Tomorrow the people of France will drunkenly dance wild in the streets in celebration of their country’s historic capacity to commit mass lynchings. Ah, I know, that’s not strictly true. Those French can hold their liquor pretty well! Plus, technically Bastille Day commemorates the Storming of the Bastille and not the bloody French Revolution. But let’s be honest: The Storming of the Bastille would mean little without the subsequent carnage of the French Revolution. What would the Boston Tea Party matter without the American Revolution? What would history remember of Gandhi’s Salt March if it had not popularized Indian independence? The spirit of Bastille Day is indelibly linked to mob rule bloodlust… and that’s why I love it!
The French try to play down the whole guillotine thing. A proper woman will wear a blue dress to her Bastille Day festivities, not red, because Bastille Day is not about insurrection, but about liberty. It’s about going on strike. The French are passionate about striking. Witness the disgraced 2010 French World Cup team, who went on strike during the World Cup. How fucking French is that?
It’s no accident that this blog’s banner glorifies the more violent ideals of the French Revolution: A fearless sans-culotte, brandishing her shackles in one hand and the head of an aristocrat in the other hand. Not a day goes by that the inequal distribution of resources and services does not pique my inner radical. But do I really believe that society’s poor and oppressed should violently rise against the wealthy? That depends… am I considered wealthy? Or are we talking about the CEOs with $9 million salaries? Yes, I would sharpen the blade for BP’s CEO, whether or not he had a direct hand in the Gulf oil spill. This company makes money hand-over-freaking-fist while recklessly pillaging the planet, and they would rather heap dividends on their investors than spend a few bucks to prevent cataclysmic environmental disasters. Corporate negligence and greed is literally turning this planet into a cesspool, and on behalf of the thousands of oiled birds, coated turtles, and contaminated fish beds, I would march through St. Jame’s Square in London, demanding Tony Hayward’s head.
Okay. Must stop with the cavalier death threats. Honestly, I only believe in capital punishment for capitalist pigs in principle.
Boston’s Bastille Day street party was last Friday night. We paid an inexplicable $28 to enter the cordoned-off area and buy expensive wine FROM CALIFORNIA and Frenchified foodstuffs (although the sausage sandwich from the Beehive was super.) I suppose we were paying for the live music, although anyone could stand on the sidewalk and dance to the sounds of the Tabou Combo from Haiti and Caravan Palace from France. (Guess which is which…)
We shared a table with another couple, and it turned out she was from France (like Mr. P) and he was from Pennsylvania (like me)! Everyone thought that was très drôle.”What is it that French people like about people from Pennsylvania?” I asked Mr. P as we savored our sausages. “Is it our peasant qualities?”
Really, I didn’t want to see Knight and Day. The cinema had a slew of other, better movies — The Secret in Their Eyes, The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo, Toy Story 3 — and here I was, buying a ticket to the latest Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz vehicle like some kind of Us Weekly tool. But last October, when I still worked in the vicinity of Boston’s Fort Point neighborhood, my former co-workers and I watched a scene from Knight and Day beingfilmed in the parking lot behind our building (here). If that had been all, I would have waited for it on DVD, but later that week, I shared an amazing, deeply personal moment with Tom Cruise as they filmed a car chase scene on a particularly long highway on-ramp: Tom waved and smiled directly at me (here). Based on that brief but intense moment that Tom and I shared, I vowed that this movie “looks like the dumbest movie ever but I’m seeing it anyway.”
“Dumbest movie ever?” Actually, no. It was an international comedy-thriller-action-adventure romp with lots of scenic, sophisticated… um, romping. There are planes, trains, boats, buses, and automobiles. No sex, but a staggering body count and more than a few over-the-top action scenes, in which Tom and Cameron dodge literally hundreds of bullets while simultaneously flirting. Heck, there’s a reason why these people are movie stars. I watched them act ridiculous for almost two hours and I never once glanced at the clock. I was too busy getting lost in Cameron’s bluer-than-blue eyes and Tom’s rugged, sprightly mouth.
I can pinpoint the exact scene they were filming when Tom Cruise waved to me. That alone was enough to thrill me. “He’s getting paid millions to flirt with Cameron on the screen, but between takes, he’s waving to me on his own volition,” I thought, only half-self-mocking.
The movie’s plot was beyond inane — repeated ridiculous contrivances involving world domination or something. Don’t bother to wonder why or how. Only the who really matters. And if you live in Boston, the where is pretty darn entertaining. Who hasn’t driven through the Big Dig tunnels and wondered how a high-speed car chase would play out… or how it looks when cars are mired in 20 mph traffic gridlock?
Everything yearns to be cleaned: the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom, and three weeks worth of sweat-dabbed laundry. After more than a month of busy weekends and busier weekdays, my life needs not just a cleaning, but a scourging. I contemplated my plan of purification as I drank my morning tea at 7am on Saturday morning. Mr. P had gone off to his sprint triathlon, which I had begged out of attending on the premise that I would dredge our domestic depot and return it to habitable environs. Such is the plight of my sex. We are not obligated, but we are obliged.
So, to prevent this little seed of resentment from blossoming into full-tilt feminine rage as I scrubbed mysterious tomato sauce splatters from the back of the refrigerator, I needed to do something for myself to take the edge off. I threw on a sports bra and jogging shorts and decided to go to the Middlesex Fells for early-morning trail training. Machu Picchu, after all, looms.
I drove the 10 minutes to the Fells and parked on the periphery of the 2500 acre park. Despite having been to the Fells well over two dozen times, I still don’t know my way around the intricate network of official and unofficial trails. My spatial intelligence is about as honed as a pile of sand, so I rely on Mr. P’s uncanny sense of direction to navigate us. Even he has gotten us lost several times, requiring us to backtrack until something jogs his memory. “Ah, I know where we are!” he’ll say, pointing at some nondescript rock. Whatever. He’s my GPS.
Of course I started on the same trail we always start on. I bounded uphills and streaked downhills. I glided over rocks and roots. I ducked under branches. I found some Atmosphere on my iPod nano. Occasionally I broke into a trot. I don’t run regularly, but sometimes I run, just to make sure I still can. Conceivably, I could be in a situation where my survival depends upon my ability to run. There could be a pack of rabid dogs bearing down on me, or a knife-wielding maniac, or a tsunami wave. Is it possible to outrun a tsunami wave?
Wait… I’ve never seen that stone boundary wall before. I suddenly came upon a unfamiliar grove of pine trees. Evidently, I had missed a turn, or taken a wrong turn. Oh well. I’m not an idiot. If I pay attention, I can find my way back to the car. Right turn at the fallen tree… left turn onto the Cross Fells Trail. Left onto the Skyline Trail, where the trail began to oscillate with outcrops of dusty blue-tinged rocks. I turned my attention to my footing. Up, down, up, up still. With Arcade Fire bellowing in my ear, I reached a flat smooth part of the trail and began to ran.
Then — airborne. My foot had caught the tip of a rock and I flew forward. My hands instinctively stretched in front of my torso. My knees jutted forward, taking the brunt of the impact on my lower body as I belly flop onto the ground. A split second. A blur. That’s how these things happen, these accidents. For once, the body usurps control from the mind.
The impact triggered the Shake feature in my iPod nano, and so it automatically shuffled songs. Next thing I know, the Overture for The Thieving Magpie erupted into my ears, with its regal snare drums, pompous strings, and grandiose brass. Goodness. I’m laying face-down in the dust listening to Rossini in the middle of the woods, all by my lonesome, with a vague idea of how to return to my car.
Luckily, nothing was broken and nothing was bleeding… profusely. My knees were alarmingly red, but it looked like the tough knee skin did its job. My right elbow had a pencil eraser-sized cut that oozed blood. I was doused in dirt. And in my ears, Rossini reached a frenzied crescendo. Maybe I should have stayed home and cleaned the stove.
Heat makes me lazy. I mean, my god. I hate to whine about the weather — such tripe. Is there anyone in Boston metro who is not heaping grave grievances upon the past week of unmitigated hot and humidity? My brain is swollen. My lungs are weary of recycled conditioned air. I ache for ice cream and Coronas. Oh, how I crave the snow.
Thanks to cultural perks like The Wire, the NFL, and grocery-store sheet cake, Mr. P’s assimilation to America becomes a little more seamless each day. But he still requires regular exposure to the French language, lest the constant drone of English start to grate at his inner joie de vivre. So we decided to abscond to a Francophone country for some Franco-fueling.
I’ve remained haunted by an advertising campaign for Quebec City that ran in various upscale liberal publications some time ago, which marketed QC as “Europe, only closer.” It featured a photo of the famous Chateau Frontenac Hotel (here), all lit up at night like a fairytale castle, and some inset shots of the cramped, flower-lined streets of the old city. Although Mr. P had lived in Montreal for five years, he had not spent significant time in QC save for some vague nightclub excursions with his fellow bachelor friends, so he was game for spending Fourth of July weekend in QC… but when he tried to book a room at the Chateau Frontenac, the least expensive room was $250/night and had no windows. Whatever. Much more economical and relaxing to stay at a quaint B&B across the Saint Lawrence River in Levis.
We took the day off on Friday and plowed through New Hampshire in mid-morning, stopping in Vermont to stretch our legs and hike Mount Pisgah, one of the minor mountains that flanks endearing Lake Willougby (here).
In late afternoon, we got back in the car and pushed north into Canada, passing over the border with little fanfare or government interference. Within the first mile of Canada, the landscape opened up into an endless vista of farmland. Welcome to Quebec! Need milk?
We were in search of a hotel that would keep us en route to Quebec City but offer a bit more character than your typical highway pit stop. Scanning the map for bold-faced towns that might likely offer services, one name jumped out.
“Let’s go to the lovely town of Asbestos!” I said, half-joking. But as we followed signs for a hotel off the main road, it became clear that we’d end up in the very heart of Asbestos, Quebec. Every sign we passed—the Asbestos Golf Club, the Asbestos Baptist Church—amused me to no end.
The town itself was outwardly tidy, with well-cared-for homes and little sign of trouble spilling onto the streets. But beneath its modest surface, there were whispers of a fading heyday: outdated motels, roaming clusters of teens, and of course, the yawning asbestos mine just on the edge of downtown—a stark monument to its namesake.
After dinner at the golf club (Mr. P’s fish came with rice, pasta, and potatoes, because why not?), we strolled through the town center and stumbled upon an adult softball game between two teams of burly laborers. It was oddly riveting. Later, we tried to check out a karaoke nightclub but balked at the $10 cover charge, retreating instead to our hotel.
Laugh as we did at the town’s ill-fated branding, I will say this: I had one of the best nights of sleep I’ve ever had in a hotel. Perhaps it was the quiet charm of Asbestos. Or perhaps I was merely sedated by the airborne particles of its infamous past.
Greetings from Asbestos
The next morning, we completed our journey to QC, arriving mid-morning at our quaint B&B on the banks of the mighty St. Lawrence River. We said “Bonjour” to the innkeepers and then hastened to the nearby ferry that would deliver us into the heart of QC in only 15 minutes. Here’s a view of the Chateau from the ferry deck…
We set off for a leisurely walk through the major tourist attractions of QC amid scores of other tourists. A persistent breeze off of the water kept us from getting too heated in the hot sunshine.
Quebec
We stopped in a cafe at around 2pm for some refreshment. QC felt very European to me, but Mr. P found the Euro-qualities to be degraded, almost farcical, like a Disney-fied version of a Parisian neighborhood. I can only imagine that it’s a tad surreal to visit a city where the people look sorta like you, talk a bastardized version of your language, and treat you with cheery patronization that the locals reserve for tourists. I can only imagine it’s like visiting Texas.
Les moutons!
Some massive public singalong weirdness…
Quebec Singalong
Couple dancing salsa to the tune of a street vendor’s radio…
Promenade…
Quebec
Tourists taunting the unmoving guard’s regiment outside of the QC citadel…
After a full afternoon that included an elating stop in a bar to watch Spain prevail over Paraguay with a group of rowdy, erudite young men who could have only been American liberal arts college kids on vacation, we boarded the ferry back to Levis, eager to escape the increasing crush of the congested old city as it came alive with nightlife. Besides, it’s much better to view QC at night from across the river — just like the advertisement.
We awoke the next morning in our delicately-decorated room and breakfasted on a three-course meal (I was curious if the breakfast would be American-style or French-style, and it turns out they were both, at the same time) after which we wanted to go back to sleep (Bed and Breakfast and Bed). But we decided to fulfill our vacation’s history requirement by walking to a nearby fort in Levis erected in the 1860s by the British, who were paranoid that the Americans were plotting to attack Quebec via a railroad. The fort, which cost the British taxpayers $1 million, was constructed using cutting edge fort technology such as rolling drawbridges, reinforced powder rooms, and angled sniper holes. It was never used, as the Americans were too busy with that whole Civil War thing to think of invading Quebec.
From the disused Levis fort, we drove over to a state park to see a dam/waterfall area (Canada thrives on hydroelectric power) that boasted 4km of pedestrian trials — mostly stairs and the world’s bounciest pedestrian bridge, which I could only cross with my eyes fixed to the sky. The battery in Mr. P’s camera died after this photo, right when he tried to capture the waterfall (making me feel guilty about all the gratuitous photos I took in Asbestos).
The rest of the vacation was a relaxing blur of food, drink, and meandering. We accomplished nothing except ridding ourselves of all the Canadian coins that we’ve collected over the years. I almost died when a bartender gave me 3 American quarters as change.
The 3 weirdest things that I saw in Canada:
1 – A highway weigh station that was actually open.
2 – A young woman carrying a parrot in a backpack cage and strolling around a park with her family.
I’m currently in a different country. It’s way of life is not strikingly different than that of the United States, and we did not travel more that 200 miles to get here, but this country is exotic in its own retarded way. Witness:
Of course, I could only be in Quebec. (Absestos Pizza? Oh, Canada.)
Because nothing says freedom like mandatory loyalty oaths.
Do you remember reciting the Pledge of Allegiance every single day in school—standing up on cue, pushing in your plastic chair, turning to face the limp flag in the corner, hand over heart like a tiny civilian soldier? In hindsight, it’s totally bizarre that I spent the entirety of my public-school education swearing blind loyalty to a piece of polyester. Who decided this was a good idea? Is there any research suggesting that robotically repeating a nationalistic poem instills anything but apathy and neck strain?
Because if the goal was to breed a generation of patriots, it didn’t stick. I grew up to be about as patriotic as my Volkswagen Jetta. Maybe it’s because I learned the words before I understood any of them. “Pledge”? “Allegiance”? “Republic”? “Indivisible”? These weren’t even in my vocabulary when I was six. By the time I could parse the language, it had been reduced to a daily mutter—meaningless sounds mumbled under fluorescent lights.
According to the Boston Globe, schools in my town don’t do the Pledge anymore, and a local high school kid is on a mission to bring it back. His argument? That it’s “a living and breathing statement” that honors our troops and strengthens civic bonds. The school board is currently deadlocked on whether to reinstate it—because of course there are six members. Excellent planning, everyone.
I could roast this teenage patriot, but honestly? I remember what it felt like to be seventeen and wildly committed to every principle I ever half-formed. I once launched a class-wide debate on whether flag napkins were more disrespectful than flag burning. I stood up in U.S. History to ask why we were still romanticizing a country thought Vietnam was a good idea. I defended the French revolutionaries for beheading their oppressors. And, I started mouthing the Pledge instead of saying it out loud. It was my quiet protest. My first foray into principled half-assery.
Had I possessed a bit more follow-through, maybe I would’ve staged my own anti-Pledge campaign. But by then, nobody seemed to care. It was the early ’90s—after the Cold War, before 9/11—and patriotism felt like a mullet: outdated, kind of embarrassing, and usually worn by someone yelling at a cashier.
Cut to a month ago: Mr. P and I played in our community orchestra’s season-closing Pops concert. The lineup was standard-issue Americana—Cats, Phantom, Singin’ in the Rain, some Cole Porter fluff. Musical comfort food. Nothing dangerous. Nothing nourishing.
And then came Stars and Stripes Forever.
It’s the platonic ideal of a Sousa march—raucous, relentless, unapologetically jingoistic. It summons a strange surge of emotion: the urge to wave a flag, kiss an apple pie, and scream about taxes.
Mr. P hated Stars and Stripes Forever. As a European, he finds all overt displays of nationalism suspect, which is fair.
Here in America, we have no such shame. We love patriotism like it’s a sport—loud, performative, and heavily sponsored by truck commercials. Even dyed-in-the-wool dissenters like me aren’t immune to the emotional charge of a freaking Sousa march. Sometimes I wonder: did all those years of daily Pledge recitation actually leave a mark? Did something seep in? Am I just now hitting that age when people start to drift conservative—not because they’re wise, but because they’re tired?
The U.S. doesn’t have a shared ancestry. We barely have a shared understanding of facts. So we cling to symbols—flags, anthems, marches, empty rituals we repeat until they feel like truth. Stars and Stripes Forever is our musical duct tape. It’s what holds this shaky project of a country together long enough to keep clapping.
Most bloggers feel the need to post consiliatory “I’ve been such a neglectful blogger” apologies after a few weeks of dead air. Me, I begin to get anxious after a few days. I’m still here! Please don’t abandon me! I’m like a hoary old nightclub singer in garish make-up who is terrified to stop singing for fear the last few lingering die-hards in the audience will abandon her. So I keep singing, even if I’ve forgotten most of the words.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. It’s called “My life is so busy, I don’t have time to write about.”
I have pictures, somewhere. And maybe someday I will get around to posting them. But for now, I’ll just moan into the microphone while you all go and refresh your drinks.
This morning, I ran into the Irish sales guy in the company kitchen—a man with whom I share a slightly fraught history. Our first encounter came shortly after the infamous France vs. Ireland World Cup play-off in 2009, when Thierry Henry’s unpenalized handball crushed Ireland’s hopes and sent France to the 2010 World Cup. Given the rawness of Ireland’s loss, my cheery opener—”Don’t hold it against me, but my husband is from France!”—was ill-advised. Though he responded politely, “Sure, I won’t hold it against you,” the look in his eyes suggested he’d gladly have seen me burn in footballing hell.
Fast-forward to today, when I decided to mend fences. With my best winning smile, I asked, “Did it make you happy to see the French team implode at the World Cup?”
Having been married to a Frenchman for two years, I really should have known better than to preface a question to any European with “Did it make you happy…?” Americans might revel in the humiliation of a hated rival, but Europeans—especially Irish football fans—view such matters with far more gravity.
“Happy?” he repeated, his voice low and his forehead furrowing. “Oh, no. Quite the opposite. I was irate.” (Yes, irate—an adjective that somehow felt more damning than a four-letter curse.) “They stole Ireland’s spot in the World Cup, and then they didn’t even bother to show up. They made a bloody mockery of the whole thing. I’m livid.”
So much for reparations. Note to self: Avoid discussing football with the Irish sales guy ever again.
All my life, I’ve wanted to be in an earthquake. Yes, I know earthquakes are deadly and destructive — one of Earth’s consequential revenges on the parasitic creatures that pilfer her largess and upend her symmetry — but I’ve always wanted to experience the earth quaking. In French, the term for “earthquake” is tremblement de terre, a similarly behooving term for what is happening: the trembling of earth. It is scared. It is beholden to abnormal forces. Our normally-comely and gracious planet is out of control. It’s like when Britney Spears shaved her head, only on a much more monumental scale. It is a taste of apocalypse.
Plus, earthquakes always sounded fun, so long as you avoid getting buried in a pile of rubble or incinerated in fire caused by a disrupted gasline. Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, like a weathered trampoline. Of course, if I really wish to experience recoiling ground, I should move to California and egg on the Big One. But Boston still does afford enough perks that I can resist the San Andreas siren song and remain in mostly faultless New England.
And then… today. A rare opportunity. A 5.0-magnitude Canadian earthquake occurs 300 miles from Boston today at 1:41pm (here). I know exactly what I was doing at 1:41pm: I was preparing for a 2pm meeting about Microsoft Word templates for the Content Development team by reviewing the previous template-less documents on my laptop while drinking a cup of hot ginger tea to help digest the pork-and-cabbage that I had for lunch.
The earth quaked, the earth trembled, and I didn’t feel a freaking thing.
