Tower of London Poppies

The Tower of London has an enormous art installation in remembrance of World War I. It is dramatic and impresses on me the image of a torrent of blood overflowing the bridge to fill the moat.

The site of so many deaths, hosting this grim display, forces contemplation. And, of course, inappropriately-smiling selfies. (I spared you.)


This post's theme word is dun, "to make persistent demands for payment, especially for a debt" (transitive verb), or "someone who duns" (noun), or "a demand for payment" (noun) or "a dull, grayish, brown color" (noun), or "a horse in dun color" (noun), or of course "of dun color" (adjective). The dun weather dimmed the demeanor of the dun dun as he rode a dun to deliver a dun.

A London evening

The sunset over London is purple tonight.

What keeps running through my mind is lines from Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle, in which he describes London many times, at length, and with his usual authorial flair.

It was impossible for so much uncovered dirt to exist in a city like London without becoming a breeding-ground for Crime or Commerce, and Daniel spied instances of both as soon as he got out of Wren’s carriage. (The System of the World)

Christopher Wren (and many other actual historical persons) appear throughout the trilogy; here's another quote on Wren and London:

Wren had put up so many churches so quickly that he’d not had time to plant steeples on them. They all looked splendid on the inside. But steeples were essential to his vision of how London ought to look from the outside, and so now, in semi-retirement, he was going round to his old projects and banging out majestic yet tasteful steeples one after the other. (The System of the World)

These books have reinforced a certain attitude and set of historical facts (or authorial imaginings, now gelled in my brain conflated with historical facts) about Europe. So much action takes place in London, though, that the experience of walking through the city brought back all these reading-memories, and wry jokes, and ridiculous costumes, and hapless alchemical experiments. Having read (and re-read several times) The Baroque Cycle enhanced my actual visit to sites of the books' scenes in a multimedia-flavored sort of way. I experienced more than I would usually; emotions were invoked.

A view of London bridge (about which I could find no pithy quotes).

There is a sickness of the mind that comes over those who bide too long in London, which causes otherwise rational men to put forced and absurd meanings on events that are accidental. (The System of the World)

I tried to avoid this "sickness of mind" by lingering in London only a few days at a time.


This post's theme word is nodus, "a complicated situation or problem." The novels' plots form an insidious nodus, much like the worldwide history they visit, excerpt, and creatively restructure.

An example of the verbose, winkingly snide, and lengthy descriptions which fill the Daniel Waterhouse sections of the novels:

For the London in which he had grown up had been a congeries of estates, parks, and compounds, thrown up over centuries by builders who shared a common dream of what a bit of English landscape ought to look like: it should be a generous expanse of open ground with a house planted in it. Or, in a pinch, a house and wall built around the perimeter of a not-so-generous patch of ground. At any rate, there had been, in Daniel’s London, views of sky and of water, and little parks and farmlets scattered everywhere, not by royal decree but by some sort of mute, subliminal consensus. In particular, the stretch of riverbank Daniel could see from this garret had been a chain of estates, great houses, palaces, courts, temples, and churches put up by whatever powerful knights or monks had got there first and defended them longest. During Daniel’s lifetime, every one of these, with the exceptions of the Temple (directly across from the outlet of Crane Court) and Somerset House (far off to his right, towards where Whitehall Palace had stood, before it had burned down), had been demolished. Some had been fuel for the Fire and others had fallen victim to the hardly less destructive energies of Real Estate Developers. Which was to say that with the exception of the large open green of the Temple, every inch of that ground now seemed to be covered by Street or Building. (The System of the World)

Lattice

Lattices and lines, lattices and lines. It's all about the intersecting planes.

This post's theme word is ruck, "a crease or wrinkle." The Louvre's absence of rucks would come in handy during a particularly cold game of I-spy-with-my-little-eye in December... hint: starts with 'L', located by a physicist, included in the title of this post. You have 60 minutes to guess while fending off frostbite!

Parisian rain

The weather has been beautiful since I moved into my new apartment, but every streak will end, so here we are:

It remains not unpleasant. (Litotes! If you doubt my sincerity or enjoyment, look out again at the Parisiant rooftops and the moulin in the distance! I'm one or two scenes away from my meet-cute with the romantic hero.)

Even when rainy, the many giant windows and my top-floor status mean that my apartment is luminous and delightful. I can look out on the umbrella-huddled tourist masses below, inevitably cowering over a map because they are lost in these tiny streets on their way to Montmartre's Sacre-Coeur basilica, and cackle my evil (Ursula-sea-witch) cackle, and be happy.


This post's theme word is micawber, "an eternal optimist." There are many stairs and raindrops, but in Paris one must remain a micawber about the weather and pedestrian accessibility.

Parasite

Horror and tension do not appeal to me as fun leisure-time sensations. I don't like to be scared, and tense cliffhangers are unpleasant.

Nevertheless, I enjoy Mira Grant's books. I don't especially seek them out, but when they stray across my path, I consume them --- usually as quickly as possible, using the Band-Aid-removal strategy --- and enjoy them. Grant's Parasite begins her latest trilogy, this time on the topic of medical-science-advancing-enough-to-implant-beneficial-tapeworms-but-something-goes-wrong. My experience with the previous one (Feed / Deadline / Blackout --- medical-science-advancing-enough-etc-flu-etc-zombies) was positive, but tense. I read Feed over a few weeks; I read Deadline and Blackout in a single weekend. Immediately. Perhaps my lack of exposure makes me susceptible to the stress of cliffhangers, or the reasonably plausible zombies and well-used varieties of format drew me in.

I liked Parasite. Perhaps I am building up a resistance to Grant's authorial magic. She is consistently good, dependable for a cliffhanger at the end of every few chapters, and enticing "excerpts" from in-universe documents at the beginning of each chapter, a trail of misleading breadcrumbs which deepens and intensifies the unfolding novel.

There were certain structural clues, though, and parallels to the previous trilogy (in an unrelated modern-day universe). So many things did not catch me by surprise. Secret medical agencies? Check. Government-organized disease researchers? Check. A confluence of events (intentional? accidental?) which results in the protagonist, a young adult woman, being chased by zombies? Check. Cell phones, secret interpersonal codes, the feeling that an all-powerful Big Brother is somewhere manipulating things and shaping destiny/leaving a trail of clues, lots of scenes with tense emotional showdowns over trust and information-disclosure? Yep. And the book-ending climax? I saw it coming in the first chapter, it's hinted at everywhere. I can only imagine that books 2 and 3 must reverse this climactic reveal, otherwise it's... too straightforward, I think.

But to be clear: I liked it. I like Mira Grant's writing; it is unlike anything else in my experience.

You should read this book if you are hard to gross out, and not prone to medical nightmares or formication.


This post's theme word is curettage, "scraping", usually in a medical sense and applied especially to the uterus. The recommended removal procedure for tapeworms does not involve curettage.

Accents on blogspot

Weirdly, blogspot.fr crashes every time I try to publish a post which includes accented characters.

How is this possible? The language has accents.

I wanted you to know that it's not me, it's the software.


This post's theme word is micawber, "an eternal optimist." The micawber believes that this issue will be resolved.

Cultural acclimatization

Apartment searching in Paris is demoralizing. I thought I had reached a low when I discovered an "apartment" of 10 square meters for 750 Euros/month, but then I compared it with an "apartment" of 2 square meters (two!), seventh floor (no elevator), slanted roof ceiling, plus a shared toilet on the landing, for 550 Euros/month. This former servant's quarters started looking good, though, after long enough perusing rental listings, agency websites, sabbatical vacancies, and craigslist.

I am coming to understand why all Parisian residents recoil slightly and emit pitying moans when I ask them for advice finding an apartment. I have been encouraged, with an appropriate cringe of social awkwardness, to ask everyone I know: are you moving soon? do you know anyone who has moved? or died?

Yech.

I have spent several days now, in sequence, where every face-to-face interaction was entirely in French. I visited an apartment showing, I walked across maybe 80% of Paris without a map (tl&dr, geography version), I read legal and immigration paperwork, I was asked for directions to somewhere I didn't recognize, I interacted with shopkeepers, I verified my temporary housing situation, I was asked for directions which I was able to give competently.  This last one feels like a milestone in cultural acclimatization. It indicates many things. I am in a demographic sweet spot to ask for directions: woman, white, healthy, not obviously homeless. I am walking purposefully. Until I open my mouth, I can pass as local. Perhaps I have improved my passive scowl. Huzzah!

I am suffering a bad case of l'esprit d'escalier, basically continuously, because my ability to cohere my thoughts into sentences in French suffers a lag.  I know enough words to say the thing I want to say, but my thoughts in English are verbal and sophisticated, while my expressibility in French is simplified and riddled with pauses. If this post seems verbose but oddly curt, blame my attempts to improve my French. Also blame my isolation from English-language conversation. I need to find an expat chatting club.

There is a fascinating mental adjustment necessary. (Il faut que je change... see? sentence structures bleed across my brain barriers between languages. I'm lucky I didn't give directions in Japanese, I aced that chapter and practiced speed directions.)  Every time a child or homeless person speaks French in earshot, my brain does this: wow! that kid/beggar is so erudite! s/he speaks French! ---oh, wait, everyone speaks French here, it's not the marker of some cultural or educational achievment. I obviously understand that there are native French speakers at an intellectual level. But somewhere deep in my brain sits the belief that humans fundamentally speak English, and all other languages are awkward additions, the result of work and study.  So a handful of times a day, I mentally kick myself for my English-centric worldview.

Of course, kids and homeless people probably do speak English, too, and likely German and Italian and a handful of other languages. Because this is Europe and such things are useful, and no one here buys into the kind of cultural/linguistic/national isolationism to which I have become accustomed.

One final thought on cultural acclimatization: I have not yet seen a single Irish pub. Amazing. I thought they were a worldwide phenomenon, a sort of screen saver adopted by any underutilized commercial food site. Apparently here they default to cafes with little black wire tables and smoking waiters.


This post's theme word is ambage (AM-bij, not ahm-bahZH), "ambiguity, circumlocution." I am not fluent enough to commit ambage.

The Ink Readers of Doi Saket

"The Ink Readers of Doi Saket" by Thomas Olde Heuvelt is a delightful gem of a story. You can read it here or listen to it here. It is about wishing, and community, and coincidence; it begins and ends with a murder, but nevertheless maintains a playful air that makes the story uplifting and fun. The writing is clean and clear, straightforward and easy to read, with the tone of a fairytale and occasional winks of cleverness to the audience.

Read it, it's quick and fun, and pleasantly outside the Western fairytale setting.


This post's theme word is terrene, "relating to the earth; earthly, mundane." The granting of terrene wishes leads to enlightenment and elevation to a higher plane of existence.

Ramen results

Early results are in for the 2014 Experiments in European Poverty Living (while I wait for my salary to begin).

This morning the experimental subject awoke with abdominal pain, likely from spasms of the stomach and other digestive tract muscles. Subject could not decide if the nerves were reporting hunger or imminent vomit. Nausea and digestive confusion continued for a period of time. After some [details redacted] incidents and a cup of plain yogurt, subject reported abatement of symptoms of sickness and restoration of normal operating condition.

These results strongly suggest that the brand of ramen noodles available in France should not be eaten. Perhaps it is suitable as fertilizer, an unscientific hypothesis shamelessly offered alongside an equally unscientific refusal to repeat the experiment.

Subject reports delight at writing in the third person.


This post's theme word is merdurinous, meaning "composed of dung and urine." A sample sentence is mercifully omitted.