The worth of things ...

... can't be measured by what they cost but by what they cost you to get them. If anything costs you your faith or your family, then the price is too high, and there are some things that will never wear out.

Drinking is a way of ending the day. - Ernest Hemingway

Evidently, it's a relatively universally-prized way of ending the year, as well.

My best friend and I realized this year that spending New Year's Eve together has become an a posteriori tradition of ours. It's been years since either of us watched the ball drop at all, much less with someone with whom we were involved. We make an event of getting ready, slither into our slinkiest dresses and our faux-Manolos (which this year occasioned a feisty ass-size comparison, adjudicated by Morgan's long-suffering roommate) and indulge outrageously in the opportunity to be fabulous. For me, this past New Year's Eve was my first grownup night out with old friends in my hometown in half a year, during which I learned a new language, lived with four different families on a different continent, almost visited Africa, got into the Peace Corps, witnessed my mother's incipient nervous breakdown, swore off sex completely and then fell off the wagon (several times), moved on, and thought about myself far too much.

It was so, so good to come home. And have a drink.

We had dinner at one of my favorite Memphis restaurants, a place downtown called Lolo's Table, that was served in courses, delicious without doubt, but (for me) unsatisfyingly French. (An utterly personal issue resolved by the utterly excellent bread pudding at the end, which doesn't exist in France, and the free champagne, which also helped to numb the shock of how much the whole business cost. I won't note it here, because there's a chance my parents might read this, and I refuse to precipitate their heart palpitations any more than I do already.) I discovered that I had completely forgotten the solicitous dispatch of American waiters; it was almost unnerving to have our pleasant server take any notice of us after the food had arrived. And of course I ordered and tasted the wine with the adroit smugness that is, I firmly maintain, the right of the hapless etudiante returning from France.

Martinis at Swig (damn, they can make them dry), champagne at Tsunami (also the location of the obligatory accidental encounter with the Preppy Posse, who insist on travelling in packs and which includes an ex whom I still can't decide if it was good to see), and hours later I woke up on the first morning of the New Year on Morgan's futon, mercifully in pajamas but still wearing makeup, with her cat purring on my chest and my fingers curled around what proved to be my earrings from the night before. Fumbling over the coffee table for my watch, I noticed the cracker-crumbs strewn in joyous confetti-profusion on the floor; I dragged my eyes up to the squashy remnants of cheese and the overturned box of rosemary-and-olive-oil Triscuits bedecking the table, and a vague memory of feasting sometime after five am surfaced, blearily.

After we cleared away the celebratory detritus of two single twentysomething girls (okay, I cleared, he mewed until I located the Friskies) and efforts both to figure out the coffeemaker and to rouse Morgan proved equally ineffectual, Smokey and I repaired to the porch and curled up together on the glider. I remember when she bought it, a hundred years ago, in Mississippi, and I've sat on it through many states of mind. I tucked my feet underneath me, lit a cigarette, and stared through the screens down towards the New Year's Monday morning traffic on Poplar.

Ever since I got back from France, it's seemed to me that everyone drives at breakneck speed. Granted, I was terrified continually in France - one quite literally takes one's life in one's hands both as cyclist and pedestrian, because they've no intention of stopping for you. Perhaps it's because I'm driving myself again - I'm still not used to it, and I'm as childishly excited every time I go out to my car as a sixteen-year-old with new-minted keys and a license still warm from the laminator.

I wondered if there's ever a time in your life when you find yourself about where you thought you'd be, a year ago. And I wondered how I'd feel about it, if I found myself at such a moment. And, if I thought of myself as a purposeful individual, what it meant that my life was such a continual surprise.

By ten am on the first day of 2007, I had already shamelessly disowned my resolution to think less about myself.


we don't know, so we wait for tomorrow
we don't know, so we wait for tomorrow

we don't know, so we only go forward

- tegan and sara

Choices scattered in front of me like cracker-crumbs. Cleaning up messes I could only hazily remember making. Wondering if this year will be an auspicious one, and swallowing the awareness that I've no idea where I'll be, next time.

Too much, on an empty stomach.

The only way to digest it all, if your hometown is the birthplace of the blues, is to drag your closest friend out of bed and let her take you out for breakfast at one in the afternoon. The achingly enormous existential thorniness of your twenties, you find, is smoothed down quite satisfactorily by biscuits and gravy, diner coffee in the heavy white mug, and cheese grits.


Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough. - Mark Twain

I wheeled around because I / didn't hear what you had said / and saw you dancin' with Elihu / up on Leemor's bed ...

... and I was foggy, rather groggy / You helped me to my car / the binding belt enclosing me / A sample in a jar ...



So, it came out several months ago, but I was away ... I couldn't believe it when I got my Christmas present from my favorite four boys today.

On top of all the other lovely things about coming home, I discovered that Phish has released a recording of their first real, out-of-the-Northeast tour, which happened in 1988, in, of all places, Colorado. Here's what Rolling Stone had to say about it:

Long before Phish replaced the Grateful Dead as America's greatest jam band, the foursome was one goofy-ass bar act. This three-CD set documents Phish's first trip outside their Northeast stomping ground: a 1988 seven-date tour in the Rocky Mountain state. Opting for concise compositions instead of expansive, noodly jams, Colorado '88 is a surprisingly crisp compilation that shows off the band's chops with early, by-the-numbers versions of classics like "You Enjoy Myself" and "Fluffhead." There's also a mountain of rarities, including "Harpua," the fantastical story of a guy named Jimmy, his dog and a doomed cat called Poster Nutbag that has attained mythical status among the Phish phaithful.


So here's the list:

Disc One
1. The Curtain With
2. The Sloth
3. Icculus
4. Colonel Forbin's Ascent
5. Fly Famous Mockingbird
6. I Didn't Know
7. Maiden Voyage
8. Timber
9. Harpua

Disc Two
1. Fluffhead
2. Run Like An Antelope
3. Sneaking Sally Thru The Alley
4. Light Up Or Leave Me Alone
6. I Know A Little
7. The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday
8. Avenu Malkenu
9. The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday
10. Flat Fee
11. McGrupp And The Watchful Hosemasters
12. Alumni Blues
13. A Letter To Jimmy Page
14. Alumni Blues

Disc Three
1. Camel Walk
2. Wilson
3. No Dogs Allowed
4. Mike's Song
5. I Am Hydrogen
6. Weekapaug Groove
7. You Enjoy Myself
8. Cities
9. Dave's Energy Guide
10. Cities
11. AC/DC Bag
12. Corinna
13. Thank You


You know that I dislike as much as anyone the idea of being one of those aging jam-band phans who yearn for the old days of going on Summer Tour, reminisce about 40-minute YEMs, nine-hour shows, fire spinners on the lot, Magic Hat and veggie burritos at 2 am. We all know that, happy as we were on New Year's Eve 2002, nothing was the same after the hiatus, and I can't say that songs like Army of One stir anything all that primal in me. But I must confess that I do have my moments. I remember the first time I saw a glowstick war, or Fishman play the vacuum. The feeling when they play the opening chords to Divided Sky. Shaggy-haired Trey. Waste. Singing to my dog, whose name is Wilson, that I'd punch him in the eye. When they walked onto the stage the last time I saw them at Deer Creek, the first night, and opened with Loving Cup. Yeah, when they played Prince Caspian, I cried. I grew up listening to all the best music from the sixties; my dad took me to shows from before I can remember, and I saw the Dead play the Pyramid three months before Jerry died. But I *grew up* to Phish - say what you will, Phish was ours, we barefoot children, drinking bathtub gin and wading in the velvet sea, who know who's in the freezer and what the banker said, and didn't believe the florist. And just now I'd give a great deal to go back to 1996 and hear Character Zero for the first time.



Hey, boys. Thanks for all the Phish.

In my mind, I'm goin' to Carolina ...

Can't you see the sunshine
Can't you just feel the moonshine
Maybe just like a friend of mine
It hit me from behind
Yes I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind



Lemme tell you some things I love about America.

I love huge, wide sidewalks. Swipes of concrete where you can walk without stumbling over someone's garbage bins, or their car straddling the kerb, or the ubiquitous pile of little French dog caca, or that never-graceful dance of confusion with passersby, where you try to figure out who has the right of way.

I love 24-hour supermarkets and gas stations and convenience stores and boites de nuit and always something to do, someone to talk to, someone to call. The ability to banter at the bank, the market, the shop on the corner.


I love houses that aren't beige, roofs that aren't the same red tile.

I love many faces, many voices, many languages on the same street. The French all look the same. The same bodies, the same trends, the same pointy-toed eagle talon boots and faux-fur trimmed vests. The same silver-and-black striped shirts, and so many buckles on everything that they could be Pilgrims.

Here I walk down Mission Street past Mexican men with slicked-back hair, black puffy jackets, and Adidas polished too-white peeking from the cuffs of their extravagantly baggy jeans.


Internet that works nearly all the time, and very, very fast.

Cheap cell phone minutes.

California wine.

Avocados, 4 for $1. Limes, 10 for $1.

American greenbacks.

Strong black coffee in those heavy white diner mugs, on a chipped formica or peeling woodgrain table, in a vinyl-covered booth at half-past midnight.

Pizza with tomato sauce and without creme fraiche. Or lardons.

American microwbrews. Fuck, American brews, whatever they are.

Large pillows, large towels, thick mattresses, hot showers, dryers (for clothes and for hair), comfortable socks, Christmas lights, fog around Sutro Tower.

The American Postal Service, bless them.

Grey's Anatomy.

The Sunday Times.

Gingerbread houses.

Knowing the correct usage of punctuation.

Knowing how much my cash is actually worth.

American coffee. American coffee. American coffee. American coffee. American coffee.

The Food Network.

Graduate school.

Secondhand bookstores.

Refills.


Dark and silent last night
I think I might have heard the highway calling
Geese in flight and dogs that bite
Signs that might be omens say I'm going, going
I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind


People who have travelled and come back and gone away again.

The ability to leave, and have a place to come home to.

My own apartment.

My friends, who, much to my surprise and pleasure, missed me.


With a holy host of others standing round me
Still I'm on the dark side of the moon
And it seems like it goes on like this forever
You must forgive me
If I'm up and gone to Carolina in my mind


Hey guys - I finally had that cup of coffee, in the paper cup with the little sleeve and the plastic lid with that frustrating little hole through which to scald your tongue. I drank it walking down the street, while talking on my cell phone.

I'm going to the movies, where the previews are too long but not as long as the half-hour French ones, and where the popcorn comes with extra butter and isn't sweet. Then I'm going to eat Chinese food in the middle of the night, out of the paper cartons and with those wooden chopsticks that you break apart and then rub the ends together to smooth out the splinters.

I'm going to a brewery, to hear bluegrass and drink real beer. I'm ordering a hamburger. A big one. With melted yellow cheddar cheese. And fries, not frites, that will come beside my sandwich instead of in the middle of it. And ketchup that doesn't taste like that tomato sauce that comes in the toothpaste-tube things at the Casino.

I'm still waiting for my first diet Mountain Dew.

Tomorrow, I get to see my father, who's brining a turkey because my family kept Christmas on hold til I could be there. I'm going to eat my grandmother's sweet potato casserole, and the cornbread dressing she makes completely from scratch, and her grapefruit and avocado salad, and that quintessentially Southern truc with the apples and bananas and walnuts and celery and mayonnaise. And three kinds of pie. And iced tea, even in December. And I'll pour gravy over all of it, and leave my squashy buttered dinner roll on the plate the whole time.

It's a beautiful thing.


Say nice things about me 'cause I'm gone,
Southbound
You'll have to carry on without me
'cause I'm gone, I'm gone
I'm gone to Carolina in my mind

For those who have aussi been forced to traduire les paroles de Georges Bressons

For my SIT cohort: Vous me manquez, deja.

There are so many, many things about the time we spent in France that I won't ever be able to explain to anyone else.

You are the thing I miss most about France; the people who understand my awe and terror of Leila (Ghregh??), who were likewise trapped for a semester in salles trois, quatre, and tres, and who likewise learned which ordinateurs dans la salle informatique were the least unacceptable (including the one you had to beat on to make it work properly, selon the directions ecrit on the petit panneau).

We loved Eric and loathed the Atelier d'Expression; we suffered ensemble through brebis and Aveyron and Ariege and torrential rains and beaucoup trop many tours.

We answered the question "What *surprises* you about France?" for the 200th time with smiles and without flogging anyone to death.

We parl-ed in constant Franglish (and sometimes even Frangleshpanol).

We discovered the English books and American TV shows a la Mediatheque, and we escaped from all those Algerian/Tunisian/Moroccan/"French"men without too much incident, eh?

We introduced Paris to the Car Bomb.

We outed Greg and Laura.

We learned what happens when you put unleaded fuel in a diesel engine.

We cartooned our teachers.

We know which one of us speaks the slowest, whose voices are so soft you can't hear them on the telephone, who has to preface all her interactions with French people with a long self-deprecatory preamble, who absolutely cannot speak in public, who doesn't like space, who touches everyone's hair, who makes the most derisive faces.

Who *always* has to talk with her hands. :)

Without Sam, who was there for the Thierry debacle from the beginning and who knew but didn't judge about the girl from the Lolita Cafe whose calls I quit returning, I never would have shared l'Ancienne Belgique, or eaten the best Tibetan meal of my life in St. Germain. I want to retire to your sheep farm, in Scotland, New Zealand, the San Juan Islands ...

Without Marissa and Greg, I never would've known for sure that no man is sorry that he'll never carry a baby, or that someone can love both Tom Waits and cute puppies with the same fervor, or had someone to smoke, drink gin and tonic and talk dirty with, or learned the merits of loose-leaf Gauloise, or played pool beside the Mediterranean.

Without Tricia, no one would have understood why Joey was NOT SPEAKING FRENCH! or the debate over the meaning of San Diego, or the only way to bag a classy lady (take her to the gun show ... and see if she likes the goods), or why I spent a French semester in a glass case of emotion. Or the deep significance of "America - fuck yeah!" and "Qu'est-ce que c'est haut, chien?"

Without Matt, I'd never have learned the difference between porn and "erotic films," or been able to meaningfully discuss the degustation of fried chicken, biscuits, and macaroni and cheese, or the joy of leaving your bread on the plate with your food.

Without Rebecca, no one would have answered my English with French, and there would be no one to carry on my Santiago de Compostela legacy. (I'm counting on you, girl.)

Without Ellen, who should absolutely NOT become an RA, I'd never have given a shit about caves or ultimate frisbee, or quaked in fear merely at someone's scowl, or learned to avoid Maison Pillon, or discovered the infinite variations possible for "Eeewww."

Without Laura, there'd have been no one's love life about which to speculate, and I never would have met the only girl who could make ice interesting, and whose patience will surely one day merit canonization. Keep that one in line - I know you will. Will you invite me to the wedding if I give you guys an ice pick and a pair of giant tongs?

Without Abi, I'd never have eaten the closest approximation of real Mexican food France has ever seen, or listened to three different versions of Romeo and Juliet in succession, or been able to replace the birthday song with Estas son las mañanitas. (Gracias para siempre.)


Without Brittany, I'd have had no pirates in France, no fellow Boulder, no one who was sick more than I was, no stories of Enrique, no one with whom to faire le bis back in Colorado. "Malheureusement, j'ai casse mon parapluie dans l'Aveyron! Et toi, tu as casse le tien, aussi, je crois. Il y avait beacoup trop du vente! Et Greg aussi, il a perdu le sien quand meme. Il faut accheter un autre, a cause de la pluie, sinon on va etre trop mouiller!" (I wanna say something. I'm gonna put it out there; if you like it, you can take it, if you don't, send it right back ... I want to be on you.)

There aren't any words for you, Julie, my Berkeley copine. Thanks for being at St Bertrand de Comminges that day, for watching the hours of montages, for laughing at Pink and Christina Aguilera, for eating raclette, for loving Ani and Orishas and Alicia Alonso, for knowing Dar Williams and Mollie Katzen, for telling me about Cuba and helping me decide about Africa, for that day at the library. For being the other Californian, the other dancer, the other American in the French host family milieu. Cheeseboard, Lovejoy's, the Ferry Building Farmer's Market, Cowgirl Creamery, Point Reyes, burritos in the Mission, Big Sur await. Come to Boulder and I'll introduce you to the snow.

Vooooiiillaaa. Tout a fait.

Ai, ai, ai.

Si vous n'existeriez pas, dites-moi comment I would have made it through the past four months. Moi, je n'ai aucune idee. Quand je suis arrivee en France, I would not have believed how much you all would mean to me. Mais, vraiment. *Vachement.*

A bientot, kids, et je vous remercie pour tous les fromages.

What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions.

Life is plurality, death is uniformity.

By suppressing differences and pecularities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death.

The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us.

Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life.

- Octavio Paz

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house ...

... as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. - Gandhi

For this project, I interviewed three French people, an American, and an Englishwoman. Perhaps the most interesting part of the project for me was to observe the differences in their attitudes towards the hardships of the Camino. The three French people were much more interested in the social aspects of the pilgrimage, and the two who hiked on the Camino Frances in Spain were not satisfied at all with the Spanish part of their pilgrimage. Everyone told me that the pilgrimage in Spain is completely different from the pilgrimage in France. The three French people, truly, seemed far less willing to adapt themselves to different habits and attitudes. But, paradoxically, they were more interested in the community of the pilgrimage than the other two. The American had chosen to make the pilgrimage at a time when he was less likely to encounter other pilgrims, and the Englishwoman had not wanted companionship, either. And, she seemed farmore affected by the pilgrimage than the French and described more profound personal changes.

These attitudes towards the Camino illustrated, to me, the profound French need to separate religious life from secular life. The Chemin de St Jacques de Compostelle is no longer publicized by the church but rather by organizations like the Society of Friends of the Way of St James, who work voluntarily to increase awareness of and interest in the Chemin. (Although, interestingly enough, judges in Spain have been known to assign the Camino de Santiago in lieu of jailtime for certain petty crimes. Once again, the Spanish take the Camino de Santiago much more seriously.)

The road itself is part of the network of hiking trails that run through France. The various churches and shrines along the way are less holy sites than historical sites. Even the profoundly Catholic Monique needed to claim the religious artifacts on the Chemin as part of the patrimony, her historical heritage as French. It seems important that French interest in the Chemin increased greatly after it became a UNESCO historical site, as if it had become somehow more acceptable to make the pilgrimage as a historical or patrimonial experience rather than a religious quest.

However, despite the obvious differences, it is in some ways difficult to say that the pilgrim of today is vastly different from the pilgrim of the Middle Ages. The difference between a "pilgrim" and a "tourist" is necessarily somewhat obscure. Both leave their homes because they have a need. There are things they want to see, places to which they feel compelled to go. Whether these needs are motivated by God or by some inner personal call seems a semantic distinction. (However, this distinction was more necessary for the French pilgrims than for the others.)

It is also interesting to note that American pilgrims, in particular, talk about the feelings of depression and despondency that often happen when the pilgrim returns home. Pilgrim guidebooks and websites offer suggestions for working through the unhappiness when the pilgrim must return to his normal life. When I mentioned this to Monique, she was surprised that anyone would feel sad to finish the pilgrimage.
When I asked Anne why she thought that people chose to make the pilgrimage, she told me that "Each pilgrim is individually called by the Camino. The Way chooses us, as it has for centuries. We do not make that choice. And it is up to us today, as it was for pilgrims in the Middle Ages, to discover the reason for the call – now, as we walk the Chemin, or later, after we have returned home."