How Do You Spell “Merde” Without an “M”?

Lately, I'm distracted from writing fiction. I've been seeing astounding art, monitoring expenditures, trying to overcome my obsessive, controlling tendencies and visiting and dining and with friends. All crises solved, all questions answered. No sweat. I'm about three-quarters of the way through an outline for a new novel, but I will have to wait until I get back to the quiet solitude of New Mexico to do the actual composition. For now, I focus on the outline, short stories, notes, observations, irritations, enlightenment and the discovery of new, important and mindblowing French literature. An easy, worthwhile compromise.

I haven't found a decent place to write.

That's not true. I write everywhere, but I haven't found a place to set up my computer in a comfortable environment and relax and compose. I can plug in the earphones, turn on the Jazz, drown out the surrounding ambient sounds, but I am usually hemmed in by others. There are forty percent too many people everywhere on earth, even, I'm sure, in the middle of fucking Antarctica. I've taught myself to write in airports, coffee shops, amusement parks and on trains, but trying to write fiction in a crowded room is really challenging.

I often use the library and I have a French library card that gives me a feeling of belonging. When I enter the bibliothèque I present my card to the nice person behind the counter and he assigns me a numbered seat at one of the tables reserved for “travaux”, work or study. There are about ten polished wooden tables and 80 spots, four people to a side, facing each other. Each place has the same amount of room as a tiny table-top in a packed restaurant. A chair, of course, and a lamp. The individually-assigned area is covered by a two foot square of hard leather, similar to the kind that one finds on an antique writing desk. It's pleasant and every effort has been made to create a scholarly and serious atmosphere.

Under the table, nearly impossible to locate, is a plug for the computer. The French outlet is byzantine and complicated and never looks stable or safe. I expect sparks, fire and sewage to spew forth. The first day or two I spent fifteen minutes wrestling with my power cord and eventually had to ask a librarian how to hook it up. She showed me and since then it's been easy. I bend down, scramble around, hit and miss, and finally, et voila, the odd shaped adapter slips into the dangerous foreign outlet. I felt pretty stupid the first few times; doubled over, groping under the table, grunting suspiciously, muttering and swearing in English. Now I see that almost everyone, French, Chinese, American, Italian, has the same trouble when searching for an electrical connection. Confusion. When the architects designed the building in 1590 they didn't consider the future invention of the computer, electricity, the internet, smart phones, email, world wide pornography and Netflix, so the outlets had to be retrofitted into the historical building a few years ago. They've done a good job of hiding the modern essentials from view and everyone soon resolves the question of connectivity.

The library patrons are all very well behaved, too. This is not an American library, which often serves as a toilet for the homeless. I've entered the library in Taos, New Mexico, and mentioned to the staff that it smells like last call at the old Lucky 7 in San Francisco's Tenderloin. No one snores, drinks or talks to themselves in the historical Paris libraries. On the streets, bridges and in doorways, sure, of course, but the library clients are students and scholars. I take sidelong glances at their work and see that the young woman next to me has notebooks full of complex equations on graph paper and she's making entries on a spreadsheet.

An older man, older than me, balding, fat, waddles up and down the aisles, carrying heavy, leather-bound books of maps and charts back to his spot where he stacks them up and searches through them for hours, his head bent and his nose almost touching the open page. He doesn't use a computer, probably has never had an argument with someone about the Mac versus the PC. I envy him.

I travel with a netbook computer; efficient, small, utilitarian. I've had it for about six years and it's been everywhere with me, Asia, Europe, Mexico. It finally shorted out a few weeks ago and I panicked. How can I live without a computer? Right? Jesus.

The first time I traveled to Europe I didn't have a cell phone or a laptop. Everything I owned was in a carryon bag and S and I spent five months on trains and in second class hotels, checking schedules, learning the language. I had to make computations every time I crossed a border to figure out the money.

If I wanted to write, I'd use a lined notebook and fill up pages. It was fun and easy and when I had a long message to send, I'd work it out on the page and then find an internet cafe and email it to my friends. I remember learning to use a pay phone in Italy. I was living in Lucca, outside of Florence, and there was a phone booth across the street from the apartment. I watched Italian people drop in their coins (Lira in those pre-euro times) or insert incomprehensible phone cards, punch a few keys and talk, loudly, to their friends and family. I wanted to do that, so I found a place to buy a phone card, plugged it into the telephone, failed again and again, scolded by the disembodied Italian phone lady, and eventually got through to my friend Jonathan Lucero in the US. We just bullshitted like we usually do, no big conversation, but I felt completely assured and that was the moment that I knew I could solve any problem on my own. I was capable and imaginative. If I could learn to use an Italian pay phone, the sky was the limit.

If I got lost I had to figure out how to read a map. When I couldn't find a place to stay, I walked until I did. Questions were answered without Google, Wikipedia or translation programs. I acquired enough Italian to take care of all my needs. I even made some friends.

I use tech stuff at home and when I travel; I like the convenience and the programs and devices have become integral to my life. I was so freaked when my computer crashed a couple of weeks ago that I bought a new one right away, here, in Paris, in French (l'ordinateur = computer), with a weird French keyboard. (Why the crap would anyone switch the “A” with the “Q” and the “S” with the “Z”? That's just nuts. Where the hell is the “M”? The French use “M”, don't they? How can I write without an “M”?) It's cheap, slow, but I can email, write, and of course, check out maps, find when the Louvre closes, look up movies, bookstores and bus schedules. Amazing, indeed, but I felt, dependent, isolated and deprived when the stupid computer crapped out and I really didn't dig that at all.

I admire the old guy in the Paris bibliothèque, trudging from shelf to shelf, schlepping his giant, antique books around, doing something that he thinks is important, self contained and focused, without distractions.

I'd like to learn to unload the pain-in-the-ass cell phones and computers when I travel and go back to pay phones and writing long hand and using internet coffee shops, which are everywhere. I trust myself to surmount the inevitable difficulties that arise when I'm on the road, away from home. Christ, I've overcome bigger problems than bus schedules in the past twenty years. I don't have GPS on any device I own and here I am, safe, indoors, warm and comfortable. I write about four hundred words a day in my notebook, anyway; I could probably save it up and transcribe it into a computer when I returned home. I think, in the old days, that was called “revising”. What's the hurry?

Still, here I am, at the library, plugged in, typing quietly, navigating this goddamn weird-assed keyboard and I'm elbow to elbow with my table mates and, even though they are polite and quiet, I can feel them exhaling, shifting in their chairs, looking over my shoulder at my work, snickering at my inability to create believable characters and an engaging narrative. I often end up writing these blog posts because much of the time it's all I can manage in this environment and it keeps me occupied. I'm not sure it's real writing.

The old guy at the next table leans forward, breathing hard, his face an inch from a seventeenth century map, analyzing, nodding, scribbling strange words in a battered ledger. He doesn't have any devices other than his brain and his interest in his subject. Nothing to plug in, connect, recharge. I like all my stuff, sure, it's fun and pretty and efficient, but, today, I think my library card is a greater asset.

Rue de Foin

Sunday on the Rue de Foin

          After two years of sipping mineral water, Martin is desperate for a drink as he pulls on his pants, a t-shirt, and slips into his overcoat. He wears shoes without socks and takes the spiral staircase down four floors, pushes open the heavy street door and walks to the Tapas Bar on the corner. It is a typical overpriced Paris bar, but when he awoke from his nap he imagined the dark wood inside. He has passed by every night, looking guiltily through the front window, on his way home. He is standing at the bar, trying to find out how much the drinks cost, asking the questions in a language of gibberish and confusion. He has forgotten so much. What's the word for “red”? Red, rouge, rose, russ, ruff, rust. Damn. He is sure that “rojo” is the right word in Spanish, but this was Paris. He asks for red.

“Red what?” The barman answers in English.

Wine. Red wine.

“OK.”

Martin hopes that it isn't more than four euros a glass. Even cheap wine has become expensive. He worries that it will cost too much.

Now there is a tall, full glass of wine on the bar in front of Martin. The bartender takes one of the bills that Martin has dropped on the bar and walks away.

It is as he imagined. The first mouthful is bitter. It settles on his tongue and he considers spitting it out but it slips down and he feels the soft burn on his palate, the descent and arrival in his stomach; he closes his eyes and becomes aware of swallowing and taste.

         The next is sweeter, welcomed and when the glass is empty he summons the young man.

Again.

Encore.

Autre.

More.

Two, please.

Yes, two glasses, side by side, with no questions.

It is 11:30. He is finished.

Steadying himself, he enters the wet, empty street. The man who had been watching through the cafe's window is walking a block ahead. Martin sees him as the man disappears in the darkness between the streetlights, becomes visible, fades.

Now Martin is alone and there is a soft mist that quiets the street. He is relaxed, enjoying the wine, the flush of early intoxication. When he passes his building he does not press the numbers of the digicode, does not go home. He walks and, after some time, he is near the The Cafe de les Musees on Rue de Foin. The restaurant is shut tight, as is the Absinthe shop next door. The metal rolling doors are lowered and locked. The post card kiosk is also dark.

He thinks, I will walk for a while but stay in my quartier. It's been a long time since I've had the warmth of wine, and I want to be near my apartment in the event that old thoughts begin to bloom. I should avoid wandering into alleys and becoming lost.

He's not alone anymore. There are footsteps. Not the hard wooden heels of the men and women who are the aggressive, committed travelers, who take up too much space on the sidewalk and expect others to move aside. A softer tread follows Martin, who concludes by the sound that the walker is twenty feet behind. It is a guess, but he is confident that he has assessed the distance accurately. He doesn't want to turn around; that would be a sign of weakness and may neutralize the effects of the wine.

It is a man.

The footsteps speed up. Martin is grabbed from behind and can't turn. The attacker is strong, heavy and round, and determined to take him to the ground. A large wrist encircles Martin's neck and the a hand is groping in the pocket of his overcoat, searching.

A cheap, simple thief, but one who is desperate enough to attack. Martin bends his knees, instinctively, but also weak; he collapses and falls to the ground and the other man follows along, his broad arm still across Martin's throat, squeezing.

“Is he tying to kill me?”

This thought and the answer, “Yes”, take an instant and, falling, Martin turns to look, to see what is happening, to learn how he is going to die and who is going to kill him and the round man, now beneath Martin, slams onto the cobblestones and there is a dreadful, vegetable sound; the head. The arm spasms, jerks against Martin's neck, hard, and Martin wonders if he will now die of choking. The grip loosens and falls away. Silence.

Breathless, Martin rolls to his left, climbs to his knees and stands, leaning on the wall of a clothing store. A sale on shirts on the Rue de Foin.

The eyes are open, but there is a wide pool of blood seeping around the man's head. Martin turns away, fast, and retraces his steps, follows the empty street for many blocks, keeping to the shadows. He is relieved, exhausted and elated.

Again he slips by his front door and continues on to the rue Saint Antoine. Here there are people. L'Arsenal is open and a few stragglers gather there, finishing a final glass of beer, a coffee, a conversation. In the distance the pale green column of the Bastille points to the sky like a decomposing finger. Clouds are low and fast moving. More rain soon.

The two-tone notes of an emergency vehicle echo. Martin follows the sound and after a while he is back on Rue Turenne, near Rue de Foin. He should turn around, go home, lock up his door and sit quietly, forget what has happened, but he wants to see.

The thief lies on the sidewalk. The purple blood spreads out around the shaved white head. Yes, the sapeurs-pompiers, the firemen, have arrived and they are hard at work. A small crowd has gathered from their apartments, from the shadows, and are watching as the young handsome men pound on Martin's attacker. They have exposed the flabby chest, pulled up a yellow and brown polo shirt, and torn off his jacket, a parka; black and shiny, it lies discarded in the street like the shell of a enormous beetle. They pound on the body and with each blow folds of fat wobble up and down the pale torso like waves in a bowl of thick cream. So white; too white. He is both shorter and fatter than Martin thought, when the man was choking him and searching through his pockets. Martin is still drunk and ashamed. He knows that they are too late, the young men, the strong men. Their square van is parked at an angle in the street, its lights flashing amber.

They will not save him. Martin recalls the gunshot noise of the man's head when the body hit the sidewalk. But it is the glowing blackred halo of blood that surrounds the big, shaved skull that convinces Martin. The man is surely, completely dead. The head is whiter than the fat abdomen, but maybe that's because it is in contrast with the blood and the wet street.

Martin imagines that he is the dead man. He is humiliated by his own dying, by the care they are giving to his corpse, and by the crowd who watch his body, critically.

“He's dead.”

“He's fat.”

“He's ugly.”

“He's old.”

“He dresses badly.”

“He's bleeding. His skin is so white.”

“Let him lie.”

“Let him die.”

“Pick him up.”

“Roll him over. Cover him.”

“Is today Sunday?”

Martin wants to come back when they are gone, come back to the spot before the rain washes away the blood. He would touch the toe of his shoe to it. Perhaps dip his finger in and feel it turn sticky as it dries.

He licks his thumb, to feel the wet; the wine was three euros a glass.

Existentialism Explained

Misdiagnosis of the day: Liver cancer.

Actual affliction: Minor lower back pain

Duration of orthopedic condition: 30 years

Time spent worrying about cancer: 2 hours

Ratio of reality to fantasy: 101,400:1

Conclusion: I'm a fucking baboon.

Yesterday I didn't leave the apartment. S has gone to Germany to explore and I stayed in Paris because I love the city and wanted to do some walking/writing/reading/isolating. I listened to music, read an early novel by Sartre, browsed the news, ate a salad. By 9 p.m. I had decided that I'd wasted my life, the news was dismal, I ate too much, and Avant Garde jazz was making me jittery. The Sartre was terrific, though. In 1964 he became the only person to refuse the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is a great novelist and philosopher and I've been deeply caught up in his “Roads to Freedom” trilogy. It's an extraordinary literary experience, but I wonder if perhaps I've been influenced by his occasionally dark observations and malaise. Was I suffering from a case of unconscious existential anxiety.

I went to bed at midnight determined to awaken early. Early, in Paris, is between 8 and 9 a.m. The sun doesn't come up until then, the construction next door doesn't begin until 8:30 and the only people on the streets are those who look like they're just getting home. Nothing opens before 10. I've shifted easily into a Parisian schedule, but most mornings I have to set my alarm for 8 o'clock just in case the guys next door don't show up due to a strike or surprise holiday and the muffled pounding of hammers doesn't reach through the wall and provoke me into semi-consciousness. I've learned to appreciate their efforts. In a city this old, there is constant rebuilding and restoration. I'm glad they care.

This morning the unseen workmen were right on time and by 9:15 I was dressed and ready to leave, feeling good, feeling rested, preparing to overcome the previous day's indolence and get involved in Life, goddamnit.

I hit the street at 10-ish and decided that I'd walk to the bookstore near the Concorde. I'd ordered “Iron in the Soul”, the last of the Sartre trilogy, and they'd sent me a text informing me that the book had arrived. It would be a good hike, three urban miles from Le Marais, through dark alleyways, past drunks and beggars, along the lovely and picturesque Seine, into the courtyard of the Louvre and the length of the Tuilleries; the weather was dry and cool and I was sure that I'd feel better, active and oxygenated, from a good brisk walk.

I was right. Nothing like a little exercise for a welcomed re-set of all psychic and physical levels. I stopped in the gardens half-way through the Tuilleries and had a coffee. At Place de la Concorde I crossed the street and entered the bookstore on Rue de Rivoli. It wasn't too crowded and I browsed the shelves for a few minutes.

I am a big fan of another famous and important French writer named Alain Robbe-Grillet. He is one of the originators of the Nouveau Roman, a radical modern approach to the novel and I'm astounded by his writing. It's strange, disturbing, but also hypnotic and brilliant. I've looked for his book, “The Voyeur”, but haven't been able to find it. I didn't see it on the shelf so I decided to ask if they had a copy.

The severe, thick-browed short woman at the information desk ignored me for a few minutes while she pretended to look at her computer screen. That's cool, I'm used to it, all French service personnel ignore everyone for a while, French, American, Italian, everyone, just to let the customer know who's in charge. I get it. I've learned to be patient while being disregarded. Fine by me.

She eventually looked up, glanced away from me and said, in English, “Yes?”

I asked for “The Voyeur” by Alain Robbe-Grillet. She immediately corrected my pronunciation, but started tapping on her keyboard.

“No.”

“No? No what? You haven't got it or you won't give it to me?” A bit prickly, but I was starting to feel a tweak in my lower back, on the left side. A wave of concern washed over me.

What the hell is that pain, I asked myself?

“We haven't had that book in the store for four years.”

I placed my hand on my left flank, massaged my lumbar area, searching for a tumor, a tender spot, inflammation. I wonder if it's cancer? I hadn't thought about cancer for several weeks and was dismayed that it, the thought, had come back. I had hoped it was in remission.

The store had not had a single copy of a book by one of France's most celebrated modern novelists in four years. I would have engaged her in critical conversation, but I was preoccupied by physical discomfort and a growing cancer scare. I shrugged, which is an acceptable mode of conversation in Paris; it communicates all manner of dismay, disapproval and sarcasm. I'm getting good at it.

To obtain the book I'd ordered, the Sartre, I had to go upstairs, down a long hall, turn left and wander around a poorly-lit room until I saw a desk designated “Customer Orders.” It was staffed by a woman who resembled her counterpart at the Information Desk; short, stocky, unhappy. She was on the phone. I pressed my thumb deeply into the area below my bottom rib, probing.

I waited, with increasing concern regarding my medical status, for a full six minutes before she ended her call. She was speaking French, but I've learned enough of the language to know when someone is making lunch plans with a friend. I lapsed into my reverie, recounting all of my acquaintances who have died of cancer in the past forty years.

Finally, she asked, in English, what I wanted. I told her my name and the title of the book I'd ordered. I could see it on the shelf but she kept going past it. I directed her, in my rudimentary French. “A gauche”, I said, and she went too far. “ A droit.”

After some time she found it and placed it on the counter.

“Twenty-seven euros.”

I knew the price when I'd ordered it a week ago, but Jesus Christ, that is thirty-four dollars. All the books here are terribly overpriced. The same book, titled “Troubled Sleep” in an English version, is fourteen dollars from Amazon. As a bit of an obsessive-compulsive reader, I had to have it, can't get American Amazon to work here, so I paid my twenty-seven euros and left the store. I wondered if I'd be able to make it home; the sharp pain in my back became worse with every euro I spent, every person I bumped into on the street, every instance of neglect I experienced from a clerk. I decided to take the metro. The Concorde station is right outside the bookstore and goes directly to my block. I got on the train, stood against the rear door and felt massaged by the gently rocking car. I kept my eyes straight ahead, looking at my reflection in a window across the aisle. Cancer. That man has cancer. That man is me. C'est moi.

I felt very existential. Deep underground in a rattling train filled with other insignificant creatures, on my way to an empty apartment, over-charged, under appreciated, contemplating my own obscurity, doomed, diseased, barely sentient.

As I exited the St. Paul metro I saw that “Aux Desirs de Manon”, the local, spectacular boulangerie, was opened and I stood in line for a baguette. While waiting among the well behaved patrons, examining the colorful, delicious pastries, inhaling the aroma of fresh bread, I remembered that I might have cancer but, miraculously, it was no longer troubling me. While climbing the stairs to the apartment I recalled that, for thirty years, I've had a chronic back problem and once or twice a week it gives me some discomfort. It comes upon me, and it goes away. It always has. My first thought, even after all these years, is catastrophic. Cancer. Cirrhosis. Emphysema, Aneurysm, Kidney Stones, Ebola.

I know that chronic back pain affects the majority of adults. Most times, there is no definite cause. It starts, it stops. Following a lazy day of indolence and morbid self-reflection, it is no surprise that it manifested after a long walk in a busy city and being overcharged by an unattractive, disrespectful clerk. The cure was a short ride on a crowded yet efficient transport system and the purchase of fresh bread.

I spend a lot of time alone and I've been told I think too much, which is bullshit. I'm just glad I don't have cancer, today, and I'm really looking forward to digging deeper into existentialism. I've got the book and the baguette. What could go wrong?