Oh! Shit

The offending shoes

I awoke to sun. Bright sunlight in the slats of the dark metal shutters, drawn since I began reading Anaïs Nin's diary up in my room. It was tempting to open them and let the sunshine, gone since the period of the birthdays, into my room; go out and do the things better done in sunlight than in rain, impossible in the driving rain we had, dismal in the drizzling rain we have more recently had.

Saturday, I spent the afternoon trimming ivy. I received a request from our gentle neighbor, the man responsible for the maintenance of all of France Telecom's buildings in the region. Sometimes I alert him to a problem, like the forest growing in their gutters (complete with forest floor) and destroying the masonry walls; sometimes he reminds me, kindly, politely, that it is time to trim the ivy. I knew. I had been watching it creep up to the new zinc flashing they installed at my suggestion, after the built-in gutters turned into Sherwood Forest. The problem was the workers' materials and crap all over the place, cast against the shrubs alongside that wall. They finally rid us of the better part of it, and I could put the ladder up again.

Pruning ivy is a choking activity. The dust, the leaf mold and the cobwebs that form in it cling to the inside of the mouth, the nose and the throat, suffocating you. Up the extension ladder I go, to the top of the wall, long and short pruning sheers in hand, ripping at what I can, picking shoots from between the zinc and the plywood behind it. I have respect for the work they did. Once I get started with pruning sheers, though... just try to stop me. I only needed to do the building, but there was the overgrown ivy along our garden wall just beside it. I'd have to take the ladder around behind France Telecom's building, to the place where I take the dogs to poo, hoping they will do so there, and there only.

The little space behind is full of piles of dog doo. I only collect it once I feel deep and abiding guilt for soiling a place that, while it belongs to no one really, and is frequented only by me, my dogs, the kids waiting for the bus, and the garden service people employed by the man from France Telecom to conquer the weeds my dogs' pee fertilizes copiously (although I suspect that the old lady with three teeth relieves herself there, and not just number 1), I still feel a sense of civic obligation to pick up after my dogs, even when the poo eventually dries and joins the soil. It would have been so easy. All I had to do was clean it up before I started tromping around, piling up the massive quantities of ivy and Barberry bush I cut.

I slipped. It was that way of slipping that is caused by one thing only: slick dog poo all along the underside of your shoe. I didn't need to look.

I could have cleaned it up, right along with all those piles unstepped in as yet. I did not.

I slipped again. Turning, feeling surrounded by piles of poo, I stepped on a branch of Barberry I had just cut. The thorns are so long and strong that they make for a natural predator for trespassers. In fact, had Dante given any thought to trespassers, he'd have surely made a level of hell ringed by Berberis vulgaris just for them. The thorns pierced the bottom of my running shoes, the ones I wear to the gym with its sign reading "Gym shoes worn indoors only, please".

Now, I had a running shoe sole covered with smeared dog doo and stuck with a 50 cm long branch of thorned European Barberry bush. I was entirely surrounded with Barberry cuttings and piles of poo. It began to drizzle. Audouin's router hummed in the background on the other side of the wall. My pile of cuttings smoked pitifully in the wet next to me. I had what is referred to as a dilemma: if I used my still clean and free right sneakered foot to step on the end of the branch sticking out from in front of my left toe and apply pressure to pry the left sneakered foot off the thorns, I risked having a dog shit covered Barberry branch embedded in my right sneaker. The alternative -- reaching down and pulling it off with my ungloved hand -- wasn't more attractive. So, avoiding the piles of dog doo and Barberry cuttings as best I could, I made my way to the concrete walk against the wall, stepped my right foot gingerly onto the very tip of the Barberry branch and rocked my weight to my left heel, levering my foot off the branch.

It worked. I was free. I could clean up the dog shit and get back to work. Or, I could just get back to work.

Hey, my sneakers were already covered with dog shit, and the pull of the weight of the pruning sheers in my right hand was too strong. I am like an addict. I had to cut, and then try to burn what I had cut.

Yesterday, I changed shoes at least before starting again.

Today, I put those Dr. Scholl's Birkenstock wannabe's on -- easy to buy here in our local pharmacie; this shames Sam for me -- and headed out to cut a little more. My heart wasn't in it. My mind was on Nin and the industriousness of the summer had passed, giving way to the reveries of autumn. I did not like the damp. Restless, I came inside, perched on the end of the sofa to see what was happening in the world of sports. I smelled -- euw, what was that? Understanding came with memory.

Dog shit.

Oh! Shit.

While not specifically about the European Barberry Bush, with it's yellow flowers in Spring and orange fruit in fall, Paghat's bit on the "gawdam barberries", the aureas and altropurpureams, in their garden largely applies.
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The Barberry Bush
by Ralph Waldo Emerson


The bush that has most briers and bitter fruit,
Wait till the frost has turned its green leaves red,
Its sweetened berries will they palate suit,
And thou may'st find e'en there a homely bread.
Upon the hills of Salem scattered wide,
Their yellow blossoms gain the eye in Spring;
And straggling e'en upon the turnpike's side,
Their ripened branches to your hand they bring,
I've plucked them oft in boyhood's early hour,
That then I gave such name, and thought it true;
But now I know that other fruit as sour
Grows on what now thou callest Me and You;
Yet, wilt thou wait the autumn that I see,
Will sweeter taste than these red berries be.

And here it is, direct from The Twilight Zone

LIMBAUGH: I think that everybody is laughing. Our president is a worldwide joke. Folks, do you realize something has happened here that we all agree with the Taliban and Iran about and that is he doesn't deserve the award. Now that's hilarious, that I'm on the same side of something with the Taliban, and that we all are on the same side as the Taliban.


What do you mean "we", Tonto?

And, uh, Iran, Rush? Really? From the BBC's round-up of world response to President Obama being awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize:

ALI AKABR JAVANFEKR, AIDE TO IRANIAN PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD

"We hope that this gives him the incentive to walk in the path of bringing justice to the world order.

We are not upset and we hope that by receiving this prize he will start taking practical steps to remove injustice in the world"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8298802.stm

And the Taliban? Don't make me laugh, I am already choking on Rush's pronouncement. We, the actual "we", have to keep a close eye on these guys and the morons who follow them.

How many of them are there exactly?
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Senator Claire McCaskill: The twilight zone

The Twilight Zone

I feel that I’m in an alternative universe. For eight years some people called anyone who disagreed with the President’s foreign policy or war in Iraq unpatriotic. Then in the course of two weeks, those same people cheer when the United States does not get selected for the Olympics and boo when our President is the unanimous choice for the Nobel Peace Prize. Go figure.

Congratulations Mr. President for standing up to the scorn and derision of your opponents in the election when you firmly stood for the proposition that strength meant being willing to talk to your enemies, not just your allies. Thank you for the confidence and wisdom to say that a hand will be extended when their fist is unclenched. And thank you for understanding that our national security rests on our principles, the example we set for the world, and our alliances along with the excellence and strength of our military, rather than exclusively the latter. God Bless America.

-- Senator Claire McCaskill, October 9, 2009, http://clairecmc.tumblr.com/post/208582433/the-twilight-zone

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President Barack Hussein Obama, 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

The transcript:

Good morning.

Well, this is not how I expected to wake up this morning.

After I received the news, Malia walked in and said, "Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo's birthday."

And then Sasha added, "Plus, we have a three-day weekend coming up."

So it's -- it's good to have kids to keep things in perspective.

I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel Committee.

Let me be clear, I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.

To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize, men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.

But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women and all Americans want to build, a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents.

And I know that throughout history the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes.

And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.

Now, these challenges can't be met by any one leader or any one nation. And that's why my administration's worked to establish a new era of engagement in which all nations must take responsibility for the world we seek.

We cannot tolerate a world in which nuclear weapons spread to more nations and in which the terror of a nuclear holocaust endangers more people.

And that's why we've begun to take concrete steps to pursue a world without nuclear weapons: because all nations have the right to pursue peaceful nuclear power, but all nations have the responsibility to demonstrate their peaceful intentions.

We cannot accept the growing threat posed by climate change, which could forever damage the world that we pass on to our children, sowing conflict and famine, destroying coastlines and emptying cities.

And that's why all nations must now accept their share of responsibility for transforming the way that we use energy.

We can't allow the differences between peoples to define the way that we see one another. And that's why we must pursue a new beginning among people of different faiths and races and religions, one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect.

And we must all do our part to resolve those conflicts that have caused so much pain and hardship over so many years. And that effort must include an unwavering commitment to finally realize that -- the rights of all Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security in nations of their own.

We can't accept a world in which more people are denied opportunity and dignity that all people yearn for: the ability to get an education and make a decent living, the security that you won't have to live in fear of disease or violence without hope for the future.

And even as we strive to seek a world in which conflicts are resolved peacefully and prosperity is widely shared, we have to confront the world as we know it today.

I am the commander in chief of a country that's responsible for ending a war and working in another theater to confront a ruthless adversary that directly threatens the American people and our allies. I'm also aware that we are dealing with the impact of a global economic crisis that has left millions of Americans looking for work.

These are concerns that I confront every day on behalf of the American people.

Some of the work confronting us will not be completed during my presidency. Some, like the elimination of nuclear weapons, may not be completed in my lifetime.

But I know these challenges can be met, so long as it's recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone.

This award is not simply about the efforts of my administration; it's about the courageous efforts of people around the world.

And that's why this award must be shared with everyone who strives for justice and dignity; for the young woman who marches silently in the streets on behalf of her right to be heard, even in the face of beatings and bullets; for the leader imprisoned in her own home because she refuses to abandon her commitment to democracy; for the soldier who sacrificed through tour after tour of duty on behalf of someone half a world away; and for all those men and women across the world who sacrifice their safety and their freedom and sometime their lives for the cause of peace.

That has always been the cause of America. That's why the world has always looked to America. And that's why I believe America will continue to lead.

Thank you very much.
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Goodbye to you my carp koi

Our fish

I love this photo. I love it even more because yesterday morning, I found one of the fish in it -- the gold-headed, black-backed carp koi just under the reddest of the goldfish to the right -- lying dead next to the basin. It was the fish that has amazed me by how quickly it grew from the same size as the other koi carp I bought in May at the garden store, the one I started going to once Florosny seemed to have dedicated itself to going out of business.

They were all about three inches long when I bought them, but different colors. There was the entirely golden one I bought first with some shubunkin, but it seemed lonely, so I returned with my stepdaughter -- one of the first outings I proposed, the day after a terrible scene; the day I asked if she wanted to learn to ride -- to get more. I was also hoping to increase the chances of the carp koi breeding by having more of them. I felt a little silly asking the salesperson if a single carp koi with lots of goldfish and their cousins, the multicolor shubunkins, can feel a little lonely. She said they could. Vindication! But, everyone did really seem happier once they had greater species representation and balance in the basin. Everyone got along swimmingly.

[I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself.]

Then, one of the two beautiful, fancy, large shubunkins I had bought first, after we repaired the leak in the basin, disappeared, and shortly after, about three other fish, including the smaller fancy black shubunkin with red markings that had come from someone else's filthy basin. An act of charity on the part of my stepdaughter brought him and a red goldfish to ours, newly rechristened in April. They all disappeared without a trace, without an explanation. Had a heron come to pick them from the basin in the gray early morning? Had a nimble cat succeeded in grabbing them with his claws?

Audouin favored the latter; he has it out for cats, who he believes are essentially cruel, killing for the pleasure of it, playing with their injured prey and not always eating it. He's not the only who thinks this. I argue it is in their nature. I am not sure this makes it less cruel. He adores Wisp, though. She is even allowed to sit by his elbow while he eats dinner. His elbow is on the table. I thought the heron was more plausible, since there was nothing left. Not a scale or a bone or a fin near the basin. Nothing. I also heard that they herons tend to do this in May, when we lost the fish.

Don't they eat in July?

Then, there were no more disappearances. Everyone grew and thrived, perhaps especially the gold and black koi carp. By his size, it was probably a she. Two of other three started to catch up to it, only the first one, the beautiful gold one, staying smaller. Now that the gold and black one is gone, I begin thinking that perhaps they would have had exquisite golden baby carp together.

I make myself touch the dead. Even if I am not close to them. I know they will feel cold, unyielding flesh under my fingers. I know I won't like it, but I feel like I owe them that much. A bridge between the dead and I, the living. A gesture to the spirit to say that I know it is there, only a difference of state exists. It is a form of respect more than affection. If I have loved the person, I will kiss him, like my grandmother, or my uncle, my husband's brother. It is a kiss to tell the spirit that I know it has gone on, become larger than the body that held it, present wherever it now chooses, and perhaps it has chosen to remain close to the body. I can't take the risk that it hasn't and not touch it.

I believed for an instant fighting belief that the fish was not ours, lying as it was just at the edge of the Santa Barbara Daisies the surround the basin. Sense won. It had not come here from somewhere else to die. From its size, it was also obvious which fish it was. The colors had started to fade. It was unmarked, no blood. Eyes open and fixed like the fish in the market. I went and got paper towel in which to wrap it. Turning it over, I searched the other signs for marks left by its killer, but there was nothing but slight indentations, depressions frozen in its flesh. They didn't necessarily come from teeth, or anything outside the fish itself.

"Peut-être," someone else suggested, my neighbor, wise in the ways of fish "il a sauté." Perhaps the drops of rain, overflowing the basin onto the inclined brick border at the top of the low wall had made it jump to meet them, and he had finished on the ground.

Or, perhaps he had tried to get to the two koi sticks I found lying in the bit of water on top of the border on that side of the basin, where it tends to overflow. Perhaps he -- or she -- thought that it he flopped a little in that water, he could get to them, and he flopped too hard, right out of the basin.

"Why," asked Sam, "do fish commit suicide?" He was perfectly serious.

"What do you mean?"

"Everyone hears how fish will suddenly jump from their bowls and die." I remembered Bubbles being found in the sink from time to time by my mother or my sister.

"I don't think," I answered, "that fish know that outside the water in the bowl awaits death." They are, I thought, probably thinking that it is the only thing they know that is also on the other side of that transparent divider, more water and the objects that interest them. I don't think that fish are existential enough to wish to die as a result of unbearable boredom or loneliness.

"Il est ici, le poisson mort," I said to my husband in the evening. I began to remove the paper towel wrapped body from the plastic bag in which I had placed him, noticing an unpleasant odor wafting up to my nose "Tu vois, il n'a y pas de marques --". He stopped me.

"Je n'ai vraiment besoin de le voir," he said. I supposed he didn't. I didn't really want to smell him without the benefit of the paper towel.

"Que fais-je de lui?" I wasn't expecting a real suggestion from Audouin, like "bury him under the dogwood, or anything.

"Jette-le." He meant in the garbage, and that is what I did. For the first time. He softened, "Tu peux acheter un autre." I felt very young, my husband as father telling the small girl that she could have another fish to replace her special one that died.

No, actually, it wasn't the first time that I threw away an animal that died in our garden -- I usually bury them --; that was when I threw the frog I found dead in the grass alongside the basin into the bin in which we put cuttings for the town to collect for compost.

I ought to have put the fish there, too, come to think of it.
....

The wrong window

Our bedroom window

But would it be as much
fun
if they got something
right?

I have been absent of late. I suppose I know why, but that goes beyond this blog to talk much about such things. I like to think that I have been careful to maintain a certain separation between all that is very personal and the public, while being truthful and speaking from what is real and important to me.

That's a little bit the problem. It is becoming unsatisfying because it is too careful, too superficial, unproductive.

It started when I began to take pictures in the garden of the work I was doing there to try to resurrect it, and then inserting them into wordprocessed documents to attach to a list of friends and family so that they could see what I was doing, otherwise, they couldn't see. What did it matter if they could, actually? If they wanted to, they could come, but I ask my sister for pictures of their work to make a patio so that I can see, so. Sometimes we're interested.

I didn't like doing this, though. I was never sure if everyone was interested, so I asked, and they said they were. Sometimes someone would write and ask why they hadn't had an update recently. This helped, but it didn't completely reassure me that I wasn't violating some rule of self-promotion and wandering into narcissism. I detest narcissism, as much as I dislike rivalry.

Then, my other sister suggested a blog. It would be, she told me, so much easier. The obvious thing to do to communicate with everyone about my garden and send news. I didn't do it right away -- I was afraid I wouldn't be as good as Julie Powell's The Julie/Julia Project, which my other sister, the first one, gave me for a birthday, and the proof that I am not: no book or movie contract yet --, and when I did, she said, "Oh! That's so 2005."

Oh. Late and unoriginal, as usual.

I couldn't even master Salon.com's blog software. That's how I ended up on Blogspot, finally.

And still, my garden and my life didn't rise to Frances Mayes' memoir Under the Tuscan Sun, or Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence. (Perhaps the problem is my last name?) I got sidetracked in politics, which my meager readership has steadfastly preferred, although the intimates are only interested in the house and garden, with one having a declared interest in the frogs only. (I also have a weakness for the frogs and the toads).

In short, it became a hodge-podge. A scrapbook. A place to take perspective on my own life and make it bearable in a distillation, where it had been a little too consuming and searing without the benefit of this process.

Then, in truth, politics became an obsession replacing my other obsessions. The garden went to seed. The work on the house began and went from great excitement and hope to greater frustration and fizzle as the workers proved themselves many things, except professional, competent and upstanding. I suppose I care greatly still because I feel so much like I don't anymore, and I can still throw a major fit. Like Saturday afternoon.

The latest is the bill for the rest of what is owed them, plus extras -- which we slashed, some being included explicitly in a contract that only one of them can't read, but which they both signed, saying they didn't need to read, they trusted that it was what we discussed, which it was, faithfully -- and therein is an even worse problem and suffering --, before the work is finished, woefully past when it was due and still incomplete.

Thursday, the windows were to be delivered. The one for our room and the children's room at the other end of the small house. It was getting cold at night. We kept each other warm in place of more than a closed, slatted metal shutter against the early fall chill. The children slept in sleeping bags under the covers when they were here. We haven't turned the furnace back onto the winter cycle. I resent burning oil to heat the house when we aren't really that cold, and it goes without saying that it is not only pointless but downright shameful to heat a room without windows. This is how we live. I admit it.

Thursday came and went without a sign of Georges. So did Friday. He arrived, as he has been doing of late, on Saturday morning, full of apologies. The windows weren't ready on time, as the window guy had promised when he was here with him -- another surprise -- last Saturday. My suspicion? Of course the windows were ready on time, but they are working on another job during the week, so it costs them less to bring them on Saturday and blame the window guy.

They looked nice. They were, this time, in oak. They were, the two of them, 3,000 euros. Georges let that slip. Of course. We'll see if we get a bill for another extra for oak. I pointed out what he and the window guy didn't bother to read in the notes section on my drawing, "The windows shall be in oak or pine." The other windows on the bedroom level are made of pine. The garden level windows are oak.

"Ah, mais j'aurais pu les faire en pin de la Carolinie de Nord, mais c'est trop tard maintenant. Tout est déjà débité," said the window guy. He had already explained how the common pine today in Europe is from the Ukraine, but Chernobyl has ruined it, causing anything made of it to rot in three years.

They should have read the drawings.

Then, later, I looked more carefully. I hadn't actually seen them, even though I looked at them, when they first arrived. I was aggravated. Another surprise: the window in our room was wrong! He hadn't even followed my drawings. I had written, drawn and said explicitly that it was to be identical to the window it replaced, and which had been taken to his shop. The other French door for the children's room was to add a vertical muntin to make 6 lites in each panel since the panels were much wider than in our room. What did he do? Make ours a narrower version of that one, so that no two windows on the bedroom floor are the same.

I called and left a message. A callback I didn't hear, but no message. Time to go call again. After I get back from picking Sam up. His scooter, which was vandalized a couple of weeks ago, won't be fixed until after tomorrow.

I'll decide the fate of this blog later.
....

This says its all: Smash the state

Just what I have been thinking lately.
....