A BOOK ABOUT DEATH.

Here's the piece I'll have in the "A Book About Death" exhibition at the Emily Harvey Gallery, curated by Matthew Rose. http://abookaboutdeath.blogspot.com/2009/08/bonny-finberg-381.html#links

WATCHING PIGEONS ON A ROOF

Watching pigeons on a roof. He is round, with a pouffed neck and pale gray feathers. She is the same color with a thin, sleek neck, her small tear shaped head converging into a thin yellow beak. She walks along the peak. He walks behind. She doesn't turn. He stops and preens every so often, his head bobbing up to see her with the eye that faces south. She preens then lifts her head towards him, who is now too busy digging into himself to look at her. She walks away. He stands and looks out at the hills, then takes a few steps towards her. She retreats behind the brass chortens and trident that sit at the roof's center. He walks quickly toward her, moving behind the chorten until they're both out of view. She walks out along the roof. He follows. She quickens her pace. He turns to go the other way, but not too far.
They stand this way for a while. Then he flies down to the eave and looks up at her, but she doesn't move. A deep gurgling rises from his throat. She stays still. He croons more gently. She waits, then turns and flies down to him. They lock beaks, looking into each other's eyes, pulling and twisting their necks back and forth. He stops to take something from under his wing feathers and puts it in her mouth with his beak. She grasps his beak with hers. They stay fastened this way for a while, then root around each other's bodies. Another male comes, and she retreats to a ledge. The two males flutter and swell. Her lover flaps once, flies over and stands beside her. The other male swoops away to another roof.
They fly to the ledge below this window and look across at an old pigeon who is now on the roof. He settles deeply into his oily feathers. The young male looks at him and gurgles. The older one stands tall and plumps his feathers into a plush of gray and black, suddenly looking much better. The other puffs up and flies over to face him.
The female hops down to a lower ledge and stands there watching the males. She retreats, then approaches.
The young one looks at the older, who is the more plumped of the two. There is a preening contest, then sudden hostile contact.
The female takes off, and then a sudden crack of thunder. Every pigeon and crow in the city soars into ordered rank except for a few who are either confused or prefer to fly solo.

(C) Bonny Finberg
Bhaktapur, Nepal, 2000

WRITTEN ON THE EYES

I write with my eyes. I stop whatever I’m doing, put down my pen, my cup, lick the jam from my fingers, but my eyes never stop. Sometimes my eyes play tricks. I sense something in my periphery, maybe only a glint of light off my glasses, which signifies like a misheard word.
The black lacquered cabinet in my childhood living room was painted with enameled scenes in the Chinese style. I spent hours studying its scenery: a world of pagoda bridges over gilded streams, temples, a colt beside a yellow boulder, a blue sea bird with spread wings, strange trees with curling limbs and modest foliage. What interested me most was a man poling a small covered boat with a woman inside. The woman had a look of surprise, as if she had just woken up to find herself drifting through this dark world animated by the creatures and plants moving past in eternal stillness.
All is told on a seamless scroll of transparency that I shake open and unfurl beneath my feet when I can no longer walk. Ever since I first became aware of windows I realized there are exits and through the exits is the world. I’ve read my life through them, remembering other spaces without language.
I pile junk upon layers of important things until there's no difference. This creates a chaos so splendid that I'm paralyzed by its beauty and have to avert my eyes. Beauty has become a painful thing. I stay away from windows where the movement of clouds across the sky threatens the rhythm of my heart. Alone in front of windows I feel danger. I’ve hung crude curtains, which fall from the walls each time I breathe. I go from room to room to avoid the wash of sunlight on the objects I’ve placed like sentences and paragraphs. Color and shadow change their meanings depending on the light or where I sit. A bird’s song or baby’s wail can distract me momentarily but invariably I go back to constructing this dangerous lie of beauty and order.
I’ve tried going outside to determine whether I mistook the world for something else, but three hundred sixty degrees makes me dizzy. Although at first it lifts me to be walking in a bright world I quickly tire and go back home to lie down. Drugs and drink make the horrible beauty more tolerable, but this is only temporary. They make me stay up all night until the sky begins to lighten and I have to close my eyes or be killed. Inevitably, the sun shakes me awake through my curtainless windows. I ask myself again what will I do today? and it’s always the same.
In the end I will succumb to beauty. All this chaos will be put in order as I drift through a black suspended world without sky or clouds, only wordless water flowing in eternal stillness.
* * *

FRIENDS

Rene was pissed because she thought Marsha had caused a big fight between her best friend and her best friend’s boyfriend, who’s also an old friend of Rene’s, besides being René’s other best friend’s ex-husband, by re-telling a story to Rene’s best-friend’s boyfriend and getting it all mixed up and sending the boyfriend back to his girlfriend in a jealous rage.
René and Marsha hadn’t spoken in three years and it got back to Marsha that René had told some confusing version of a perfectly innocent and normal situation having to do with Marsha’s best friend which in the telling implied something else, or at least left a few things open for question.
It was one night when René was sitting around with her oldest best friend, Sherry, who happened to be Rene’s best friend’s boyfriend’s ex-wife, drinking red wine and cognac.
Marsha used to be almost-best-friends with René, but three years ago Marsha tried to take advantage of the good nature beneath Rene’s coarse exterior, because beneath Marsha’s smooth exterior lies a cauldron of fear and envy, which cooks up to a pretty deadly stew.
René said to Sherry, “Have you ever seen Marsha with a pretty woman?
Are any of her friends pretty?“
“Well you’re pretty,” Sherry answered.
“Oh, I’m acceptable, but have you ever seen Marsha be friends with a beautiful woman? No! Never!”
Sherry considered Rene’s thesis.
Marsha had gotten a nose job about five years ago. She’d had a magnificent nose, very large and positively sculptural. It was her signature feature. When you thought “Marsha,” there was a deeper more subliminal thought: Nose.
About a year before the nose job, probably in preparation for what she had planned as a complete overhaul, Marsha got braces. That was unfortunate because the way her teeth protruded a little had given her an even more distinctive look.
It wasn’t just her quirky looks, either. She’d had an ironic sensibility, an eccentric sense of humor, both of which informed the conceptual art objects she produced, as well as making her an entertaining dinner guest.
After her braces and nose job she looked like everybody’s idea of attractive, and she slowly molded her personality to accommodate the bland features that she’d neatly organized, like a mannequin, around her messy human core.
She gave up making art and took a job at a bank. At dinner parties she talked, with little irony, about other people and clothes. René stayed friends with her because she was one of her oldest friends. Rene’s like that.
But Marsha, not fully satisfied with the course her life was taking despite all her physical adjustments, started cooking up a big soup of disappointment and despair, until she was completely transformed by hate.
One day, after Rene confronted Marsha, saying she was pissed about the incident with Rene’s best friend and her best friend’s boyfriend, Marsha wrote a letter to René:

Dear René,
If you ever mention my name in public again I’ll tell your boss you’re giving clients a 25% discount for your services and seeing them from your home.

Marsha

René never cries. She never cries in public anyway. You could know her for thirty years and never see her cry. But when she told this story that night to her best friend, Sherry, as she’d downed a couple of bottles of red wine and smoked a pack of Rothman’s Mild while Sherry drank green tea and smoked a joint, Rene cried.
Sherry, who loved René dearly because she knew her true nature, and also knew how much she loathed crying in public, listened.
Then René said to Sherry, “And you went to her wedding!”
Sherry protested: “But you never told me about the letter, how could I have known?”
René explained through tears and sobs that she hadn’t told anyone, until now,
how scared she’d been, but now that she had a new job she was free to tell whoever she felt like.
Sherry said, “René-e…I’m a single woman. It was a chance to go out and….”
“But she hardly ever saw you. She saw you, what? two? maybe three times a year? She invited people she saw three times in her life! She has no friends!”
“I’m sorry, Sherry said, eyes wide. I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me.”
“Do you know how scared I was? I couldn’t say anything to anyone. She said I should never say her name in public again. I could have lost my job. I could have lost everything. My co-op. Everything.”
Then they went to the movies.

© Bonny Finberg

CRUCIFICTION

While the bombs fell between the 20th and 21st of April 1944, people prayed at the feet of the Crucifixion at Sacre Coeur. Montmartre was spared. I can’t help but feel it was their
collective prayer that saved them rather than the stilled heart of a dead man, as full of grace as he might have been. There was no one then to pray for his salvation. He was betrayed. No one saw it coming.
I followed the Stations of the Cross, its brilliant mosaic transforming what must have been a messy business into a spectacle for the eyes. From the gleaming dome above, Le Seigneur, all cleaned up and risen from the tomb, bestows his blessing, substantiating triumph over death.
Once a year his betrayal is re-enacted. We all know what’s going to happen but we can’t do anything to reverse it. We can elevate it to sacrifice, feel better about the comparatively small betrayals we commit. We are all Judas. Only Jesus is the savior. His message was simple: Save yourself. But a game of telephone was in operation, and the road to dogma is paved with competing intentions.
Did he really die for our sins, or was he merely being consistent? Here, you can own another’s pain without having to really suffer it. You can be protected and forgiven. All human misery is swept under the shade of an ancient oak whose acorn happened to fall on good soil.
A martyr chooses death. Jesus’ Passion might have been an unfortunate political accident. Or else Judas helped to ensure He carried out his destiny. Most of us die for no reason. Insight might come early or not at all. We may live rich, complex lives that are woven into a larger, ongoing narrative. Or we may be easily forgotten. How many bibles have gone unwritten?

*
Asylum

At the entrance, security guards scan the crowd. A man directs people to the side aisles or the pews, depending on whether they’re coming to pray or coming to look. He repeatedly puts his finger to his lips—sshhhh! They have lots to see and say. Some are in awe. Some are making arrangements for later when they’ll go for moules frites. Scowling, he continues shushing, pointing to his head to remind them to remove their hats, shaking his finger at the one-eyed monsters to put their cameras away. He protects the Sacred Heart with the authority vested in him by the Holy Fathers who take his confession and hand him the Eucharist. The end is always near. You try to see it coming.
*

Passion

I thought the services would start at 5:30, so I was seated in the second row by 5:25. But this is Good Friday not a routine Vespers service. After an hour, a nun in a white robe and black wimple walks out to the front of the apse and sets up a microphone. She moves like an actress playing a nun. Men in lab coats come out and place the sacred objects and texts. A short, plump woman in a white lab coat appears with a rag and feather duster and tidies up. They have a brief conversation and walk back behind the apse. A handyman walks on, front left, with keys and a tape measure hanging out of his pocket. He looks around and walks off, leaving behind an odor of lubricating oil. Another half hour goes by. The pews are filling up.
A Black priest in a white robe comes out. There is anticipation, especially in the first two rows, where those who came earliest have been sitting longest. But then, behind the priest is the cleaning woman again. They file off to the right. Some people are talking, others are praying. Some of the ones praying tell the ones who are talking to be quiet. An irritable exchange erupts between the two women next to me, who have been chattering away, and the woman behind, who chastises them. A woman many rows back is talking loudly. People are trying to quiet her. She becomes increasingly belligerent and it slowly becomes apparent that she is not in her right mind. A few people smile indulgently. Two nuns come out and hand out the texts for the mass. Another ten minutes pass. The nuns come out and take their seats on the sides and the noise subsides a little. Another twenty minutes pass.
I read the whole four pages of the mass. My eyelids fall closed and I drift into a mild state of meditation. The woman next to me stands suddenly. I jump up from my seat, surprised at my own reflex and realize that, although I never thought it possible, I have been hypnotized. The procession has begun.
A cardinal and three priests are in front. One of the priests is old and feeble. All kneel down and prostrate themselves before the marble Crucifix. When they stand, the two on the outside pull the old one up by his elbows. He stumbles to his feet, a tuft of white hair sticking up from his head. The angelic voices of the nuns sing about the Royal Kingdom of Heaven. I sing along, following the printed text, in exalted French. The Passion is read by three priests. The cardinal speaks the words of Jesus in a deep, commanding voice. We all stand and the nuns sing, in crystalline harmony, the adoration of the Wooden Cross:

Voici le bois de la Croix
qui porte le Salut du monde,
Venez, Adorons!

Here is the wood of the Cross
that carries the Salvation of the world,
Come, let us adore it.

The Wooden Cross, carved in olive wood, is carried from the back by a procession of robed men. When they reach the apse they hold it vertically so the priests and altar boys can each in turn come forward to kiss it. After each kiss, a priest wipes the spot clean with a handkerchief.
Then the nuns line up. They kiss the naked Jesus all over his stretched out body, under his ribs, his armpit, his thighs, his hands, his feet. They know how much he suffered for them, how much he loves them. And they love him back. The priest swabs each kiss with his handkerchief.
After this the pews empty into the aisles. The line is slow and as I come nearer my eyes are ineluctably drawn to the loincloth. I sense a nudge from the devil but head for the foot. The priest points to the blank surface of the cross, indicating where I must kiss it, shouting, “Le pied! Le pied!”—and I begin to think my eyes have betrayed me. Or the priest has read my mind. I am convinced he is able to see transgressions before they happen. I walk past his finger and put my lips to the exquisitely carved toe, the tendons strained in agonized submission.
The nuns sing:

O Croix, buisson ardent de la Revelation,
Vigne au Sang vermeil, Olivier de benediction,
O Croix, bois d’ombre et defraicheur ou murmure L’Esprit, nous t’adorons!

O Cross, burning bush of the Revelation,
Vineyard of ruby Blood, Olive Tree of benediction,
O Cross, dark and faded wood where the Spirit whispers, we adore you.

Words so holy even the metaphors are Capitalized.
*
Betrayal

Walking back from the church I notice signs hanging outside many apartment windows that read, Vendu. The word ‘vendu’ means ‘sold.’ It also means ‘traitor.’ This seems serendipitous. We find ourselves inhabiting a world where the structures we’ve trusted to protect us have betrayed us. Time and space have become commodities beyond our means—The weak may inherit the earth, but the traitors have the best real estate. So at least here, in Paris, you’re safe from traitors if you pay attention to the signs.

Easter, 2005

EVENTUALLY OCCAM'S RAZOR

Looking back from some distant future one might write: “They thought existence, or consciousness, could be captured as if it had a place or time, deifying constancy, ignoring the fact that nothing ever finds a corner or enters a moment, that everything is transience and momentum.” Either there is one limitless form or limitless varieties of form. And love, whatever you think it is, requires duality, bi-directionality, or it dissipates, or tries to consume itself. Even self-love is a splitting, fragmentation of the self into objects and subjects, interchanging perspectives in an orgy of interactions, a world inhabited by lovers, ex-lovers and possible lovers.
Wars are fought depending on what tribe you belong to. Both alliance and enmity are presumed to share the same rules of survival and destruction. The body remembers best what history dilutes. Put bareness and scarcity in the center of memory. Eventually ancestors accrue, leaving footprints across the desert as its perimeters recede behind urban landscapes. We implode toward cities. We create and consume technology which usurps the evidence of our bodies. We conglomerate. We shatter in self-love. We rush toward self-conflagration. Eventually the trench’s stink habituates. Stagnation blazes in self-consumption and existence hovers over the prodded corpses. Substance is illusory. It continually expands. The task of investigating the complex nature of things is monumental and potential answers too ambiguous for dabblers. Some of us figured out how to transform sustenance into transcendence. Probably through methods that would disgust the eulogizers and exploiters now trading in consciousness as if the universe were linear and unilaterally determined. Binary models inhibit the future. They centrifuge irregularity, asymmetry and ambiguity. The mandates of empiricism exfoliate belief in God’s right to order the universe. Determinism crucifies inquiry. Each system is seductive: Yes or No; Light or Dark; Being or Non-Being. Either/or agrees to lead us through the labyrinth of our desires, implies a contract between the conflicting bases of our plurality, becomes a greeting across the boundaries of our values. As one Time and Space tycoon might put it: “Feed it or eat it.” But all this spending makes us a target for wandering bad boys. We are only made of fish spines, of hollow twigs, of sand. Knowing others desire you engenders certainty, as does physical power, as does the monstrous bulk of chauvinism covering you from the shadows like a bodyguard. We begin raising questions about the holiness of our ancestors. We ask, “What does it matter if we destroy innocence?” forgetting that existence is a fragile insect hanging on a web of chaos.

Still Alive In The Western Lands
March 16, 2009

Sitting in La Café Cave or La Cave Café listening to Johnny Cash, a demi and McCarthy novel on the wooden table in front of me feeling life to be so painfully sweet and familiar so far from home, those I love most, precious time, I think about the impulse moments, “Meet at the Bean?” “What are you up to-want to meet?” R, L, sisters, lover, friends, the state of things impermanent—that particular constellation of person time and space so fleeting and me over here lonely for them all and it, yes if I were there lonely for this? But who? P, S, N, B and N, the only ones I don’t have to hunt down for company but still—only these, while in NY there are countless places I can go to see countless people who know my name my face even if they care very little, though some are glad to see me even if in my neurotic way I still wonder—no matter where I am—like here—where some generic rock is playing, quasi-Rolling Stones, and no one’s brought the free popcorn to my table—maybe if I have a second beer and on and on and on…but what I really wanted to say was that the exquisite pleasure of life, these perfect moments of beer and music and book among the voices, soft in conversation, rising and falling the sound of a chair pulled along the floor, the tattooed waiter with the rock t-shirt loving his American look, now Echo and the Bunnymen, maybe, la la la la, and human creation has made all this meaningless beauty like the smell of warm popcorn and beer and the velvet voice speaking French to the woman sitting across from him, smiling back, her cheek resting on her knuckled fist, perfect white teeth, as the street corner ignites with the reflected light of pink sunset and green neon pharmacy cross above—I don’t know where I am in this bar of American music and little French dogs, Belgian beer and gloves made in China, but no loud Ha ha ha like on the LES, the tones more intimate and tremulous, there used to be a pinball machine in the corner where the couple sits and the guy knew how I liked my coffee and there were usually only 2 or 3 people in here at this hour but now the bar is almost full and the old men are gone—where? I keep trying to go west as the day progresses, follow the sun, that’s my mantra, makes the day last longer.

HERE IS A GREAT AND TIMELY SPEECH BY SEN. TED KENNEDY

This was his speech when he lost the democratic nomination to Jimmy Carter in 1980. It's sad that so much of what he proposed has not been realized 28 years later, almost a whole lifetime for some of you. I hope we will see a different outcome this time around. If link doesn't work, cut and past into address bar.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/tedkennedy1980dnc.htm

Your Bright Future...

Brought to you by Mayor Bloomberg. I am back in the thick of it, folks. And please don't support the Carlyle Group by frequenting Dunkin' Donuts. It's a small ping in the universe but if alla us little pings got together maybe some of the big pongs, mine-sweeping our rights and quality of life, would go down. Hopefully, i will regain my mental energy and increase the length of these little blog pings. Buy local, pay attention, and don't be afraid.

What's been on my mind...

I've been thinking about forgiveness. How difficult it is. I've been listening to devotional music and looking through my pictures of Bhaktapur. That's all i can say right now.

Tea Pee

The sun has finally come to Paris, though if you don't stand in the sun it feels like late March or September. I decided to go outside to work, write by hand, something I do when I can't bear another moment in front of this screen. So I went to the Jardins des Plantes to look at flowers and find a cheap place to eat a sandwich and write in my notebook. I arrived with an empty stomach and a full bladder with no bathroom in sight. I ordered a sandwich and asked where the toilets were and was told straight that way and then make a left and keep going. That seemed far so i decided to eat my sandwich first. It seemed kind of lame, though, considering there was a food concession next to a playground which was visited by children who were clearly no longer in diapers. Inconvenient is putting it mildly. So after my sandwich I trudged off following the directions. After a while it seemed too long a distance so I walked back the other way to the playground thinking I'd misunderstood, being not that proficient in aural French, which even though it may sound like it, is not a sexual technique. I asked someone in the playground, still incredulous that there wouldn't be a place for children to make doody and sissy, which is what we called it in Brooklyn where I grew up, though I do remember people holding their little kids over the gutter to pee rather than take them upstairs to do it in private. Anyway, the woman said there wasn't any in the playground, so I went back in the direction I came from and asked two old people sitting on a bench doing crossword puzzles. They pointed straight ahead and said it was just a little further next to the entrance to the zoo. I walked for what seemed like three city blocks, avoiding getting too caught up in looking at the flowers, and finally came to the PortaSan (however you spell it.) There was a red light which read: "Hors de service" meaning "Out of service." I was getting too pissed but couldn't even find a place to do that, and what's more, I hadn't even stopped to smell the roses. I went off in another direction looking for a gardener or someone who might know what's what, and found a guy digging around in the rose garden. He directed me back in the direction of the PortaSan and i told him it was out of order. He looked apologetic and told me to find the 'gardien' and ask him, perhaps he would know more...Walking further, avoiding the seductive alleys and walkways full of lush plantings, I found a bunch of beefy guys walking around in uniforms with gardening tools. Before they had a chance to send me off to the f'n PortoSan again, i explained that I'd already been there and wanted to know if there was an alternative. They said I should go into the nearby Museé de L'Homme, a complex of buildings spread over a dozen or so acres, another walk of about three blocks. So...I arrived in front of the first building and read the sign: "Fermé Mardi." Well, it just so happens it was Mardi and the museum was closed. I began considering peeing behind a bush or tree, figuring there must be some out of the way shady nook, it being a Botanical Garden and all. In the gardens of Brooklyn or the Bronx, for example, one could easily find such a place, certainly in Central Park, right? I began wishing that I had a companion with me to act as lookout--but that was not happening. French gardens are very formal with no hidden or overgrown areas, unless you go into the Labyrinth, which is populated with all kinds of people, lovers, parents and children and others you don't want to see with your pants down. But at this point I'm still trying to be optimistic. I walk around and around and...around. But, as I often try to ignore them, the facts inevitably win. I decide to ignore my need for the moment and go smell the roses. I am delighted when I discover among the rose beds an exquisitely naughty marble statue of Dionysus, with a sinister smile on his pointy-eared face looking down on the smaller, captive figure of Eros tied to his chest. Eros looks up over his shoulder at his captor with indignance, his defiant boy chest exposed to the viewer, straining wings spread. It is one of the most erotic sculptures I've ever seen. But as for the roses, most of them have been drowned by the excessive rain.
I decide that since I'm not far, more or less, from La Mosquée, which has an incredible hammam with a tea garden and restaurant, I'll go there for tea and use the bathroom. I walk about a half mile since I've come out from the exit furthest from the mosque.
After I use the bathroom I take a table inside one of my favorite rooms in the world, a Morrocan paradise where sparrows flit in and out of the open windows, landing on the brass tables foraging for crumbs of almond, rosewater and pistachio soaked in too much honey, though sparrows have no teeth and don't have to worry about cavities, and flit around so much they can probably eat 1000 times their weight. The voice of Oum Kalsoum and the sweet smell of tobacco being smoked in hookahs fills the room. So in the end, tout va bien--the simple pleasures of a pee and tea.

Remembering Elizabeth Murray

I learned yesterday that Bob Holman's beloved wife, the painter Elizabeth Murray, has left this world.When such a joyful being dies at the pinnacle of her creative powers it leaves a space in all our lives. But the greatest loss is to those closest to her--Bob, their two daughters, her son, and the rest of her extensive family.
I'll miss seeing her occasional visits to the Bowery Poetry Club, lighting up the dark corner at the end of the bar. She emanated a unique glow from her blue eyes, cloud of white hair, and neon smile. I think the last time I saw her there, a couple of years ago, she and Bob were making out like a couple of teenagers. It was an image of love that lasts, and that's the way I'll always think of her.

Helping out a talented spammer

I just want to share an email exchange I had this morning with yet another call for money out of Africa. This time it wasn't someone offering me a reward of a zillion dollars as percentage of their soon to be released gazillion dollars, offering me the opportunity of helping them by wiping out my own bank account which in return would free up some fictitious account or gold bullion or the testicles of the Prince of Timbuktu. No, this was from a humanitarian in distress. It was a dubiously named Dr. L--- P---who claimed to be volunteering her time to fighting racism, HIV/AIDS, poverty and lack of education in Africa. What's not to like? Apparently she left her bag in a taxi...well, I'll let you read it for yourself since I can't really duplicate its poignant tone. I also include my response below.

----Original Message Follows----
From: "L--- P---"
Subject: Please, I need your Help Urgently
Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 09:49:32 +0200

How are you doing today? I am sorry i didn't inform you about my traveling to Africa for a program called "Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education, the program is taking place in three major countries in Africa which is Ghana, South Africa and Nigeria. It as been a very sad and bad moment for me, the present condition that i found myself is very hard for me to explain.
I am really stranded in Nigeria because I forgot my little bag in the Taxi where my money, passport, documents and other valuable things were kept on my way to the Hotel am staying, I am facing a hard time here because i have no money on me. I am now owning a hotel bill of $ 1550 and they wanted me to pay the bill soon else they will have to seize my bag and hand me over to the Hotel Management., I need this help from you urgently to help me back home, I need you to help me with the hotel bill and i will also need $1600 to feed and help myself back home so please can you help me with a sum of $3500 to sort out my problems here? I need this help so much and on time because i am in a terrible and tight situation here, I don't even have money to feed myself for a day which means i had been starving so please understand how urgent i needed your help.
I am sending you this e-mail from the city Library and I only have 30 min, I will appreciate what so ever you can afford to send me for now and I promise to pay back your money as soon as i return home so please let me know on time so that i can forward you the details you need to transfer the money through Money Gram or Western Union.
--
Dr. L--- P---
l---p---@gmail.com


Dr. P---,
I am so sorry for your discomfort and i understand why you would write me for help, being that we are like sisters and you have been such an integral part of my life. I am buying a lottery ticket and sister--if it's the winning ticket it's got your name on it.
Love, your sister and best friend, Lana Turner

As a footnote, I actually googled Dr. L--- P--- and she does exist. She's a professor at an East Coast university and has also published a book on global public health policy and administration. Apparently the spammer has been doing her/his homework. Who knows, there might be someone out there claiming to be me and trying to get a $20,000 stipend to finish her novel in a shack somewhere in Mozambique.

Velib Schmelib

I'm trying to keep it together but disintegration is always at my heels. For a moment I considered re-titling this "The Daily Flog," but I spend so much time battling my tendency to complain that i decided against it. Anyway, I googled it and it's already taken. I will forge ahead with "the path of least resistance" if it kills me.
I decided to try to go against another natural preference of working at night when it's dark outside and I can control the light inside, and most people are home doing god-knows-what and I don't really want to know about it. I tried it and after a week of working in the daytime began to feel as if a gray muck was settling over my soul. Daylight is best for outside activity and I was slipping into a werewolf mentality. To remedy this I decided to go for an afternoon swim at the public pool and ride there on one of the new free for the 1st 1/2 hour bikes that the mayor of Paris had installed in mid-July, a system called VELIB. I used one once coming home late from a friend's and it was super convenient.
I packed my gear and went to the conveniently located bike station across the street from my apartment. There were no bikes. Ok, there's another one not too far, even though it's in the wrong direction. I get there and the computer screen tells me i can't get a one-day pass with my bank card. Ok, there's another one, this time closer to where I'm headed, but not so close to the pool to make me want to walk. I get there and there's one lonely bike left whose red light I foolishly ignore. I go through the registration process. It registers my bank card and charges me the one euro fee plus 150 euro deposit. I couldn't get the bike to release from the parking station, but ok, I should have paid attention to the red light, should have known better. Now that i've been charged, though, I'm determined to get on a bike, damn it. There's another station further along, almost all the way to where i'm going. It's out of order. I end up walking to the pool--I can always get on a bike to come home. There's a man outside the pool who tells me it's closed due to "technical difficulties." This is not the first time this has happened and i sometimes wonder if it's just a sneaky way for the staff to get a day to themselves. I know there's a bike station, not that close, in the opposite direction of home, but hey--i paid my one euro.
So i trudge over there and finally get a bike assigned to me by the computer--Number 6. I straddle Number 6, lower the seat and slowly find my balance with my heavy bag on my shoulder since if i put it in the basket i'm afraid the badly balanced bike will start wavering into traffic. I stay on the sidewalk just to be sure I make it home without being creamed by the Alain Delon wannabes on motos. I seem to be going over speed bumps, but i'm on the sidewalk and can't figure out why there'd be speed bumps on the sidewalk. I look down and it all looks like normal pavement so i get off the bike and give a look. My rear tire is flat. The question now is--where do i dump this thing? First i try the station that was out of order, thinking maybe I can drop off a bike even if i can't take one. Nope. I go back to the one that wouldn't take my bank card, but YES! it takes my bike. I apply a well-made chestnut cream crepe to my frustrated intentions and walk home.
In total, I spent an hour and a half within a half mile radius that I could have spent at the Louvre, or walking through the Luxembourg Gardens but let's look at it this way--there was a three point payoff: Even though I didn't get to swim, I got a major workout walking from station to station and then pedalling uphill on a one ton bike with a flat rear tire. The crepe was really good. I think i'm making progress with my attitude problem.

If you've landed here, you are on top of the Eiffel Tower, and maybe you'd rather be in Brooklyn. If so, I recommend you take one of the rides in ASTROLAND before they tear it down as this will be its last season before the raptors come and change Coney Island into another shiny corporate feedbag (the CYCLONE and the WONDER WHEEL will stay, as they are owned by New York City and have landmark status.) But they will never tear down the Eiffel Tower because it would be like tearing down the Chrysler Building which would be like tearing down the Eiffel Tower.
I was here, on the top of the E.T., for the third and hopefully last time for awhile, because my dear sister and brother-in-law were visiting and I would basically do anything to make them happy, especially on their first trip to Paris--even stand in line in the cold rain for two hours to get to the top and look around at the magnificence of this city for about 20 minutes, take pictures, and then, thankfully, go get a beer.
I am leaving my Montmartre paradise for New York Shitty in seven weeks and will be glad to see my son, sisters and ooooold friends again. The Parisians are good at complaining and there's lots to complain about everywhere, but I must admit I miss New York style kvetching. I'm sure the charm will wear off quickly, but Murray's Bagels and Hudson River here I come. Seven more weeks....I hope I find someone to stay here that loves plants. Writing is a solitary activity and sometimes the only living thing i touch for days at a time are my flowers and fragrant green friends on the balcony.Stay tuned....