Those 20,000 French steps ...

About killed me, I am paying for it today. Not just knees but thighs, calfs and hips. Fuck this getting old crap. It beats me up.

Sorry, just had to get that out there, at 9,700 steps today which will be 10,000 after the nightly stroll, this time to the corner and back and it's more a hobble than a stroll.

Before I go farther, I know that this font is really small but I cannot change it on this device I am using so put on those reading glasses and deal with it.  Please and I thank you. Basically, I can't change how the blog looks, so we will simply adjust to what we have instead of what I want. Which is, of course, what life is all about. "You can't always get what you want but if you try, sometimes you get what you need."

It's odd, but I gave this some thought today while on the Metro (instead of on my feet) and I can't figure out why I am less sure of myself now than I was 25 years ago traveling. You would think that having been to this city about 15 times in the past 25 - 30 years I would know it well enough to be strong and confident and decisive.  Yet I find myself second guessing everything! (Well, most everything, I am still sure that any bottle of wine I get in the local Mom-and-Pop market for 8 euros will be delicious and it always is!) But I took the Metro today and I had to seriously stop and think about the process, which is basically: know the end route, put the tiny ticket in the slot and go. That's it.

It all worked out fine but it brought on a world of confusion just thinking about the process. (Not old age confusion, mind you, just the confusion you get when wondering why something is what it is.)  Is it our lot to get more confused the older we get despite our years of wisdom or is it just my rambling mind experiencing this? When younger, it seemed we plowed through things with unsubstantiated confidence and things usually worked out well. Now, at this older point in life, I am at times 100 % sure of what to do and at other times, like today, conflicted.  Where's that store of knowledge and experience when I need it?

Last evening I walked to the Jardin des Plantes to see an exhibition of luminaries. It was about a 25 minute walk. Today I took the Metro for a totally different reason and when I exited the Metro station  (after an 8 minute ride) when I turned around, there was the entrance to the Jardin des Plantes! It made me laugh out loud.

All this is to say that everything we do, all the time, everyday, is nothing but one more fucking life lesson, whether it is in France or Rome or Pasadena or in the ghetto of our minds. When we stop learning, whether about ourselves or about the world, then that's the time to kick it over the goalpost of life and call it a day. There is no growth without change and there is no change without questioning everything.

So sayeth the small print oracle.
I am going to try and insert a photo here, the view from my flat. It is of Norte Dame but let's see if it shows up.

Another random day in Paris

The random days in Paris are often the best, which is true of a lot of life. Unplanned and unmoored means (sometimes) that there will be few expectations and thus little disappointment.  The distaff side of that is also true, of course, no expectation means little excitement which can have its own problematic outcome.

The flight into Paris yesterday was rather turbulent but since statistics show that planes don't normally crash because of turbulence I am less afraid of it than I was in the past. The plane was pretty full but because of my wileyness about airplane seating, I was able to snag three seats to myself and I had no guilt about not sharing them. I read two junky books, watched one movie, slept for about an hour and voila! In Pàris I was.

My flat is fine, smaller than it looked inline (isn't that always the case?) but it has a great view, which I will try to figure out how to share with you.

It had been years since I visited Musee D'Orsay and it had a couple of special exhibits so I spent a couple of hours there and had an excellent lunch in the cafe there and how much more boring can this be? Seriously, no one wants to read about my lunch, nor does anyone want to read about Special Exhxibits at a museum in France! What was I thinking? Sorry about that.

The thing about coming back to a place you have been to more than a dozen times is that you know it is going to be boring and repetitive at some point. One doesn't want that to happen to anything one loves but it can, and then you get divorced. A person gets pissed off at whatever got boring but the bottom line is that EVERYTHING and EVERYONE gets boring at some point and  to avoid divorce you need to spice things up a bit, change costumes or venues or try a new cuisine or something.

 I am not going to wear a French maid costume or anything but since I know this town pretty well, I am going to try and see new places here. I wish I could say I will overcome my fear of being buried alive and go visit the Catacombs but that will not happen. Today, instead of taking the Metro, I walked a lot, more than 20,000 steps (7 + miles ) and my knees feel it. It was a lovely day for walking, temp around 55, partly sunny and There I Go Again, launching into boredom!

It is close to 11:00 pm, time for a cookie and and another glass of supermarket Bordeaux. Hey, at less than $10.00 US dollars, it's good stuff! Snobby Californians denigrated Merlot for so long, not realizing that it is the backbone of Bordeaux wines and the cornerstone of my drinking habit at this moment.

Please excuse any strange spelling or punctuation. I am using a friend's iPad and it is so touchy and a bit idiosyncratic, like me and many I know. (Thanks, Margaret for the iPad loan.)  I will try and get photos on here, stay tuned.

Bonne nuit!

Off to my European adventure!

Tomorrow I fly to Paris for 5 nights, then train to Lyon for 3 and then rent a car and drive around the middle and south of France.  By Myself.  Yikes!

For some reason, perhaps my advance age, I am a little nervous about this trip. I cannot put my finger on why, I have been to France many times and am comfortable there, even with no command of the language. Yes, there are street riots in Paris right now but I can avoid those. Yes, it is more dangerous to travel now than ever before but that doesn't worry me. Maybe it's just that my mind seems less focused lately and I fear I will do something stupid, like leave my luggage somewhere and walk away or lose my passport (been there, done that) or simply act like an old lady.  (Which I am quickly becoming.)

But maybe the opposite will happen: everything will go smoothly and I will have an amazing vacation!  That is certainly a possibility. Maybe it's just the getting ready to leave that is making me anxious, packing, prepaying bills, cleaning up the house, all that crap.

I am fairly certain that when I get to the airport tomorrow all the pre-vacation jitters will be gone. By then there is nothing to do but get on the plane and let the anxiety go, have a cocktail, read and fall asleep and wake up in a foreign land.  That's my plan, anyway.

I will attempt to continue this blog using a borrowed iPad, trying to connect it to foreign websites and we will see how that goes. (I have little confidence in my skills regarding using new devices, of which the iPad is to me.) If you hear from me, then great!  It worked!  If not, then boo, I am too lame to figure it out. 

Au revoir to you all for a few days but tune in on Thursday or Friday and see if I have anything to say.

SF Symphony: Beethoven's Ninth, Ode To Joy

Of all the performances I have seen over the past 20 years or so, Beethoven's Ninth, which I saw on Friday, was perhaps my favorite of all. It is a one act of 66 minutes (but who's counting, right?) of astounding orchestral music and a chorus that probably numbered at least 100 voices. We all know the melody of the Ode to Joy and that last movement is so filled with emotion that it was all I could do to keep from cheering out loud half way through the build up to final shout-out to Beethoven's Joy.

Tom and I, in the past, went to the symphony often. But then the recession of the 2008-2009 years were tough on all of us and the money for tickets was necessary for car payments and rent. But this year, being the excellent friend that he is, Tom bought tickets to see Michael Tilson Thomas direct the symphony in this masterpiece. And a masterpiece it was! 

Our seats were in the loge area, which means we had roomy seats just a step above the entire orchestra.  You can see every instrument and follow the flow of the music not just by listening but by watching the musicians and their grasp of the music. The loge seats are the best in the house (and thus their price reflects that) and the scope of the orchestra gives you a physical sense of the music as well as perfect acoustics.

There is no way to describe the journey this symphony of Beethoven has. It is, as the program described it, a journey from darkness to light. Crashing chords, sadness, pathos and then a slow, gradual climb from depths to middle ground and peace, then the ascent, higher and higher to the platform of joy and wonder and love. What a musical triumph this is!

Here is a short video of a totally different Ode to Joy experience from the SF Symphony but the joy and the emotion are so evident.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87qT5BOl2XU

And another more classical look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uooe16ILaPo

I say do yourself a favor, find a good recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, take an hour and sit and listen to it. The first movement is familiar, the second less so. The third is so well-known for many reasons and then we get to the fourth movement, the one we wait for, the Ode to Joy with the chorus and every instrument in the orchestra jumping for joy.  It will be an hour well spent.

Thank you, Tom, for the early Christmas gift!

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My love affair with Joan Baez, tonight

It is past my bedtime but I just returned from seeing Joan Baez in Oakland this evening. Left my house early this morning to get to work, left work at 5:20 and got to Oakland just in time to miss the first two songs, but it was worth every wrong turn. What a voice and what a person!

On stage Joan Baez is as natural as a bouquet of wildflowers, there is nothing tricky about her or pretentious or famous. She sips tea, chews on lozenges (and apologies for doing so.) She applauds her guitarist and her son, Gabriel Harris who plays the drums and a young singer who shared the stage with her for a few songs. But when she starts singing and playing the guitar, she is a force. It's not just her voice, it's her entire musical and political persona that resonates on the stage. She admits her voice doesn't have the range it once had but there were times when she hit the high notes and the audience gasped at the purity of that sound.

Yes, this all sounds so fan-like, and so be it. I have been a fan of Joan Baez for more than 50 years and will be a fan forever. How I even considered not driving to Oakland this evening (where I ALWAYS get lost, always, coming and going) is beyond me. I walked in, had a very nice aisle seat and as I sat she began talking about her mother and then she sang "Honest Lullaby" and I began to cry.  (Silently, of course.) It's a story about her growing up in the 1950's (lyrics below) and then experiencing motherhood, that you don't get through either of those lifetimes without some true and honest guidance. It's a song I have always liked, hearing her sing it brought the house down for me.  But then she sang more, some Bob Dylan, some Tom Waits, so many songs she wrote, many traditional tunes and she read a poem to California about the fires and smoke and ash and our duty as people to stand up and help and fight, the world needs us and our participation.  

I could go on and on.

For some reason, for many reasons, my emotions these days are not just on my sleeve but are covering my entire body, usually manifested in tears. I can't read a headline without tearing up nor can I think about the fires and the shootings and our corrupt political world without tearing up in anger and in fear. Things just seem out of balance, I just seem out of balance, waiting for that boulder to tumble into my path or onto my car or for the tree to fall on my house or to be pushed off the brink or ...... something.
Seeing Joan Baez tonight made that unease and latent anxiety go away for two  hours. It somehow made the future seem possible for that time.

I parked about ten minutes from the Fox Theater in a loading zone with some other cars who were taking the risk of being towed. Sketchy neighborhood would be kind, but that's probably just my white woman stereotypical fear. But walking back to my car after the concert a guy was walking the same way, same age as me more or less and we talked for a few seconds about Joan Baez.  He said "I cried through about half of it" and I replied "Oh, me too! I cannot believe I considered not making the drive tonight."  He shook his head slightly and said, softly "We won't forget this, will we?"  

Nope.  We won't.

Early early in the game 
I taught myself to sing and play 
And use a little trickery 
On kids who never favored me 
Those were years of crinoline slips 
And cotton skirts and swinging hips 
And dangerously painted lips 
And stars of stage and screen 
Pedal pushers, ankle socks 
Padded bras and campus jocks 
Who hid their vernal equinox 
In pairs of faded jeans 
And slept at home resentfully 
Coveting their dreams 

And often have I wondered 
How the years and I survived 
I had a mother who sang to me 
An honest lullaby 

Yellow, brown, and black and white 
Our Father bless us all tonight 
I bowed my head at the football games 
And closed the prayer in Jesus' name 
Lusting after football heroes 
tough Pachuco, little Neroes 
Forfeiting my A's for zeroes 
Futures unforeseen 
Spending all my energy 
In keeping my virginity 
And living in a fantasy 
In love with Jimmy Dean 
If you will be my king, Jimmy, Jimmy, 
I will be your queen 

And often have I wondered 
How the years and I survived

I had a mother who sang to me 
An honest lullaby

 
I travelled all around the world 
And knew more than the other girls 
Of foreign languages and schools 
Paris, Rome and Istanbul 
But those things never worked for me 
The town was much too small you see 
And people have a way of being 
Even smaller yet 
But all the same though life is hard 
And no one promised me a garden 
Of roses, so I did okay 
I took what I could get 
And did the things that I might do 
For those less fortunate 

And often have I wondered 
How the years and I survived 
I had a mother who sang to me 
An honest lullaby

 
Now look at you, you must be growing 
A quarter of an inch a day 
You've already lived near half the years 
You'll be when you go away 
With your teddy bears and alligators 
Enterprise communicators 
All the tiny aviators head into the sky 
And while the others play with you 
I hope to find a way with you 
And sometimes spend a day with you 
I'll catch you as you fly 
Or if I'm worth a mother's salt 
I'll wave as you go by 
And if you should ever wonder 
How the years and you'll survive 
Honey, you've got a mother who sings to you 
Dances on the strings for you 
Opens her heart and brings to you 
An honest lullaby

Songwriters: Joan C. Baez

And the ETA on the Zombies is when?

Seriously, I just came back from walking Cooper around the block and it is a ghost town out there, like Zombie-land. No one is on the roads, I could have prostrated myself on Mendocino Avenue and read my Bible (if I was carrying it) for five minutes before a car even came into view. The only time I have seen the road this quiet was Christmas morning, and this is Friday night!

Same thing last night, no one on the roads. The smoke was annoying last evening but today it was awful.  The smoke index (aka Air Quality Index but come on, it's all about the smoke) starts at zero for good and 500 for bad. Today in Santa Rosa it was around 320. It was around 410 in Guerneville, home of Autocamp, my place of employment. It is supposed to be the same tomorrow, Saturday.  Another reason to be joyful about going to work!

Walking Cooper around 4:30 this afternoon for a short jaunt, the sun was a hellish red-orange combo, as if someone poured blood into orange juice and stirred it up. It was as defined as a canonball in the sky, clear and hot and creepy. A young guy was standing outside my neighborhood tattoo parlor as Cooper and I walked by and I pointed to the sun and said "fucking freaky, right?" and he replied "I don't want this, we had this last year, I am done with this."  My feelings exactly.

Shootings and fires in Los Angeles. More fires 100 miles from us right now. It feels like death and destruction are leaching out from Washington, D.C., a crawling plague of evil, leaving nothing whole or safe in its path.  Yes, I am making that up but come on.... you know you can feel it too.

Be safe out there. Evil does abide. 

November, and I have been such a slacker

Where does the time go?  I actually created an account at work yesterday and labeled it "October shop account" because in my mind it was still October.  Yes, that's a very sad sign about the state of my mind, but true nonetheless. 

November: one of my favorite months, along with all the months after summer. (Well, actually, I am not usually a fan of March for some reason. Go figure.) Leaves on trees change colors as do all the vineyards I pass driving through the Russian River valley. From my front desk post at work I can see dozens of trees and sometimes a breeze comes up and thousands of leaves get blown from their branches and float down, like a snowfall of color. It's mesmerizing.  This week the days are overly warm but the nights are very cold. It's rather odd, you start the day with layers and by mid-day you are down to a t-shirt and by 4:00 the layers are back on and by 9:30, when you take the dog out to pee, there are even more layers! Crazy!

I had a mediocre lunch today but with the best company, my Stacey, but it made me not hungry for dinner. But one must eat something, right? I cubed up a chunk of butternut squash that was languishing in the fridge, salt and pepper, and a chopped piece of bacon, and baked it until the squash was tender and caramelized and the bacon was crisp. Delicious, and I am pretty sure that since it was lean bacon and the fat sort of cooked off and the squash didn't absorb ALL the fat that it was almost fat-free!  Who cares, it was really good, the soft, sweet squash against a little crunch of crisp, salty bacon.  So autumn.

Two weeks and a few days until Thanksgiving. The highlight of autumn, of course. One can walk down any street in any neighborhood and smell turkey roasting and pies baking and hear the elastic chatter of groups of people and kids gathering. It's a good day.

I will try to be back here more.  Yeah, I know, promises, promises.  But there you have it.

And here is a photo of main room of the clubhouse at Autocamp. You can see a few Airstreams and the little Redwood Suite (the ADA unit.) That's the view from the front desk where I see leaves pouring down. (The front desk would be farther to the right.) Not a bad thing to look at all day. Redwood trees on the left.