The good news is that the mystery box has been found!

The bad news is that it has been found at my house in California.

The good news is that I have a housesitter armed and ready to ship it again!

The bad news is that I have no confidence whatsoever in the ability of either of the national mail systems involved.

The good news is that there are commercial alternatives which are, granted, much pricier, but which come with certain kinds of increased accountability!

The bad news is…

I hesitate, at this point, to contemplate the potential bad news. I’ve got five weeks left here, and I’m determined to be wholly optimistic about them. We’ll see how far that gets me.

There’s always something very odd about being in a place where the 4th of July is only… July 4.

Have a happy one back there, all. Eat something flame-grilled for me.

I’m currently reading Empire of Signs (one of the few books that actually went in the suitcase, which I’m trying to spread out enough to tide me over), which just presented me with the following:

The murmuring mass of an unknown language constitutes a delicious protection, envelops the foreigner (provided the country is not hostile to him) in an auditory film which halts at his ears all the alienations of the mother tongue: the regional and social origins of whoever is speaking, his degree of culture, of intelligence, of taste, the image by which he constitutes himself as a person and which he asks you to recognize. Hence, in foreign countries, what a respite! Here I am protected against stupidity, vulgarity, vanity, worldliness, nationality, normality. The unknown language, of which I nonetheless grasp the respiration, the emotive aeration, in a word the pure significance, forms around me, as I move, a faint vertigo, sweeping me into its artificial emptiness, which is consummated only for me: I live in the interstice, delivered from any fulfilled meaning. (Barthes 9)

I am fascinated, on the one hand, by the degree to which this captures my experiences abroad: caught in the swirl of chatter in another language, which I hear only as raw communication, without any sense whatsoever of what’s being communicated. All such overheard conversations give the sense of being about matters most serious, when no doubt some percentage of them are just as idiotic as those overheard in your local Starbucks.

On the other hand, I’m also fascinated by the transition out of this mode of existence in the midst of another, unknown language. I had a moment the other day of overhearing a conversation that I wasn’t paying attention to — just that level of background chatter to which one is not party, and not really meant to understand — when I suddenly recognized that I’d followed the entire thing without being aware of it. I think that’s the first time that’s happened to me — that I’ve understood something said in French without my having consciously decided to do so. It’s a different kind of vertigo than that to which Barthes refers, and perhaps more literally disorienting, as the “foreignness” of the language seems to evaporate, like the morning fog.

No sign of box-o-books. Paid approx. $67 yesterday to have two books I already own sent to the woman whose name is on the mailbox, who will hopefully receive them on 3 July.

On the up side: slept like a big dog last night, for something just short of NINE HOURS STRAIGHT, with no chemical assistance whatsoever. And, beyond that, what work I can get done with what materials I’ve got is going right well nicely.

Also, I’m still in Paris. Did I mention that part?

Sleeping: improved, but not perfect.

Box of books: still missing. The United States says, with absolute certainty, that the package is still in France, where it should remain for 30 days. We haven’t talked to France again yet, but will hope to do so today.

Work: proceeding anyway. I’ve carved out a particular chunk of the new project that I’d like to produce by the end of the summer, and which I think I might be able to complete if I can get my hands on two of the books that were in this box. The good news is that Amazon UK can get them to me quite quickly. The bad news is that they charge in *pounds*, which is to say that not only will I be rebuying books I already own, but I’ll also be paying slightly more than double for them. But what can one do — work must go on.

I have to admit, I’ve gotten a bit complacent these days. Since moving to an address that the postal system and the various private shipping companies actually believe exists — a place where my packages actually arrive, taking a reasonably direct route from the shipper to my very own front door — I’ve come to assume that as a standard of service: put the correct address on a piece of appropriately mailable or shippable material, pay the correct amount, and the item will appear where you intend. Call me naïve, but I thought my days of mail snafus were over.

As R. and I were packing for Paris, we had the great book debate, which went something like this: I really need a fair pile of books for the work that I’m doing this summer. I could attempt to put them in a suitcase, thus adding another twelve pounds to our already overloaded baggage — baggage that we knew would not only have to survive the various handlers on the way to CDG, but would also have to be picked up and gotten in a taxi, and then, most significantly, would have to be lugged up three flights of a fairly tight, creaky, slightly uneven spiral staircase to the flat we’re staying in — but would ensure their immediate availability upon our arrival. Or I could ship them to us, relieving us of the physical burden, though adding, I now realize, one a bit more metaphysical.

It appeared at first that we were going to go the baggage route, as FedEx wanted something like $150 to get the books to Paris. But then, alas, we discovered that the USPS now has flat-rate international shipping boxes: for $37, we could ship as much as we could stuff into the box they provided, and it would arrive — so they said — in six to ten days. That seemed the obvious choice: less heavy lifting, a not-ridiculous fee, and just as my head would start to clear from the jet lag, I’d be able to get down to real work. So on the 11th, the day before we left, we sent off the box.

When the books hadn’t arrived after eight days, I didn’t worry terribly much; after all, six days seemed pretty optimistic, and they may well have meant six-to-ten *business* days, which would dramatically change the ETA. At the ten day mark, though, I thought I’d start trying to figure out what was going on. On June 21, I started searching around the USPS website and decided, on something of a lark, to attempt to track the box using the only number that I had, which was a US Customs number. And lo but the tracking worked: except that what it said was that delivery of the package had been attempted on June 18 and 19. And there was no further information. This was when I realized that, armed only with a US Customs form and my crap French, I was going to have to brave La Poste.

One hears horror stories about French bureaucracy, though I’m not convinced that their systems or personalities are any worse than those in the US. My fear mostly came from the thought of having to negotiate such a bureaucracy in a language that I speak at the level of a five-year-old. I got R. to come with me, though, both for moral support and because people working behind desks just seem to like him, regardless of language barriers, and are often willing to help him out in ways that I’m not sure they’re willing to help me. So we went over to the neighborhood post office and waited in line.

The young woman who wound up helping us was utterly charming — a little perplexed at first, but very sweet. I haltingly explained the situation (j’ai m’envoyé un colis des États-Unis à Paris, mais il n’arrive pas; ce matin, j’ai suivi le colis sur le site de USPS, et il m’a dit qu’on a essayé de le distribuer le 18 et 19 juin, mais…) and asked whether the package might be there. She looked at the form and told me that the package number was an American number, and that when the package arrived in France, it would have been assigned a French number, and that she needed the French number in order to do anything. I asked her how to get that French number, and she said that perhaps I could call the United States, and someone there could inquire of the post office for me? After that, she did go look in the back to see if there might be a particularly American-looking package lying around, but, for obvious reasons, to no avail.

That afternoon, once they were open for business, I did call the United States (which suggestion, not incidentally, provoked an ongoing “allo, États-Unis?” joke in the flat), where I was most helpfully told that if the French had assigned the package a number, then only the French would know that number, and that there was nothing else to be done. So that evening, I asked one of our French flatmates, S., what to do next, and he volunteered to take things on from here.

And thank god. The next day (the 22nd, if you’re keeping track), S. and I headed back to La Poste, where he talked to a different woman from the one I’d spoken with before. This woman not only looked in the back for a package, but also looked through a notebook in which I assume were written the various bits of info about packages whose delivery had failed, but came up with nothing. She suggested that we go to the next Poste up the sorting and delivering chain, which was about seven or eight blocks away, so S. and I headed that way, joking to ourselves that I might get a proper tour of Paris this way, being directed from Poste to Poste.

At the second Poste, things were a bit more technologically sophisticated. The guy behind the counter took my Customs form and scanned the barcode, the first time that had happened, but of course came up with nothing, as it was an American barcode. He then flipped through that Poste’s notebook, which also provided nothing in the way of results. He took, however, a photocopy of my Customs form, saying that he was going to fax it somewhere, where they might have more info, and that he would phone S. if he found anything out.

Apparently he did phone S. very quickly, because within half an hour of returning to the flat, I realized that the conversation S. had been having on the phone was about my package. I sat and listened, attempting to be helpful however I could, but only comprehending about a quarter of what was being said. S. was able to come up with the French number (and not only that, but for future reference, a phone number at La Poste that one could call in order to get the French number in the future), and the information that the delivery had failed because the person to whom the package was addressed didn’t actually live at that address. (I’d of course been careful, however, to address the package to me *chez* the woman who actually lives here, and all parties to whom S. spoke agreed that that should have been sufficient, and the package should have been delivered.) The package had been sent back to the United States on the 21st — the day before. From there, S. was directed to French Customs, where we might be able to intercept the package on its return journey aux États-Unis — but to no avail. The package was already on a plane, headed home. Rather radical efficiency, I’d say, though unfortunately not in the direction I’d like.

Somewhere along the way, someone warned S. that we would need to talk with the United States again (”allo, États-Unis?”), because a package that gets returned like that is often deemed suspicious by US Customs, and could be held up there for weeks before making it all the way back to southern California.

So here I am, rather seriously underbooked, really ready to get down to work, and not quite able to do so. A Canadian flatmate who’s currently working at the Bibliothèque Nationale is checking today to see if a book or two that I need might be available in the open part of the library, which might tide me over a little longer. In the meantime, though, I do feel I’ve learned a couple of things: first, that I can make myself understood in French if I really need to, but, as I already imagined, it takes fluency to really navigate a bureaucracy; second, that French bureaucracy may be a bit harder to penetrate but is no more stupid than is that in the US; and third, that the most important sentence in the French language may well be “on va voir,” said with the tiniest of shrugs.

What will happen? On va voir.

Yesterday was the summer solstice, of course, the longest day of the year, which hereabouts began with the first bits of sun, sometime around 5.15 am, and ended with the last bits, well after 10.30 pm. Last night was also the Fête de la Musique, with live musical events of all genres taking place in squares and on streets throughout the city, stretching into the small hours. R. and I found ourselves at a café on the Boulevard Montmartre, watching a couple of bands playing on the back of a truck parked right in front.

I quite liked the first band, a very young jazz/funk combo that went by the unfortunate name of Funky Chicken. The second group wasn’t bad, but they were a little too hard-core for my tastes. Which is the point at which I realize that I’m old: I have no idea how to characterize the band’s genre. There was clearly an inheritance from punk, though without the speed, and the bass line had a bit of a funk edge to it. But there was something a bit drony about the guitar part that had me thinking trance, except not electronic, and then there was something screamy about the vocals, that brought me around to hard-core. Which is where I realized I was totally making it up, and had no idea what I was talking about. Whatever: they were pretty good, especially the vocalist, but I enjoyed the first band a good bit better.

In any event, it was a fabulous evening. These short nights aren’t helping with my ongoing sleep issues, but the city is helping everyone recover a bit from their fêtes by being quite grey and cloudy today. It may be the second-longest day of the year, but somebody’s thoughtfully turned down the lights a bit.

I’m quite behind the times on this (appropriate for mon état, quand je souffre du décalage horaire), but the talk of the lefty blogosphere a couple of weeks ago was the much that was being made of W’s having been spotted drinking what his advisors insisted was a non-alcoholic beer (and, of course, the Beeb’s somewhat tickled connection of that beverage to the “stomach bug” that apparently knocked him out of commission the next day. One might also note the gleeful reminder of H.W.’s stomachal gift to the prime minister of Japan back in 1992).

Here, however, what’s being circulated with equal schadenfreude is the video of an apparently drunken Nicolas Sarkozy in a G8 press conference. His advisors insist that Sarko never drinks, and that he simply wasn’t used to the long hours and late nights of negotiating, and that lack of sleep produced his wooziness. It’s hard, however, to imagine a late night with Vladimir Putin that could conceivably end in sobriety.

On the other hand, if I’d been asked to give a morning press conference yesterday, I might have looked much the same. Today, after a full night of sleep (though one admittedly produced with a bit of prescribed assistance), I’d be a little more on my game.

In no particular order:

– My sleep problems continue unabated. Last night, I slept fairly well from shortly after midnight until sometime around 4 am, and then was awake between 4 and 8 am (and actually out of bed and reading between 5 and 7 am), and then asleep again between 8 am and 9.45ish. I’m positively exhausted, and yet I know that come midnight tonight, I’m going to be all keyed up again.

– Aside from waiting on a few pieces of information from this year’s crop of graduating seniors, I’ve finished my program’s annual report. This means that all of the tasks that remained between me and my own work are essentially cleared out of the way.

– I’m doing some reading toward the new project today, and it’s in an area that I’ve spent a fair bit of time avoiding thus far in my career, not least because I found the material so difficult. I now find it utterly fascinating, but that hasn’t alleviated the difficulty. (Nor has my insomnia helped, for that matter.)

Further thoughts as the brain cells necessary to produce them regenerate.

The last three days have been utterly consumed with departure-for-Paris business. We head off tomorrow morning, and there are at least three things I need to do before I go. The most pressing of those is sleep, which I’m off to do now. More from the road, as there always is.