Passing Trains

The image wants to be in motion. It wants to be the train again, to thrust the cool morning air of the space where it was into the open window of the train it passes, where a little girl has just awakened from her nap, having traversed the Danube Valley overnight. She asks her mother, “How long until we are there, now? How long to Budapest?”
Perhaps this image wants to be heard: we can imagine hearing the whistle of the trains passing in the early morning, one heading east, the other west. The sound is vivid, emerging from our memories (experiences or imaginings of experiences) of whistles, or trains, or whistles and trains.
After our image will come other images: Hungarian hamlets dotting the countryside, churches and farmers’ fields. We can anticipate them because of the motion our image gives us. In this way, we must be careful to remain faithful to our image: no more wondering what came before or what will come after, because our image can cause us pain. Our image shows two trains on parallel tracks, thus there is no danger of them crashing. Yet, danger is still imminent, still possible.
Here another want comes to the fore: this image wants us to fear it, to respect its distance. The image was taken at a dangerous angle. If I, in one train, put my hand—or worse, head—out at the wrong time…that’s the end of it. A concussion or a broken limb would be the most generous of possible outcomes.
This image is almost a word problem in algebra, one of the hackneyed “time over distance” scenarios that always take twice as long as any other problem on the test. But it isn’t, thank goodness. It’s just the image of two trains going in opposite directions on a clear, early morning.

Happy Birthday, Baudelaire!

Google today (…maybe just in France…) is celebrating the 192nd birthday of my personal favorite opium addict and deranged but brilliant mind, the late Romantic poet Charles Baduelaire!

To add my own salutation to the mix, here is one of his shorter poems from “Les fleurs du mal” (1857):

 

Tristesses de la lune

Ce soir, la lune rêve avec plus de paresse ;
Ainsi qu’une beauté, sur de nombreux coussins,
Qui d’une main distraite et légère caresse
Avant de s’endormir le contour de ses seins,

Sur le dos satiné des molles avalanches,
Mourante, elle se livre aux longues pâmoisons,
Et promène ses yeux sur les visions blanches
Qui montent dans l’azur comme des floraisons.

Quand parfois sur ce globe, en sa langueur oisive,
Elle laisse filer une larme furtive,
Un poète pieux, ennemi du sommeil,

Dans le creux de sa main prend cette larme pâle,
Aux reflets irisés comme un fragment d’opale,
Et la met dans son coeur loin des yeux du soleil.

Dans le jardin

August heat swirls around us on our walking tour of Paris. We head toward the Jardins de Luxembourg, passing a metro station, a row of apartment complexes, young families out for a stroll, like us. I coo at a baby sitting upright in his stroller strangling a teddy bear. His mother smiles at me, a knowing smile, imagining for me a future I have not yet fathomed for myself: motherhood, just like her. A gelato shop on the corner houses twenty-five flavors and teenagers taking any ready excuse to evade the summer sun and to gaze at each other’s bodies.

“Do you want one?” he points to the sign: GLACES.

“We just ate lunch,” I say. I put my head on his shoulder as he wraps his arm around my waist.

“You’re right,” he smiles. “Perhaps on our way home.” He does not use the word home and it takes me a moment to associate what he does say: à la retour – on the way back – with its implied meaning.

More young families as we enter the park. Puppet Show Today, the sign informs me: a hanging sign, a gazebo—an arrow. I almost suggest we go, but stop myself, thinking he’ll probably reply, we just ate lunch. As I imagine this, I decide, I become convinced, that he will say this. I remain silent.

Trees and their beautiful branches sprawl from roots enmeshed in sandy soil. Exotic, Mediterranean, Temperate; they coexist here. Benches welcome visitors. We seek shade under a magnolia. I sit cross-legged. He lies next to me, his head in my lap, eyes closed. I stroke his hair, his fine-boned face, the faint stubble on his chin. The park is man-made, yet natural. Beautiful. The calm is uncustomary for the center of Paris. And yet, it is not. The park has been here since Haussmann. Is happiness beauty? I forget for a moment where I am. I consider that at this moment happiness could similarly be found in a stroller, strangling a teddy bear.

Beauty is idealized here, in France as anywhere else in the world. Beauty is important. Beauty can be found in many things. If I describe the beauty I see, it is opinion with a grain of truth. Undeniable.

We take a different way home. He has forgotten the gelato shop. He has forgotten to ask me if I want to stop. We pass a portico on our way to Place de la République. The portico is tall and gray but not Roman: Neoclassical Revival: Quatrième République. A lie, a beautiful, enticing and boldfaced deception. Like the chateaux of the Loire, like the palm trees of St. Malo, like the Starbucks in the Louvre, like Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.

In a doorway as we pass I catch a glimpse of a bare-chested woman draped in a clinging negligee as if she had stepped momentarily from a Delacroix painting. She holds no flag, no harbinger of peace, comfort, or ideals. She is a plain woman, dark haired, of medium height and build. She is barefoot in the doorway, her feet calloused, her toenails yellowed. She is not beautiful. Yet she is not unattractive. I stare at her feet, at her bared beasts.

He looks at me, his head cocked to one side. “Is she the first prostitute you’ve ever seen?”

“Yes, in person,” I reply.

He takes my arm this time. He leads me away, across the street to safer parts. I am not accustomed to prostitutes as people, as existing in the city where I live. He is protective. He finds me innocent and naïve. He wishes to explain the world to me.

V.C.Weller © copyright

Port Vieux, La Ciotat

On n’est pas coupable

Liquide ivoire d’alcool jeune est

monotone aux délices d’éponge.

Personne ne peut chanter en face.

La geste sonore existe dans

quelque chose de grande beauté.

Une femme angélique et vaine qui

pousse l’instinct discret ; elle est la

douleur même, peut-être — respire !

La chasse et la chaleur ne semblent

pas cuites—l’extase pieux qui rit,

qui dévore le velours en chocolat.

Tu as un objet qui cherche, qui enlace

Le matin rouge et maintenant—

mélancolique aux genoux sales !

V.C. Weller © copyright

Link to For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Megan Garber, The Atlantic, April 2013

Review: For Whom the Bell Tolls?

This article, written by Megan Garber for the most recent issue of The Atlantic, has ruffled my feathers.

The premise is that the pronoun “whom” is doomed and dying a slow death. The Internet is helping it along. It’s outlived its lexical usefulness. Plus, only people with rods up their asses even know the difference between “who” and “whom” let alone make the distinction.

As a language purist, and no doubt we are found few and far between in this day and age, I was actually really upset immediately after reading the article. Then I got to realizing: IT’S TRUE!

However, I still can’t help finding it unfortunate that no one really seems to care about correct grammar, usage, or punctuation anymore.

Also, Ms. Garber’s excitement at the demise of an interrogative pronoun–her introductory sentence says it all–is something I find wholly disheartening. A published journalist, and staff writer, of a nationally (and internationally) circulating magazine celebrates the decline of grammatical formality?

Whom did they poll in coming to the conclusion that no one likes “whom” the pronoun?! Not me, obviously.

Has the stigma of being a “pompous twerp” superseded the necessity for users of a language to use said language correctly and dutifully? As the article states, “The Internet…institutionalizes the errors.” Case in point, the term “Grammar Nazi,” which I loathe, for it undermines the English language by saying it’s unimportant to use standard conventions–you’re a geeky loser, not to mention an asshole, if you do. In fact, in using the term “Nazi,” it implies there is something inherently evil in wanting to preserve correct usage.

I guess that makes me a geeky loser and an evil asshole. You’re welcome.

Traunsee, Bad Ischl

A Brief Moment of Heimweh

Outside the Lidl in the center of town in La Ciotat, France, the birthplace of cinema, the town where I live and teach English at the local high school, a bum starts talking to me in German. It is just his luck that last year, I lived (and worked, teaching English in a high school) in Vienna. I know German. I respond. The rain comes down in faint sprinkles. I ask him if he has an umbrella.

He is drunk, I think, or in some sort of stupor that alcoholics get into when they’re constantly drinking. His name is Stefan. He thinks, for some reason, that I am Swiss. I explain I am not, but he forgets halfway through our conversation. He continues his rolling monologue of mantra, philosophy, confusion. He quotes the Bible. He sings Alpine folk songs. He asks me about myself.

I tell him I lived in Vienna…his friend is from Vienna! His friend–Fritz–comes over and quizzes me on Vienna. (I think I pass the test.) He tells me about his life: he served in the French Foreign Legion. He was honorably discharged, has a son and did have a girlfriend, but she kicked him out, and now he’s homeless. Same with Stefan. They’ve been living on the streets for 17  and 19 years, respectively.

Other Lidl customers come to give them money or talk to them. Stefan’s French is not so good, but Fritz has a good command of the language, albeit in a thick Viennese accent. Fritz tells me about how the doctors want to operate on his leg, but he doesn’t want any of it. It wouldn’t do any good. Today, tomorrow, ten years from now, he’s going to die anyway. He asks Stefan to pass the wine.

What amazes me most–and why I stay talking to them instead of ignoring them or running away–is that my German comes back to me in no time. The words just roll off my tongue. If my companions were completely sober, I think my non-native German-ness would be quite obvious. However, it doesn’t seem like they notice at all.  It’s a profound and bizarre feeling. I consider, even after living in France for six months, speaking French still feels sometimes like setting my mouth up in a wrestling match against marbles.

Stefan tells me I have eyes like Cleopatra. He makes a dirty joke. I figure that’s my cue to leave, but then he says something profound. “Always think positively,” he starts. “God is in everything, after all.”

My horoscope said something today about meeting new people who would greatly impact the way I think. Chalk one up to astrology? Or coincidence.

Fritz says living in France, it’s not like Vienna. The people are colder, more antiquated, bureaucratic and unforgiving. They don’t see the humanity in others–what is all this about the French being so Cartesian, so adept at philosophy and deciphering human nature? Perhaps all that logic does make them unfeeling. The mayor of La Ciotat would rather get the homeless off the street at any cost to bring in more tourism than to see Fritz and Stefan working, in a home, in rehab. There’s no humanity, just dollar signs down here. “And it’s useless,” he continues, “because La Ciotat is never going to be able to compete with Saint Tropez. He’s defeated before he’s started, and we’re the ones who suffer.”

Fritz continues, quietly after his rant against the mayor. “Ich habe Heimweh. Du auch?” (I’m homesick, aren’t you?) I nod. I can’t decide whether or not my nod is facetious  It’s strange to think, in my own foreign-ness, last year in Austria, I would have described Vienna the same way Fritz described La Ciotat. It’s amazing what a change of perspective can do.

Suddenly, there is a row on the street. Family doing the shopping has been double parked into their spot, with the ice cream melting and the bargain priced chicken thawing away in its insulated bag. Seeing as this is France, the owner of the double-parked car throws a hissy fit along with his wife, who throws a bigger hissy fit, since being double parked was his fault. Obviously.

I say my goodbyes to Stefan and Fritz, who both reply: “Man trifft sich immer zweimal im Leben.”

You always meet twice in life. There’s always an opportunity for a second chance. I walk home hoping, somehow, that this is true.

V.C. Weller © copyright

A Long Time Coming

Finally, I am on WordPress! After documenting certain adventures on Blogger, notably living abroad and working as a teaching assistant in Austria and France, I am going to bare my soul just a little bit more.

I am going to do something I’ve wanted to for a long time, but never told anyone about. (It was a secret.) I am going to publish my writing. I am going to self-publish things that I write, like almost every other blogger on the planet.

There will be musings, but there will also be finished pieces. I am sick of receiving rejection letters from publishers, editors and literary agents. If Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey can get published, why can’t I?

The answer is: I can–and I will!