people i see on streets and in trains...images from all of these stories creep into my life constantly. i feel so blessed to have spent a childhood in the company of these wonderful characters and to notice when parts of them seep into my adult life.

The Day Jimmy's Boa ate the wash
Ramona Quimby, Age 8
Tuck Everlasting
Madeline's Rescue
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
A Porcupine Named Fluffy
The Boxcar Children
Caddie Woodlawn
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Ghost Cat
Harriet the Spy
Matilda
more to come...

the way i walked

away from his crooked floors and tall windows and curling plants and...
down that tiny street, at the end of which lay the seine...
down the quai and past the boats where i imagine the ghosts of pirates still live...
across a bridge that knows only feet, where a man in black sat playing the clarinet, which matched the sky and my insides...
and then my heel got stuck between wooden slats, and i had to look down, and then...because i was standing there, still, already, i looked up...
and there was an archway and the entrance to what was once a palace
crossed a busy street and joni started singing about a baby, born with the moon in cancer
and i stepped on each cobblestone, one at a time while she sang about crocuses and california...
another arch and the gardens with fountains where someone i loved once told me to rent a tiny sailboat...and i imagined his peter pan ghost there in black and white.
and the narrow path with trees curving up and over the length of green fence
and old men with small dogs and jogging firemen and women scowling and smoking
and in a hurry
and the grate over the bookstore windows is still down and the books stare out like little paper prisoners
maybe monday i will walk this way again.

the lion's mouth

Stuck my finger in the socket

Wondered why it burned

I stuck my arm right down the drain

You'd think I would have learned…

 

But the scars from burns and metal

Are the ones that heal so slow

And the ones that stay the longest

Are the hardest to let go

 

So I'm glad I stuck my finger

In the socket on the wall

And now I'm off to see

If there's a lion in the hall

 

I plan to walk right up to him

And this is what I'll do

I'll put my head right in his mouth

And dare him to chew

 

Don't ever try to think about

The things you might have done

Just do them hard and do them fast

And try to have some fun…

cowboy boots

i will search for them when i go home

for no more than thirty dollars at value village

i will eat sour patch kids and fruit leather

i will park my battered little green car in the wide wide parking lot of glendale mall and marsh grocery store and

i will buy things i know i do not need

i will eat a hearty breakfast most days,

with bacon and syrup

i will wrap presents and sing carols

i will show julien the pretty houses on meridian street where

i will never live and the big schools that look so unfriendly from the outside

i will watch videos of forgotten recital routines, full of tongue biting and bad pirouettes

i will eat perfectly salted popcorn at the movies on christmas day

i will chase the ducks on the canal in broad ripple and

i will drink hot chocolate with my mother and cocktails with my father after church

i will show him where my grandparents used to live and the places where i fell in love and

i will do all of these things that remind me of home

and then

i will go home again

the hangover that didn't happen

and am very grateful for that. (thank you aspirin).  

birthday dinner went off without a hitch (a long climb up rue de belleville but it made us hungry so that ended up being a bonus). the food was delicious, the wine was amazing, the boy was happy. all good things. drinks with friends at the express bar and a short ride home before 1am. all good things.

nespresso in the morning, a lovely chat with a smiley parisian woman at a stoplight who liked my rabbit fur jacket ("marché aux puces ou le marais?" "ben, le maris..." i admitted, guiltily. "but i didn't buy it, it was a gift"). singing and dancing alone in the office this morning, only to be caught by the gardien who was standing in the doorway with the mail...laughing. why is she so tan? two white chocolate cookies for breakfast. watching an old movie tonight at one of the tiny theatres on rue des écoles. all good things.

now...one very bad thing. i just read an article in the herald tribune (since my boss finished his paper during the hour and a half that he was stuck in the train because it ran over someone, okay- two bad things):

sarah palin is really starting to scare me...i have always had nightmares but they were improbable before (faking death in a helicopter crash so that the nazi soldiers wouldn't find me and i could escape into the jungle, strangling a baby, setting a haunted house on fire, sitting before a panel of french doctors and then having to pay sixty-nine euros because i didn't have health insurance, taking flight on my bicycle, chatting with monkeys in a café...just things that probably won't happen); but the pitbull hockey mom with a barely used passport and a degree in journalism who wasn't even popular in high school and who probably wants to make my kids pray in school who could be headed to the white house, that is beyond nightmarish. so i already mailed my ballot.  get those scary people out!!! it's almost halloween. i have enough scary things in my imagination, i don't need them in real life.

so tonight i will try to find a pumpkin to carve. another good thing...keep 'em comin' please.

in anticipation of tomorrow's hangover...

my boyfriend came to see me at the office today wearing a bowler hat, a sweatshirt, a scarf that he has had since kndergarten (read, very very short) and a pair of kelly green sweatpants with one leg rolled up. but it's his birthday so he may do as he pleases.

strange things have happened today... i bit my tongue in my sleep so it's been difficult to express myself. i know there will be bottles and bottles of wine tonight and there will be an abundance of self-expression. i have a headache just thinking about it.

will raconte tout demain from my little desk overlooking the little courtyard sipping my little hot chocolate (received yesterday from hayley who cared enough to go to the post office...thank you hayley).

à demain!