miracle at canna

Every day I go to work, twice. I am reprimanded for failing to say Bonjour, Bonsoir, Ca Va to each member of the equipe individually, for using the passive voice. Yesterday I ate most of a small early pumpkin. Today I ate lunch in a mosque…I have the profound sense I don’t do anything.

And yet I traverse great distances, I wind up on staircases. I carry bags of bread from the bakery, tourists point and tell each other, “Look! Very Traditional.” The ground around the arena is blanketed with rotting leaves, soccer balls pound against the walls, bugs bite me and I feel I am becoming part of this pit of History. Various members of the equipe don’t understand how I drink 10 1.5 litre bottles of Vittel a day, I don’t understand how they don’t. I used to just fill up the same bottle from the robinet, I hate wasting plastic, but it tasted too animal, vegetable, my neural pathways needed something more, and it is precisely this sense of profligacy that makes water a little more like wine…it’s Leah’s birthday, what cann I do?

jardin de l'internet

I've made little progress. I do yoga. At work when no one's looking I pique some pickled ginger and it piques right back, my body-mind commits speech acts all day but I remain the abject object of my own affectation. I use the internet at an ancient Roman arena where now kids play kickball. But I've transcended the internet...it's not even real. These days I'm more interested in virtual internets, like the restaurant. I have recurring dreams the premise and promise of which is repetition; three chefs turn out plate after plate in the Jardin du Luxembourg as I run laps, pausing every so often to set paper napkins on bread plates.

Dear Abou's gone to New York to become an avocat, my cabinet is empty, and if no one comes to me chercher at midnight tonight my Coach might turn into a kadu. Mao pouts her red lips, promises "ça va aller, chouchou," offers me a chocolate. I smear red cabbage with avocado. The (black) kitchen staff asks me if I know Barack Obama, if I would like to visit Africa in October, shut up I'm busy setting paper napkins on bread plates.

Only two weeks left of work, praise be to Allah or ardor, it adds up. I amble along Rue Monge, Adderall-addled, I mange almonds, apples, avocados, all AB. I feel awesome sometimes, awful full-time. I'd assign my body-mind the name Brother Assonance, barring bad associations, adding bar associations (to set, to raise, to pass, to drink).

chaque matin, pour gagner mon pain

Paris is Paris, business is business; I've spent the last week and a half tying bundles of nine napkins up with a tenth. I work at a cozy cafe with a bibliophilic bent and an archetypal staff. To give only one example, the soi-disant Madame Martine celebrated her last day before (forced?) retirement by making off with a client's sparkly shoes and belting out, hands in air, head thrown back, "C'est la luuuuut-te finale!" To give another, the Marseillais chef with the mane and snarl of a wild horse of Camargue sings slightly vulgar folk ballads and speaks only in improvised aphorisms. Everyone treats me like a strange animal whose genetic proximity to humans is unclear, handling me very gently and with only an optimistic expectation of sentience. At the same time I have the sense that someone has paid them to entertain me, with the predictable effect of skewing my perception of subject/object relations. We can see the Eiffel Tower from our window. At night it blinks wildly or turns blue...why?