Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Finally, I am special


Today I got my super exclusive rouge elite card stating that I have risen above bleu medium elite status and have now joined the ranks of the super exclusive elite members of Frequence Plus, Air France’s frequent flyer program. This is not surprising. I use Air France for everything outside of this country. If I go visit family in Poland – it’s on Air France. If I have to go to Japan for work purposes – it’s on Air France. I will take Air France to hell and back just to rise to the top of the elite heap of flyers. And today I made it.

This is what I receive in exchange for my loyalty (and I quote, in their order of priority):

You have access to an exclusive reservation service (don’t people use Expedia, travel agents, or, among the exclusive set – their secretaries?)

Air France ticket offices are waiting to serve you (only me? They turn away others? That doesn’t seem fair…)

Choose your seat before your day of departure (oh come on, even Polish Airlines let you do THAT!)

We give you priority for your vaccinations (now halt right here: is there a line? Does ANYONE wait until they get to the airport to get vaccinated?)

Oh sure, then there are pages and pages with what I really want to see: that the rich get richer! Yes! Now I get 50% more miles each time I fly economy, just by being elite and wealthy in miles already, and even more if I fly upwards of economy! And my luggage gets special plastic coating to protect the Gucci leather (?) from the bumps it would otherwise receive from lesser bags. And it will roll out first on belt, and there’ll be lounges all over the world where I will rub shoulders with other super super elite members, just like me.

Now if I can only afford another ticket so that I could reap all these super elite benefits (they only last a year; cheapskates!) and, of course, cash in on my priority shots.

At the bottom of the Ocean



In a few minutes, law students are meeting with several blogging members of the faculty to talk about the phenomenon of weblogs. I’ll be there, but I’ll probably lay low. Because I’m not sure I want to reveal the truth behind Ocean. Nor do I want to tell them that a certain blogger with deeply embedded European roots, residing in Madison, Wisconsin, regards keeping a blog as akin to dancing a complicated tango or taking a photograph of a Thanksgiving dinner: it’s not all as it appears to be.

Raised on Polish literature that developed the art of allegorical writing to the highest standards, I can’t help but take that devious layering right back with me into the blog. That Saturday post about freezing tomatoes? Maybe a person or two recognized that it wasn’t really about tomatoes. I was involved in a writing project over the week-end and I got perversely stalled – frozen, as it were. Hence the post.

The texts and subtexts of a blog – so deliciously evil in their veiled meaning. Song lyrics thrown out to ones who may remember their import many years past, allusions, references, all nicely tucked into a plain text of a story. For there has to be a story as well.

Is it always like that? Is it one big inside joke? Of course not. For me, the greatest challenge in writing this (and elsewhere for that matter) is to find and develop a reason for writing any particular entry. There may be anger, passion, hope, joy, remembrance – all have prompted a post at one point or another. But it has to be a really dry day before I succumb and write anything, just to get something posted.

So, this is what I wont reveal to the group this morning. I appreciate everyone’s sudden desire to post thoughts about the political process, interspersed with comments on daily life. But for me, blogging is all about story writing. I take it seriously. It is hard hard hard to put forth something twice a day (that is my goal) given that it is only a hobby, to be sandwiched into all the other things that need to be attended to. The product may appear at times crude, insufficiently edited (I fired my staff of editors and fact-checkers -- oddly, they wanted to be paid, refusing to work for the sheer glory of it), lacking in grace and wit and humor, but it is here that I practice the craft of writing and story telling. Between you and me – and not for the audience today – that is what Ocean is all about.