And courtesy of Marcus:  the famous sofa-baignoire:

I was pretty skeptical when I first sat down on the thing—there’s no back cushioning whatsoever, so one leans back against the side of the tub.  The odd thing is, though, that it works; the angle of the tub is exactly right for leaning back, the narrowness of the tub makes the sofa less deep than most, so relatively shorter folks like myself can sit all the way back comfortably, and the seat cushion was a great combination of firm and cushiony.

Either that or I was just so jet-lagged I’d have fallen asleep on a pile of bricks.  But it’s still a pretty groovy piece of furniture.

(By the by, the four small framed pieces over the sofa-baignoire are Marcus’s.  Alas, the majority of his work in the show is not contained within this shot.  About which work, more shortly.)

Yes, I returned to Claremont eight days ago, after a fabulous trip through Paris and Tours.  Yes, I’ve been meaning to post every day since I got back, but have been massively unable to do so, due to one crisis and another.

And yet, here I am, on a Monday night, when… aren’t I supposed to be in class right now?

Why, yes, I am.

Instead I’m at home.  In bed.  With the laptop.

And what appears to be an incipient case of the chicken pox.

And, I guess, plenty of time to get caught up here.  More soon.

Returned to Paris last night, and will head toward the airport shortly for the long trek home.  I’ll post more either from Houston or from home.  It’s been a great trip, of course, and there are more stories to tell, but I’m ready to get back into the end-of-semester fray.  I’m a little alarmed that Continental is already saying that my flight will be delayed, but I guess that foresight on their part could be considered a good thing.

More soon.

What of Wednesday I spent in Paris was mostly spent in the post-travel fog I always find myself in; once I got to Marcus’s apartment, I showered, and then he and I headed out toward the gallery where he was that evening having a vernissage of a new group show he’s in.  We ate some quick sushi, and then he worked on last details for the show, while I sat on this strange but lovely sofa made out of an old claw-footed bathtub and tried not to fall asleep.  Once the opening opened, and folks started coming through, I spent some time attempting to chat with a few of Marcus’s more patient friends, who were very sweet to me, by and large, about my rotten French.  (I have decided that I have the vocabulary of a 7-year-old—which may in fact be over-generous.  But the good news is that I’m no longer paralyzed by the embarrassment that made it impossible for me to speak in another language; I figure, hey, at least I’m trying, even if I suck.) I fully expected that I was going to collapse around 8 pm that night, but surprisingly, we were at the gallery until 11, and I didn’t get to sleep until nearly 1 am.  And then woke up at 6 am, of course, worried about my next round of travel.

So I made my way from Paris to Tours yesterday, blessedly without incident, which has restored my faith in my ability to travel on my own.  Marcus’s apartment to the Métro, the 11 to Chatelet, the 4 to Montparnasse.  Picked up my train tickets.  Had a coffee.  Boarded the train.  Negotiated all of the above entirely in French, I’m happy to say, and no one shot me the “poor stupid American, but at least she’s trying” look, so I think I must be improving a bit.

One lovely note from the Métro:  throughout the lines I rode, there were massive posters advertising baby clothes at a chain store I’m familiar with but have temporarily forgotten the name of (like H&M, but not—C&G, perhaps?).  Anyhow, one such ad featured a very small boy who could, for €9.95, “s’habiller cool.” In one station, somone had written across the lower half of the poster, quite large, “moins que 2 ans et déjà consommateur.” I like a country with anti-capitalist graffiti; makes me continue to feel better about my recent consumer-card detox.

On the TGV (which does, as promised, move with très grande vitesse), I read the first half of a grad student of mine’s masters thesis, which is appropriately on travel media—guidebooks, television travel shows, internet sites, and the like.  It was fascinating to read this while completely dizzied with travel, myself, and while thinking about the travelogues I intended to write.

[The following was written on the Powerbook in Paris at 6 am today, and is being transcribed in an internet cafe in Tours now.  I’m not sure how much posting I’ll actually wind up doing from here; the cafe is fine, and darned conveniently located, but I’d completely forgotten about the AZERTY keyboards here.  Typing is really painful when those few letters aren’t where they’re supposed to be.  Please forgive any strange looking typos; I’m trying to catch them, but it’s hard.]

After a sleepless night on the plane—I’m constitutionally incapable of sleeping on command, no matter how luxurious the circumstances; if my body says it’s only five in the afternoon, and if there are the least number of distractions around me, I’m wide awake—I managed to navigate my way from Charles de Gaulle to my pal Marcus’s apartment with only a few hitches.  Those few were, of course, not insignificant, and one of them reminds me how much easier it is to travel when somebody’s got your back, literally.

Of course, in my jet-lagged exhaustion (je souffre de la décalage horaire, I learned last night), I’m dwelling on the few things that hqve gone wrong thus far, beating myself up for my stupidity, and so I’m hoping that getting this into writing will stop the little voice in my head that just won’t let it go.

The first thing that went wrong was this: After having successfully negotiated Charles de Gaulle without a hitch, and after managing to purchase my RER ticket with no problem; I completely, stupidly forgot that whole French put-the-ticket-in-the-machine and take-it-out-again thing.  Most particularly, I forgot the you-need-your-ticket-in-order-to-leave part.  And I sleepily marched right on through the turnstile and left my ticket there.  So, of course, when I arrive at Chatelet to transfer to the Métro, I can’t get out through the turnstile.  In order to leave, I need a ticket.  A Métro ticket will do.  But all the points-of-sale for tcikets are on the other side of the gate, which I need a ticket to get through.  The good news is that I was able to use my limited French and my general American cluelessness to persuade someone to help me out; a somewhat disgusted looking man put me and my suitcase in front of him and pushed us both through as he left.  So I was then able to purchase my Métro tickets and continue the journey relatively without incident.

Except that—and this is the real source of the voice in my head which warns me that traveling alone when massively sleep-deprived may not be a good idea—when I arrived at Marcus’s apartment, I discovered that the back bottom pocket on my computer backpack (the same pocket I’m forever zipping up on R’s backpack, one that’s apparently easy to forget) was open.  The good news is that, as the plane was landing, I’d already gone into that pocket and taken my wallet out of it; putting it in my pocket for ease of access and safekeeping.  All that had remained in that pocket were my keys—still there, happily—and a small change purse, which was gone.

So I don’t entirely know what happened.  It’s almost certain that I simply left the pocket unzipped after taking my wallet out, and the change purse could have fallen out on the plane or anywhere along the way.  Or, which seems all-too-likely, someone somewhere snagged it.  Whatever.  I feel terminally stupid, either way.

The good news is that what has, in either case, gone missing is a small pouch of U.S. change—and mostly pennies, at that.  But the case also served a second purpose for me, which was as the carrier of all those miscellaneous cards one carries as a card-carrying member of American consumer society:  a small stack of my business cards, sure, but also my Continental frequent flyer card, my Sam’s Club card, my video store cards, my grocery store cards, my museum membership cards, my bookstore and car-wash and coffeehouse buy-ten-get-one-free cards.  None of these things has any real monetary value, and what little value they have cannot be exercised in France, and so none will be remotely useful to anyone who’s got them—and so perhaps I should think of this as a freeing experience; no longer weighed down by the baggage of my past consumption practices, I can now choose to reacquire only those cards that are actually useful to me, sort of like a consumer fasting detox.

This doesn’t make me feel any less stupid, though.

[UPDATE 04.08.04, 7.35 pm:  As it turns out, the folks in the internet cafe have shown me the trick to making the computer think it’s hooked to a QWERTY keyboard.  The catch is, of course, that I have to touch-type in order to make it work, because the thing itself still has the keys in all the wrong places...]

[What follows was written at 30,000 feet.  I’m no longer there, but firmly on the ground, for another fifteen minutes or so...]

I should have known right from the start that this was going to be a particularly surreal trip.  I went online the night before leaving, just to make sure that all with my reservation was as I left it, and discovered that while I’d had a seat assignment for the Houston-to-Paris leg of my trip a few days before, that assignment was no longer there, and a note on the reservation said that my seat would be assigned on check-in.

No biggie, really, except that I’d used miles to upgrade to business first, since it’s such a long journey with such a quick turnaround time.  And now, of course, I was afraid that they’d sold my seat out from under me.  So, intending to throw a little platinum-elite-frequent-flyer muscle around, I called Continental to see what was what.  The quite lovely rep I spoke to was as befuddled as I; first class was not oversold—it was in fact empty—and all the seats had been frozen.  Nothing he could do.  I figure, whatever, I’ll get to the airport early tomorrow.

So I do, after my customary morning-of-departure what-am-I-forgetting OCD attack.  But even at the airport, the agent behind the counter—not a Continental agent, sad to say, as Ontario has so few Continental flights in and out that they use America West agents to staff the counter—told me that she couldn’t do anything either, that the seats were all still locked down, and that I’d have to get a boarding pass at the gate in Houston.  Again, whatever.  There still appear to be plenty of seats, and my reservation still says first.

But then she starts doing the rest of whatever it takes to check me in, and says “Houston’s having weather.  But you know that, right?” I shrug; Houston’s always having weather, so whatever.  But she starts telling me how if I get on this first flight and then get stuck in Houston, there will be no “amenities.” And another agent looks over her shoulder and says “Red alert?  What’s that?”

Not so much with the “whatever” now.  Red alert?

But if there’s a chance the flight is going to go, I need to be on it, right, so I say I’ll take my chances.  She finishes checking me in and I head up to the gate.  Once the gate agent arrives—and nine times out of ten, flying Continental out of Ontario, the same America West agent who checked me in is the gate agent, but this time it’s someone else—I sidle up and ask her how things look in Houston, that the agent downstairs had said something about weather and a red alert, to which the agent responds, “Weather is yellow.”

Great.  So what’s red?

She pokes at her computer for a second, and then mutters something about—I kid you not—“tee enn tee.” And I’m thinking, TNT?  Or T.N.T., like Temporarily No Transportation?  Or Today’s Not (a) Terrific (day to fly)?  But then she follows up by saying, “well, it should be fine, because they’re still coming and going.”

So I’m back to “whatever,” but it’s a bit of a strain.

I get on the plane, settle in, pull out work, and attempt to hide the fact that my computer bag is behind my feet (I’m in the first row, so there’s no seat in front of me, and I’m going to need the computer during the flight).  Of course, the eagle-eyed flight attendant spots it immediately and offers sweetly to put the bag up above for me.  Whatever.  But she looks weirdly familiar to me, and I can’t figure out why; I take this flight out of Ontario through Houston quite a bit, so I’m assuming I’ve flown with her before, but that doesn’t feel quite right somehow.

Why becomes clear once we start taxiing, as the safety video runs; she’s Allie, one of the flight-attendant-spokespeople in the video I’ve seen eight bajillion times.  She’s standing right in front of me, right next to my little drop-down screen, and I do the totally dorky reflex look-back-and-forth between her and the screen, and before I can stop myself blurt out “oh man, I thought I recognized you.” She was quite sweet about it, telling me how she’s run into fellow airline employees out of context and out of uniform and been unable to place where she knew them from.

It would be great to end the story here, but just after this we took off, to the accompaniment of a profound shuddering and awful noise in the front end of the plane, which was enough to set my teeth on edge—I’m not a terribly nervous flyer, but this was a little more than I really wanted to deal with.  Particularly given the rushing back and forth of flight attendants that ensued, as apparently one of them smelled smoke just after take-off.  This was the point at which my latent superstitiousness kicked in in force, and I started thinking about the number of weird portents that have so far surrounded this trip, the kinds of portents that only really appear in made-for-TV movies about plane crashes, signs from beyond attempting to warn me not to get on the plane, and a literal bit of bleed from the TV monitor into the reality in front of me, letting me know exactly where I was.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the movie ends, to say the least.

[As you may guess by the flashback-driven nature of said movie, all ends well.  “Red alert” is apparently about weather after all, of the particularly untenable kind.  And being Houston, the weather has pretty much moved on.  As am I.  More from France.]

But I am drowning.

Jake writes to ask where the heck I’ve been, which is a really, really good question.

Alas, I’ve been more or less right here, grading papers for class, reading senior thesis drafts, desperately trying to get the paper written that I’m delivering this week in France…

And thus I’ve had no thoughts worth sharing, unless you find yourself interested in the babblings of someone periodically exclaiming ”Where is for physical locations only!  Use in which to talk about parts of the text!” Or “That quote isn’t going to do all the work for you!  You must explicate, explicate, explicate!”

When I am grading, I think in exclamation points.  And no one here wants to read my exclamation points.

Ah, but tomorrow, I’m leaving for France.  (Have I packed?  No.  Do I have a plane ticket?  Yes.  That, I consider a major triumph.) I’m speaking at a conference of the Laboratoire Orléans-Tours de la Littérature Américaine (otherwise known as LOLitA), focusing on the work of Richard Powers.  (Along which lines, I get quoted here.) So things could be worse.

(Apparently stress also produces an abundance of parentheticals.  A sure sign not of too little to say but too much, and no time for proper organizing.)

In any event, I’m outta here until Sunday, but will hope to post from there, if this “world-wide” part of the web allows.