I CANNOT SHAKE THIS THOUGHT

On the last metro (is this the title of a great movie?) ride from Paris to the airport, two musicians with accordions were going from car to car, playing some and collecting tips from passengers. They were quite good in that they complemented each other in their playing. Obviously they’d rehearsed this a lot.

The metro at this point had emptied out except for the small number of us that were flying out of CDG airport. I was surprised that no one pulled any small change for them. A group of travelers from the States was sitting up front and one of the women looked questioningly at what appeared to be her husband, as in, ‘why didn’t we give anything?’ He said to her “you know, of course, that we’re not supposed to pay. We’re not supposed to encourage them.”

I thought – encourage them in what? Music-making? Reaching out? Providing cheer in a sad and gloomy departure-oriented ride? (I’d never heard them play on the way OUT of the airport.)

Why is it that we must hold back and restrain ourselves from acting in good ways toward one another? Is it that we really have too much cheer and friendship and conviviality in this world? I do not understand.

A CHILL IN THE AIR

SIDEWALKS: I walk over from home to a gas station near Border’s where my disabled car is being looked after. It takes me 50 minutes. I pass not a single person during this walk. I think suburban sidewalks are a waste of taxpayer money. Today I may have been the only person using one. That’s pretty poor considering it isn’t even bad walking weather. A little brisk, but at least it’s dry.

LAW SCHOOL: The temperature inside the law building is hovering around 56 degrees. This has something to do with cleaning the pipes, cooling systems and other mechanical deficiencies that cannot be resolved in the immediate future. Therefore everyone moves quickly and those that can, work at home. I lend my space heater to a person who can’t leave the building, pack up my 45 exams plus 16 seminar papers and go home.

COLLEAGUES: Everyone I run into is looking bedraggled at the prospect of grading exams. I am not yet looking bedraggled because right now I can still set lofty goals and believe that I will meet them. As we get closer to the grading deadline (June 11) I will start looking bedraggled as well.

PHONE MESSAGES: In my office I have several desperate phone calls from people in the community who want free legal advice. I get a sprinkling of these throughout each week, but it is very depressing to get them in one batch. It’s as if the problems get magnified by the number of times they repeat themselves.

GARDEN INSULT: Bad enough to face all the weeds and disarray in the flower beds. But to have to contend also with this (-->) is too much. There’s no chance of winning the battle this year. I should not even try. Monet made slaves of his family in his garden: they had to tote water and pull weeds and generally listen to his authoritative commands. My smaller yard, however, should thrive on my work alone. My failings as a plant person today are so evident that it hurts.

Otherwise, I am very happy to be back.

A BLOG IN TRANSITION

I was away for almost a month. I decided that upon returning I would make some blog changes. Complete overhaul, from appearance to content. However, this kind of action takes time and when you come back after a month’s absence the stack of things requiring immediate attention is unreal. So I am giving myself a deadline: June 1st. By June 1st this particular blog renovation will be complete. That gives me two weeks to do nothing about it and one day at the end to madly put in changes.

EYE MOVEMENT

In the meantime I am still mulling over a comment I heard yesterday on the Van Galder bus from O’Hare. The driver, an extremely outgoing and friendly guy, tells a passenger that she might want to turn on her overhead light to avoid eye strain. It is dusk and she is reading away, inching closer and closer to the window, trying to catch that fading light. “No thank you,” she says. “I prefer to read in natural light.”

Is it a new movement? A self-at-one-with-the-world type of thing? She’s riding the bus from the airport, so two strikes there against thinking that she is technology-averse.

The eyes are peculiar kind of body part: apart from eating lots of carrots when told to do so by 1950s parents who said “Eat carrots or you’ll go blind!” we don’t do much preventively for them. We just patch up the problems as they arise (except for my purist nephew, the Krishna one, who believes that his prescription glasses are a sign of spiritual weakness and so he does eye exercises to improve his vision and get rid of the glasses; jury’s still out on whether there’s progress – he CLAIMS there is, but sometimes his spiritual self preordains a desired result even if science cannot prove it).

Is she onto something? I gave in to 5 minutes of googling on the topic, but ‘light and reading’ led me in all sorts of directions where I didn’t want to go (for instance on ‘seeing the light,’ or on very very ‘unserious’ reading).

[btw, I don’t know about eye-care, but I have decided that sleep is way over-rated and so I continue to view it with scorn and avoid it at all possible times.]

SONGS THAT HAUNT

On my very last flight I watched nothing on the nifty little TV monitor by my seat (and, I have to brag that I never once turned on a TV in any of my hotel rooms for the duration of my month away). This was NOT a naturalist thing. It was because I got addicted to the “musique francaise” channel on the audio program and so I listened to that over and over and over again (it was a 9-hour flight). Consequently, one of the songs is wedged in my brain and I WANT IT HERE AND NOW! If I wrote to Air France, would they understand this kind of inquiry: “Dear Madame or Monsieur, On your French Music Program, the one you’ve been running in April and May, there is a female vocalist and a male vocalist. I know the male one – Charles Aznavour. I don’t remember the name of the female. She sings this very pretty in an odd sort of way song that stays in the low range and then jumps into the higher ranges and I have a desperate desire for that little song now! Could you look it up in your files and send me the title? Thank you very much, Your loyal patron – the one who selected YOU as the airline of choice for a flight from Chicago to Tokyo, NC”

GARDENS THAT TURN INTO JUNGLES

My mind is still on the gardens of Japan and Giverny. Inspired, I come home with new resolve to rework and improve my perennial beds. This little sign noted in a Paris café is dancing in my head, and I cannot wait to get to my own little Giverny outside.



But inspiration is a short-lived thing. Especially when you wake up in the morning, go out to take stock, and witness this, which some may call a grassy stretch and others, the more realistically-inclined, may view as an intrepid assault of the weeds:



And how about this mess, where all spring blooms are spent and not a single summer perennial has yet to show signs of budding. My God, what was I thinking? Did I forget to plant for May??