Metro mysteries

    I've ridden the Paris Metro nine times in the past two days, racing from museum to restaurant to library, rumbling from Odeon to Pyramides to Opera, and so couldn't help noticing ways their system is different than Chicago's.
     No announcements. They commute on utter quiet on their trains' rubber wheels.
    Some parts took figuring out. The first train I went to get on pulled into Cardinal Lemoine station. The other doors slid open, but the door directly in front of me stayed resolutely closed. I sprinted to  the next door-- Paris subway trains have three or four entrances to the two on Chicago "L" cars--and hopped on the train. On Paris trains, riders have to open the doors themselves to get on or off, either by lifting a chrome lever or, on newer trains, pushing a green button. Parisians seem to handle the responsibility well.
     The benefits are obvious. Less wear and tear on the door mechanisms, for one, since they only open when a person wants to get on or off, not every time the train pulls into the station. It also allows, I noticed, gentlemen a chance to be polite, as those standing by the doors will open them for the benefit of others, even though they themselves are not leaving the train.
     Other differences are less readily explained. I have seen more people rolling cigarettes in two days riding the Paris Metro than I have in the past 20 years riding the "L," including a man Wednesday who removed the tiny butt of a smoked cigarette from between his lips and delicately inserted it into the makings of his next smoke. Why all this impromptu manufacture? It couldn't be poverty--France does have 25 percent unemployment, so maybe that's it. Though there are a lot of poor people in Chicago too and I don't see them rolling cigarettes on the train. Maybe that's it--I'm riding the train more  here. Or maybe it's that so many more people still smoke here.or -- a guess from left field-- maybe a country with national health care taxes the bejesus out of cigarettes, to pay for the enormous medical burden they place on society, but loose tobacco for some reason is taxed less. Anybody know?
     While I'm tossed out questions that I would figure out myself were I not on vacation, what's with the scarves? French men like to wear them loosely around their necks, dark blues and purples and greens, fine wool scarves that are part warmth, part decoration. You might see such a scarf on a flamboyant young man or two in Chicago, but here they're everywhere. I know it's dome kind of Gallic badge of masculinity. But why?

A perfect day....

    —Tech problems persist in Paris: I can't make the italics I like for this little introductory text, perhaps due to some heretofore unimagined EU restriction on the importation of exotic fonts. Anyway, while doing so raises the specter of lowered EGD standards, I thought, since I'm on vacation and my equipment is failing me, I would offer up something I wrote previously but never posted (I don't know which is scarier, the realization that I write even more stuff than gets thrown up, pun intended, here every goddamn day, or that I actually reject my own stuff as inadequate, sometimes. Though that IS the mark of a professional, which I try to be, today notwithstanding.
      Enough. I wrote this at the end of December but never posted it, probably because it struck me as boastful and arch and preening. But still, better than nothing. I hope. For the record the boy did call faithfully, every week, without fail.—

   Lunch was tuna fish salad -- with cranberries, the good stuff from Sunset Foods. Expensive but, heck, it's the holidays. I started the charge Friday, loading up two slices of wheat toast, with lettuce and tomato and a big mound of tuna.
    My wife followed my lead, piling sliced tomatoes with tuna, then noticed the banana bread she had baked earlier that morning, set out, cooling. She reconsidered -- maybe a slice of that instead of the tuna. 
    "You could put the tuna fish on the banana bread," Ross deadpanned. "It's a 'Perfect Day for Bananafish.'" 
    She looked up with an expression of inquiry. An odd remark that warranted explaining.  
    "A short story..." Kent began. 
     "By J.D. Salinger..." I added. 
     Welcome to the Steinberg family. Edie will say we could have some noodles with dinner, and I'll say, glancing at Ross, "Noodles. It's a long time since I've eaten noodles" and he'll smile—a line from "Uncle Vanya," thick peasant practicality intruding on all the high-minded Russian banter at the end of the play. Chekhov goes on from there, but I always thought it should have been the final line.
    I don't get to do that with other people, but one glory of children is that you can raise them into people you want to hang around, if you're lucky.
     Forty-eight hours later, Ross was on his way to France, where he starts classes in international economics and French at the Pantheon-Sorbonne on Wednesday. Kent was back at Northwestern, with no prospect of another lunch, all four of us around the kitchen table until May. 
     I almost said it's hard to have the boys go away, but that's not true. It's hard to have your children in a hospital, or in prison. To have them at college, it's neither hard nor easy, but just is, how it's supposed to be, just as winter might be cold, but it's expected. Besides, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?
      That's Shelly. 
     "A Perfect Day for Bananfish," by the way, is not nearly my favorite Salinger story from his Nine Stories. Though if you ignore the shocking development, it is apt, with the daughter talking by long distance to her concerned mother, a connection that takes two and a half hours for the hotel operator to make, and costs a fortune. No more. I downloaded Whatsapp—another punning literary reference, this one on Bugs Bunny. You can talk to anybody anywhere in the world for free—but can't imagine us using it much. I think I'll pause from hanging out in Paris with my new pals to go talk to my DAD.... No, don't see that happening much. But if it does, I have the app.
     "The Laughing Man," that would be my favorite Salinger short story from his collection, for how it so perfectly captures a moment in a young boy's life, when he is a member, "with maximum esprit d'corps," of this threadbare New York City after-school club, run by the Chief, a hero in their eyes, and the romance that goes on just outside of the view and understanding of the boy, and the cheezy-yet-perfect radio serial-esque tale told to keep the tribe occupied. 
    A close second is "For Esme—with Love and Squalor" a tale, like "Bananafish" of an adult man and a little girl, this one about 13, at the next table with her little brother and their governess in a tea shop in wartime Britain.  The same PTSD dolor hangs over the tale, though this one ends happily, or happier than "Bananafish," which isn't saying much. 
  

You can be the center of the world

      "I'm listening," announced the waitress, walking up to our little round table at a small bistro called "Le Centre du Monde" on Rue Galande not far from Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris Monday night. I asked her if the salmon in citrus sauce is good. She gave me a curious look, as if I had asked something exceedingly obvious.  An almost insulted look that said, "Of course it is."
     "It is ... in citrus sauce," she replied, and I took that as a confirmation, of sorts, and ordered it, even though I had already had salmon at lunch.
     The fish was more than good, it was excellent, served with rice and ratatouille, and as we ate I asked my son if "I'm listening" is a common French idiom, something waitresses typically say to prompt an order. No, he said, he didn't think so. Maybe it was particular to her.
     I considered asking the waitress, a majestic Gallic beauty. But that seemed a Bad Idea.
     Perhaps as compensation, as we headed out the door, I asked a passing waiter why the restaurant is called, "The Center of the World." He laughed, a short, derisive laugh, the laugh an unkind person would make seeing a stranger trip and fall and hurried outside to smoke a cigarette.
     But as we stepped onto the street the owner, an older man--okay, maybe he was my age--followed us out of the restaurant. I asked the question again.
     "This used to be a Roman road," he began, gesturing to the narrow cobblestone street in front of the place. "The Romans built them east to west. About 100 meters away is Notre Dame Cathedral, which is the center of Paris. Distances of the various roads to Paris were measured from that spot."
     He went on quite a bit, saying, in essence, France is the center of Europe and Paris is the center of France and this is the center of Paris."
     "Now of course we know the world is round, so the center is..." He gestured down below. " Now the center of the world can be anywhere. You can be the center of the world."
     I understood what he meant, and thanked him. "The dinner was excellent," I said.  
     He gave me a surprised look, as if to say, "Of course it was."

This is not a post

 
   There will be no post today. The internet in my apartment in Venice is balky, and while I can for some reason tap letters into my phone with the tip of my left index finger, I can't use my iPad or attach a photo, which throws me off my game even more than usual.
     Unless this notice, telling you there is no post, actually is ITSELF a post. That would make it something of a paradox, a koan, exactly the sort of mental calisthenics I reach for when I have all my fingers at my disposal.
     Or perhaps it is just a contradiction, the way the stillness of the Sistene Chapel is periodically punctuated by booming, amplified cries of "Silence please" and "No photo!" The later edict was respected by the hundreds of visitors craning their heads to look at Michelangelo's triumph. I also complied, reluctantly, knowing that no photo could do it justice anyway. Which leads to another paradox: due to technical difficulties, I can't post the photo I didn't take.

Only two years to go ...

     I'm technically on vacation. But this tidbit was lying around, and might bring a smile.

     Facebook and Twitter and Gmail, Linked-In and Snapchat and Instagram—there are so many ways to communicate. And I'm not even talking about individual sites. I went on my Berea High School web page, after not having gone on since 2009, and found all sorts of messages from classmates who had written to me, never realizing I wouldn't check back.  I felt bad that they had reached out and I hadn't responded.
     Then there was this conversation. Though I don't know if he just lost track of it, found it, and replied, or what. It's not as if I could ask and get a straight answer. I do know this, however: I am blessed with two sons who are both smart and deadpan.  The rest I can deal with.
     I think the exchange stands on its own:

     
    

Botticelli, ripped from the headlines

 

     Some things are obvious.

     Not the painting "The Calumny of Apelles" by Botticelli. That isn't obvious. Almost subtle, actually, hung as it is immediately to the left of the enormously big and enormously famed "Birth of Venus" at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Such a magestic masterpiece sucks up all the attention. So the relatively modest, relatively unknown 1495 artwork hardly gets a second glance from most visitors, who don't get close enough to even be tempted read the explanatory text on a card next to it. 
     But I did. Because I gave it a long look. Since it is an enigmatic painting. And I wanted an explanation. Which I got. This is what it says:

   On the right King Midas, poorly counselled by Suspicion and Ignorance, prepared to judge the victim of Slander, who is dragged by the hair by Calumny and accompanied by Fraud, Deception and Spite. Repentance looks at the naked Truth, who raises her eyes to heaven. 

     I don't have to say another word, do I? Some things are obvious.

Take better vacation pictures

     By the time a man is in his 50s, he's lucky enough to hold onto his oldest friends, who have a tendency to drift off, move, die, embrace loathsome political beliefs, or otherwise become inaccessible.
     Never mind making new friends. 
    However, unusual, traumatic experiences can forge new friendships, even in the gathering twilight. Floods. Earthquakes. Writing a book together. Thus I was pleased and surprised that, even though the rigors of collaboration passed, that my co-author Sara not only didn't part enemies, shaking our fists at each other in mutual creative disagreement, but actually seem to be keeping in touch. 
    She returned from touring Japan a few weeks back, and shared some of her excellent photos—readers with steel trap memories might recall the post I did on her charming cat portraits, done pro bono for New York City area shelters, trying to help find their kitties homes. But these travel shots are even more impressive, and they offer insight into how to take better vacation photos.  

   1) Three salarymen taking a selfie: Here Sara masters a concept that is very difficult for many of us to wrap our heads around even when we're not taking photographs: other people. How many vacationers feel the need to obscure every landmark they come across by including their own precious selves? Who would no sooner take a local person's photo than they would pick his pocket? Why photograph strangers, they exclaim, not realizing that is very close to asking: "Why travel at all?"
    When the truth is, you know what you look like, and being in the midst of a trek around the globe doesn't really improve matters. Forget the Kilroy Was 

  Here documentary proof and keep an eye out for people who live there, especially when they are concentrating on doing something else, such as this trio. Caught at the moment of saying chizu which is Japanese for "cheese" and what they actually do say over there when snapping photos. 
     2) Mom and schoolgirls (left). When you do want to take a photo of your traveling companion, try to get them doing something rather than just standing there, as in this picture of Sara's mom, who she went through Japan with, taking a photograph for a group of students.
      3) Bamboo trees (atop blog). The flip side of the Other People concept is the No People at All Concept. Look for patterns, for interesting juxtapositions, like these achingly straight bamboo trees crossed by a perpendicular fence.  Be aware of colors, and when you realize that chalk white and brush brown are colors too, you'll be on your way.

   
     4). Branches in water (right). Look up. Look down, to find unusual perspectives, like these branches reflected in water  Trees reflected in water along the Philosopher's Path, a serene retreat near Ginkakuji in Kyoto.  This one is intriguing because it takes a moment for the eye to grasp what you're looking at—not up, into the sky, but down, into a channel of water, reflecting branches and clouds and blue. It's almost like a little riddle, a koan, waiting for the viewer to come along and solve.
     5).  Look for details, like these kimono buttons at a flea market (below) Details bring you into a location, make it very tactile and real, and will show how far you've come from the tiny-people-standing-in-front-of-a-distant-monument Kodachromes of our parents.

    6) .Don't mug for your selfie. There's nothing wrong with taking your own picture, but that doesn't mean you have to offer up an expression like Betty Boop trying to blow a bubble. I like how Sara isn't looking at the camera here, in front of a temple gate, how she manages to get a bit of the ancient wood in, and goes for an interesting angle by holding the camera up and away. 
     Not everyone would be willing to share their vacation pix with the world, so thanks to Sara for allowing me to show them off while I'm away, taking my own vacation shots, which I'll no doubt be sharing soon too.
   
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