The Frogmarch

"I've got to pull up my stakes and roll, man." --Jean-Jacques Libris de Kerouac

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Apologies to Kenneth Patchen


THE MURDER OF TWO MEN BY A YOUNG KID WEARING LEMON-COLORED GLOVES
Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Now.


Our visas have been approved!
The big silver bird awaits!
Looking at 3/24 for the move date...details forthcoming.

V. has been watching the winter olympics each night after Boog goes to bed. Every time a male French athlete appears onscreen, she asks me what I think of his name. Fabien? Antoine? Serge? No disrespect to our downhill-skiing overlords, but I can't picture naming The Tadpole any of those things; they have a certain please-beat-me-up quality to them. Maybe an Irish name isn't so nonsensical for an Asian kid born in France.

(the picture is one of the results of a Google Image search for "Fabien". Many of the others were apparently gay porn. Note to self: Clear out browser cache, stat.)

Monday, February 13, 2006

Monkey Surrenders to Cheese

For the past few weeks, I've been working my way through the cheese section at the Harris-Teeter. Not the type of selection we'll find at a Lyon fromagerie, obviously, but not bad for a grocery store in a small town in North Carolina. I just don't want to come off as a complete philistine once we get to France.

My findings thus far:
I like cheese.
I like most cheeses.
Morbier cheese smells like feet. No, feet with jungle rot. I'm running the air purifier next to where I was sitting when I opened it. V is insisting I eat the rest of it outside.

(No, we haven't heard back about our visas yet.)

Friday, February 03, 2006

No Place in Particular


Once while driving a truckload of furniture across the New Mexico desert (long story), I was struck by the thought that any of my surroundings--spectacular mesas, rock formations, cliffs, canyons--would be a major tourist attraction if (by act of mischievous or bored god) it were picked up and transplanted into Piedmont North Carolina. But in New Mexico...it's just what you see from the parking lot of a Texaco off I-40 near Gallup.

This picture isn't of any particular attraction in Lyon. I actually took it out back of some sort of technical high school on the hillside below Fourviere, where I was shortcutting straight downhill from the cathedral rather than taking the crazy switchbacked medieval-era cobblestone streets back down into the old city. But it struck me as very beautiful and very French somehow, the kind of place where people would have outdoor weddings if it were back home in Chapel Hill (and if it were June rather than late November). But here? There were some high school kids hanging around smoking cigarettes, and I believe they may have actually snorted at the dumbass touriste Anglo as I snapped a picture.