Christmas at home

Just a few words about Christmas.

We collected at Mother's house on the 24th—that's me, Brother, and SIL. Brother and SIL spent hours cooking for the next day. I got there later and brought a shitload of wine. I … actually don't remember what we had for dinner the night of the 24. I know we had to improvise something at the last minute. We all joked over having a house full of food and "nothing to eat"—nothing that wasn't already slated for the next day, that is. But we scraped together something. And we had wine to drink—I'd brought plenty, so there was some for that night too. After dinner, Brother and I put up the outside lights along the front edges of the roof.

Dictionnaire d'amour

"I sometimes wished someone would invent a dictionnaire d'amour—a lover's dictionary listing all the weird and wonderful ways in which humans show their love. An inordinate number of men choose to repair things; other people frantically rebuff compliments, and still others stubbornly conceal their love so as not to pester anyone. A dictionary—yes! Of course, it could never be comprehensive."

⸻ from Nina George, The Little Village of Book Lovers, p. 24

I got this book last week, as a Christmas present from Debbie. So naturally I have to wonder, … is "buying someone a book of fiction in which the story is actually narrated by Love" one of these "weird and wonderful ways" that would show up in such a dictionary?

See also choices like this movie here, not to mention our further discussion here or any of the posts that come after it.

          

A year later

A little more than a year ago, I visited Son 1 and Wife in Chapter Two of this long post here, to bring them their Christmas presents and check in. Today I did the same thing. This is the first time I've seen Wife since that visit, and it's close to the first time I've seen Son 1, as well. (He came to town once during the summer for something else and asked if he could park at my apartment because parking was going to be hard to find. We probably exchanged a dozen words—surely no more than two dozen—while he was coming and going and using my bathroom.)

So I looked back at that post before writing this one, to compare and contrast. Sure enough, I can do both.

Paying for Paris

I'm going to post this in real-time, the evening I write it, and not back-date it to go with the rest of the Paris posts. It wasn't really a "theme" during the vacation itself. And it only got resolved in the last few days. So it can sit out here in December as an outlier.

Two weeks in Paris aren't going to be cheap, no matter how you do it. We went in November (not "high season" and therefore cheaper). We stayed in "cheap and cheerful" accommodations in the Quartier Latin, rather than more upscale tourist digs. We didn't go to the Moulin Rouge, or any other expensive entertainment. And still, it … wasn't cheap. Paris never is. 

"Odiosa Ergo Vera"

Just found this on Twitter. I don't know if I believe it, but I love that the author bothered to put it in Latin. (You can find the original here.)

Kulak's First Principle, eh? Fine by me.

Unproductive

I've fallen into a pattern in my days that's really unproductive.

I get up late, because I stayed up too late the night before. Sometimes I'm mildly hung over. That is to say, I'm not badly hung over—not to the point where my head hurts and my mouth feels foul and living is unpleasant. No, not at all. Nothing like that. Just to the point where I'm sluggish, and unimaginative, and uninspired … just to the point where I can't quite muster the gumption to do anything more ambitious that to doomscroll* Twitter.

What's wrong with the Five Mindfulness Trainings?

Last night, the Unitarian Sangha that I belong to recited the Five Mindfulness Trainings. This is something we do every month or two. The Five Mindfulness Trainings are Thích Nhất Hạnh's recasting or interpretation of the Five Buddhist Precepts. They also serve as the entryway into the Order of Interbeing. (See also this link here.) So they are kind of a big deal for the Plum Village Tradition of Buddhism.

Overall, or at a high level, I don't really have a problem with the Five Mindfulness Trainings—that is, if you see them basically as injunctions to be a nice person and don't look too closely at the details. But you all know me by now. When have I been able to avoid looking at the details? And when you subject them to that level of scrutiny, … well … there are issues with them. Problems. Things that don't make sense, or that really should be worded a different way. 

Things that I can't fully agree with.

Now, any member of the Plum Village Tradition will be quick to tell you that the Five Mindfulness Trainings are precepts—often they take this to mean suggestions or advice—and not commandments, strictly speaking. In principle they won't insist that you stick to every jot and tittle; but they will tell you that the closer you can come to abiding by these, the less suffering you will feel in your life and therefore the happier you will be. Well and good. At the same time, I don't feel that most of them want to hear the flaws—the misconceptions or simple errors—that I find in them. So you're going to have to hear them instead.

The fragility of the self-absorbed

This afternoon I saw "Maestro," with Bradley Cooper playing Leonard Bernstein. It's not really a straight biopic (you should excuse the pun), but focuses specifically on his relationship with his wife Felicia … and therefore it shows us something of his many affairs (without cataloguing them or always bothering to give us names). Men and women both, of course, although it looks like the men outnumbered the women. At one point he meets friends on the street in New York: they are a young couple carrying their new baby, at whom Lenny coos and makes suitable noises. Then he bends down as if to address the baby very seriously and says, "You know, I've slept with both your mommy and your daddy!"

I also found myself thinking about the dynamics of having any kind of a relationship with a very self-absorbed person. Lenny appears to ignore Felicia for years; but when she gets sick (she died of cancer in 1978) it hits him like a pile-driver. And I reflected that Wife fought tooth and nail for decades to be "free" of what she saw as my overbearing domination; but when I said "OK fine, I'm going" she crumpled and was utterly lost. It's not an easy dynamic to understand.

Of course, Wife was never a world-famous conductor, either.

It's late, and I can't think of anything insightful to say. So I'll stop here. Maybe I'll think of something more in the next few days. But the comparison did strike me.

          

Why not to bring your whole self to work

Way more articulate than anything I've said on the subject. Agree 100%.

You can find the post on Twitter at this link here.

Failure upon failure

Decades ago, back when I was in school, I thought that "success" meant getting good grades and the approval of my teachers. That belief pretty much guttered out when I left graduate school with a stack of Incompletes, partly because I didn't really want to be there and partly because Wife had a new boyfriend.

Time went on. After a while, I began to think that "Success" meant keeping my marriage together, doing OK in my job, and buying a house. Of course that belief ran aground when I decided I had to leave the marriage, and when we later sold the house.

On cannibalism

I forget whether I ever mentioned this, but last spring Son 1 asked me for $1000 because Wife had stuck him with an unexpected bill on the excuse that she was doing him a favor. I gave him the money but warned him that with it would come a certain amount of advice. There followed an email telling him how to set up a budget (to which I got no response). Several months later I sent him a second email, about how to disentangle his affairs from Wife's, so that if she declares bankruptcy it doesn't pull him down too. (I got no response to this one either.) Finally last night I sent him a third installment:

Some day, the people at your work might offer you a promotion that includes a relocation. Depending on how things are going at home, you might feel obligated to turn it down because if you move to Greenland or Langley or Some-place-I've-never-heard-of then that might be tough for your Mom.

ADVICE: NEVER TURN DOWN A PROMOTION. If you do, chances are that they won't ask a second time: they'll just pass on to the next guy. And if the promotion means moving to Greenland or Langley or Wherever, that's normal in your line of work. And you need to prioritize YOUR life, not someone else's.

Parental failure: fathers and sons

There's a passage in Plato's dialogue Protagoras, from about 319E through 320B or so, where Socrates argues that virtue can't be taught; and as evidence, he points to Pericles—the most successful and accomplished (i.e., "virtuous") politician in Athens at the time—whose sons were widely acknowledged to be worthless. If virtue could be taught, he says, then surely Pericles who was himself so virtuous would have seen to it that his sons learned everything he knew, so they could carry on the family fame into the next generation. But in fact he did nothing of the kind. Therefore virtue must not be teachable.

I assume we are supposed to laugh at this argument, at least a little bit. But part of the humor comes because Socrates's remarks are so believable. We are not so accustomed as Socrates was to the idea that the son of a cobbler will become a cobbler, or that the son of a pilot will become a pilot. But we can all think of men who are great successes, whose sons are failures—or (at the very least) whose sons would be failures if they had to compete with anyone else on a level playing field. Examples like that are all too easy to come by. 

Why is this so? There seems to be a natural drive on the part of sons to get away from their fathers, to distance themselves in some way. So if the father is shrewd and self-controlled (for example), there is a powerful pressure on his sons to be the reverse. In another sense, I'm pretty sure that one reason I married Wife was to use her as an obstacle between me and Father, to keep him somehow at bay. [I think I've written about this somewhere, but I can't find the post to link to it.]

My object all sublime ....

… I shall achieve in time —

To let the punishment fit the crime —

The punishment fit the crime;

And make each prisoner pent

Unwillingly represent

A source of innocent merriment!

Of innocent merriment!

I was talking with Mother today. She's concerned about a lot of the stuff she has accumulated over the years: in the house, stacked up in the garage, and in a storage unit. She was talking about how she might get it cleaned up some day. And then I asked her a question that has been on my mind for a while.

By the time Father died eight years ago, he had for many years been spending a lot of time each day on the computer. Doubtless a lot of this time was spent emailing with old Army buddies, or browsing random shit on the Internet the way I do. But I also know that over the years he wrote a lot. He used to write funny shows every year for his local Rotary club: probably those scripts are still on his computer somewhere. What else might he have written? Did he crank out the Great American Novel before he died? I asked Mother if she had looked through his files … or even, more basically, whether she had the password to open his computer?

Echoes of Kimberly

You've all heard too much about how I've "written a book" under my real name about the stuff that I used to do professionally, but it's still sitting on my hard drive because I can't figure out how to publish it. Almost six months ago, I asked Kimberly Steele to consult her Ogham, to tell me what I ought to do about it. She told me that it is very important that I publish it—"one of your major tests in your life"—"but you have to be very flexible and open to multiple ways of publishing and promoting it: eBook, website, podcast, audiobook, even self-publishing... Nothing should be off the table."

Today I was traveling back home from spending the Thanksgiving holiday with relatives. Brother was driving. And out of the blue, he started talking about my book.

Thanksgiving Day

As I write this, I sit here feeling so full, the way people feel when they say they will never eat again. I'm back at my aunt and uncle's house. The food has been put away, the trash has been taken out, and the dishes have all been washed. The two of them are sitting on different sofas in a dark living room. My uncle is on his phone; my aunt is on her tablet. You remember that I've said they can be quiet.

The big family dinner was at my Other Aunt's house. (I've mentioned her only sporadically; once I called her "Aunt C.") Her long-term boyfriend died of old age a year or two ago; now she's in this big house by herself, with her dog. (That's for half the year. The other half, she has another house in another town.) But the house is great for parties like this one, where we had twenty people spanning three generations all under one roof. 

The party went well. My cousins all acted glad to see me, though at times I wasn't sure quite why. At this point they all live in the same town. They are all part of each other's lives. I swoop in once a year for Thanksgiving and then go away again. What do I bring to the table?

This year I didn't even bring food, because I was scarcely back from Paris before it was time to come here. I didn't have time to plan or make anything. Or at any rate I didn't do it. (Opinions might differ on whether I had the time.)

I was pleased that there were no moments like the one a few years ago (see "Uninvited parenting") where I lurched unasked into parental-style behavior. The kids were energetic, and their play involved a lot of running around and squealing. But I didn't see anyone do anything dangerous. In particular, Stan—the little savage whom I wanted to bend over my knee a few years ago—seems to have learned a better mode of behavior. I don't know what he is like the other 364 days of the year, but then I really don't need to know.

In the end I got to talk for a bit with each of my cousins in turn. They asked after Son 1 and Son 2 and I told them what I know. (That is, respectively, that Son 1 is providing a home for Wife, and that Son 2 is living with Beryl and going to graduate school. I also explained that I don't hear much from them, but why would I expect to?) I told them that Marie and I just got back from Paris, and it was delightful. I asked about their lives and work, and I think I found something intelligent to say to each of them. (I hope!) So I'm not unhappy with the day. 

But somehow I feel a little disconnected from everyone here. I wish I understood why. 

Seeds of doubt

As I noted yesterday, I'm staying with my aunt and uncle for the Thanksgiving holiday. And this morning I found myself briefly discussing the politics of COVID-19 with my aunt.

For years my aunt has identified herself as a "yellow-dog Democrat": one who would vote for any Democrat over any Republican, no matter what. And in general her political positions have been reliably those of the Democratic Party. But she remarked this morning that she had asked herself more than once, "If Donald Trump had won re-election in 2020, would she have trusted the COVID-19 vaccine that came out in 2021?" 

Of course, politically speaking in the USA, Democrats have tended to support the COVID-19 vaccines, and hesitancy or distrust has been expressed mostly by Republicans. But my aunt seemed to recognize that this alignment was in some ways peculiar: "Why  did those of us who believed what our government told us about the disease actually believe it, when we know that our government has lied to us before?"

This is a question I have heard many times from Republicans, when they want to accuse Democrats of hypocrisy on the issue of COVID-19. But I think that hypocrisy might be too simple an accusation. Certainly my aunt realizes that there is some kind of inconsistency here, and it bothers her. In retrospect I wonder if she was trying to elicit a firm statement from me one way or the other, to find out where I stand. If that was her aim, then I hope I evaded her. But I did suggest that it may have been no more than a historical accident that the parties aligned the way they did around the vaccines, and not the opposite way.

It's not a red pill yet, but the conversation did expose seeds of doubt. I think those are healthy, and I'm glad to see them.

__________

P.S.: My own position on the vaccines is ill-formed. I do not have strong opinions pro or con, and the information that I hear is too confusing for me to make sense of. I am intrigued by (and sympathetic to) John Michael Greer's hypothesis, but I don't commit to any specific explanation or account.

          

Silence

I'm spending the week with my aunt and uncle, for the Thanksgiving holiday. Mother, Brother, and SIL are all staying with the other aunt. Both these households are in the same town, as are the households of all my cousins and their kids … basically everyone in the extended family except for me, Mother, Brother+SIL, Son 1, Son 2+Beryl, … and I guess Wife if you still count her. (In other words, this means everyone except those of us named "Tanatu.") But we're here this week: not the boys, that is, and not Wife. The rest of us.

What's remarkable to me is how quiet it is here. My aunt and uncle aren't unsociable. But for the most part they don't chatter needlessly. I talked with my aunt about public affairs for a little while over breakfast this morning. And when we all get together for dinner this evening I'm sure they'll both be part of those conversations too. But in between times, it seems like mostly they talk if there's something that has to be said. Right now my aunt is making a pecan pie in the kitchen while my uncle is cleaning up stuff she no longer needs. She just remarked, "I'll probably need that spatula." I think those were the first words spoken in the last five minutes. Before that I told her to let me know if I could help in any way, and she said "OK." Before that, the two of them coordinated briefly on tonight's dinner. But there hasn't been a lot of conversation.

Watching my aunts split a bill

Last night a bunch of us went out to dinner. This means both my aunts plus my uncle; Mother, Brother and SIL, me, and some of my cousins. The place we chose was cheap and fun. And my aunts made sure to split the bill between them.

I've seen them do this before—come to think of it, this is normal pretty much whenever the family goes out together. If anything the odd part this time was that only my aunts were involved in the split, instead of all the adults (or all the heads of households).

But it puzzles me, just a bit. I know that one aunt is worth millions—by which I mean somewhere over ten million dollars. The other aunt might be worth less, but the house she shares with my uncle is pretty nice and I don't see her economizing on simple things whenever I stay with her. So one way or another they are comfortable. The dinner bill for ten or twelve people (all relatives) was maybe a couple hundred dollars total. Why go to the trouble of splitting it?

Of course the decision is out of my hands: I don't live in the same town, so I'm just a visitor; also, even though I'm over sixty years old, in this company I'm one of the kids because there is a full generation ahead of me (Mother and her siblings). But if I were part of the process, would I play along? Or would I just say, "This is silly; I'll pay it and have done"?

I would want to do the latter. I also know that if I did it too often, I'd start to feel like people were taking advantage of me. I don't know how to make sense of this. It's a puzzle.

Maybe now that I've made a note about it here, that will prompt me to think more about it and come to an answer.  

          

What books did you need?

Just one more of the post-Paris ideas to discuss, and this should be a short one. We're in the home stretch! [Yes, in the real world it is still late in the evening of December 28, 2023.]

After we'd spent a long time over dinner on Day 12, wringing and worrying the topic of "privilege," Marie abruptly asked me, "What books were really important to you when you were a kid? What books did you need to read?"

Was this a non-sequitur? 

Why do we travel, 3

[I'm writing this late in the evening of December 28, but back-dating it to shortly after my and Marie's return from Paris. I hope this won't be too confusing. I also hope that I can finally wrap up this string of post-Paris essays before the New Year … and maybe tonight!]

The morning of Day 4, Marie started musing as we woke up. Why do we travel? She suggested that there is a natural desire to share with others. (As an aside, she added that this is why we condemn misers.) But when it comes to travel, in particular, this means we have a natural desire to meet other people and to interact with them.

So, for example, her memory of the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries from our outing on Day 3 will always be enhanced by her memory of the school group there, and of the teacher gently asking them questions for an hour. (And in fact, by the end of Day 4 I'd had a similar idea about having shared with her the tour of the Clos Montmartre Vineyards.)

Privilege

[I'm writing this on December 27, but back-dating it to shortly after my and Marie's return from Paris. I hope this won't be too confusing. I also hope that I can finally wrap up this string of post-Paris essays before the New Year … and maybe tonight!] 

The evening of Day 12, while Marie and I were having dinner at the Brasserie Balzar, we started talking about boarding school. I no longer remember why. I explained why I think boarding school is a good idea. (As I referenced in the post for that day, see for example this post and maybe this one.) And then Marie told me that my children were very "privileged."

Can I be forgiven for interpreting this word as an attack? Later on Marie said she didn't mean it that way (not as an apology, to be clear, but as a dismissal that everything I'd said for the last half hour was beside the point!). But it feels to me like people use this word a lot these days, and the subtext is always that that privilege is something to feel guilty about, that privilege more or less automatically entails oppression of others. Also, I find that when I discuss boarding schools with anyone, the attitude I face is always that boarding schools are for "rich people"—this means people richer than the person I am talking to (regardless how rich that person might be). No one ever imagines that boarding school might be an option for their children. It is somehow only for Those Others. Of course, by this point in my life I have discovered any number of topics that other me, that make the person I am talking to regard me as fundamentally alien. But few of them—I mean, few of the topics I am still willing to discuss at all—work faster than a discussion of boarding school.

So yes, I took it as an accusation that Wife and I were rich snobs. I know that Marie feels very conflicted about having turned her back on a lucrative career, now that she's involved with me. (Mostly I haven't written about this, but consider for example this post here. Also, I'm pretty sure that her former career would have paid her better than mine ever paid, for what it is worth.) And I could have sworn that I heard echoes of that conflict and that resentment in her choice of the word "privileged."

Political failure (conversation in Paris)

[I'm writing this on December 20 and 21, but back-dating it to shortly after my and Marie's return from Paris. I hope this won't be too confusing. But I assume that in reality nobody is reading this blog anyway, so why not?]

Here was another of our rare discussions of politics. Like this one back in January (which might have been the most recent one before this), it was fueled by alcohol. After exploring the heart of Paris during Day 3, Marie and I had dinner in an Italian restaurant near our hotel and split a bottle of wine. Actually we split a bottle of wine most evenings, but somehow this time I let it get the better of me.

[I should add that my notes for the day were jotted down briefly just before we went to bed, so they are rather scattered. I will do my best to draw them into a coherent narrative, but please be charitable.]

Touching (Themes from Paris but not only ....)

Whenever I'm with Marie, there's a whole dynamic about touching. I haven't written about it before because I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. But it must have been on my mind when I made a list of "ongoing themes from Paris," because I wrote it down. So maybe I can talk about it now.

In an email a week and a half after we got back, in relation to something else altogether, Marie wrote:

Don't remember if I've ever told you, I really like it that you are physically as well as verbally affectionate with me (independent of fucking, for which I KNOW I've expressed appreciation!) But it makes me feel very cherished, when you take my hand or are ready to steady me.

And sure. Naturally I'll put out a hand to steady her on a stairway, or along an uneven road. Naturally I'll take her hand when we are finding our way through crowds, so we don't get separated. (That's just how Debbie and I held hands when we were in Glasgow … well, more or less.) And naturally Marie and I touch from time to time when we are out in public, the way lovers do. The way spouses do. It's a normal part of being together.

But.

Bedbugs (Themes from Paris)

Early in October, almost a month before we were scheduled to leave for Paris, I sent Marie the following information in email:

News reports tell me that Paris is experiencing a surge of bedbugs reported. I'm not quite sure if I want to email our hotel to ask about it—seems like that might start our visit on the wrong foot, somehow. But I did start googling what to do about them. The first two articles I found were these:

Bedbugs and travel: A simple thing to do when you get to your hotel room. (slate.com)

Paris Bed Bugs: Everything You Need to Know | Condé Nast Traveler (cntraveler.com)

Five hours later (the same day) she replied:

Stairs (Themes from Paris)

[I'm writing this on the evening of December 18, but back-dating it to just after our return from Paris. I hope this won't be too confusing. But I assume that in reality nobody is reading this blog anyway, so why not?]

Several times in my travelogue from Paris, I alluded to topics that I promised to cover later. So now, squeezed into the few days between our return and my trip to visit family for Thanksgiving, let me say a few words about some of those topics.

Day 14: Departure

Our alarm went off at 5:15. We picked that time to get us to the airport in time for my flight. (Ironically, it turned out that my flight was delayed, so in retrospect we could have slept a little later.) Since we had packed the day before, our morning was simple: shower, dress, settle the bill, and leave. We walked five minutes or so to a station where we could catch the RER-B to the airport. Even that early, the train was surprisingly full; though, in fairness, most of the other riders looked like they were headed towards very working-class jobs, and got off before we did.

I carried Marie's suitcase and she carried mine, because—like Debbie in Scotland*—Marie had packed significantly more than I had, so her suitcase was significantly heavier.   #chivalry 

Day 13: At ease, the Quartier Latin with books

Finally, a day with nothing on the agenda. So we spent it at leisure.

We strolled down to Shakespeare & Co., the famous English-language bookstore. We browsed, and bought some books. When we were done it threatened rain, so we took our books back to the hotel to keep them dry. While we were there, we checked into our flights for the next day. For a few brief moments, while we were safely inside, it rained very heavily.

Day 12: Père Lachaise and a lot more rain

The tomb of Abelard and Heloise.

By this point we had seen most of the sights on our "Must-Visit" list. But there were a couple more places that we wanted to visit, if we could. One of these was the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise. Now, neither of us was desperate to visit the grave of Jim Morrison. But Marie wanted to make a point of it, because I had mentioned once upon a time that cemeteries can be a peaceful place to while away a spare hour—so she wanted to "watch me in a cemetery." Also her guidebook recommended the #69 bus route as particularly scenic, and that route stops right next to the cemetery.

So we took the Metro (actually the RER-C) out to the Champ de Mars, to pick up the #69 at its origin. We had a fairly long wait, but since we had nowhere else to be instead that wasn't a problem. The morning was foggy, and we watched the Eiffel Tower vanish into the fog and periodically reappear. When the bus arrived, we rode it across town to the cemetery.

The rain was intermittent all day, but it started up once we got inside the cemetery. Also it turns out that the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise is the size of a small city.* So we rapidly gave up the fancy of visiting the graves of prominent people. We found the tomb of Abelard and Heloise (pictured), because it was near to the entrance. We walked past the tombs of a lot of ordinary people, and tried to guess at the family situations that their grave sites hinted at. I climbed some stairs that Marie didn't feel like daring, to see a particularly gaudy tomb that turned out to belong to Elisabeth Alexandrovna Stroganoff.** And shortly after that we agreed we were getting soaked, and maybe it was time to do something else. 

Day 11: Versailles

This was our last long day (unless you count the flight home). But I'm not sure how much there is to tell. We took the train out to the town of Versailles, and walked through the palace. We saw the royal apartments, the Chapel, the Hall of Mirrors—all that stuff. If you've been, you know what it was like. And if you haven't, you can find enough information online to give you a really good idea. I guarantee you can find better photos than any of mine.

Before we went, I warned Marie that there would be a lot of walking. For starters, I said, the train station is more than a kilometer from the palace, as shown on on the map. Then I added, But don't worry. It won't look that far. The Palace and Grounds are so big that the kilometer you are walking in to get there looks like no more than a driveway.

Day 10: Maison Poincaré and lots of rain

Today, the next day, was a lot easier. (We had only one more intense day but this was not it. That was tomorrow.)

We woke up tired. (No surprise.) After breakfast, we walked to the Maison Poincaré, a brand-new museum that had opened only about a month before, under the auspices of the Institut Henri Poincaré. Since the Institut is part of the Sorbonne and our hotel was in the Quartier Latin, it was in walking distance.

Day 9: Day trip to Mont Saint-Michel and nearby towns

The next day we got up early, and left the hotel before breakfast. In fact we triggered some kind of alarm, and the man at the desk asked if we were checking out. Non, and non. But we had to leave early to catch a train. [This was a long day, so I'll put the jump break right up here at the beginning.]

Day 8: Le Marais

This is another day briefly told. We wandered through the Le Marais district, stopping for a while at the very pleasant Place des Vosges. We found lunch in one of several restaurants in the Marché des Enfants Rouges. Then we spent the afternoon in the Centre Pompidou, looking at work that was solemnly alleged to be "art." (For the most part, I was not impressed by the work on display in the Pompidou.) We got back "home" earlier than we had the day before, so we had about an hour in the Jardin du Luxembourg before closing time.

           

Day 7: Orsay, Rodin, Invalides

La Vérité, by Jules Joseph
Lefebvre, on display in the
Musée d'Orsay

We spent all morning at the Musée d'Orsay, looking at Classicist, Impressionist, and post-Impressionist paintings.

For lunch we went to Cinq Mars, a restaurant just a couple blocks from the museum. When we walked in, they asked if we had a reservation. No we didn't, but it was early enough in the lunch hour that they gave us a table anyway—and after that, there was never any pressure for us to hurry up and leave. The food was delicious. Also, everyone in the restaurant besides us conversed in French, so it was clearly not a place for tourists. Go there, if you get a chance. 

Then we walked to the Musée Rodin. We strolled through the gardens and the ground floor. I walked upstairs as well, but Marie did not join me.

Then we walked to the Invalides, where we visited the tomb of Napoleon. There was some kind of delegation of NATO brass visiting at the same time, and we tried to stay out of their way (while also checking all the international uniforms and trying to guess their provenance).

When we got back "home" to the Quartier Latin, we spent ten minutes in the Jardin du Luxembourg before closing time rolled around and the police pushed everyone out. So we walked up a random street about a block or so, to a bistro where we got drinks and then dinner. Once again, the food was wonderful; once again, the clientele spoke French and not English. (The waitress tried to speak English to us to be polite; but when I asked her to tell us about one of the desserts, she had to begin with "Vous parlez français?")  

          

Day 6: Orangerie and Louvre

Monday should have been easy, because we visited only two places … right? Hah! Those two places were the Orangerie and the Louvre, with a pleasant stroll through the Tuileries in-between. By dinner time we were exhausted and our feet hurt. But by golly we sure did see a lot of amazing art!

I'll post no photos for this day. All the photos I took have Marie in them (which would ruin my efforts at anonymization). And you can look up online a better image of the Mona Lisa than I got with my crappy phone-camera. (My picture shows Marie standing next to the painting, but the Mona Lisa itself is blurry.) 

Day 5: Eiffel Tower, Seine, rainstorms, and Bach

The Olympic clock, on the pier where we met our boat tour.

We planned Sunday as a light day. For breakfast we picked up croissants at La Maison d’Isabelle and coffee at the café next door. Then we tried to take the Metro to the Eiffel Tower, but that exit was blocked. We got off at the next exit, walked back, and found our way blocked by a marathon or relay race. We later learned that this was the Ekiden race, a relay marathon for people of multiple abilities. I'd had no idea there would be such a thing, so it was fun to discover and then pick our way around it.

Our next stop was the Eiffel Tower. We walked around the base and took some pictures, but neither of us was too interested in taking the elevator up high. So from there we walked down to the piers along the Seine, and picked up a boat tour up and down the river. The tour was fun, if a little cheesy. From there we strolled down the Champ de Mars. Our plan was to visit the Hôtel des Invalides, but a sudden downpour changed our minds., We ducked inside a convenience store to buy lunch, and then made our way back to the Quartier Latin in time for a performance of Bach by candlelight at the Église Saint-Éphrem-le-Syriaque. Marie cried during this performance, too. Afterwards we walked one block to a restaurant where we had dinner, and then another couple of blocks back to our hotel where we planned our itinerary for Monday.

            

Day 4: Montmartre—coffee and art, vineyards and wine

Our fourth day may take a little longer to describe, though again I will postpone any account of our conversations till later. Today we visited the neighborhood of Montmartre.

First stop was Café Lomi, a coffee shop one of us had read about in one of our travel books. We took the Metro to Montmartre, and then walked several blocks through some neighborhoods that looked very different from the ones we'd seen till now. All the restaurants advertised either that their food was halal, or else that it was African and Antillean. When we got to Café Lomi, we could tell right away that everyone there was young and cool … except us, of course. We ordered coffee and scones.

Next we made our way by subway and bus to Sacré-Cœur. There was a long line to get into the basilica, and it was raining. But this was the plan, so we stood in line. When we finally got in, services were in progress. We circumambulated the chapels around the perimeter as quietly as we could—just us and the million other tourists who had been let in at the same time—and then discussed whether to climb the steps to the top. There were 292 steps with no bannister; also we had an appointment in the early afternoon, and it was raining. Marie was plainly not about to chance it. (I'll write later about the role of stairs on this trip.) I did the math and decided there was no way to make the time work. So we passed on the steps to the top.

Day 3: The heart of Paris

The next day is quickly told, though we had some long conversations that I'll take up again later, after finishing the travelogue. We started by visiting the Musée de Cluny-Musée National du Moyen Âge, which was only a couple of blocks from our hotel. Marie spent close to an hour in the room with The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. A group of young students was visiting the exhibit at the same time, so partly Marie was listening to the teacher explain the tapestries: how they were made, and what they symbolized. Marie told me later that part of the time she was in tears, though she tried to hide it from me. She never said quite what it was that made her cry, but I believe part of it was that all her life she had read about these places and studied these artifacts—and now she was actually here, and the artifacts were actually there right in front of her.

Day 2: Avenue des Champs-Élysées

Our first full day in Paris, I had planned for us to stroll along the Champs-Élysées, but first Marie wanted to see something called a "Boomforest." From the maps it looked like there was something of the sort just a little farther on, so I routed us out on the Metro to Porte Maillot with the idea of coming into town from there. We wandered around for an hour, seeing lots of neighborhoods but nothing that looked like a forest. Finally Marie described in a little more detail what we were looking for, and we found it on an embankment of the Boulevard Péripherique. Marie admired the planting, and we decided to move in towards the heart of town.

We didn't get far before deciding it was time for lunch, so we ducked into a place on the main road that didn't look too touristy. It was a good choice, too: the rest of the clientele were clearly locals (many seemed to be construction workers) and the food was very good. (In general we ate well on this trip.) What's more, there was a television on inside the restaurant which told us about the weather. We had already noticed strong winds while walking around; what we learned from the television report is that we were experiencing the fringe edges of Tempête Ciarán, which was at that moment devastating spots along the Atlantic Coast. 

Day 1: Arrival

Where do I start? In some ways the run-up to this trip was very similar to the run-up to my trip to Scotland earlier this year. I spent a lot of time making lists and buying supplies. Also—unlike the trip to Scotland—I spent time planning our schedule and buying tickets in advance for all the sights we wanted to see. Many of these venues now require not only a ticket but a reservation for a specific date and time. So I worked out a schedule with Marie, and then spent several hours booking us into one after another.

On the other hand, when the day of my departing flight came (October 31), I don't remember anything like the levels of anxiety that I felt before my flight to Glasgow. Maybe that's because I had just finished an international trip a few months before, while my last international trip before Scotland was in 2019. Maybe it's because Scotland was brand-new to me, while this was my fourth trip to Paris. Whatever the reason, I got myself to the airport without too much tsuris, and clambered aboard my flight. It was a nonstop to Paris, so I didn't even have to worry about changing planes.

Marie and I had scheduled our flights so that they landed within half an hour of each other, and they were allocated to the same terminal. We figured this would make it easy to meet up. But Terminal 2 at Charles de Gaulle Airport is enormous, and the gates are widely separated. What's more, my flight was allocated to the international gates since I was flying directly from the United States. Marie had to change planes in Amsterdam, so her flight was treated as somehow more like a domestic flight. We collected our bags and cleared Customs, and were still in different places. Fortunately we were in touch by cell phone, and realized this. Marie asked at an Information desk how to find me, and I made sure to stand still so that she wasn't hunting a moving target. After a little while we found each other. The next step was to buy Navigo passes so that we could hop on and off busses and subways; this meant standing in line for well over an hour, but it was an essential step. And then finally we could take the train into town, to the Quartier Latin.

From there, in a sense, the day was remarkable only for how well it went according to plan. We got off the train at our stop, found our hotel, and checked in. We walked around the neighborhood for a little while, then got some dinner and went to bed. Even so, Marie was pinching herself every so often to remind herself, "I'm really in Paris!" It was sweet.

      

           

Writing about France

NOTE: I'm writing this three weeks later than I am posting it, on Wednesday, November 22.

You remember that Marie and I were going to Paris. Well, we went. I think I'll handle this the way I handled writing about my trip with Debbie to walk the West Highland Way: first, a quick resumé of what we did each day, posted on the day we did it; and then maybe a couple of posts about thoughts that came up during the time. It feels like I won't have as many of those as I did with Debbie—maybe I wasn't as thoughtful this trip, or maybe it's something else. Maybe it's just that I spent more time by myself in Scotland, and so had more time to mull. Anyway, these posts will follow the same structure as before, and therefore will be posted on the day they are relevant (not the day I actually happen to be writing them.)

Meanwhile, I will post in real time anything unrelated to the trip to Paris—for example, this post here which I posted yesterday.

          

"Can't"—part 2

A while ago—gosh, it looks like it's been more than nine years already—I wrote a speculation about why Wife insists so devoutly on her illnesses and her incapacity. I said she must be getting something from seeing herself as weak.

Just this evening I read an article by the School of Life ("The Upsides of Being Ill") which proposes much the same thing. This article goes so far as to suggest, in fact, that every illness has a psychological upside, because it protects us from some realization we'd rather not face. Or at any rate the article suggests that we would do well to ask ourselves whether this is the root cause every time we get sick, as a way to keep honest with ourselves. It can be a kind of discipline, for the sake of moral and intellectual hygiene (at the very least).

So then I suppose that (rather than stopping with a discussion of Wife) I also have to ask myself … what benefit do I get out of compulsively reading Twitter? And while I recently stopped drinking for 30 days in a row, what benefit do I get when I start up again?

          

On lying, part 12

So it appears that Nature published an article a couple weeks ago under the title, "Deception is associated with reduced social connection." (You can download a PDF of the article here.) The conclusion includes such gems as:

"Our findings suggest that learning to engage in honest conversations—even when they may be difficult or uncomfortable—may provide an avenue for improving social relationships and well-being, more generally."

"Dishonesty, it seems, is detrimental to the sender’s well-being—breeding distrust and diminishing social connection."

"Findings underscore the consequences of deception in social life, even when undetected, and provide support for the old adage that honesty is the best policy."

It even comes with charts.

Well it's certainly nice to know. I'm pretty sure this is what I was trying to tell Wife for years. "Dishonesty … is detrimental to the sender's well-being"? Yup. I discussed that here. (Well, and for example here too, and other places.) "Honest conversations—even when … difficult or uncomfortable—may … [improve] social relationships"? That's exactly what I was saying here. And I'm pretty sure Plato and Aristotle got to the same conclusion long before I did.

In other breaking news, the best bait for mice is cheese.

          

So it's not just me?

Twitter says, apparently it's NOT just me. That's very reassuring.

     

The empty table

A while ago—maybe it was last week—I subscribed to The Daily Dad emails, from Ryan Holiday. It's not like I thought I was going to get advice I could use in a practical sense, since the boys both moved out years ago. But fatherhood is a subject that I acquired a lot of opinions about over the years, so I thought I'd like to see what Holiday had to say about it.

Last Tuesday—when I started writing this post that was still "yesterday" but I see it is now after midnight so let's call it "the day before yesterday"—the Daily Dad email was on the subject "This Is How To Hold Them To You." The idea was that you should be encouraging and supportive while your children are young, not an asshole or a martinet, so that when they are adults they'll still want to spend time around you. Fine, that makes sense. And while I certainly didn't hit 100% on that scale, I think I did OK. Is that all? 

But then he introduced another concept (one that linked to another essay, in fact) and it made me think about the topic in a little more depth.

You say you don’t want to lose them, that you want to see them, that you want the crowded table. But what do your actions say? How are they making your kids feel? Are they making your table an inviting place they can be themselves? If not, then maybe it’s time to let things go. Admit you’re wrong. Apologize. Otherwise you will have no one to blame but yourself for your empty table.

Twitter talks about violent porn

Here's a topic I discussed … what was it? Twelve years ago? In this post here. And now someone has taken it up on Twitter. (Excuse me, I guess I'm supposed to call it X now.)

Here's a link to the initial Twitter post. The author spells out her basic point in the first four entries, and then it becomes a discussion.

How to know your will

I can't believe I never posted this story before. But a quick search proves that I haven't. So here goes.

A couple days ago, I read a remark by John Michael Greer that he made three years ago, in the middle of a discussion about training the will. (I probably read it back then too, but in the moment this discussion was referenced from something more recent.) Anyway, leaving the context aside, what he said was: "You always do act in accordance with your will -- just not always in accordance with your conscious will."

And suddenly I was reminded of a Full Moon ritual put on by Wife and a couple other members of her coven, some 36 or 37 years ago. One of the young men (later ordained as Sun-Bear) drew the lot to serve as Priestess, so the Lady was invoked into him during the Aspect. (For a rough overview of the Full Moon ritual, see this post here. At the ritual I'm describing now, I was not the one to do the invocation.)

"Auxiliary backup parent"

I got a call from Son 2 today. He explained that he and Beryl have been fixing up their space so that they can accommodate overnight guests. And he invited me to come visit sometime. Not today, exactly [and that's fine because he lives at least an eight-hour drive from here!], but sometime when it's convenient.

It was a lovely invitation. I thanked him multiple times for it. And I have spent the rest of the day disgruntled.

Maybe it was partly because he started the call by explaining that he had just been talking to Wife, and so he figured sure, what the hell, why not call me? I forget his exact words, but somehow or other he said that of course I'm the "auxiliary backup parent," but he was in an expansive mood so he called me too. (I don't remember the overall remark, but I'm certain of those three words.) And later, as he was explaining how they have fixed up the house they're in, he mentioned that they invited Wife to come visit for Thanksgiving, Son 1 to come visit sometime in the fall to go shooting, and Beryl's brother to visit them over Christmas. And then, he said, he was left wondering, "Now who am I forgetting …?"

Very likely some of this was meant as a joke. Maybe even most of it. But of course it struck me kind of hard because it doesn't feel like a joke. Not really. 

• I've written about how I feel out of touch with the boys' lives. (See for example this post here. I feel like I've written about it in other places too, but I can't find them right now.) 
• I've written about feeling jealous that Wife talks to them a lot more than I do—and of course she is actually living with Son 1. (See for example this post from ten whole years ago, or this one that is a lot more recent.)

And Son 2's remarks re-triggered all those feelings again.

I'm writing this post because I want to force myself to think this through, instead of just reacting to the emotions.

So let me think.

Does everyone hate family life?

Fifteen years ago, I wrote a post arguing that monogamy is an artificial social institution like democracy: "unnatural" in the sense that it doesn't respond to the tug of immediate impulse, but superior to impulse because it solves some of the problems that unfenced impulse creates.

Now earlier this week I saw on Twitter a post quoting from a new book* that appears to argue that family life itself is unnatural, and that really nobody much likes it (neither men nor women) … at any rate not compared to the life of immediate impulse. The quoted selection goes on to say that the reason traditional societies feature patriarchal privilege is that this privilege is a bribe to men to encourage them to settle down in households. The reality, says the author, "isn't that men seek by nature or education to dominate wives or children, but that men simply don't care."

Really? I don't know … there were good days when I was glad to have a home and a wife and a couple of kids. Notwithstanding all the destructive chaos that was ultimately unleashed, I do remember that. (It didn't last, of course.)

Maybe I'm just easygoing. Or easily bribed. 

__________

* Costin Alamariu, Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy, Independently published (September 15, 2023)        

               

Nobody cares about rights until they want to DO something

A few days ago, I saw a post on Twitter from CatGirl Kulak defending "Lost Cause" historiography. In case that term isn't immediately transparent to you, the "Lost Cause" is an interpretation of the American War Between the States (1861-1865, also called the Civil War, or by other names) which argues that the South was justified in seceding and that the war was not primarily about slavery. Lost Cause historians often argue that the South was driven to secede in order to protect its "way of life," and in particular that the southern states were ticklish on the question of "states' rights"—rights which were already becoming so infringed by a tyrannical and centralizing government in Washington, D.C. that separation was the only way to preserve them.

CatGirl Kulak's argument is that the historians who developed the Lost Cause interpretation were the ones who had direct access to surviving participants of the war, and so could question them. She argues further that the current generation of historians (who reject the Lost Cause interpretation pretty universally) are all Marxists, so what do they know? It's the kind of argument that sounds good until you think about it for a minute. Yes, the Lost Cause historians were closer to the action than we are today; they were also, to a man, Southern. And surely it is only natural that defeated Southerners—especially those who lived so close to the war that they still felt the shame of defeat—should try to put the best possible face on the choice to secede. As for protecting the Southern "way of life," already before the war it was well understood on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line that the critical, fundamental difference between the Northern and Southern ways of life lay in the South's "peculiar institution"—namely, slavery.

But the main point I want to make has to do with the topic of "states' rights," and it is a point far more general than the specific argument over Civil War historiography. It is simply this: Nobody in real life cares tuppence about the details of their legal rights until they actually want to do something!

"Neopagan disability cult"?

A few days ago I was reading John Michael Greer's latest weekly blog post—plus the comments, which are always valuable—and in replying to one comment he made a passing reference to something he called the "Neopagan disability cult." Someone asked him what he meant, and he explained as follows:

Pro tip from Twitter

I'm pretty sure when Scott Adams posted this he meant it as a political remark. Given what's been in the news lately, it probably has to do with the allegations of bribery against President Biden. But it caught my attention because this was always and consistently my experience with Wife! With her affairs. With everything else. This was always her go-to defense.

Or else she'd ask me what evidence I had. Then she'd give me a carefully-tailored alibi to account for exactly that evidence. After a while I caught on to the game, and stopped answering her questions. This made her accuse me of jumping to conclusions unfairly, but it was easier than playing the game over and over.

On the one hand, it was exhausting. On the other hand, I know Adams is right about what he says here.