When someone dies at 91, you can't say it is untimely. When that someone used to be a neighbour and friend that you no longer see regularly, that doesn't stop you from feeling sad and remembering not going to Algeria together because we couldn't get a visa to travel through the dessert to search for cave paintings, but travelling around Europe instead and still having a good time.
You can remember exchanging writing, having meals together, and his telling you the history of the bas relief on a column in a convent in Elne.
It doesn't stop a flood of memories when we had rented a grey car in Southern France and we decided to remember that the last two numbers of the license were 66 only to discover that all plates in the region ended in 66 and walking around and around the parking lot and putting a key into every grey car that faintly resembled our rental and laughing about it.
It doesn't stop me from sitting with his ex-wife tonight who also feels sad and remembering how both of them didn't make anyone chose sides in the divorce and that the sadness of the divorce was that they both wanted such different things that the sacrifice of the other would have destroyed what remained of a love.
It doesn't stop the memory of his phone call to France when he remarried to a woman when they were both in their sixties to share the news and his laughing when my lover at the time asked "Do they HAVE to get married? Is she pregnant?"
It doesn't stop the memory of meeting him and his new wife at the Lausanne train station and a great weekend in Payerne with my Swiss lover.
It doesn't stop the memory of his ringing my bell when I lived on The Riverway and announced himself as a character in a book I was writing.
What does stop is the chance to share just a bit more silliness and ideas and that a little piece of the past is gone never to return and that makes me sad.
Monday, July 13, 2009
National Holidays
Technically I can celebrate three national holidays. If I were in Geneva on the 4th of July I could have gone to the Bout du Monde for a typical holiday, but I wasn't.
However tomorrow is France's birthday and we are having fireworks. There are at least three street balls and a couple of concerts and I can just wander around.
On August 1 it's the Swiss birthday celebrating almost 720 years of democracy. We're planning an open house and I have my train tickets ready to get back in time to help my housemate all the goodies.
Hopefully the neighbours will do their firework display like last year over the lake, but even if they don't the 14th will have enough ooooos and aahhhs to hold me.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Okay I was wrong
Years ago, while driving from NJ where my daughter had spent part of the summer turning her white skin into a colour darker than one of my African-American friends and her hair white, we were listening to a concert broadcast live.
The perfomer?
Michael Jackson.
"Ten years from now, no one will remember him," I said. That remark had the same wisdom as the then Digital President Ken Olson, who said he could see no reason a person would want a home computer.
As much as I enjoyed Jackson's music and found his videos fascinating, I do not understand the media hype around his death. Yes, exceptionally talented. Yes a breakthrough artist. Yes, a dedicated, hard-working performer. Yes a tragic life despite his success. But with the world in crisis there has to be other stories that need more air time. I keep thinking of Roman bread and circuses.
Maybe I lack passion. I can think of no one outside my family in friends where I would travel for miles to stand outside their home if they died. Even Garou. Even Margaret Atwood. Even, dare I say it...George Clooney? Don't those who consider the death of a celebrity, any celebrity, a personal tragedy have something better to do or real people in their lives to care about?
My daughter, who that summer did a temporay reverse change in skin colour to Jackson's reminded me of the remark.
I can admit it.
I was wrong. He will be remembered and should.
The perfomer?
Michael Jackson.
"Ten years from now, no one will remember him," I said. That remark had the same wisdom as the then Digital President Ken Olson, who said he could see no reason a person would want a home computer.
As much as I enjoyed Jackson's music and found his videos fascinating, I do not understand the media hype around his death. Yes, exceptionally talented. Yes a breakthrough artist. Yes, a dedicated, hard-working performer. Yes a tragic life despite his success. But with the world in crisis there has to be other stories that need more air time. I keep thinking of Roman bread and circuses.
Maybe I lack passion. I can think of no one outside my family in friends where I would travel for miles to stand outside their home if they died. Even Garou. Even Margaret Atwood. Even, dare I say it...George Clooney? Don't those who consider the death of a celebrity, any celebrity, a personal tragedy have something better to do or real people in their lives to care about?
My daughter, who that summer did a temporay reverse change in skin colour to Jackson's reminded me of the remark.
I can admit it.
I was wrong. He will be remembered and should.
Friday, July 03, 2009
Fantasy
fuzzy socks, sweats, a turtle neck, a pot of hot tea in my penguin tea pot, fat sloppy snow flakes ambling by my window. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Kitty coup
My daughter informs me there’s a kitty coup going on in her flat.
Gwen, The Lady Guievere, the first cat, the tiger, probably takes Garfield as her hero seemed to be the dominant.
Gwen, The Lady Guievere, the first cat, the tiger, probably takes Garfield as her hero seemed to be the dominant.
Morgana, the grey and white cat as a kitten was adopted by college students in Boston then abandoned when they left for the summer.
Each established their own spaces and habits despites moves from Boston to Geneva to Boston to Malden to Leesburg and then Vienna VA.
However, last week at bedtime Morgana took over Gwen's sleeping place. disgruntled and perhaps with an I'll show her attitude, Gwen settled into Morgana's place. Morgana didn't care.
The next night the same change of place. Some nights Morgana goes to bed before anyone.
The next round is the bathroom. Gwen seemed to think my daughter needs help and advice getting ready in the mornings and watches her intently. Now my daughter reports, this duty was assumed for the first time by Morgana.
Gwen talks a stream of meows while Morgana USED to remain silent. This too is changing. Gwen does not seem to know how to combat this coup. On verra.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Inernational Panic
When I lived in Boston and a plane crashed at Logan airport, two of my international friends, knowing I took semi-frequent trips from Logan, called to check to see if I was okay. I also remember my ex-boss rushing into my office when the victims of the crash in Peggy's Cove was released and pale-faced asked me where my daughter was. There had been a Tara Nelson not a Llara on the plane. The impulse to immediately worry about those you care about, is human.
Thus Monday night when I awoke at three for a piddle run I flipped on the news for a few minutes to learn of the D.C. Metro crash. My daughter rides the Metro. She would have been on it in rush hour.
With shaking hands I dialed her cell, telling myself that a no answer would mean only it was shut off as it often was. It rang, rang, rang.
Then her voice came on the line.
"Mom?" She was amazed I was up and even as a news junkie had heard about the crash. She was home, safe and sound, having come home on other trains.
My relief was only matched by sorrow for the families of people who weren't so lucky.
Thus Monday night when I awoke at three for a piddle run I flipped on the news for a few minutes to learn of the D.C. Metro crash. My daughter rides the Metro. She would have been on it in rush hour.
With shaking hands I dialed her cell, telling myself that a no answer would mean only it was shut off as it often was. It rang, rang, rang.
Then her voice came on the line.
"Mom?" She was amazed I was up and even as a news junkie had heard about the crash. She was home, safe and sound, having come home on other trains.
My relief was only matched by sorrow for the families of people who weren't so lucky.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Dancing with petals
The Tramantane is at first force leaving the sea white with a few blue caps. My street with its overhanging flowers is a wind tunnel which is pulling many of the petals off the stems creating purple and pink carpeting on the pavement. As I walked down the street I was caught in a swirl of petals twisting around me, going as high as my shoulders then dipping in a floral curtsy--a magic moment.
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