Anouncement

On July 14, 2009, at approximately 11:00pm, the Eiffel Tower celebrated its 120th birthday by dissolving into stardust. Spectators lined up along the Seine watched admiringly as the Tower, draped in dazzling gemstones, modeled her stellar coiffure and executed a few deft maneuvers with a highly original glittery hula hoop. "Do all those spouts of glitter tickle?" onlookers wondered to themselves; then the Paris night went silent for a split second and in the blink of an eye she had gone up in a flash of shimmer. A fitting end for the doyenne of the City of Lights.

Don't Complain, Don't Explain

If I were a ship, I might get the above phrase carved on my masthead.
Barring that, I suppose I could tattoo it on my forehead.

Put another way; the deathless one-line rule for writers: show, don't tell.

(This is surely why I make so many faces; that and my grandma's face yoga, which has kept me supple as I inch my way toward the third-of-a-century mark.)

At right, I am showing, not telling, the bemusing challenge of unpacking
when you are addled by jetlag.

Don't complain, friends, and don't explain, but rest assured:
vacation (as you can see) has injected me with new life force
and the blog is up and running again.

Miranda Ventures Home

We head south...
Asheville:
Shindig on the Green
is,
according to itself,
the oldest folk festival in
the United States of America.
According to me,
it is almost as homey as katydids;
an occasion to sit in a warm evening and hear music
that makes my heart ache for summer.
Once it was an occasion for frock envy;
now I am older than six
I am willing to leave the petticoats to the cloggers.
This year, we discovered a new wonderful thing:
quarter watermelons may be obtained there for a dollar.

Knoxville:
In Pigeon Forge,
we ate peanuts and drank bad beer while
the Montgomery Biscuits beat the Smokies 6-3.
Then the next day watched snakes hoist their bodies over tree branches
turtles kick their claws through mud
and various sleepy lonely creatures lazing in the mud
then hopped into the Tennessee River; fish nibbled our skin
we lazed in the water to another concert of katydids.

It's good to be home.

capricious and corybantic

minus is
a very intelligent and highly communicative creature
who had an appointment with the veterinarian today at 5pm.
at 4:30 she sauntered in to the living room, sniffed at her carrying case,
stuck her head in, sat down in front of it, and began to give herself
a little bath (it's like brushing your teeth before you go to the dentist).

i thought, cats are so clairvoyant. all you need to do is
let them know your plans ahead of time, and they're really quite accommodating.

fifteen minutes later minus had disappeared onto the next door neighbor's balcony,
and i was the one in need of medical attention.

Metro Line 8: La Tour Maubourg

Spring in the seventh arondissement calls a last-minute afternoon parade attended by dogs on leashes and some of their owners, taxi drivers waiting and smoking at the taxi stand, a tour guide with no tourists, holding a sign, two ladies swinging their pocketbooks back from lunch. Spring troops down the Boulevard de Grenelle, a float of ornamental cherries, pansies jostling their velveteen banners, a brassy ache of wind, barrelling brawling car horns and buses’ bells, churning lost scarves, sneezes, and stray leaves. The spoons glint crazily on the café terraces, the waiters’ aprons rattle their change, the lights go green yellow red, green yellow red. The chestnut trees blow down confetti from their roman candle bouquets. Pigeon policemen hustle sternly up and down the sidewalks, giving you the stinkeye: no loitering. The dogs sniff and trot away, the taxiphone rings, the tourists troop up, their dim offices suck the ladies back in to work, and the day moves on.

ABOVE LEFT: Marie Victor Nicolas de Fay de la Tour-Maubourg enjoys the parade.

Pizza from the past

It is cold and rainy outside; also everything is closed for something the French state refers to as "Easter Monday."
So until I venture back out for another interview, here is something I wrote in avignon several years ago:

i do not usually like to make comments about
"the french" or "les americains" but
now i feel called to do so
like this:
in france those of us who have
had the privilege
of eating american pizza
we have become accustomed to the fact that the french
have a different understanding of what a pizza
ought to be;
for instance in america there is a sort of
general agreement that one should not
be able to cut pizza with scissors, whereas here in
france, scissors are the tool of choice, even amongst
professionals.

so granted we make a lot of jokes,
as we snip ourselves off a slice;
like, pizza delivery is easy in france
because you can just put the pizza
in an envelope and slide it under the door;
or, one friend, when his pizza arrived
forty minutes late and cold and soggy as a washcloth
someone had left in the tub after a bath
shouted at the delivery boy,
"well for god's sake,
why didnt you just fax it to me??"

you get the idea.

but, cosmopolitan as i may be
even i reeled upon disovering
while on my way to the organic supermarket

*an automatic pizza teller.*

yes that is right.
it is constructed exactly like an atm for cash, except
painted bright red, with a wider slot.
"24 hours a day," this machine proudly proclaims, "one
can obtain a hot pizza, just by pressing a button!"
i didn't try it, but it appears that you make your
selection of toppings, put in your credit card, and
out slips a pizza, paper thin.

by the time you get it home, it is sure to have cooled
and congealed enough for you to clip and enjoy.

Away from the rue Vasco de Gama: waiting for the metro

To me, this advertisement is like a Barsotti cartoon. The longer I look at it, the funnier I think it is.