October in Paris

I think the secret of my apartment building -- the reason it's called October Mansion -- is that the entire structure is actually carved from one giant piece of amber, and when the angle is right -- beginning on the first of October -- it's lit from within by an astonishing warm golden glow, as though we all lived in a bottle of really good brandy and swam ecstatically through its light. Sometimes, just at dawn, you can see the faint skeletal shadow of a trapped insect's wing throwing its frail mesh across the floor, magnified through the lens of your kitchen wall.

I don't know what happens in November (apart from my birthday, ahem) -- I suspect the light moves and the building seems like dull brick and opaque stone for another year. So if you'd like to see Paris in October, plan your trips now. If you don't have a private jet (and we can't all be grumpy bastards), my good friend B. points out that the Number 14 bus goes right by Paris.

Greatest.kids.evaaaar

I met grumpy bastard's (see above) Dogkids the other day. While he and their mother smoked and talked philosophy on the deck, musing over the star-glittered view of the Gorge, the kids and I played what I have dubbed Speed Hide n' Seek. This involves a small child shouting random numbers while staring directly at you and running full-tilt in your direction while you "hide". Each round lasts approximately fifteen seconds. Then it's your turn. Then it's their turn. And so on. We made occasional forays onto the deck to make sure they weren't getting too laid-back.

It reminded me again that the only thing I'm sad about in my parents' move to Gibsons is that I have no kids to take to their house. it's a great house, not very far from the water, and I have so many good memories of that place as a kid that I want someone else to experience it. I like being there, and seeing them, but there's a missing generation of screaming happy hungry people, and somehow I feel the lack most when I'm there.

I don't know if my brother plans to have kids. I sort of hope so, because I decided a long time ago that I wasn't, and, barring an act of Dog--

Hmm, that's an odd image.

Anyway, no kids for (or at least from) me.

--rf

his very own meme

I forgot to say: this morning the streets around Paris were sunk in fog, and I went down to the coffee shop to watch the city form itself again out of the haze. I love fog. The world looks the way it feels; comprehensible to a short distance and then full of confusion and mystery.

Okay, blogmeme. Because trivia about your friends is Just So Interesting.

Top-Rated Songs on My ITunes at Work: (all 5 stars)

Brand New Love - Sebadoh
Clever Not Beautiful - Hawksley Workman
Dance of the Seven Veils - Liz Phair
Ocean Breathes Salty - Modest Mouse
3rd Planet - Modest Mouse
Papa Was a Rodeo - Magnetic Fields
The Night You Can't Remember - Magnetic Fields
Loverman - Nick Cave
Red Right Hand - Nick Cave
If Your Kisses Can't Hold the Man You Love - Rasputina
Saline the Salt Lake Queen - Rasputina
Brand New Key - Rasputina
Book Smart, Street Stupid - Sarah Slean
Hold On - Tom Waits
I Hung My Head - Johnny Cash
The Big Ones Get Away - Buffy St. Marie

* * *

And now you know pretty much all there is to know about me.

(Except that I have a big backlog of not-yet-listened-to gift music from Various Artists.) (Michili and grumpy bastard being my main Wells of Cool.) (And if someone else didn't have it, but I like it, it isn't showing up here, obviously, and apologies to PJ Harvey, who I know is devastated. She thought we were so close.) (And Tom Waits wonders where the rest of his albums are.) (See, Tom, I depend mostly on the Kindness of Others for my good music, so my ITunes rocks and my actual CD collection blows.) (Which is how I came to actually hear the Sebadoh song for the first time today, and how I lost all the flesh from my bones in a slow blast of radiant dissolution, tears leaking from my melting eyes, mouth frozen in a gape of joy for the infinite moment before I crumbled into dust.)

--rf