Les said, the better II

Here, I will present information that I used to prepare for my trip and things I wish I had done / known. This is Chapter 1.

Advance Preparations

Call up the Cité Internationale des Arts and ask about housing. Do this as soon as you know that you are coming. If you are two late to apply for the start of your stay, apply to get housing for the second half. This housing is probably cheaper than what you would otherwise find and it gives you access to the art scene, including a performance space. It is really hard to get gigs in Paris and very few people have heard of CCMIX. Being in the Cité des Internationale Arts will help you out.
Learn as much French as you can. Take French classes at your school, at Alliance Française or in summer school. The 2-semesters-at-once summer class at UC Berkeley is the cheapest option for a Californian. Also, the teacher and TA will help you with your paperwork for a visa.
Get a visa. The school tells you not to worry about visas. None of their students have been deported ever. The anti-immigration hysteria is not about Americans. However, getting a visa may be worthwhile for a few reasons: 1. If you are age 26 or under, the French government will give you money. 2. If you ever want to return, you won’t be faced with the choice of lying or admitting you’ve been in the country illegally. 3. The paperwork will help you buy a cell phone and open a bank account and things like that. You must go to the consulate in person to get a visa. Call them for more info. In the morning. It may be that you only need to appear in person once.
Tell everyone you know that you are coming to Paris for the year and then ask them if they know anybody there. Get phone numbers and email addresses. Call those people as soon as you arrive and arrange to have a drink with them or something. Meeting people in Paris is difficult and making friends takes a long time. Get started quickly.
If you want an apartment to yourself, Craig’s List Paris can be a good place to find one, as can FUSAC. Having a housemate, however, will help you meet people and will be cheaper. If I were coming by myself and I didn’t get a spot in the cité, I would stay in the CCMIX apartments and look for a housemate once I arrived.
If you like to read about things before doing them, French or Foe has good advice about cultural differences. The philosophy seems to be right, but unfortunately many of the specifics are outdated. The author is right when she says not to bring wine to a dinner party, but (probably) wrong when she says not to go to the bathroom at somebody else’s house. I say “probably,” assuming you’re not going to be dining with any high government officials or anybody’s formal grandmother.
This list is not exhaustive. Obviously, you must also do things like gather paperwork. If you think I left anything out, please leave it in the comments. More advice about other aspects is coming in later posts!Tags: Paris, CCMIX, Celesteh

Anti-Algerian bias has been in the news recently, what with the world cup scandal. In case you don’t follow football, what happened is this: during the world cup final, the captain of the French team, Zidane, headbutted Materazzi, an Italian player, during overtime and got thrown out of the match. Allegations have come up that Materazzi called Zidane “the son of a terrorist whore.” Zidane’s mother is an Algerian immigrant to France who was sick in the hospital at the time of the match. Italy went on to win the match in penalty shootouts. Zidane has never missed a penalty kick and so some suspect that France might have won had he stayed in the match.

Allegations that Italy won through racism must be going down very poorly at home, right? Well, not exactly. According to the NYT:

Swastikas spray painted in Rome’s ancient Jewish ghetto sullied Italy’s joy after its World Cup victory on Sunday, as did racial comments made by a former government minister about the French team.

The former minister in question is Roberto Calderoli, the guy who was forced to resign after appearing publicly wearing a T-shit with one of the Mohammed cartoons on it.

After the Cup victory he said that the Italians had vanquished a French team that was comprised of “Negroes, communists and Moslems.” Italian soccer is no stranger to extremist politics. Italian football matches are often used as a platform for far-right fans to express racist sentiments.

Well, at the very least, in the enlightened and noble United states, anti-Algerian sentiments are, well, foreign, right? Let’s ask the San Francisco Chronicle.

No one should ever take Zidane for a peaceful man. The son of Algerian immigrants, he comes from the hard streets of Marseilles, a truly rough-and-tumble background.

He’s not peaceful because . . . he’s the son of Algerian immigrants? Oh, and he’s from Marseilles.
In other news, I read a web comic called Shooting War. The comic is kind of fucked, but it takes place in the Not Too Distant Future (one of my favorite time periods), in Iraq. and then I read this panel. The plot at this point is that the main characters have just been attacked by insurgents carrying forged Iranian passports. The female character notes that the ring leader looks as if he is North African and is wearing a T shirt from the banlieues of Paris. I won’t quote all the dialog for you (it’s in the image I linked to and you can’t cut and paste from images), but I will pull it apart for your benefit.
She did not live in the northern suburbs when she was a university student. Teachers live in the burbs. Students live in the left bank. It’s important for students to be near university life and they get something called the CAF from the government to pay their living expenses. All students get this, foreign or not. This system is extremely unlikely to change in the near future.
This travel agency thing she speaks of does not exist. There are French soldiers in Afghanistan. Given the timing of the comic, she would be in university now. Would the French happily send extremists off to kill their own troops? No they would not. Happiness about extremism does not exist.
Burning precious Pugeots! Oooh, somebody read a newspaper in November! But not very carefully, because only like 5 cars were burned in Paris, the rest were in the burbs. The cars burned in Paris were around the Place de la Republique. One may have been on my street. That’s an immigrant neighborhood. They weren’t burning cars out in the 16th. Also, the word “Peugeot” sounds effeminate, right? Because all French men are pansies, not like us tough Americans who go fight imperialist wars in Iraq. Maybe the writer couldn’t think of any other French car brands. Maybe, in the future, there are no more Renaults.
Pissed off suburban youth are angry about economic issues, not religious issues. It may be the case that in the future, that changes. But right now, they’re angry about job discrimination more than anything else. France has an extremely secular society. These kids are French. They were born in France. They went to French schools. Even the “native” French see them as French. The kind of changes this future envisions might happen, but I don’t see it as likely. Especially not a toleration for terrorist travel agencies.
This poorly-written dialog, of course, comes from the same place as the stuff Materazzi allegedly said to Zidane. This stereotyping about Algerian terrorists is everywhere in the media. If you kept hearing that over and over again, this hate speech, it becomes like a physical attack. Zidane told reporters he would rather take a blow to the face than hear what Materazzi said to him. Hate speech is violent. “Sticks and stones” is bullshit, and everybody knows it. This has got to stop.
Tags: Football, Celesteh

According to the Washington Post, the US has decided to apply the Geneva Conventions to all detainees. File this under “it’s about damn time.” Even CIA black sites and secret gulags will have to follow the Geneva Conventions, and I’m sure that everyone will be properly informed and they will act in full accordance with the law, because if there’s one thing the CIA has a reputation for, it’s legality and more importantly, transparency, so that interested parties can verify that they are indeed following the law.

(Speaking of proper information, guys in the field in Afghanistan, when asking how to treat detainees, were given rescinded torture-ahoy! memos intended for Guantanamo Bay. So decisions on the top only matter as far as they get out to people actually handling detainees. Link 1, Link 2)
The Bush administration continues to insist that torturing people into giving false confessions makes voters feel hopeful about the war on terror, but the Supreme Court apparently remembers that we have laws and treaty obligations and stuff.
The WaPo article does not mention extraordinary rendition, a practice in which we turn over wrongly grabbed innocent suspects to other allied countries known to use torture after the very solemnly promise (wink) not to torture these particular suspects. Then they share all the false, i’ll-say-whatever-you-want,-just-stop-it information with our intelligence agencies, who use it to grab more innocent people who were randomly named as the last guy sought desperately to make it stop suspects. One thinks the Geneva Conventions and Jesus would disallow such a thing, but since the Supreme Court didn’t rule on it (and how could they since it’s secret?) and nobody is talking about it now, it will probably continue.
This is a small step. Very positive. But too small by itself.
Tag: Celesteh

The day after I went to see the movie, I woke up early the next morning to call the Netherlands consulate in Paris to ask about immigration procedure. Apparently, if you’re American and want to move to the the Netherlands, you just show up with paperwork and ask for a residency permit. Then convince somebody to giv e you a job and show up with some paperwork around that and they give you work papers. Maybe, probably if they like you.

lyme disease update

And the, the over-exertion of walking around Paris and then waking up early had me feeling miserable in bed for two days. At some point, taking 1 gram of fizzy tylenol at a time started doing me harm. And so I stopped and began to feel better. Yesterday I felt fine, except for getting tired really fast. Only occasionally tiny amount of burning and the bite hurts from time to time, but not so much that I would probably even notice it if it weren’t so suddenly important in my life. The red spot around it shrank and faded and got really dry and then I stopped putting the antiseptic on it because it was so dry. The doctor gave me something that smells like pool water. I think it’s chlorine. And last night, I noticed it looked the same as it did a week ago. ack. So I bleached it and this morning, it’s light again.

I’m up early because I was worrying about the implications of the rash not going away and had plans to call an anglophone advice line. What if I have antibiotic resistant lyme disease? But commenters on Live Journal have said they had the rash for two weeks. So I’ll wait a few more days before seeking advice. I don’t want to spend another four hours at the hospital waiting to talk to a dermatologist unless I actually have to. What did we do before the internets?
I want to be travelling right now, but if I get completely exhausted after just riding my bike downtown, then it is not in the cards for me. I’m really tired of not feeling well. I want this to go away. Hence my worry about the rash. “Why isn’t this gone yet??” I whined to myself. My problems are minor compared to many folks, but they’re mine and that gives them a certain gravity in my mind.
Tags: Lyme, Lyme Disease, Celesteh

Aside from sleeping and whining and whatnot, I’ve been leaving the house once a day.
Tuesday, I was feeling not so sick, so I decided to go to the cheese shop. This was not actually a good idea. The cheese people are the friendliest people in Paris. One of them had worked out that I was an American and was asking why I was in France. He’s a nice guy, but I could barely answer. The time was not right to venture out.

Wednesday, France won it’s semi-final match in the World Cup. Huzzah for France! I watched on TV. Afterwards, I could hear people setting off fireworks and celebrating in the streets. So, I limped out to watch. The thing to do when you win a football victory is to head directly to the closest car and drive it around with people all over it, waving flags. A bunch of people were doing so around Place de la Republique. If you don’t have a car, the best thing to do is go to some place where there are a lot of cars and climb on them as they’re stopped at red lights. A bunch of people were doing so around Place de la Republique. It was an amusing spectacle. They climbed on a public works car. The public works people lit road flares as sparklers and waved them around, failing to note that they set something on fire. For a while, a largish garbage fire burned next to a tree but then somebody noticed and stamped it out. People yelled and cheered and jumped up and down. I limped home.
And when I say “limped,” I mean that I have arthritis. It will go away soon, but in the mean time, I walk as if I am arthritic.
Yesterday, I thought I felt well enough to see a movie, so Nicole and I went to see the Road to Guantanamo. The metro ride in itself was more than enough adventure for me, but seeing a movie involves sitting and political documentaries are ok, right? This movie is actually a dramatization of what happened to those three british guys that ended up in Gitmo. On a lark, they thought they would go be aid workers in Afghanistan. It was incredibly stupid, but would have been a hell of a vacation if they’d all survived and the survivors hadn’t gone to Gitmo.
You know Nazi movies, where they have the incredibly evil camp guards who are also fairly incompetent and they have that Hollywood Nazi look of a happy predator about to bite some tasty Art Spiegelman mouse? Now replace that expression with that broad ugly grin that male, american assholes get when they’re enjoying seeing somebody hurt. That, wide cocky, cruel American grin. It’s the new Nazi expression, because my god, we’re acting like Nazis.
Being in the US Armed Forces used to imply some sort of honor. Behaving honorably does not include lying about what country you are an officer of, nor does it involve beating prisoners. Nor violating the rights of prisoners. Nor disregarding the Geneva conventions.
Yeah, I love my country. I love the land. And I love the music. And I love the brave leaders like Mother Jones and MLK and Cesar Chavez, but I do not love the military industrial complex and I don’t love the police state. I hate what’s going on right now. There are still hundreds of prisoners in Gitmo. They’re still being tortured. George Bush is still president. He got reelected. Yeah, I love my land, but the people? Maybe half. All Republicans can fuck off and die. I hope you get the police state that you so desperately want and I hope I’m far away from it. Something is profoundly wrong in the US and I can’t think of a way to fix it.
Tag: Celesteh

This is now the journal of tick bites. I should learn to bear misery more silently. I need some character. However, maybe somebody else out in the world also got the same diagnoses yesterday and wonders if it’s “normal” that her skin is full of pricks of burning like little jabs of something tiny and hot or the scurrying of little heated legs like the wiggling legs of the tick before I dropped it to die in the drain. Like little bursts of 4th of July sparklers.

Yes, it is.
I called Sarah Dotie to ask if this was cause for alarm. She called around and wrote email back to say that what I feel is spyrothetes dying. These are the little creatures that invaded my blood stream. Lyme disease is a parasite. As each of them dies, I feel a burning stab of it’s death, in my arms, in my legs, in my scalp.
I find that keeping things from touching my skin seems to help. And the tylenol that the doctor prescribed turns down the amplitude a bit. Keeping my skin bare is not always an option, for reasons of modesty and because my antibiotics cause extreme sunburn sensitivity.
If you are in America and you find a tick, you pull it out with tweezers or your fingers, making sure that there are no visible bits of tick left behind. Wash your hands and the bite afterwards and use antiseptic on the bite. If you are in Germany, you go to a doctor and ask her to pick the tick out for you, for which she will use some sort of pointy device. If you are in France, you go to the pharmacy and ask for some stuff which you put on the tick, the tick goes limp and lets go.
I am going to be sporting long pants and sleeves next time I’m in the woods, but ankles, neck, scalp, etc may still be uncovered and will be checked for ticks. Check for them right after you hike. Then check again at night and in the morning. Apparently, there are no documented cases of Lyme when the tick was attached for less than 12 hours. Yeah, it’s treatable and I’ll feel fine soon, but the meantime is disconcerting and alarming.
I didn’t celebrate the American Holiday, alas (unless you count exploding parasites). I left the house once only and it was overly exhausting.
Tags: Ticks, Lyme, Lyme Disease, Celesteh

probably. By the time the blood test comes back, I’ll have taken all the antibiotics. But this explains why I was feeling crappy all weekend.

I will detail my experiences in case anyone wonders what happens when you go to the hospital in France.
In america, there are sprawling medical complexes located around hospitals. These are doctors offices (sometimes called “private practices”) where you can go to get specific problems treated. France is much more centralized, as far as I can tell. There are many specialist offices located within hospitals and even (relatively) minor outpatient surgery is done in the hospital.
So I went today to the hospital, walked in the front door and went to the accueil, explained that I was a clueless foreigner and asked where I should go. She directed me to the dermatology department, so I went there and got in the queue for people without appointments. They do patient intakes at 8 AM and 1 PM and they take a set number of patients at each time. First I talked with somebody who verified that I was in the right place. She penciled in a couple of forms. The next person I spoke with entered that data into the computer. She gave me a bunch of barcode stickers with my name on them and told me to keep them. Then she sent me to the waiting room for walk-ins.
It was a long, long wait. It smelled of hospital and it was hot. They broke out a small fan to blow at us. A toddler kept kicking my chair, but he was cute and singing as he did it, so I didn’t mind. It was like baby performance art.
Finally, somebody called my name. She asked many questions, did doctorly things and wrote prescriptions. Then a nurse walked me over to the blood department. I waited again and then two women joked amongst themselves, took some blood, and collected some data from me about where I was hiking and when I got bit. I suspect this data will be used for disease tracking purposes. Then they gave me another form and told me to go pay.
The payment system normally goes on a take-a-number system, but there was a sign on the machine saying they were done with numbers for the day. So after they called the last number, those of us remaining queued up to pay.
I have no idea how they will alert me to my test results. I intend to ask Solène when she gets back. I also don’t know how long I can expect have this annoying rash on my leg. I figure, though, even if it’s not lyme, oral antibiotics will kill it. I feel zen now so comment away. Well, zen and kinda like I’m a bit, you know, sick. 100mg of doxycycline twice a day. When I feel energetic, I’ll look up how closely this meshes with what would be prescribed in the US. Here, they usually give something else, but I have a possible penicillin allergy. The doctor that I saw in Den Haag said “This is not lyme disease,” but there’s no reason to believe I couldn’t have gotten an infection AND a lyme rash later.
Tags: Lyme, Paris, Celesteh

One of the things that Catholics believe is that you can ask saints for stuff. They’re buddies with God, so they try to work something out on you behalf. Certain saints handle certain types of requests. For example, St John the Baptist, who got beheaded is the guy to go to for headaches. The Virgin Mary is the go-to for absolutely everything, since she’s got the closest relationship. There are spheres of influence and specialists for certain things.
You can also go to your own relatives, if you’re pretty sure they’re in heaven. I think the idea here is that God is too busy to do anything for you directly. But then the Virgin Mary would be just as busy, if not more so, with all those Rosaries that everybody prays. So your own relatives might not have a lot of influence, but at least they have time.

The first problem is that they might be in purgatory. You can’t go to heaven unless you’ve pennanced away all of your sins, or never sinned or got baptised right before death (since baptism wipes away all sins without need for pennance). If you died and you’ve repented you sins but not done enough penance, you go to purgatory where you suffer like hell until you’ve atoned for your wrong doing. Fortunately, you living family members can help you out by praying to get you out of purgatory. Let me tell you, it’s not comforting sitting at your grandmother’s funeral when everybody including the priest assumes she’s currently burning for her sins.
However, I have some relatives who were (unofficially, of course) proclaimed to be saints upon their passing. One of these was my cousin who didn’t die too long ago. She was a nun and a scientist and she did groundbreaking research on ticks. Yesterday, my infection was getting smaller and I didn’t want to have to go to a hospital today (it’s hard to just walk into a GP office here. The one I went to in the Winter didn’t even have a receptionist. A machine answered the phone.).
All of the other nuns and several other folks were convinced of my cousin’s sainthood. I could ask her for help without having to worry about whether she’s in purgatory (and not feel guilty for not praying her out of it – sorry mom). And talk about a perfect match for a tick-related woe!
So I asked her (and her brother for good measure) to please ask around on my behalf and it would be really great if when I woke up in the morning, the infection would just be gone. It would be totally awesome and not completely improbable, so c’mon, help your cousin out.
When I woke up this morning, it was larger and more inflamed than ever. I’m pissed off. I went to visit her in the old folks home, I spoke at her funeral. I mean, if it were the same size, that would be one thing, but it’s actually bigger. I can’t remember if I also asked her for help getting into Berkeley. Maybe that’s why I got rejected. Thanks for nothing!
Ok, ok, it’s not fair. It’s not even rational. Sometimes I think misdirected anger isn’t all bad. Next time I’ll try St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.
Tag: Celesteh

saturday

Today was Vélorution, but I dropped out after only a few minutes because I was feeling crappy. I’ve been kinda having a few issues with anxiety lately. I think it might be a bad idea to not eat, take a xanax and then try to go biking in the heat. This is kinda sad because it’s the last one for me before I leave, but I’m glad to not be biking right now.

The red area on my leg where I got bit is bigger and a bit painful, so I just went to talk to a pharmacist. French pharmacists are actually incredibly helpful. He looked at my leg and gave me some anitsceptic pain killer stuff and told me to see a doctor if it’s still red on monday. So I’m going to be in Paris until monday probably, unless my leg unreddens. I asked about feeling bleah and he blamed the heat. I blame being homesick.

sunday

All winter my apartment was freezing and i kept thinking how nice it’s coolness would be in the summer. ha ha. In other news, I got email from my brother today inviting me to his wedding.
Wedding?? I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend, let alone a fiancée. I know absolutely nothing except the date they plan to tie the knot and that they plan a bbq. He didn’t mention her name or anything in the email.
As I wrote back, I realized that he wasn’t sure about what country I was in, nor knew anything about my plans for next year. So it’s not just him, it’s me too.
And finally: I know hearing about other people’s disgusting medical issues is so much fun that people use it as a metaphor for other terrible conversations, but my leg hurts less today but is still red as hell. So likely trip to doctor or hospital tomorrow. (Hospitals here are also clinics and can be just a way to get to see a doctor that day.) I want to go to Berlin and Brittany (and play a concert in Karlsruhe on July 11th) and squeeze in a couple of days in Alsace all before Bastille day, but I don’t know how I’ll have time. Why before Bastille Day? Because I’d like to see it and because Brother Bob (“brother” as in title, not as in same parents) flies in the next day! Yay.
Tag: Celesteh

Today

I got back to Paris yesterday. I’ve been spending most of my time sleeping, as I hadn’t been doing much of it for the last week. I also spent part of today writing music for my August 3rd gig at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco. While I was in the Hague, I went to two of the Sonology final exams. These are concerts, because it’s the conservatory. The last piece on Wednesday night was exceedingly stressful sounding and went on for quite a long time, I think around 17 minutes. t changed very slowly to my ears as it went, but I think by the end, it was less stressed than at the beginning. I felt less stressed than when I went in. Judging by their music, the Sonology students are an angsty lot. I should fit right in. Anyway, somehow, after 17 minutes of stressful music with a possibly calmer ending, I found myself feeling relaxed. So I thought I could write something similarly calming, which I’ll call “Music for Panic Attacks.” I can’t tell if I’ve got the end right because the middle part feels like ball peen hammers pounding on my spine and I had to walk away from it for a while. Um, anyway, you all should come to the concert and I won’t play it unless it actually has a relaxing ending. Otherwise, it’s like some of my political music from last year. I seem to want to write stuff that kind of hurts people. Sorry. Anyway, 32 bit float distortion of high pitches is a lovely way to introduce piercing stress into any piece.

Monday

So upon my arrival in Den Haag, I went right to Sonology where I had no appointment and nobody was there. I emailed a prof who said they were giving final exams and I should come to those. I spent much of the rest of my day wandering the streets of Den Haag. Everything closes on Monday. Everything closes at 5:00. On the other hand, everything is open on Sunday. The next day, my host (actually the host of Cola and I, since we were both there) took us to try the new herring.

Tuesday

Herring

In the middle ages, herring was mostly caught in the North Sea and sent down the Rhine river to Cologne, where it was graded and packed into barrels with salt. From there, trade associations shipped the barrels all over Europe. The Cologne stamp indicated it’s quality. Thus because of trade along the Rhine, and especially fish trade, Cologne was the most important city in what is now Germany. This according to the woman who ironed my hankerchiefs in Cologne and I can think of no greater authority.
Um, anyway, apparently the annual catch of herring is usually in the Spring, but this year it was delayed and the new herring has just arrived. What perfect timing! I did not sample the herring, but Nicole did. When I explained to Sasha that I was a vegetarian and thus would not try the fish, he said, “oh, you’re lucky” with genuine envy or a very very dry delivery.
The herring came on a hotdog bun, covered in onions. To get the taste out of his mouth, he went to get something called “karne milk” (or something similar). It’s basically sour milk. So apparently if you start every morning with a raw fish on a bun covered in raw onions followed by a sour milk chaser, you’d better hope the worst of your day is over.

the North Sea

Cola and I decided to go see the North Sea. He suggested it was not a proper beach and we should got to Delft instead. He also left us the keys and said he was going to Paris. Despite his advice, we persisted in our plans and rode the tram out to the end of the line at the sea.
It’s not overly obvious at the end of the tram line and so not disconcerting, but in the Netherlands, the sea is higher than the country. So you walk up a big sand dune and down a much smaller slope to get to the ocean. It was lovely. Sandy. Full of sea shells. Cold water. Reminded me of Santa Cruz. We walked for a long while along the beach and then turned to the marshes inland. It was not a long walk before we were out of sight and sound of human activity. It maybe took half an hour in all, counting the tram line. Twice away from a city in a short period of time. I’ll get spoiled. We walked for several kilometers and then took Sasha’s advice and rode the tram to Delft.

Delft

You know those white tiles with blue pictures of windmills or boys peeing that middle class americans use as bathroom decorations? Those are all (in concept at least) from Delft. It has old brick buildings, and squares and canals and churches and probably windmills and many many stores selling white tiles with blue pictures of boys peeing onto windmills to tourists, but all of them closed at 5:00. We got dinner and then rode the trolley back to Den Haag to go a final exam.

Final Exams

Because I’m going to the school next year and my ignorance of possible political consequences, I want to be vague about the concerts. Every piece had good moments. Many went on a bit too long (which is normal for student concerts). The first piece of the first concert however, was extremely brilliant. It was called Contact by Jeroen Liebregts. The composer built this thing with florescent bulbs in it, or rather those long buzzy beams that you see in offices and classrooms. All of his beams were near death and thus very buzzy. He attached contact mics to the beams and amplified and filtered them. His piece was a liver realization as the computer stepped through different combinations of filters and on and off lights. The connection between the visual and the sonic was strongly evident. The visual was fascinating, but not overly in front. It was extremely excellent.
As I was putting on my hat to leave after the concert, a person said, “Are you Celeste?” It was only the second time I’ve been recognized from the internet and the first time was Sophie’s ex-girlfriend, which is not exactly from the internets.
Sergio actually recognized me from the weird picture in the corner of my blog. He left a comment a few weeks ago telling me to try PitchShift for my recorder project. Whoah.
I went home and discovered my leg was red and swelling up and became alarmed and blogged. In the morning, I sought aid and then got on a train to Amsterdam. It is less than an hour train ride from Den Haag to Amsterdam and the ticket prices are not high, although many of the tourists are.

Wednesday

Amsterdam

Cola and I went to see the Homomonument. It’s a series of three pink (marble?) triangles embedded into a square near the Anne Frank House. The triangles remember queer victims of the holocaust and other violence past, present and future. As far as I know, it was the first such monument in the world.
The square was full of women in couples, looking at the monument. I realized that a lot of queer women outside of France are much more easily identifiable. They may be more out, or I may not understand French social cues. It is really a relief though, walking down the street and seeing other queers.
The last time I was in Amsterdam was 5 years ago. I got the best haircut of my life in a gay leather hair salon that had several larger-than-life statues of Tom of Finland Characters. There was a sign on the door that said “men only,” but I didn’t see it until I left.
I found the same salon again, although now there is just one Tom of Finland statue. I got a damn good haircut. Finding the same salon was almost as surprising as being recognized from the blog.
Hopped on a train again. Saw more concerts. Went to “coffee shop.” Got home. Nicole began consuming recently purchased item while I checked my email and became very alarmed at a comment on my blog. Took a xanax. Blogged again before it worked (I should not do that).

Honey, I’m Home

The door of the flat opened and Sasha’s husband announced he was home early form his trip to Berlin. We must have looked startled as Nicole was freshly high and I was waiting for the xanax to work.
Yeah, anyway, I calmed down and Nicole sobered up and we had a long and charming chat with him about his days working at Apple in Cupertino. Remember the protest when Apple killed the Newton? (yes you do, you big geek.) He was the guy whose picture you remember from the Mercury News story covering the event. (When is Apple going to bring back the Newton? Never. Alas.)

Thursday

The next morning, we got on a train to Paris and then went to Solène’s concert in the evening, which was perfectly lovely. Her father was there, but she didn’t introduce me for some reason.
You are now up to date on my recent activities, although I still have not blogged everything about Germany because I wasted most of my blogging time being worried about tick diseases. To find out what Sarah Dotie would do, I sent her email and learned that she has had more than three thousand ticks attached to her person at one time. I’m thinking perhaps my WWSDD approach should not be followed 100% of the time.
Tags: Den Haag, Celesteh