Paris part II: obligatory Eiffel Tower pics

This post doesn't require a lot of text, so just enjoy the ride.

Weird Band-Aid wall art in Montmartre, with the tower wayyy in the distance. Makes me wanna crush it with my thumb and forefinger. *pinch pinch pinch*

Our first day. A little goofy with excitement and exhaustion.
















And I present to you the leaning Tower of Eiffel. And Robin and me for good measure.

 . . . and Robin and Gienna










Finally, we meet.

















We agreed to meet up at the carousel by the Eiffel Tower that afternoon. Did you know there are TWO carousels? May have lost a couple hours there (and I may have flung myself across a busy street to get Robin and Gienna, who were getting in a cab to go back to the hotel). The art on the carousel reminds me of things that are wrong, like candy cigarettes and a Smurf figurine holding a mug of beer.

Late that afternoon, we had a lovely picnic beneath the tower. As it happens, there is a lot of girl-on-girl love going on in that park. Ah, the French.














My new boyfriend, hanging out by the tower.





And, of course, there are little towers to be had everywhere. Nancy looks adorable here with her sparkly tower.










While the bateaux may seem tacky and touristy, it gives a great view, and without any tourists to muck it up.

And one evening, Noelle and I wandered around the top of Montmartre and, at midnight, caught the hourly light show. It would seem cheesy, except that it was so quiet and so far away. It almost feels like your own little secret. And then it's gone . . .

Paris part I: Montmartre cemetery (and its many cats)

I am a pretty lucky girl who just got back from a week-long stay in Paris with five girlfriends. It was a whirlwind. A good whirlwind. A fantastic break from real life.

Perhaps starting off with pictures of the cemetery doesn't appear to speak to the good times one would hope to have in Paris. But to me it captures the tranquil, romantic, grainy staidness of the old city.

Two mornings I trudged out early, past all the people on their way to work, to wander the narrow paths of the cemetery as the sun began to rise and cast shadows. The cemetery hosts Degas, Foucault, Truffaut, Zola, Dumas, and the list goes on. But even with the help of the maps, I couldn't find any of them.

The cemetery is located below street level, and is dissected by a bridge that sees heavy traffic. But it still manages to be quiet and serene.
 

And along the way, I was followed, watched, and judged by the multitude of cats that call the cemetery home.

I love this broad. She's haunting and hovers directly over passersby.
















And this woman reminds me of the paintings of Jean-Francois Millet, who created spectacular depictions of pastoral farming folk (I was smitten with his work when I went to the D'Orsay).

    

I wouldn't mind a small lilac blossoming by my grave.









The little ears you see here followed me for a while, but kept a safe distance.

The thing of nightmares, but also draws one near. I can't figure out the intention here, but I dig it.

 Sweet owl.

 

Some of the tombs were extraordinarily tall; others had no name or decoration.














 One of these things is not like the others...

And...what not to do on a tombstone: pictures of the person in a leisure suit, smoking, lounging, and doing a Glamor Shot pose. If anyone does this to me, they can rest assured that I will come back and haunt the shit out of them.

More to come. A bientot!

Don't fucking smoke! ...and put yer gun away too.

This at the neurologist's office today. Really? This sticker wasn't here at my last check-up. The foolish question I want to ask: What the hell initiates someone putting up such a decal? Was there an incident? My neuro is the sweetest man. I feel much more inclined to fist-bump him than stab him.

I guess that means the meds are working.

Thoroughly Loathing Thoreau

This is a rant. I need to let the venom out. If you are not interested in a bitch session about Thoreau, well, I completely understand. See you around the playground. The rest of you, put your crash helmets on.
________________________________________
I spent some of my college years swimming in Walden Pond and cooing over the cute boys and quotes in Dead Poets Society. But it's almost 15 years later that I'm finally reading Walden, and my greatest fears are confirmed: Thoreau was a pompous prick.

Cliff's Notes on Thoreau read romantically enough: poor boy goes to Harvard, becomes gardener and hiker, hangs with Transcendentalists (Emerson) and poets (Whitman), builds small hut in woods, swears off belongings and high society for simplicity and clean living.

But for every beautiful too-oft-repeated quote in Walden, there lurks prep school pugnacity:

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation (11)

I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of value . . . from my seniors (11-12)

 I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion (33)

  Philanthropy . . . is greatly overrated (63)

 I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life (74)

The best works are the ancients, and they haven't been translated (86)

 

with huge lumbering civility the country hands a chair to the city (93)

 Sometimes, when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they (106)

 Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves (137)

  . . . his wife--every man has such a wife--changed her mind . . . (68)

Mr. Thoreau, would you like some cheese with your whine?

Does anyone discuss the hypocrisy of this book? And the dreamlike, unrealistic nature of his thought process?

It's all well and good to live a mile or so from Emerson's house. To undoubtedly dine with him regularly and discuss all things under God by Emerson's fire. But to then write bullshit such as, "a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prairie dogs . . . I went there frequently to observe their habits" (134). Like he's so removed from humans.

http://colbysts.blogspot.com/2009/05/henry-david-thoreau.html

And maybe his bitterness toward women stems from the fact that his proposal was turned down? Yeah, Ellen Sewell turned him down after turning down his brother. Of course there's also speculation of his being homosexual, as indicated here. And he did meet one of his heroes, Walt Whitman, on Cape Cod, after all. Hmmm, when did Provincetown secure its reputation?

My issues with Thoreau go long and cut deep. It's like this:
"[I speak] to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot . . . when they might improve them" (17). And "The laborer's day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit" (59).

umf.maine.edu

Sure! Forget your wife, children, and bills. Mill girls, forget the 12-hour shift you just completed and the letter you just received from Maman, asking for more money! Better yourselves, damn you! Because surely after sundown you have plenty of time to learn Greek and thereby read the ancients who are spectacular but not yet translated.

He spends a lot of time building up and condemning blue-collar folk. He is saddened that the Irish are building a railroad, yet states that it would do the students of Harvard good to build their own dorms. Further, he prattles on about why no manner of job suits him, but maybe he could pick berries and with that meet his expenses (58).

And don't get me started on the asinine ant wars (180-182). "And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment's comparison with this . . . for the patriotism and heroism displayed." Thoreau wrote this in Concord, MA, ~80 years after the Revolutionary War. About ants in his garden. 

http://www.sunjournal.com/state/story/876963

Two years later, the bum went back to town, to be with the other prairie dogs. His flimsy excuse is that he felt he "had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one" (252). Henry, Louise Dickinson Rich farts in your general direction, you fucking pansy.

If Thoreau were alive now, I believe he would have gone to Hampshire College. He would be that asshat who is 110% enviro, judging everyone, and graduating with a degree in frisbee. In sum, Thoreau was a hipster. Before being a hipster was hip. Ironic bastard.

zazzle.com

 

Millgirl's ass is better, and February proves amusing

I'm officially one step closer to Paris in April. Try on your best accent and say like the French, "Super cool!"

In other not exciting news, I played grown-up a week or so ago and attended Flight Night at the Wentworth by the Sea. A sampling of three wines, with foods to accompany, for $16. Not a bad date, actually. But I was there with colleagues, so romantic it was not. Still, a good time.

But my favorite thing at the moment is my celebrity valentine.

It appears that no one knows who Adam Goldberg is. He was in Saving Private Ryan, 2 Days in Paris, Friends . . . Still don't know? Well, he's this guy.

A girl can't always account for her crushes. There's something about his yummy, hairy, tattooed, angry presence that makes me giggle like a school girl. So I spent some quality time stalking him on YouTube because I wanted to hear him talk without a script. I caught a couple clips of him sparring with Craig Ferguson. He's got a dry sense of humor (which the commenters didn't get because they mostly thought he rode the short bus to the studio), and he's a fast talker (=smart/smartass). Then, suddenly, I spied, with my tiny eye--cowboy boots! Fuck me. I hate cowboy boots. So what does a person do now whenever she has any fucking thought going through her head? She becomes an asshole like everyone else and shares her upset with the universe. On Twitter. Without thinking there will be any repercussions. Thus ensued our tryst.

Damn. Adam Goldberg wears cowboy boots. Reassessing... #waningcrush

RT @nhmillgirl Damn. Adam Goldberg wears cowboy boots. Reassessing... #waningcrush http://twitpic.com/3zk9yi

  @TheAdamGoldberg Well played, sir.

And I'm the happiest fucking stalker in New Hampshire. 

Amen

"A fatherless girl thinks all things possible and nothing safe."

--The Company of Women

So far, 2011 is a pain in the ass

That's a literal statement.

About two weeks ago, on a Monday, pain developed in my right buttock. By that Friday, sitting became excruciating. I set up a doctor's appointment for the following Monday afternoon. But by Sunday, I had stopped eating and was feverish and nauseous. Not good. So, with Mom's help, I limped into the ER Monday morning.

What a long, slow day of poking and prodding; no fewer than six people spent quality time checking out my backside. And under the awkward florescent lighting, I was mortified. And scared. I kept thinking cancer and welled up pretty easily throughout the day. The nurses kept offering pain meds. But that wasn't it; the pain I could tolerate; the humiliation and fear were overwhelming.

Diagnosis: perirectal abscess about the size of a kiwi

Funny, in all my Google searches that week, abscess is the one word I never saw. Plenty of boils and cysts and other colorful things that come up with searches on "tenderness in buttock," "firmness in one buttock," "pain in buttock" . . .

So, in the ER at 9 a.m., diagnosed by noon, admitted at 4, surgery at 5, postop at 6, discharged at 9:30. Looking back, I'm not sure I should have been discharged. But I think my fierce attitude scared the young nurse on duty. I was a hot mess--barely walking, draining everywhere, and full of pain. She literally looked both ways down the hall and told my mother and me to just go.

I am now two weeks into recovery. The first week was a Vicodin blur. But I have vivid memories of removing the gauze. The surgeon had said, "There will be a lot of it, and it will hurt." What a fucking understatement. I stood in the shower for 30 minutes, intermittently tugging for 10 seconds, then holding onto the bar and breathing for 10 seconds, watching blood run down my legs and the tail of gauze behind me growing. I asked my mother to come into the bathroom to talk to me so I could focus on something other than the pain. The sensation . . . like pulling a dull sword through your ass at about a half-inch per minute. I was lightheaded with pain. The last tug almost brought me to my knees. I held the gauze up. It reached from my feet to my collar bone. That gauze was inside the wound. This open wound in my ass. I exclaimed that we should bronze it, or certainly a photo should go on Facebook. But Mom quickly put it in a bag and whisked it away. My body was shaking uncontrollably, my modesty and pride shot to hell. She prepared a sitz bath for me, and I sat in warm water, pulling a towel around me and shaking. I was humbled.

For days after that, I slept, mostly. Very little movement, very little eating. Loss of appetite is a peculiar sensation for a foodie. At the same time, I had to succumb to the fact that I was "unable" in many ways. Unable to do just about anything for myself. A horror to an uber-independent woman. My mother visited every couple days, calling ahead for a grocery list and taking out the trash on arrival. She kept telling me to rest, to appreciate the trauma my body had been through. But this is new to me . . . this inability to bounce back. And when I called to say I would be out of work a second week, I felt ashamed.

I'm feeling almost complete again. I've stopped taking the Vicodin because I would rather feel pain than cloudiness. I can sit with mild discomfort, and I can drive. I left my apartment for the first time yesterday, and felt both weak and victorious. It felt good to clear snow off my car, to use my body, to breathe fresh air.

The moral of the story is to never underestimate the importance of your own ass. Sitting is a beautiful thing. And no matter how hairy or puckered or weird you think it looks down there, embrace it. Love your little balloon knot, your dirty penny. Mine looks very different now. All hopes of being an anal porn star are dashed for me. But it's still healing. It's still draining. I'm not fully me yet, but I'm getting there. And I'm sorry there are no pictures to accompany this post, but, frankly, there's not one goddamn thing about this that you want to see.