mardi 29 juin 2004

To finish with the beginning* Undoubtedly the most prolonged absence of news from this site in its short history has reduced the readership from the Faithful 5¾ to the Habitual ½-back, who has yet to let me know whether you're a she, a he, an in-between or an alien "invader". We've seen a lot of those hereabouts lately, the Kid and me. Finally, I'm forgiven for inflicting 'Mars Attacks' on her when she was seven or eight and it scared her silly. Moreover, she has emptied the box of its DVD, along with seven others, most of them destined for their umpteenth viewing, but this time with a nice young lad. Those ghostly 'Pirates' were also among them, as well as 'Human Traffic' (IMDb), which perhaps I ought to have forbidden. "La comédie la plus trash de l'année !!" is one of a bunch I haven't seen myself yet and comes with a big cover "health warning". I suspect 'Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within' is still here simply because she forgot, but this striking, "ground-breaking" first in fully computer-generated cinema about an invasion which isn't brings me back to wounded Gaia. During today's stroll in the Parc Montsouris, one of the two biggest within city walls, I almost succeeded in the "lonely as a cloud" act, though it's late for daffodils and nigh impossible to escape the dirty noise of internal combustion engines. It came to me that I've scarcely set foot outside Paris for getting on for two years now and never anywhere which could really be called open countryside. That must change, but I'm ready to wait. The day has been wonderful, the weather magnificent. I slept little last night and have eaten virtually nothing since Sunday lunchtime, but my operating system feels all the better for that. And, yup, I'm blogging again. On June 25, I received this, and haven't yet answered: "Yr last blog featured a Cybergirl of the Month. It was dated June 17th. Does this mean you are now going to blog mensuellement? Cheers, Tony" No, it didn't and doesn't. For yesterday's revival with a film review, you have not me to thank, but a phenomenal woman who gave me the required kick up the butt, strongly recommending that I catch 'Les Choristes' before it drops off the radar of the city's big screens. She was right. And the movie also came as a much-needed reminder that none of the DVDs I've gathered to see and watch again on the Mac offer the same thing as a decent Paris cinema, bonuses or no bonus discs. However, unlike the last time there was a gap, it wasn't blogger's block that seized me, but the growing realisation that this place, like its author, is in for a serious change or three. Since a delightful first meeting in a month one night last week, I've realised something a little odd. In her way, for all her "faults" and her "flaws" and such other intimations of simple humanity she has issued as warnings, she is -- and I mean this one short word -- perfect. Perhaps rather like another alien who isn't: Milla Jovovich in 'Le Cinquième Elément' ('The Fifth Element'; ("72% fresh" - Besson being one of my favourite directors). For the first time since I wrote 'Gaia's Complaint' -- and previous risks at blogging parts of that have perhaps mercifully met without comment -- I've understood, myself, the full meaning of that highly imperfect endeavour. "  - It wos always The Eyes wot dunnit, guv'nor. - The eyes, raged the judge. - Yes, m'lord. I've got a fetish for clear eyes, well-lit (and bushy tails). - Be British. Your values... - are widely shared, m'lord. I detest eyes that hide behind veils. [...]" (from the Third Watch) It may take forever for her to pardon me this; but let's say it must be the last breach in the wall of "rules and regulations". It can be no more, but certainly no less; not for a woman who now knows absolutely everything I had still locked in a heart which is completely and most willingly hers. The eyes have it all right; the lifelong question was always "Whose eyes?" Yet still she is talking to me! Which is, of course, nothing short of the second miracle of my year... Today, three times I was spoken to by a woman in love. Such a road almost invariably being strewn with obstacles, real or absurdly imagined, this friend is among several people who have made a fearful mistake about me of late. "Since you met her," one said some weeks ago, "how you've changed! You've opened up and seem so suddenly wise about love. It might just be that you're right and this woman is your salvation." Well, I know neither about the salvation nor the wisdom! If that consists in disclosing to the other all that needed the saying for a lifetime and taking every other risk your closest friends have told you is total folly and no part of their own guidebooks, then call me a "wise fool" with the luck of Old Nick himself! But for the rest, anybody who comes back here any more will have to settle for 'And the end of all our exploring'. It's the last part of my 'Gaia story' I remain willing to share with anybody but her. Her white lilac among the illustrations on that page is another breach of (copyright) rules, since I stole it from the newly discovered 'Armchair France'. The butterfly kiss reminds me once again of the 'Dreaming Butterfly' of Chuang Tsu. So, for that theft I can offer amends. But as to Gaia's full intent, all I have left to offer now is patience sustained by some living spirit within of hope, and the promise to keep the private promises already made. Whatever happens, I must always be grateful, without regrets, for what already did. So should the Habitual ½-back seek further news of my heart, I'm sorry to say that this is all. There won't be any more, not on this blog. The acts of "confession" and "blogging as therapy" end, for me, with this entry tonight. That others, some of them blogrolled, have no such plans is no hindrance; on the contrary, I much appreciate what many have written, their courage and insights and strength. I shall certainly go on reading them, without ceasing to link to what I find entertaining, informative, novel, wise and sometimes extremely funny! In thinking all this through, along with the rest of my life, I was tempted for a while to remove those key words from the top: "an experiment." But only this part of my experiment is finished. I shall also go on posting serious stuff, of course, but my heart has been so greatly unburdened by a woman's astounding tolerance of its dangerous ways that what's between us has to lighten up, especially at my end of this silver thread. There's a "deal" now, that's how she once put it. It's not for the breaking! _____________ *Post modified mainly for format early on June 30: i) two images removed since I've seen too many SF films lately, would not want to leave any even remote clues as to the lass's identity; and ii) I had to redo the HTML code (the "pre" tag I had finally learned and tested worked fine in all of my six browsers but one. Which one? Internet Explorer, of course. Another dog's breakfast of a present from the Bill Gates stable...). 11:02:04 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 28 juin 2004

'Les Choristes' - music, with class The chill, bleak morning Clément Mathieu arrives to take up his post as class supervisor at a private boarding school lost in the countryside, a small boy is waiting just inside the locked iron gates. Every Saturday, he hopes his father will finally come for him. Every other day is a Saturday in the child's mind, but his parents are dead. "Action. Reaction!" Each crime brings its punishment, even when the offences lie purely in troubled adolescent heads and hearts confined largely to dully furnished classrooms and spartan dormitories. The man Clément is replacing shows him an armful of surgical stitches. The stab wound was the reaction of the boy from whom he confiscated a packet of cigarettes. While the response to the assault is short of police intervention, the culprit spends much of his time in the lock-up or doing menial chores. Clément, a onetime music teacher and discreet amateur composer superbly played by Gérard Jugnot, is set straight to work with the benefit of grim good luck wishes, a shortlist of names of the most rebellious boys and a sour introduction to the despotic headmaster of the school. A modest new masterpiece of French cinema begins with bad news and a light classical waltz in modern New York, but the real story is set in the Auvergne of 1949, when much of France remained traumatised by enemy occupation and war. On the remarkable official site of 'Les Choristes' (Fr.), director Christophe Barratier outlines the then prevailing psychology of child reform, which is certainly "disturbing today", adding that "as in all periods of crisis, parents had other priorities ahead of educating their children." Such methods of "social reinsertion" (a term still employed but as little practised or thought out in some post-conflict countries in our time) prevailed well into the 1960s, along with much of the austerity Jugnot, like me, remembers from his own schooldays, the everlasting smell of chalk dust and the "mouldy memories". With a solid supporting adult cast, Jugnot, the teenagers and the music they come to make together are the real stars of this flawlessly paced and deeply heart-warming movie. The score is partly the original work of Bruno Coulais (Amazon.fr only for the soundtrack at present), who won fame when he composed the music for such outstanding and varied achievements as 'Himalaya' (1999) and 'Le Peuple Migratoire' ('Winged Migration,' 2001) . In his début as director for the general public, Barratier reveals another considerable talent by himself contributing two of the key songs performed by the chorale, in reality the Petits Chanteurs de Saint-Marc. The 12-year-old lad from this ensemble based near Lyon whose phenomenal voice convinced film-maker and producers alike that they could have a small miracle on their hands was Jean-Baptiste Maunier. He also landed the difficult child star role of Pierre Morhange, whom we first meet some 50 years later as one of the world's most acclaimed orchestral conductors. From half-remembered trailers, I'd wrongly expected a tale of the hard-won triumph of shared music-making over life's adversities on a par with the well-earned box-office success of the bitter-sweet 'Brassed Off' (1996, IMDb), the Yorkshire mining band tragi-comedy of ruptured families and the impact of Britain's Thatcher-ruled years when so-called "liberal capitalism" meant get rich quick for the few, along with everybody else for themselves in the failed vision of a classless society. Had he set his own film in contemporary France, Barratier, it turns out, might have set it in the urban ghettos of some inner cities and hopeless suburbs. Then we could have got something like 'Music of the Heart' (1999, IMDb), whose syrupy title might have made me miss Meryl Streep's striking teacher's struggle to bring the violin and orchestral discipline to Harlem street kids. But in 'Les Choristes', for all the attention to telling details of hard times, politics and most aspects of family life are kept well out of the picture, with the exception of the relationship between Morhange and his working single mother, Clément's disappointment in his own love-life and the paternal affection he introduces, along with the redemptive strength of music, to an institution run like a prison camp. On screen in France since March, the film co-written by Barratier and Philippe Lopes-Curval suffers no lack of drama in a taut plot, where Clément's humanist principles encounter many obstacles. When headmaster Rachin (François Berléand) acts on his initial misgivings about the whole absurd enterprise of trying to bring a team spirit and a shared passion to lost adolescent misfits for whom he has no love but a sliding scale of contempt, the chorale becomes an explicit act of resistance and Clément discovers some unexpected allies. The language of music infuses the narrative and some formidable camera and lighting work ranging from abrupt allegro to seamless successions of broad-measured slow movements with a faultless coherence. To shoot successful winter scenes in last summer's heat wave must have been tough enough for all involved, but such skilled visual mastery of a transition from metronome monotony to a summer coda is more remarkable still. Jugnot and others, including Berléand as erratically obsequious bully, bring some highly comic, often wordless gracenotes to the unfolding of the story. Which, all told, is one vast flashback. A flashback in Morhange's memory, where he comes to recognise his lifelong career as the repayment of a debt to a hero unsung for decades. A man for whom music, like his compassion, was one of the fruits of love. It's been a long while since I've watched and listened to a story where when the final credits had rolled, I felt quite ready to see the film and hear more all over again. At once. I couldn't. But I shall and 'Les Choristes' -- particularly as a writer-director's first -- takes an easy 8.5/10. A major box-office success at home, this is a movie worthy of international attention. 10:38:03 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 17 juin 2004

Cybergirl of the Month Cicely Mary "Barker’s fairies were based on her knowledge of plants and flowers and her artistic studies of real children, each dressed to represent a different flower." 9:22:02 PM  link   your views? [] Looking for the kitchen sink? It'll soon be time to do myself the favour someone recently strongly recommended and stop spending money. This suggestion was put to me with feeling, in circumstances best left unexplained: "...don't collect shit. Just don't buy anything ever again. That's what I'm going to do now." And I almost believed her. By "shit", I suspect my friend meant almost anything, being a person of high standards, but I'm an inveterate hoarder. This is June, I'm on vacation, I've had a clean-out and I have just given away or thrown out a great mass of stuff. Like every year. And like every year, the cellar is still full of boxes. Cupboards are still packed with files of paperwork I can scarcely face. Under French law, you have to keep some voluminous, routine documents for anything between three years, 10 and a lifetime. It's a bad idea to grow up. The folding bed under my own is strewn with thick files that must go. Part of the floor is covered with organised piles of magazines I can't bring myself to chuck out. Elsewhere, there's an ever longer line of books I'm still unable to return to the shelf because the leak in the roof has only been partially repaired. Even if I could, there's no longer enough shelf. The Kid has done her bit, with much reluctance. A recent cover story in 'Time' magazine supposedly granted insight into the teenage mind. I could stand just enough of the rag to note that it rendered parents a great disservice. Summed up in a sentence, the science it described offers adolescent offspring the perfect excuse to say, "There's no point in calling me lazy, impolite, unhelpful, difficult and irresponsible because my brain isn't yet sufficiently developed to be otherwise." Every smile, spontaneous offer, intimate disclosure and contribution to housework should thus be regarded as anomalous behaviour to be welcomed like a Greek bearing a gift. The Kid may be, as some people seem to enjoy telling me, "precocious," since at just turned 15, she's often a little darling, but by the time she was eight, I had already dubbed her "Bomb-site Marianne." That must have been the year after she flooded part of a north African hotel and provided the obvious explanation: "Daddy, it's not my fault if the stupid baths here don't have proper walls like they do in France." Those cheap, second-hand DVDs I mentioned in my last entry, before most of the clean-out got done: my return visit became a near-looting spree, including several absent from my Top 50 list, but which I grabbed for entertainment value. Like all the throwing away, it failed to increase my morale very much, but did wonders for raising the guilt level. Today, however, all has changed. The moon is about to start waxing again and she, E., has finally replied to my increasingly frantic, if hesitant, entreaties, having endured a hell of her own. Hallelujah! Last night, I was so downcast that I even watched a DVD. The agreeable surprise was that that David Twohy's 'Below' (2002; the Tomatoes) is diverting, unnerving and generally well acted and crafted. It's a combination of WWII submarine thriller and good ghost story, which I shall certainly be watching again, less for the plot, than a commendable attention to mainly accurate period detail. Twice I've visited submarines, one old and in a museum and the other modern and in port, and both times were frightening. However relatively comfortable today's subs might be, the claustrophobia, let alone an all-male environment, would swiftly drive me mad. With a small budget and a real sub, Twohy darkly makes the most of both. I'm with Moriarty: "What I liked most about the film was the way it’s written so you can argue at the end about what really happened. Is this a supernatural story? Or is it a story of guilt and what happens when men do what they think is right, only to be eaten alive by the gradual realization that it’s wrong? All of the more bizarre occurrences could be written off to the mental effects of a lack of oxygen as they stay submerged too long and hydrogen begins to fill the boat. The script only reveals the backstory of things in small bits and pieces, and it works as a result" (from 'Ain't it Cool News'). My now overspent cultural budget allows me only to browse the big Apple event of the week, though I've risked opening an account today at the new iTunes Music Store (Apple UK) -- Europe. I can spare two cents to add to what many bloggers in France, Germany and the UK have been raving about by noting without complaint that the Factory's report I mentioned on June 8 was misinformed by the rumour mill. We "Europeans" only have to pay a little more per track than Americans, and not half as much again. For once, I insulted the Great Steve and his Works without cause. I would say "Sorry" but for the fact that I still have every reason to be cross with him when it comes to those DVDs. On the installation of Mac OS 10.3.3, the classy DVD software I had to pay for -- TransLucy -- abruptly stopped working with my external LaCie DVD machine. CE Software offered no fix for this (but now I understand why), and neither did the assholes in Cupertino with the release of operating system version 10.3.4, who already wouldn't, in theory, let me use Apple's own DVD player. The only acceptable way round this was French, from those splendid students who started the free VideoLan project. But while their media player is as clever as a Swiss knife and the results excellent, it isn't for novices and it's a bugger of a job to get the DVD menu to work. My already critical internal operating system went ballistic on Saturday, when I belatedly learned that the infallible Pope Steve I has decided as of Panther version 10.3.3, Apple will no longer allow people who own DVDs they have duly paid for to play them externally. This, purportedly for unspecified "legal reasons", is all the more infuriating if, as with my Mac, there isn't an internal DVD player and even the darned CD player refuses to recognise many perfectly bona fide commercial CDs. There's a fix, however. It's risky, since it requires minor Mac surgery and re-installing the old over the new, but it works admirably well if you've got Charles Srtska's superb Pacifist ('MacUpdate') to open installation "packages" and find the bits you need. Both 'macosxhints' and a couple of helpful fellers on Apple's own boards tell you what to do next. By Jove, it works, and any fool can do it. I can vouch for this, because E.'s vanishing act rendered me stupid as well as almost hopeless. The Kid came and watched and told me off for "hacking" my computer again, though why that scares her so much I have yet to fathom. She too was happy enough to have TransLucy back. I'm infinitely gladder that E. has apparently landed in one reckless-adjective-to-be-avoided piece. Do angels, fallen or otherwise, get jetlag? I guess there's only one way to find out. I wonder whether she minds hairy legs and a battle-scar. If she does, that's tough. The shorts came out yesterday and I hope not to have to put them away again for the foreseeable future. Without socks. This Brit frog prefers to make his minor fashion statements without spending money on clothes. 8:26:42 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 15 juin 2004

Sky-rats are no substitute for legendary flame-throwers Another self-imposed rule needs breaking. But then as Véronique -- that blonde chick Sam planted at my table, if not quite in my lap, last Friday -- swiftly and intuitively noticed: "You're very hard on yourself, aren't you?" She's not the first, because it's true. However, we are a-mused. Which means that we are not amused at all. Factors conspire against me, and thus you, dear or detestable readers alike. First, to find yourself suddenly on vacation (interrupted by working for a very nasty Africa news day in the Factory on Sunday) brings the "oouff!" and "aahhh!" that come when it stops and the usual discovery that you're tired. Secondly, it feels like that part of the month. Checking confirms that it is: the moon "disappears" on Thursday, my energy and inspiration levels waning with it. The Faithful Five ¾ know that however sunny it is (and it's fine today), the New Moon = a blog slump. Thirdly and by far the worst, E. has gone without trace. She's a very long way away and I've been without word from her or about her for a week. This has become an awfully long time. She hasn't completely vanished. I think I know more or less where she is, all the things she has to do and how extremely demanding and exhausting they are, but even words of what I hoped were encouragement and entertainment have met with silence. The self-tortured time of "have I said something wrong and/or hurtful and/or thoughtless and/or clumsy" came and went over the weekend. I know the lovely creature -- what kind of "beast" is came to me recently with very near but not total certainty, but it's a shaman's secret -- is quite capable of looking after herself. However, when I told the Wildcat, who 'phoned me late last night about her latest travels and adventures, the woman offered me little reassurance by pointing out that "I'm also quite grown-up and strong enough to look after myself, but then ...well, you know." Indeed I do. The selfish side of all this is that I'm sad. I miss E like mad. The patience I need ran out yesterday and I ignored all experienced, wise, kind and well-meaning advice and wrote to her again. Even the Wildcat, swept up and alarmed though she is by a most blogworthy (if I dared) tide of passion such as she has never experienced before, counselled me to leave E in peace. From somebody who has fallen totally in love and found that it can come with the rare but sometimes complicated bonus of being reciprocated, this was so restrained that I managed it for another 24 hours. Not, however, without calling the Wildcat rude names. My reward for that was to learn that "I like E. very much already, without knowing her, but you I like even more." Nevertheless, I would much rather be savagely clawed than left in ignorance, by somebody who dislikes the word "complicated" and finds "difficult" more meaningful and manageable. I say all this because a journalist told me that I really should write something daily. I think that no blog entries are far better than dull ones, but the veteran Barry said: "Could you imagine AFP going for a day without news?" I can, yes. The idea fills me with joy, since while the news agency puts out good news as well as all the bad, almost all the receiving editors who then package it for media audiences and the papers use a cheerfulness checker more effective than most spam filters. I'm also revealing this because I fear for my sanity. It is "not normal" so acutely to miss somebody whom, in theory at least, you've barely met and have only begun to know a little, even if you both get on famously and with ease. It is "not normal" to be sure you have known them forever. It is "not normal" to feel complete trust and kinship with and in a "stranger". Enough, one of life's lessons evidently being that there is no such thing as "normal". If I went too far with E, this is truer still of the sky-rats. Two pigeons in particular have taken up semi-permanent residence on the windowsill. One of them frequently folds up its legs and falls asleep. This morning, the other marched over and began doing something with its beak which looked like the sky-rat equivalent of apes picking the fleas off their partners and young. I have never seen that before. Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting here catching up on numerous belated e-mail replies when both little buggers strolled cheerfully and curiously through the other room and into this one to see what I was doing. I ordered them out and they left. On further observation, I found that they have assumed the right to hop into the room overlooking the garden and wander around when they like. They look at me with bemusement when I say "Your place is outside!", but oblige. They have neither shat on the floor or the carpet nor taken to the air, except to fly in and leave. They mind the furniture and go nowhere near anything they could break. If pigeons are capable of politeness, these two are. I know what my mother would do. She would turn into a gibbering wreck and it's scarcely her fault. Since infancy, she's been cursed with a phobia about birds. She has a love-hate relationship with a robin, finding him friendly but unpleasant to have around when she's gardening, which is one of her favourite activities. By behaving themselves, however, these "filthy, statue-wrecking, disease-ridden pestilential vermin" have won my affection. I don't give them just anything for their breakfast, which they have decided should be in two sittings. The early birds include the cheeky pair and their mates, then comes a second flock led by a handsome specimen with white wings. When I saw a squashed pigeon on the street at the weekend, I found myself hoping it wasn't one of my visitors. For E's flower, I'm grateful to newly discovered blogger and fellow-believer in Creative Commons principles Andy J.W. Affleck of northern Virginia, who keeps his "Webcrumbs" in a Ragged Castle. I briefly mention CC licences again for the benefit of one or two Factory hands. The other day, we had what could have become a very heated debate about copyright. I was unable to find any work by some US cartoonist whose name I've already forgotten. It seems my ignorance of his work is a serious gap in my pop culture. However, a hole it will remain because the man has politely but systematically had all unauthorised use of it removed from the Web. If I have no idea what I'm "buying", I'm damned if I'll pay for it. Last, in an entry almost devoid of links and no intended explanation of the title, I must thank Tony for pointing out that I gave him a laugh. He wrote: "Your blog: '...she kept her eyes lowered as she walked. Until recently there were three of them....' I know the positioning of the lines made it jump out @ me, but the antecedent of 'them' was so gloriously the lowered eyes that it made my day." His e-mail was called "Mlle Cyclops". Thank you, mate. I'll still have lunch with you tomorrow, but if you're expecting to be paid or otherwise rewarded for grammar policing, think again. I have vainly sought to console myself for the silence of E. by taking advantage of a special offer the video rental shop downstairs is making on used DVDs for sale. I can't afford them, but picking up three absolute musts made me feel better for two minutes. And I've just thought to enquire after another one. 5:33:01 PM  link   your views? [] The general's tale - Abu Ghraib Updated June 16 with details of a further sound link: Again, a breach of the "no more damned politics" rule, when it comes to abuse, torture and humiliating people. And again, this is for the likes of the admirable Hetty, who happens to be writing today of "army interrogators" (Heli's Heaven and Hell) and Norm (one good move). I've been listening to General Janis Karpinski tell her own story. Until now, the woman in command of the military police unit that ran Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq when those terrible pictures were taken has apparently been given little chance to speak out. Today, she has, in a half-hour interview for the Beeb. 'On the Ropes', to be repeated on Radio 4 tonight, will also be available for a week (until it's replaced by next Tuesday's broadcast) on the Web, regrettably only in Real Player format. June 16: For those who need more than a week -- or never use Real One or whatever -- Norm has very kindly made us an mp3 file (9.7 MB; direct link). "John ['Harrumph'] Humphrys asks Brigadier General Janis Karpinksi, who was in charge of the Baghdad prison where Iraqi prisoners were tortured, why she refuses to take the blame," is what that linked intro page says, and of course it's also a BBC news story. Even for disabused ears, the full version of what Karpinski has to say is worth the 29 minutes it takes. As always, things are rarely quite what they seem. 11:12:32 AM  link   your views? []

vendredi 11 juin 2004

'Pleasure of the eyes' indeed First call this morning. 8:20. Only the Wildcat and a very small handful of others who know me would take such a risk, except in an emergency. Caller unidentified. Most likely the Wildcat then (her 'phone does that). I pick it up. Click. Second try at 9:45. The same. Third time unlucky. Mid-afternoon. A middle-aged voice: "I'd like to speak to Mr Barry, please." "It's Barrett." "Ah, Mr Barry. My name is Mme Machin Truc. I'm calling because I would like to invite you, and Mrs Barry too of course, to a porcelain exhibition --" "No thank you." "But, Monsieur, if only for the pleasure of the eyes --" "No thank you." "Then I --" "Goodbye and better luck with the next one." The "pleasure of the eyes", indeed. Been reading my blog recently, have you, Ms Truc? I loathe cold callers and there are more and more of them. Sometimes daily. Most get filtered out. This one was more cunning, knows how to hide her number. I suppose you do when you're desperate enough to be human spam for a living. Not her day for it. I'd got to bed around three, forgetting that the hammering and power drilling on the second floor begin at eight a.m., the instant it's legal. The lady my brother once nearly accidentally killed when my cutlery fell down the stairwell, including sharp knives, is now having her flat redone. No household goods piled up in boxes on her landing, though, just ladders. Sam also chose his day. Table N° 9, despite warning, was taken when I got to the Canteen. And my chair was missing. "Sam!" But on the other hand ... she was pretty, blonde, looked intelligent, interesting. Hmm. He's up to something. Indeed he was, le patron. I had to ask three times before I extracted her name. Véronique. Caution, darling. Sit down in my life and you risk walking into the blog. Well, well, she wants "to improve (her) English" and she wants to pay for lessons. I gave her 15 minutes before I started tutoying her, told her to do the same and make life easier. I liked her. She's direct, spirited, partnered, fun and passionate about her ideas. So passionate, indeed, that I didn't even notice a much liked, retired man I'd not seen for weeks slip into the Canteen. He pricked his ears up, though, when Véronique started talking about the Fourth World (the poverty on First World city streets), Americans and all. I greeted him then. "But I'm so sorry, I've forgotten your name." "Philippe." "Sorry, of course. Philippe. Philippe, this is Véronique. She wants English lessons. Véronique, this is Philippe. He used to be a spy." That was a certain way of seeing that they hit it off immediately, with the bonus of being, in good part, true. Indeed, once Véronique had gone, after no less than a couple of hours, Philippe and I had a long coffee together over the current state of Africa. Sam must have known, somehow, that I've just begun a holiday. "Well, aren't you going to thank me?" he had the nerve to ask after the woman had left us. "Thank you?" I said. "Or thump you, you cheeky twerp?" "I know your weakness." "Which is, pray?" "Attractive, short-haired blondes." Now that, particularly after what I wrote this morning, was a theatrical master-stroke! Mention Meg Ryan and Sam presents me with Véronique, who, of course, needs to know my star sign, what's in the ascendant and what my Chinese year is. "Sam. You're mad. And this heart's already decisively taken, should the lady want it. Too late, mate." The pleasure of the eyes, indeed. Since Véronique is her real name and she does want lessons, grammar included, I'll say no more of her for now. Only one problem remains. She said she'll insist on paying for them, would be most embarrassed otherwise. I would be far, far more embarrassed to take money from a nice woman with honest eyes -- extremely closely read, of course -- who merely wants "structured" conversations related to her bilingual work and not only bemoans the scandalous existence of the Fourth World but does something about it. So, despite my vow, I'll accept "just friends", just once more. After all, they say that's what 'When Harry Met Sally' is about. I don't know yet. I've only just laid hands on it. And Natalie's waiting for me to review 'Augustine's True Confession'. No rush. But she wrote and said so. There's only one way out of such a sequence of events. Stick in a pin and ask Augustine herself. The picture is what she said. Do you ever feel conspired against? Perhaps I should have said "yes" to the china shop. 5:09:01 PM  link   your views? [] Getting out and away with it Last night, my part of town had a special beauty. It brought several species of the birds now sadly so few (apart from those pigeons) out into song, in the late evening light after a storm where the city colours of stone, paint, zinc, tile and tree became radiant. Cloud formations assumed countless hues, the unseen sun low enough to irradiate the wings and feathers of the late birds still in flight from beneath. There was a brief, silent rainstorm earlier, which I missed until I went up to the top floor of the Factory, cunningly trapped into the annual medical visit, and saw it with the fine view right up to Montmartre and the Sacré Coeur they enjoy. The air was less heavy than it had been for much of the week and such weather felt like a good omen for a month's holiday which has, with absurd suddenness, started. I haven't quite said all my goodbyes since I'll be working one last day on Sunday, focussing on Africa as ever while a far bigger weekend crew than usual will be showing up at AFP to give their all to the European elections. Those are about the only ones left in which I'm entitled to vote. Coming home, I listened to Ana Gracey again and rejoiced that I've found this fine voice to commend and that a couple of readers have thanked me for it. At least three of the songs given away on Ana's web site -- 'Pretty Girl', 'Jimmy' and 'Mo Lah du Say-o' -- strike my own ears as flawless, perfect gifts. If her Jimmy is somebody real, then he's a very lucky man. But then Ana's vocals, the often deceptively simple accompaniment and her words really caught my own predominant mood of the week, a bittersweet joy mingled with the uncertainty as to what echo my heart, freely and wholly surrendered for what must be the first and last time in my life, may find in the other. The hope also admits of her own absolute freedom. I know I wasn't going to go here again, but I can't stop myself, especially while she must remain far away for a few more days. Ana's own bravely shared heart sharpens these delicious and difficult emotions, but I'll say no more of the singer for now, since she'll undoubtedly be back, having paid me the honour of asking me to review more of her art in a while. After a long absence, I saluted a woman on the stairs yesterday on her return to the Factory, with a superb but not overdone tan she'd acquired while working elsewhere. When I saw her later, she was innocently dressed to kill, in a tight T-shirt and jeans, her slender midriff dangerously bared to render her more desirable than ever. Habitually shy in her beauty, she kept her eyes lowered as she walked. Until recently, there were three of them, people I work with whom I find almost unimaginably beautiful; but musing, I've extended this to at least a half-dozen, including ones I rarely see. It was after meeting the woman I feel I've forever loved and will love ever more, whom I find so very beautiful too, that I've been unable to avoid reflecting on what it's been about such people which I had considered irresistible. The satisfying outcome is that I've got no idea. They're none of them the same "type", in either personality or looks. Some smoke, others don't, they move in different ways. Their ages are varied. Such beauty can't be simply in the eye of the beholder and doesn't fit any of the other clichés that came to mind. When I dared tell one of them how she struck me and had the cheek to add that she was not alone, she was acutely embarrassed, then flattered, then accepted the compliment for what it was and made an entertaining guess at the others. She was both wrong and right. While it's always the eyes that draw me the most, there are few other common features. None of them wears make-up or when they do, it's sparing. They dress naturally, without ostentation, vanity or show. Their daily self-confidence varies from one to another, but all of them have it. They all know what they are, the effect they have on men, without making an issue of it. They have different senses of humour, which seems in part to be a matter of nationality, fun to tease out. The self-awareness goes with their creativity, expressed in different ways, and a shared ability to laugh at themselves. But that's about it. The rest remains a very agreeable mystery, one I have no desire to explore, but has come to convince me that everybody has a soul. I now believe those who tell me the spirit is something in constant motion and ... evolution. It's an odd notion, requires an otherness scarcely mentioned in a particularly interesting contrast between two different kinds of philosophy drawn and in part resolved in yesterday's 'In Our Time' on the Beeb, which kept me glued. The less muddied it is, the more readily some people let it show, whatever others might consider as their flaws, tics, weaknesses and imperfections, the more people simply live with it and leave it open for others to "read", the more beautiful they are. It's an absolute, uncultivated star quality. An inexplicable open secret. And something I've even encountered in the blogosphere too. You don't know why you know it, but you know it; it's unmistakable. I begin to think that real beauty starts where deceit ends, both of self and of other, in anything more than the most superficial, unimportant of ways. It is not flaunted, but is indeed a kind of truth. Such people get away with it by being nothing other than themselves. Whatever it may say on the web site, the guest on today's repeat of Sunday's 'Desert Island Discs' was Geraldine Brown, whom I've not seen since the days when the BBC television dramatisation of Paul Scott's 'The Jewel in the Crown' (IMDb) became one of two, with their equally five-star 'War and Peace', where nothing on earth could prevent me from missing an episode. So there is a DVD, far too expensive for now, but Marianne must see it one day, and when her English is up to it, I'm sure the Kid will find Scott's 'Raj Quartet' as magnificent as I did, one of the greatest achievements in 20th century literature. But unfortunately, I kept the radio on to listen to the first part of 'Woman's Hour'. This was a mistake, since the actress Molly Ringwald was being interviewed about ... well, the BBC site says what it's like to fake an orgasm on stage, but that was just a hook for a far more wide-ranging chat about her brat-movie career and now being in London to do 'When Harry Met Sally' (IMDb) in the theatre. If I'd not heard that and Ringwald's comments about Meg Ryan's performance, then I'd be able to resist the temptation. Francis the news vendor currently has the DVD at an "affordable" price, part of a series where I intended to behave myself and steer clear until they release 'Doctor Zhivago'. So much for that. As for Geraldine Brown, her 'Desert Island' disc of eight had to be Bach's St Matthew Passion. Hmmm. I could be a Man Friday to that. But then she asked for an iPod. And you know what? This time around, host Sue Lawley let her get away with it. 12:32:12 PM  link   your views? []

mercredi 9 juin 2004

The pond, the frog. Or crossing the Pond and the Frogs Got home. Removed clothes instantly. Don't care what neighbours think since they'll be doing same soon enough if they have any sense. Still don't know what to do when August arrives. Nobody at the Factory can tell me whether loathsome air conditioning worked last summer, while I was away, leading me to believe they must all have slept through it. Europe-Africa editor Isabelle tells me I must go to Mauritius if I'm to find a light, bright and pretty tank-top and loose trousers like hers. Maybe I could bribe Lauren to send me a couple of boubous from west Africa or Patxi to bring me back something from Kinshasa. Jocelyne, retired firebrand but still a "hot chick", told me off for the umpteenth time for wandering around the building in my socks. "It's dirty," she insisted when I went down to see the Frog African Desk, which has been sent into temporary exile on the second floor, where they live in something the size of a small ballroom but feel isolated. "It's cleaner now," I replied when I got back. I have no intention of cleaning the floor with my bare feet and in any case the techies are sticking so much more wiring everywhere that I might electrocute myself. For those who have asked, including Lauren, E remains very much alive and I'm missing her now, very much, but she'll back soon. Of course I'm still not saying who and where she temporarily is, but I got mail this morning. Speaking of fairy tales -- and don't forget that I've still no idea where this one is going -- Barry is back on the Desk, a soothing and good-humoured presence but with a hoard of new and awful jokes. Such as the peasant who found a frog as he was labouring by the pond. "Kiss me and I'll turn into a princess," the frog promised. But the peasant stuffed the frog into his pocket. All afternoon he worked on, sweating it out in the sun. All afternoon came this muffled voice from his pocket. "Please!" "Kiss me..." "Let me out!" It began to irritate him. "Go on, let me out. Kiss me. I really will turn into a princess." "Shut up," growled the peasant. "But it's true, I'm really a princess." Enough was enough. Out came the frog, looking up expectantly at the peasant from the palm of his hand. "At my age," the peasant told it, "I'm far more interested in a talking frog than any princess." BJ also showed me an Anglo-American press web site where he'd been flattering and commended this log of mine, but I'm blowed if I can track down the URL he conjured up. Never mind. Since I now have every reason to be kind to some trans-Atlantic people in Paris, I will instead remind people of the American community. I've already spoken well of Harriet Welty Rochefort, but the approach of another tourist season tells me it's time for a reminder that her superb job at 'understandfrance' is an invaluable asset for other English-speaking newcomers too. As for the music, film and book reviews, there've been none for a while because I'm too busy elsewhere, it's that simple. They'll be back. 9:19:07 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 8 juin 2004

The flip side of Venus It became hard to maintain the ill-tempered, disabused mood when almost everybody was cheered up by watching the blip of the planet of love glide across the sun (BBC for all the links, along with Ars Technica) on a glorious late spring morning. The coincidentally well-placed science department's little corner of the Factory happened to give us a splendid view. Something that slightly amused me in reports by hacks nearly everywhere, from Europe to Australia, was the remark that each had the "grandstand view" of the celestial kiss, which made Gina comment that "Planet Earth is a heck of a big stadium". Spirit and poetry prize of the day goes to Fienie in Pretoria who sent us a colourful story about the historic Venusian role in African rain dancing and traditional ceremonies in southern parts of the continent. Even in Grand Zimbabwe (Trek Earth). Astrologers in India, however, dourly warned that all this palaver could entail a dramatic rise in the number of "sex crimes". While back in what seems to have become a quasi-permanent state of arousal and transgression, Joe has declared Phuket, Thailand, added to a World Tour he's threatening to foist on us. Personally, mate, I find one seasonal outbreak of lust passion and a heart-stopping encounter quite enough at a time. But when it comes to the weather, the warmer it gets the happier I am (though I know I dared to moan just a tiny bit when we hit the 40°C mark last August). This view is "totally not shared", as one absolutely fabulous American I'm dying to know better might put it, by Cass, who thinks that "hot sunshine was just something invented by those who owned dark air conditioned bars in an attempt to drum up trade" ('Hotness' at 'cancergiggles'). Ars and Reuters beat AFP by a day to another piece of glad news: that the iTunes music store will be launched in Europe a week from today. However, if the Factory's correspondent is right, Apple will be asking about 1.30 euros per track, which is scarcely going for a song when you remember that -- as per bloody usual -- this is around half as much again as the Americans pay. The tidings were welcomed by a few Factory hands from the majority who will insist on using Windows, but I'm not sure how much progress on that front has been made since Ken Fisher warned that there might be drawbacks when he considered the "new challenges" for the Ars' 'Wankerdesk' last October. If the iTMS comes to France, I'll not be among the first to put my toe in the water since doing my month-end accounts for May warned me that while June may prove to be good for romantic pursuits, it's also the moment to rein in my spending. What I like to think of as my "cultural" allowance has made a dangerously big dent in the "camembert" picture I've finally learned to make with the computer's budget programme since I've been won over to DVDs, if never the telly. Meanwhile, Brian, one of the fellows who makes top-notch Mac software, has acquired a "new toy lust" (Unsanity blog) of his own. Gosh, yes, it looks tempting, but for me even to think of AirTunes right now would be true insanity. Whatever. I doubt Apple will ever be offering anything like the "Dirty Kuffar Jihadi rap video" (courtesy of John Robb). But the Airport Express & Airtunes have also got fine 'cityofsound' blog writer Dan Hill all excited (via Tom's plasticbag -- the link taking you to some news from his own delightful corner. I don't know which is worse: murder virtually on the front doorstep or a girlfriend "probably" pulped ... again! Remember what those Indian astrologers said). At 'Hack the Planet', Wes starts out complaining that the Express does "too many things", then cheerfully proceeds himself to sci-fi and singularity. Now there's a man whose brain works in as singular ways as my own tin of peas. Next thing you know, we'll all be telepathically doing it by way of something similar to the "effort to allow two users of a common communication channel to create a body of shared and secret information", otherwise known as "quantum cryptography". Never heard of it? Neither had I. But it's caught the eye at Grafyte. Where were we? Oh yes. Money (hateful subject). Or the lack of... ...but the Kid's planning a cheap summer. While the pictures and poetry she's posting on belcatja2 are making for darker reading than ever, I'm happy to find Marianne no less cheerful a youngster than usual and she's busy working on her first... -- but it's up to her, not me, to announce what in the fullness of time. In any event, it's increasingly difficult to unglue her from her PowerBook even in marvellous weather, and the disease appears to be catching. I had to do a reality check on my lugholes when her mum very recently told me, "Nick, I think I must get myself a Mac." Will wonders never cease? "Imagine it," I said to the Kid. "Your mother could be driving a Panther before you are." "Well, I'm still quite content with Jaguar, thank you," she insisted, but perhaps I may not regret paying the extra for a "family pack" version of the new operating system after all. If Apple thinks it's invalid for divorcees (or, since you never can tell in miraculous times, lovers out of wedlock), they can damned well think again as well as different. I promised politics is now out of it. Enough. Nevertheless ... when Norm finds Chirac saying something sensible, it's worthy of note: 'Lessons of History' (1gm). A lesson history has taught me is really to fall in love with people in my immediate vicinity instead of thinking I might be doing so by virtual means. For those who disagree or have seen happier outcomes, consider the "googler, the blogger, the sniffer and the stalker": Wired cracks their codes. Thanks to LinkMachineGo for a "whole new universe of creepiness". Again personally, I'll settle for Venus, Gaïa and beauty closer to home. Chad's Uncertain Principles are strangely troubled by his own pleasure in "living vicariously". He finds that "becoming weirdly invested in the personal lives of people I've never met" in the blogosphere is just "a little creepy". Not me. Without wishing to start affairs with them, I find the personal lives of real but physically unknown individuals a source of endless fascination. And even highly instructive sometimes. If you don't, then I wonder what half of you are doing here. Moreover, as Tim suggests, "If you're ever really bored one day, instead of just reading my blog, read the comments of the Linux kernel. There you can pick up all sorts of geek vernacular juxtaposed euphonic swear words." Potty-Mouthed Programmers is also a 'Wired' thing. But, though I'm one of the foulest-mouthed people most people know in two and a half languages (three if you include my groping in American), I wouldn't have thought of turning euphonic about it if Tim hadn't had a "case of the Mondays" (Doctor Recommended). 11:40:16 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 7 juin 2004

A 'Why bother?' news day Bukavu. I came home from the Factory just wanting to know what the place looked like. Where people I've talked to sometimes but never met live, or is "endure" the word for it? There's little on the Net, but this is a detail from a much bigger picture in a series taken there in 1999 by Garret Wilson, who says his skills range from information technology to African and Oriental studies. Garret "didn't get out to see the town very much. The rebels had changed the flag, and there was a curfew late in the evening. Being sick with Giardiasis didn't make me feel like exploring a lot, anyway." Somehow Wilson's pages and his other pictures, made me feel better! Just another African town, little different from so many others. Bukavu is high in the news because of more "unrest" there, at least 88 people killed in a week of clashes which take hundreds of words to try to explain in a way the Kansas City milkman could understand, in the unlikely event that he cares... "Where's the shit going to hit the fan tonight?" the duty editor on AFP's English Desk asked me as I quit, gave the usual quick parting briefing to the few poor devils left to handle the world's horrors and joys throughout the night until tomorrow morning. "Bukavu?" "I hope not," I replied, banging my hand down on the desk in the usual superstitious touch wood move. "But then, over the past few days, I've constantly hoped they wouldn't start the same old crap all over again. And still they did and they are." Bukavu, capital of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo's Sud-Kivu province. The BBC sees what's going on there like this. It's mostly accurate enough, as far as anybody can tell. And then there's Ituri, another trouble spot, even further north on the eastern edge of a single country the size of western Europe, if you leave Scandinavia out of it. In Rwanda, today's trouble was of a different kind. A former, post-genocide prime minister got a 15-year prison sentence (AFP). And behind that little phrase -- "charges that covered inciting racial animosity" -- in our lead paragraph, lay no fewer than 13 minutes on the 'phone, me in Paris, Anthony in Nairobi, Helen in Kigali, trying to get the comprehensible formula for what it was all really about. Normally, it doesn't take that long. Nobody was especially weary. But how my heart hits my boots when I turn up for my news editor stint at the Factory knowing that it's that particular part of Africa, the so-called Great Lakes region, which is going to take up the best part of the day. So many lies all round. So much sheer stupidity. Propaganda daily pouring out on every side. Intractable conflicts which seem to have lasted forever and become almost cyclical, to such an extent that if the "shit really does hit the fan", we might almost as well start digging out stories sent five years ago and refile the things, just changing a name or a faction or two. It would be in the face of indifference from the rest of the world, apart from a few mining companies keen to go on raping DRC, ready to work with whichever faction suits, and be damned the daily misery of the people of the place. And from quite a handful of dedicated charities and non-governmental organisations with rather more commendable motives. Plucky little Rwanda, or at least the current regime there, sickens me the most. Like some Israeli leaders who have for decades politically milked an appalling Holocaust for all it's worth -- six million Jews, well, yes, we know! -- Rwanda has its 1994 genocide. Nobody knows exactly how many. 800,000? The government says one million. I'm no anti-Semite. I'm no anti-Tutsi. But are these immense traumas of the past any excuse for the "victims" to turn aggressors, well-armed little fortress nations where most of those who wield the power are the worst of all? Every time there might be some grounds for optimism, a hint or two that peace, of all ridiculous things, is breaking out, we journalists have to watch somebody go and screw it up; some leader who seems to have a steel implant in place of any heart, does something absurd. Or do they? Ask the Institute of Islamic Political Thought and they'll tell you that "Sharon's visit to the mosque highlighted another rather important, though occasionally sidelined, element in the conflict. The Al-Aqsa Mosque and its blessed environs, mean a great deal to the Muslims world-wide. It is, therefore, not surprising that as the Palestinians rose up and exploded in anger, their Intifada was paralleled by hundreds of Intifada in Arab and Muslim cities around the world. Israelis and their allies in the West seemed shocked. The reaction to Israeli brutality and Sharon's disrespect for Islam and Muslims was beyond anticipation" (source IIPT). But ask another bunch of academics trying to make sense of 'Palestine Facts' and they'll reply that "Sharon did not attempt to enter any mosques during his 34 minute visit to the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest place, which Muslims have renamed Haram al-Sharif. His visit was conducted during normal hours when the area is open to tourists. Palestinian youths — eventually numbering around 1,500 — shouted slogans in an attempt to inflame the situation. Some 1,500 Israeli police were present at the scene to forestall violence" (What started the (...) Intifada?). Now we have Pasteur Bizimungu jailed by a Rwandan court under Paul Kagame's regime, a Kagame once described to me by a journalist who interviewed him as one of "the coldest, most chilling men" they had ever encountered. Did the former prime minister or didn't he "incite racial animosity" in a powderkeg and embezzle public funds as well? I don't know, yet I have every faith in the way the story eventually got sent to the world. I very much doubt that most "regional analysts", "well-informed diplomatic sources," the whole of the rest of the pack of people journalists turn to at such times for a bit of light really have the remotest real idea. "Stick to the facts, always the facts," aspiring journalists are told, "and give proper sources for everything. Back up your 'leads'." But what the hell are the facts, sometimes? Even the "hardest" of news can so often come down to little more than opinion, ever amorphous, unreliable. It's on a similar basis, as the latest Iraq war most amply proves, that powerful politicians make appalling decisions, trigger mass slaughter and mayhem, some apparently genuinely believing they have the noblest of motives when in fact they're already lying through their teeth, lying to themselves, lying to journalists, lying to the people who put them where they are. The better informed the rest of us think we are, the more news sites and propaganda sites we consult, the less we really know, until the point comes when you cease to care. Or you think you do. All this is really why I've decided to stop writing about politics. Enough is enough. A day at the Factory can be so exhausting when you're constantly searching for the "right words", to the extent that you cease to be sure that there are any. It's always an approximation, based on the trust you learn to have for "your people on the ground", their eyes, their ears, their experience. But this log is certainly going to turn elsewhere now. There really are times when -- despite the immense respect I retain for a few practitioners of the art who strike me as being genuinely good men and women -- I feel that the politics of our times have become quite simply incompatible with any kind of truth, integrity and decency. Yup, I think I need next week's month off! 11:10:54 PM  link   your views? []

dimanche 6 juin 2004

Unforgettable courage: le Jour-J (French style) For once, this is a day not to be a cynical old fart. And also, as I've already told the Kid, to declare a truce with the Yanks, despite the mainly cynical jerks currently in office over there. I don't feel the slightest sudden urge to go to church, but it's still a day to remember and give thanks, especially if you live in France. For the younger frogs, Marianne among their number, if you're looking for the best of the bunch among the weekend supplements and special issues in the French newspapers, you won't find it there, though some of the dailies do have quite good D-Day numbers. Going through the pile with news vendor Francis, the "keeper" we found -- the most clearly written in French, the best illustrated and the most "entertaining", though that's scarcely the word for a day so full of slaughter and sacrifice, was right here, at Historia. If you speak Frog, they've been generous enough to put a lot of this issue, 'Les Soldats de la liberté,' online. Judge for yourselves. 12:58:12 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 5 juin 2004

The lady vanishes Certain kind readers have decided of late that I write well about affairs of the heart, which have at times played a considerable part in this log. A few people have expressed surprise that I have manifested a healthy interest in sexual pleasures and the acute physical attraction aroused in me by a number of women, only to reveal that I have been celibate for a dozen years, largely out of choice. To the most intimate of friends, I've privately explained of late some of the reasons for this apparent contradiction and self-denial. The truly Faithful 5 ¾, who have followed one or two adventures recounted here with an alert and constantly surprising interest, must, to some degree or another, work it out for themselves. But one or two of them are more experienced and wise in the games people play, especially men and women, than I've ever pretended to be. In recent weeks, one Lady E joined a little list of characters increasingly well known to regular readers, ranging from bloghero Yang to the Wildcat, from the Literary Lion to the Apprentice Dragon. And, of course, the Kid. Particular interest has been shown by close and distant friends and Factory hands alike in Lady E, especially since I shared part of a true story which has since been referred to by a handful of such people as "the Kiss". Indeed, at the Factory, the occasional colleague has expressed a mild but real irritation at the outrageous fashion in which I have decided that the unanticipated explosion of a fragmentation bomb, which scored a direct hit on the kernel of my being and was followed by a series of aftershocks, is a matter of infinitely more importance than pressing incoming news bulletins and urgents about the outbreak of yet another battle in a place called Bukavu on the Democratic Republic of Congo's border with Rwanda. It may be a huge failing, but in the past few days I have been almost blind to the fact that a new conflict, very closely resembling many years of other murderous struggles somewhere once known as the "heart of darkness", is far less boring than a personal encounter. A meeting set fair, in my current disturbed frame of existence, to be the fulcrum of my life, the moment where all previous nanoseconds of breathing and feeling and reflecting and dreaming have been illuminated and found their meaning. It is true that the often untold brutality our species perpetrates on itself and the certainty that thousands of people are now going to die of starvation if not directly of "ethnic cleansing" in another rarely highlighted part of Africa -- Sudan's Darfur region -- is of greater significance in the history of humanity than one individual's meeting with another and the gradual dawn of understanding that the other person is the very reason he was born. Yet such things happen. It's one of life's best-kept secrets. I believe, in fact I now know for sure, that the explanation of all things conceivable to us lies, in English, in one-four letter word. In French, five letters will say it. Neither language is adequate. I know, equally for certain, that when any one of us has the astounding luck to be awake enough to recognise that other, out of millions, and also to understand with heart, head, blood and guts and spirit that the other person is it, the only one, always was and will be, then that's well worth a sleepless night or a week of them, a complete re-evaluation of your whole life, and allowing events in the rest of the world to take a back seat. This has happened to me. I sought wise counsel and have been given sound advice. I have learned that it is perfectly possible not to believe in God and still be certain that some things are so sacred that you only know it when you find them. I know that it would be absolute folly, crass disregard for almost all the rules and conventions of daily life, to tell someone you thought to be a total stranger just a very little while before that in them, you have met the other, who is your future in as much as "normal" notions of time have anything to do with it. To those who gave me sensible and excellent advice, many thanks. Most of it was common sense. But common sense ceases to apply, reason becomes meaningless, questions pointless, analysis futile and hesitation absurd when your whole being knows that the other must be told of what has happened to it and asked whether she (or he) finds even the remotest echo at their own core. At such times, you have to stake everything on trust. The risk has to be taken because the outcome just might be a gift, an opportunity, an opening beyond price. And forever a miracle in the wake of one you never had the slightest right to expect. At which point, good readers, the lady must leave you. She has a life entirely of her own and must go very far for a few days to pursue it, in her own time, her own space and her own way. And she must disappear from this journal. Because she is real. She exists. I have found her. If ever I knew how to pray, believed in something perfectly unfathomable to pray to, beyond all hope and far beyond every dream I've had, then my profoundest prayers have been answered. Since she has told me, cautiously, "Yes, I'll play," the most perfect game of my life begins and the only possible first move is forwards. Never entirely alone again. Not while either of us breathes. That's also part of what a kiss can do, but what lies behind that kiss and how we choose to play this marvellous game can be nobody's business but our own. So, the lady vanishes. But do I have news for the Kid! Real news. You never find the like in the papers. 2:12:02 AM  link   your views? []