a shoreline ½-way

Kathmandu, Nepal—11 Feb 2015

Dear Inurnet ..

.. the crow caught by its wing we checked on (reluctantly) + not there .. must've managed to free itself while we walked about in the Himalayas .. either that or it sacrificed a wing to become like the 1-winged bird of Peter Markus's fancy .... sings a song sounds like she's singing ..

.. as we exited Kathmandu (stuck in traffic of course) saw us monkeys climbing around on telephone wires + ambushing unsuspecting ppl walking by .. 1 alpha male lunged at a guy carrying a baby .. jumped up on him tried to grab it .. them evil creatures that we come from ..

pic we took of Paris Peasant back in NYC before we left

.. at the airport now reading Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon .. strange book .. not in a way u typically think «surreal» but sneaks up on u .... starts off w/ hackademic tone of philosophical treatise (or anti-philosophical) that gets to the heart of the main themes of 5cense (the hypocrisy of reflexivity):

«It is generally accepted fact that abstract notions about mankind have all been eroded imperceptibly by the investigation they have undergone, that human light has infiltrated its rays everywhere and that as a result nothing has escaped this universal process which is subject, at the most, to revision.»

.. it goes on in this vein for a while + u sort of space out + next thing u know u flâneuring thru the arcades + backalleys of Paris (circa 1920) .. detailed + poetic impressions of the usual Dada haunts .. spiraling deeper into the nitty gritty of daily life .. from the debaucherous nightlife to urban design + women's fashion + the latest hand creams, like this 1:

«Thyme and lavender, the very odour of mountains, and not of arrogant mountains boasting eternal snows and poisonous plants, but those which are resin and bilberry, no whose slopes the chalets can be seen adorning themselves mournfully with blue cheeses; everything in Velouté Naturel recalls a morning landscape before the trees have quite shaken off the night, a landscape for cheeks which surrender themselves, beneath this tactile fresco, to the vertigo of a drive through the forest by car, don't forget to sound your horn: dangerous bend ahead.»

.. to the ins + outs of operating transient hotels + restaurants (complete w/ actual advertisements + menus etc .. sum translated which must've been challenging from a book design p.o.v. .... come to think of it it might've been Burning City (which we laid out + designed for Action Books) that inspired us to read Paris Peasant as it had excerpts from it caught our attn ..

textual sampling from Paris Peasant + also Burning City
(not that this 1 needs translation)

Abu Dhabi, UAE—12 Feb

.. arrived Abu Dhabi late last night/this AM .. an 8-hour layover we had so booked the airport hotel .. little did we know thru immigration + customs we had to go .. so technically we've been to United Arab Emirates now but not really .. if it wasn't the middle of the night + we tired + in need of sleep might've called up James Lewelling (author of Tortoise) who lives here .... instead maybe 5 hours we slept then went back thru security + immigration .. + ends up our flight = delayed 1 hour anyway ..

air tower in Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi development

Abu Dhabi from the air

.. + now on the plane .. felt fine w/ solid poop all thru India + Nepal but now sumthing we ate on plane not agreeing w/ us .. either that or sumthing from the buffet in the lounge in Abu Dhabi .. feel like shit ..

Tour Saint-Jacques (getting ahead of ourselves)

Paris—13 Feb

.. feel even shittier now .. + our better-½ also feeling shitty if not worse .. both of us trying to sleep it off holed up in a typically tiny dank hotel room .. of all places Paris .. nowhere else do we feel such the fish out of water as France .. even living 3 months in Nice never adjusted culturally .... nowhere else do we feel so detached + self-conscious .. so unhip + unfashionable .. tout trop étranger .. maybe sumthing to do w/ the language .. our français est merde .. other places we go not knowing the language we get by (arrogantly speaking English) but here we feel like shit about it .. + they rightfully make u feel stupide .. like u got no bizness coming here unless u know la langue .. or at best they let u know your pronunciation = wrong .. but speaking French properly requires a certain arrogance that cant find in us (unless we speak sarcastically) .. this French fish-out-of-water-ness sumthing we tried to capture in Marsupial ..

restaurant front

.. last time we stayed here (2006) we stayed way on other side of town .. now we near that big Triumphant Arch thing .. near that big wide Champs ave .. from what we seen in sick stupor last night feels like uppity east side NYC equivalent ..

on the Metro (2 line where it goes above ground)

.. slept the morning off .. ate lunch felt a bit better so our better ½ showed face at the meeting she here for + we took the subway out to Parc des Buttes-Chaumont .. mostly cuz Aragon talks about it a lot in Paris Peasant .. at the end of the book he takes a walk at night thru it w/ André Breton .. describing in great detail the features of the park + what took place there .... unfortunately grande partie du parc now under construction or blocked off .. comme the point of highest elevation where he transcribes the inscriptions on plaques comme:

page from Paris Peasant transcribed from plaque in Parc des Buttes-Chaumont

overgrown statue in Parc des Buttes-Chaumont

.. notorious «Suicides Bridge» Aragon also talks about .. that sposedly ppl used to get vertigo when looking down from it + even if they had no intention of suicide in 1^st place they'd impulsively jump after looking down .. at 1^st we thawt it this suspension bridge (that he also talks about in great detail) thinking it too low to kill yurself from:

suspension bridge

.. until we walked around the pond + saw the higher 1 .. spanning a gully ..

Suicides bridge

.. still not that high but guess plenty high if u jump head 1^st (tho now caged in to make jumping impossible) .. all sorts of caves + cliffs most blocked off + workers rappelling down into them to make them safe .. walked up + across bridges til we dead-ended into construction then looped back thru sum other neighborhood back to metro ..

communist party HQ

going underground

subway ad

Gare Nord from Metro

14 Feb

Valentine's Day .. flâneured Paris in the rain .. took refuge pour un café in Saint-Germain-des-Prés .. took refuge in Shakespeare + Co (where we pet the gros chat blanc + bought Michael Kimball's Big Ray) .. might've taken refuge in the Notre Dame if the queue not so long .. took refuge à manger in Marais .. eventually got so cold + wet we retreated to hotel liked drown rats still in a bit of gastrointestinal distress .. far from romantic ..

.. + then to discover the whole thing w/ eating on Valentine's day w/o a rez not just an American thing but seemingly worse in Paris (St. Valentine from France after all) .. anything decent booked complète so just walked around til finelly trouvéd a seafood place not ½ mal .. all sorts of shell creatures sum raw sum cooked .. oysters + clams + snails + ..

.. sure we feel this fish-out-of-water syndrome in say Rome + embrace it even there feeling more Rome-antic .. not sure why .. but just feel more «at home» there even if we forever tourists or ex-pats (+ feel more accepted as such) .... the language certo we sense more comodo .. + the food just so much more agreeable cd eat it ogni giorno for the rest of our life .... many of our favorite writers + thinkers come from France so u'd think we cd relate or see it in the stones + river .. + maybe to sum xtent we can imagine what sourced such thinkings .... but always we feel 1 step removed .. détaché ..

.. + plus the whole smoking thing in France .. seems much worse than Italy or anywhere else .. everywhere u go breathing in others smoke .. + all the best tables in cafes for smokers while non-smokers banished to the ugly interiors .. such a disgusting habit ironically of American origins but dont tell French that ..

invalids

je suis Charlie's Angels

art de rue dans quel monde

monument desecrated in name of je suis Charlie vigil (place de republique)

.. + now as we write this another similar shooting in Copenhagen

canal st-martin

art de rue near canal

.. + now retreat us back to home to Rome .. to a roaming home per se ..