This is why I'm going to be late to go to work today:
My life right now, it's like this blog -- directionless. Or rather, going in every direction at the same time. University. Job. Money. Entertainment (with Raph here, it's hard to live an ascetic life). GRE preparation. Reading manuscripts from time to time. Trying to fix another computer.
If you ask me, I'll say I feel a little schizoid these days. Trying to beat the February visa deadlines. Trying to beat the mid-December university deadlines. For the first time EVER I surprised myself considering that getting married could be a solution to the problem. Now you get an idea of how low I feel. That's not the way I thought I'd make it here. Still, a good 80% of me still wants to stick to plan a): Do it by yourself.
Sometimes, you wake up in the morning and you just think, Just fuck it. Now if 10/18 was offering me an interesting position, I might really consider returning to France and even live in Paris. Or Fleuve Noir. But I know I'll miss Brooklyn and NY so much....
Damn.... even Jean-Claude Van Damne (to hell with the spelling) was smart enough to make it in this country....now, that's insulting.
Prune (my brother's girlfriend) decided that she couldn't stand it anymore at the restaurant in upstate NY where she was doing her professional training. She's going back to France. She arrived at Grand Central Saturday morning and Raph and I met her there, next to the clock at the center of the big hall, of course. She had tons of bags. She left yesterday. We went to JFK with her. I hardly saw her this time. Stupid job. Last time, she came for a weekend too, and in less than 3 days, she left me exhausted but she had seen all the basic stuffs you need to see when you come to NY for the first time. We did everything but the museums. This time, though, because of my shitty, cheap job, I couldn't spend time with her, so Raph was her chaperon-guide.
She's funny, Prune. And she's so clumsy and tête-en-l'air. My brother warned me, though. He said, Never let her near an open bottle. Saturday night she WAS next to an open bottle and she spilt some Snapple on the carpet, the bubbling sticky liquid wetting the pages of one of my books. Aside from a dark stain on the carpet, she also left two bags of cookies supposedly able to make you travel through space. Last night, I started eating them while reading LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN. There is this after taste of grass in them that makes me wonder whether they have been cooked the proper way.
For your information guys, you don't just put the weed in the cookies' paste. You have to extract the resin off the weed and make butter with it, and use this butter to cook you cake.
LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN is one of the book that traumatized me when I was a kid. I remember. I must have been 12 or something and sick. I had nothing left to read so my mother brought me a bunch of her books and amongst LE CLUB DES CINQ and FANTOMETTE there was this book. I remember reading it in one day and night. I remember feeling even more ill after. I remember how, in my weak condition, the story had a huge impact.
I never read it again. Not until I started last night because I was feeling like throwing the GRE test preparation book out the window.
I wonder what kind of academic grades NYU or Columbia require you to have to get admitted.... If I had had the time to be strategic with that university thing, maybe I should have tried to be admitted at the Brooklyn College or something. My phobia of administrative process really does not help here. There is this page, in the Columbia files, I don't even wanna look at it. It's called something like "Proof of funds." My dear American friends, every time we apply for a visa of some sort, your government asks us poor helpless immigrants to prove that we have enough bread to stay and live in your country for a while. If you can't prove it, HAUS!
The problem with the national security thing is that terrorists have money and hardworking students often don't. Yet, you're more suspicious to the INS broke than wealthy.
Now Prune is gone and it's only Vanessa and me now and Vanessa is at Penn. U. doing cushion battles in high heels, g-string and sexy underwear with her hot bisexual female only roommates. Or at least, that's what GIRLS GONE WILD TV-shows make you think university life must be like in this country.
She denied it all, of course. But I know better. TV never lies.
Where to start? Things have gone undoubtedly out of hands since No.3 arrived; which, of course, was to be expected. First, he did find Port Authority AND Bleeker AND the restaurant. I suspect that he worked hard on the Guide du Routard, though, just so that he wouldn't have to bear with my sarcasms. This being said, it's hard to put everything back together into any coherent, chronological order. One thing is sure is that I somehow managed to appear everyday at work (from 5 pm to 1 am) 1) shaved 2) not THAT late 3) sober enough not to break anything.
Interestingly enough, statistics recording my consumption of cigarettes and alcoholic beverages have skyrocketed. This is not without influencing my performances on the point 2) above mentioned, since it's getting harder to beat the train when it arrives at a station that I only see in an improbable and ethilic distance.
If that makes sense...
I still have to deal with the university I graduated in in France and where they destroyed the archives of the past few years and are thus technically unable to send my transcripts to Columbia and NYU. So today, I went to the literary agency and ask a big favor to my ex-coworkers and managed to scan the copies of the transcript I had just enough time as everybody there had to catch a plane, a train or a cab to flee the City for Thxgiving.
Yesterday, after work, Raph & yours truly went hunting for a nice place to hang out. We started at Le Souk in the East Village, where you can smoke hookas while enjoying your beer. But all the hookas were already taken and my friend who is usually the DJ there was reported MIA so we promptly left and finally ended in a bar which is a kind of Communist paradox and which is aka the KGB. We had a strange time there, getting our J. Daniels from a skinny Asian guy. It was soon obvious that he was on something, Raph and I arguing fiercely as to what the product might be. Still, the KGB definitely scored some points, though I can't give the reasons here, nor even hint. Just go there. It looks like a Communist nightmare, though, but after a few drinks it's easy to forget your Russian and be blind to the early 20th century propaganda.
Tonight after work and a lot of (good) wine, we ended up at Madame X, on W. Houston, with Maureen and this Italian guy I hardly know and for some reason that must have made a lot of sense back then but I can't recall now, we had two bottles of Moet & Chandon Rose. Delicious. And when you feel like your no longer drunk, you can get a nice buzz just by glancing at the bill.
Obviously I'm still drunk, now, while the city is waking up and Raph is snoring on the floor, and I don't even want to think about the tons of things that need to get done urgently tomorrow.
On the floor, there's also this 400-page manuscript that the President of the agency gave me this morning, while I was waiting to use the scanner. A report is due for Monday.
And tomorrow is Thursday and I promised to meet Sara which makes tomorrow's schedule look like some paradoxical impossibility likely to tear the fabric of the space-time continuum and its immediate outskirts.
I have to grant Raph that in about five days he already has two girlfriends, which shows that he obviously made huge progress in English since back in the days when I was briefing him on the eves of his exams.
Enough now. I'll have to edit this one of these days.
NB: When I say tomorrow, I always mean after I get some sleep. Even if it's now half past six in the morning, I refuse to consider that this is a new day until I got some sleep.
Since you didn't ask me my opinion about the GRE test let me tell you what I think
Well (as those damn English people always say in Austen's novels), I think it is the most absurd, useless and irrelevent exam I have ever heard about or could ever dream of creating for the need of a sarastic text. Aside from taking away from you the burden to worry about how else you would have spent those 100 bucks I really don't understand the point of this test, since you are obviously not given a grade on your actual knowledge but merely on your ability to pass the GRE itself. It almost makes me want to learn more about the history of the GRE test (who decided that studend needed to pass it, who decided about the way it is now etc.), but also ETS's. But I'm too busy reading books about how to crack it...
J'ai un carnet rempli de notes que je ne trouve jamais le temps de dévider ici. En attendant...
En attendant, il y a No.3 qui arrive demain directement de France. No.3 est également connue dans quelques recoins de la Drome, l'Ardèche et les départements alentours comme la Lose. Raph est aussi identifiable sous le numéro 3 parce qu'il fait en fait parti d'un trio dont mon autre pote David est No.2 et dont je suis, à ce qu'il parait, No.1. Les numéros sont assez récents mais cela fait longtemps déjà qu'on s'appelle "loser" entre nous. "Loser" qui a été par la suite abrégé (à la française, c'est à dire pas abrégé du tout) en "lose". Féminin. Me demandez pas pourquoi.
J'ai appris aujourd'hui que j'avais l'honneur douteux d'être le numéro 1. Ca sert à ça les potes. Si David venait à percer dans le cinéma ou la photo, Raph et moi nous assurerions qu'il foire quelque part et qu'il revienne à sa place dans le monde des losers. Ca sert à ça aussi, les potes.
Donc voila, demain, la lose No.3 va se poser sur le tarmac de Newark Airport à 15h45 heure locale. Je ne pourrai bien sur pas aller le chercher because je dois aller taffer, mais je lui ai tout laissé. Mon numéro de téléphone de la maison où il n'y aura sûrement personne pour l'aider. Le numéro du restaurant qui, je l'ai appris trop tard, a été coupé par la compagnie de téléphone -- certainement pour non-paiement. S'il arrive jusqu'a Port Authority ce sera déjà bien. S'il arrive à trouver Bleecker St. on frôlera le miraculeux. S'il trouve le resto, il faudra se résoudre à brûler quelques sorcières.
Ca fait bizarre d'écrire en français. Il me faut chercher mes mots. Me demander, "Ca se dit, ca?." Finalement, j'ai l'impression de m'être échoué quelques part dans les limbes d'un entre-langues. I apologize to my non-francophone readers. God knows (I have thousands of readers, anyway) for my French post. Some post sometimes HAVE to be written in French, just like some other HAVE to be written in English. Don’t ask me why.
Mais c'est pas grave. Raph, si t'es vraiment un pote, t'auras pensé a amener un pot de Nutella taille familiale comme on en trouve pas ici, malgré que j'ai complètement oublié de t'en parler.
Raph, arrive sans $ bien sur. C'est pas pour rien qu'on l'appelle la Lose. Et il n'est que No.3, entendez bien. Je vous laisse imaginer le niveau de perfection que les autres ont atteint dans la loserie.
Ce soir, grillant une clope devant le restaurant, j'ai vu qu'un type avait écrit quelque chose lorsque le ciment a été coulé. N'ayant fait qu'une seule table ce soir, je n'ai pas pu m'empêcher de rêvasser sur la signification de ce mot. Et si c'était un sort ? Pourquoi avoir écrit ça? Ah, oui, au fait, le mot: "SOUL."
hoarse voice because of a cold i caught a couple days ago this saturday felt like a sunday and then you turn on the t.v. so that you don't have to do something constructive and you see Ol' Dirty Bastard on the screen in what looks like archive images of a press conference and by the time you found the remote to turn the volume up you know that you're about to hear something bad because it always happens like that most artists you like are seldom on t.v. except when they die thank you for your music and words O.D.B./Dirt McGirt may you rest in peace
it's like i'm taking my being in this City for granted and that's not good
not if I want to stay
and i do
so why can't i sort out what's important and what is not? step one is: define priorities
and priority is to stay here
but in the meantime i have to eat and pay the rent and that means making money which implies some kind of work which implies a loss of the time that could have been dedicated to the visa issue
fuck it
fuck me
fuck
Daaamn, the City is so cold. And it will be probably even colder in the coming weeks.
So I'm ill, of course. Why not? Still working though. My week started on Monday (Nov. 1) and I've worked everyday since and since Saturday, I am doing brunch/lunch as well as dinner. 12+ hours a day. So, yeah, leave a door open for five minutes and not surprisingly I'll get any stupid disease I can find. This "week" will finally end on Sunday night.
Had a very strange dream last night. The fever probably has something to do with it.
Francois Mitterand (former President of France from 1981 to 1995, now dead) was in an early 20th century uniform, riding a white horse. It was a ceremony in his honor. Maybe for his reelection. You can tell he his proud of being able to ride in spite of his old age. I think I am watching the ceremony on TV. And I keep thinking that this is a very bad idea. He looks too old and skinny to be on a horse. Then Mitterand moves his horse and he has to go down a huge stairway. To my surprise, he doesn't dismount and the horse resists and sends him flying in the air and the President lands on the steps of the stair, breaking every bones in his body as he keeps rolling down in the most grotesque and yet terrifying manner.
He dies, of course. I don't know why, but this is the first dream in months that I can remember.
D'Oh, indeed... But hey, son cosas de la vida... As if politics could change anything anyway... Last night went out for a bite with Sara. Even though it was way too early, she decided to give me my birthday present right away and so I came back home later that night with a very very nice sober, simple and elegant Kenneth Cole watch. Hadn't have a watch in years. I think there's a message behind that. Something like, "Now if you're ever late again I'll kill you!" I left her at the subway station in the West Village and started to walk towards Times Square and then thought I really really didn't want to be in Times Square tonight so I went to Union Square instead, hoping for some action but the scene was dead. Before I arrived home I hesitated for a while over buying one of Kennedy's madly delicious double cheeseburger. What a strange country where you can wear a heavy watch at your wrist and still have to worry about being able to afford a double cheeseburger or not... When I arrived home the map of the US was already pretty much all red and no matter what HST wrote earlier that day, it didn't look good to me. At first, I had given Bush the winner. But then, reading HST's text I thought, "Maybe this guy has spent most of his life trying to kill his brains cells, he still covered more US Presidential Elections than you did -- plus he is an incorrigible gambler. So why not?" Why not, indeed...
"It is now Tuesday, and John Kerry is looking good today, while George Bush is looking a little desperate. His eyes are wild and his voice is shrill and he is acting more and more like a doomed animal on its way to the meat-grinder. Young George is about to lose his first election.
JFK will win this one decisively enough to make any recounts or challenges irrelevant. If Kerry wins New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and Florida, for instance, this election will be over before it really gets started.
Kerry will win big today. I guarantee it. The evil Bush family of central Texas is about to suffer another humiliating failure on another disastrous election day.
And I knew it Sunday after returning from Los Angeles, where I had been campaigning for Kerry, my friend. Football and politics were never so fatally linked as they were when the Washington Redskins lost to the Green Bay Packers that day. It was all over after that." -- Hunter S. Thompson, in his ESPN2 column.
Il y a tous ces gens à appeler que je n'appelle pas. Tous ces rêves que je ne fais pas. Ou que j'oublis. Toutes ces lettres que je n'écris pas. Tous ces mots que je garde pour moi. Tous ces coups que je ne donne pas.
Toutes ces choses qui s’entassent et débordent et veulent sortir malgré moi.
Et qui ne sortent pas.
Ne sortiront pas. Ou alors seulement au goutte a goutte.
Aujourd’hui, Taha a dit : « This is nothing .» Il a dit, « This is only the chapter six of your book ». Il parlait de la soirée de merde qu’on venait de passer à bosser sous les humiliations imbéciles de notre patron.
Plus tard, sur Bleecker street, un groupe dans un pub jouait « Like A Rolling Stone. » La version d’Hendrix, bien sûr. Qui voudrait sérieusement reprendre la version de Dylan (a part Hendrix lui-même) ?
Il y a des Boston Kremes à la maison. Et ces amis du bout du monde. Sur le chemin du retour, dans le lecteur CD, la voix torturée de Kim des Sonic Youth.
Le mois d’octobre donne déjà une petite idée de ce que New York va être cet hiver.
En rentrant, en marchant vers la station de métro, j’ai rencontré un groupe de français qui était plus ou moins paumé.
« Est-ce que je peux vous aider ? » Et là, ils ont cette réaction typique de Français à l’étranger, s’exclamant bruyamment au milieu du froid et des limousines et des rumeurs de la ville : « Ah ! Quelqu’un qui parle français !! » Je pensais que peut-être ils cherchaient un métro ou quelque chose comme ça. Malgré leur beaux costumes, et leur bijoux et leur maquillage, leur chaussures cirées et leur sac à mains hors de prix. Ils cherchaient un pub.
« Vous êtes dans le bon coin, en tout cas.
-- On cherche le Bitter End.
-- C’est tout près d’ici. Il faut juste que vous descendiez d’une rue ou deux. Vous devez rejoindre Bleecker et tourner à gauche et la remonter d'un block ou deux. »
Il y eut des « ah » et des « merci » et puis il y eut moi et puis un peu plus loin il y eut une copie de l’âme d’Hendrix dans la nuit.
