H. Hsu Word Salad

I never did write about the fiasco(s) P & I had in Paris for New Year.  Let’s just say that I hadn’t planned on running for life and limb during our sojourn, and the year started off with adventure.

Travel Tip: www.go-today.com is a fabulous website for international travel bargains, P & I used them to visit Argentina/Uraguay last year, and to spend New Year’s Eve in Paris the year before. 

Sound romantic? Let me warn you about going bonkers Paris-style.   

First of all, approx 6 days in Paris for accomodations plus air at under $700 is a steal, even if it is the cold season. Thus, we packed all our cold weather gear-taking care not to look too much like unkempt Americans.  Although my efforts to look tres chic on vacation merely meant that we wound up having to buy a cheap pair of athletic/casual shoes in Paris because my boots meeting cobblestones and the like rendered a lot of pain.

New year’s day we are touring the city on the Metro and notice someone handing out flyers.  I have a habit of collecting random information, and much to the annoyance of P and attested to by the drifts of paper all over our home, I also collect random reading materials everywhere I go.

P hurries me along, and does not take a flyer. "what if that’s important?", I ask. He scoffs. I read less French than he does, so, we walk on and board our Metro.

We do a whirlwind tour of the fabulous Louvre, and are dissapointed that it closes early due to the holiday.  P also seems thoroughly unimpressed by that grand dame, Mona Lisa. I just wish I had bought a better camera to do this place justice.

We wander about the Champs Elysses taking giant self portraits of our own heads blocking the scenery, and pretty much give up on communicating intelligibly in French. Now we accost random Parisians and fellow tourists to find out who we CAN communicate with. "excuse me, do you speak English?" "Hablas Espanol?" P beckons me over "Hey, these guys speak Chinese!". During this trip we chat with a lovely couple from Spain and some Chinese people, but they seem as clueless as we are. No luck dredging up any Thai people.

New year’s Eve night falls and we station ourselves next to the river Seine and befriend some New Yorkers, married 11 years and here enjoying vacation with their kids tucked in at home with family. We are facing the Eiffel Tower which looms before us and sparkles with extra-festive scintillating lights.

Some dude walks up and picks up our camera case and starts moving it away. We’re a bit shocked at the brazeness, but he scuttles away when confronted.

At midnight the Eiffel Tower is….sort of anticlimatic.  Apparently any actual fireworks are being held over at the Ferris Wheel this year, not the Eiffel. Didn’t get the memo.  So everyone’s watches go off at different times and there is a chaotic wave of uncoordinated "Bon Anee"’s!  Now the crowd is moving along in rivulets, shouting and noisemaking and pickpocketing merrily.  People are drinking champagne out of bottles in the street.

Several large young lads come up cheerfully pounding people on the back "Bon Anee!", I notice them way to close to P and his backpack and steer him away-the dudes notice my confused dippy tourist face change into a "back off man, I’m from Oakland" wariness and they move on - as P spins around to check his bag and finds the zipper pulled more than halfway open.

P & I are fanatical recyclers. Paris has ginormous green recycling depositories in the streets that are  big enough to live in. I love it.  There were 2 or 3 empty water bottles in our backpack which we were saving up until we reached the next recyling blob.  All the Bonne Anee Thieves got away with was a water bottle, not even a full one at that. (recylers get good karma?)  Both cameras were safe & sound. Whew.

As we are talking about being more careful, "Can you believe these guys?", we walk past Paris cops manhandling other Bonne Anee thieves, shoving them onto the ground in cuffs amidst the crowd. "whoa, don’t mess with these cops" I joke, and then suddenly my beloved exclaims: "My eyes! My eyes are burning!" I don’t get the "Wha…?" out of my mouth before I feel the sting in my throat and we both realize that those cops have just pepper sprayed in the middle of a New Year’s throng.

P grabs my arm and takes off running. This is the type of running that occurs when your body takes off and leaves the head back at the starting block.  The kind when your eyes are burning, your throat is closing, 30 or more people have set off running beside you, all are jumping over and past landscaping on instinct, and panicking about not being able to outrun this danger.  If ever I felt like one amidst a pack of fleeing animals, this was it. 

We find ourselves finally in clear air. Laughing (only a little) about what in hell kind of Paris story is that gonna be?!  We start to breathe again, and the efficient Parisians have started driving all the street cleaning machines. Champagne bottles are being swept aside, and we are all being herded away from the square. It’s now probably almost 2 am and we are about ready for this jaunt to end.

P waits 20 minutes in a queque to use a stupid loo. Two drunk ass cute girls cut, or beg their way into line.  Meanwhile, I am standing outside watching all the locals line up and pee against a wall in a busy street facing the bar where P is waiting.

Then, we are almost mushed for the 2nd time that night in a wall of bodies at the Metro station. Apparently, that memo we failed to collect in the morning, was to inform riders of the various stations that would be closed for New Year’s.  We claw our way out of that crowd, and dash down the street to the next Metro stop. No dice. Start racing toward the NEXT Metro stop, (I am distracted by a series of tables where folks are selling gummy candy in the street near the Opera House) P is on a mission to get us outta here.

In sum, we braved 3 or 4 Metro stops that night before I pretty much gave up. We sat on a park bench in Paris, watching the reveler stragglers run by. Hmm. I pondered how interesting that we would sleep in the street for New Year in Paris since we can’t get on the proper Metro to our boonie hotel until 6am.

P was doggedly determined. There simply had to be a way.

My brain was out. Somehow that night P figured out the sole Metro line that would connect us to one that was at least vaguely in the vicinity of the hotel.  I was getting delirious. I was sitting next to a Metro ad of a little girl gleefully picking her nose. That was funny, and I made him take a photo.

We got off the Metro, and proceeded to almost get lost (yet again)but finally muddled our way through a scary ass warehouse type area toward our hotel. P was wary, alert, and paranoid. I was intellectualizing to myself that statistically we were quite likely to get mugged, but actually I was not afraid of getting shot as I would be back in the U.S…So assault seemed imminent but homicide probably no.

Miraculously, no additional muggings or gassings occurrred that night, or for that matter, for the whole year. We got to bed at…maybe 4, maybe later.  Poor P was dead to the world the next day.

I went downstairs to eat endless baguette and write down my recollections. Came to the room, P was still dead to the world. Night fell again. It’s 2005. P finally recovered, barely in time as we almost missed the bus to the infamous Moulin Rouge.

Beautiful? Absolutely. Sexy? Hmmm…He said, "they dance like white people".  Have to admit that was true… 

I loved the petite horses and the crepes poulet that we ate in the street.  Paris was not the postcard city of romance we have always seen, but it sure was another adventure in our life together-and more excitement than we had bargained for in a night’s celebration. 

Bonne Anee.

D, the spouse of my office spouse and I saw Guns ‘n Roses at the Warfield last night, or rather, Axl Rose n’ friends, as well as Sebastian Bach of Skid Row.  Our respective spouses were kind of like "um, yeah, you guys have fun." Not that they are haters of G’nR, but they didn’t think it was worth 60 bucks & a weeknight bender.

Show sold out in less than a day. As the day drew closer D and I kept making jokes about how the band hadn’t broken up yet, or no one has OD’ed yet, and we were actually going to see them.

Finally, despite my illness (killer cold) I was hell bent on seeing the man, Axl Rose, whose posters once were plastered all over my bedroom. 6:30 D  left his respectable banking empire. I fled being anyone’s therapist or supervisor, put on the skull and crossbones tee I bought in New Orleans (pre-Katrina), throw on boots and cuff -and off to meet D at Virgin Megastore.

Sebastian was due to go on at 8pm, doors open at 7. After dinner at Plouf we saunter to Warfield and braved the jungle of meth addicts, homeless, porno shops lost tourists, etc. as we edge to the Tenderloin.  I wonder if we will be late but D doesn’t really care about seeing Sebastian, plus he said "given who we’re dealing with -we’ll be lucky if anything goes on time".

It’s now 8:45 and hundreds of irate black-T-shirt wearing aged rockers or former rockers (uhm. like myself I guess) are queued in the street.  Some dude is leading a group chanting "this is bullshit! this is bullshit…" while another voice calls out "what do U think you’re accomplishing!?".

D & I now need to accomplish the location of an acceptable loo.  But the ones near Warfield include Crazy Horse or Donut Star, where you take your life in your hands just walking in the slimy door.

We hoof it back to tourist land in Union Square and wind up taking the elevator to Cheescake factory.  We debate how sissy it is to eat cheesecake at a Gn’R show.  I feel it’s like eating caesar salad and sushi while watching a ball game.  Lame, but everyone does it now.  After much perusal, we buy a slice of Key Lime cheesecake. I call P to inform him that the show is like 2 hrs late. Don’t wait up.

Back to Warfield, people are surging inside and Sebastian is singing and hollering his heart out onstage already. D is forbidden from bringing in our Cheesecake, and winds up gifting a group of homeless folks outside with the fancy $7 slice, and they seem quite happy.   

Finally now, the show.

I’ve never been in the seats at Warfield-normally only the main floor. I must say that from the distance where we sat, Sebastian is still looking pretty damn good in his leather pants and vest and shampoo-model hair. Ya figure the guys gotta be pushing 40.  Songs like "18 and life" " I remember you" and of course "youth gone wild" bring me back to being like 16 and playing that Skid Row tape (yes, an audio cassette tape) in my parents’ house back in Cupertino.  He sounds good but screams so much I wonder how he manages to keep his voice.  The dialogue is peppered by lots of F words and comments about all the pot the crowd is smoking, and a brief chorus of "When the lights go down in the city…" for the benefit of the San Franciscans.  He also talks a lot about the show on Vh1 he is on with freakin’ Ted Nugent. 

During the show among the hands grabbing him, someone passes something up to the stage and it’s…a toddler. D and I look upon this w/raised eyebrows as the tiny little boy with shiny blonde hair is grabbed onstage, and then Sebastian puts the kid up on his shoulders continueing to sing and walk about the stage. He manages not to drop the baby, and the show goes on.

By 11:00-Gn’R fans are plenty restless. The house lights go out, those familiar chords radiate out…it’s Welcome to the Jungle and the crowd goes bonkers.  The pyrotechnics are a lot of fun too-showers of sparks, exploding flames, and if we don’t all die in a fire in here then this is awesome!

The night is punctuated by old favorites that bring back memories and have us all rocking out. What a cool show! Sweet Child ‘O Mine, You Could be Mine, My Michelle, Mr. Brownstone". They bust out the full grand piano for November Rain.

But then-

there are the random moments. Like, between each set Axl goes off stage left and dissapears.

So…his band has these long jam sessions. Which is cool. Until like the 4th or 5th one. And the show which was set to end at maybe 10:30 is now running past midnight.   

At one point 2 very excellent guitarists are jamming and wailing for many minutes before I realize that these rock stars are playing an electric guitar rendition of Christina Aguilera’s "Beautiful". WTF!?

And Axl’s mike fades out often, and Axl’s voice sad to say, sorta fades out often too. At one point he brings Sebastian out onstage with him-and it’s undeniable that while Axl is the big rock star everyone came to see; Sebastian’s voice is far stronger. (and for god’s sake Sebastian is not wearing corn rows). Axl also shares that he was kicked out of a restaurant earlier that night for refusing to button his shirt.

After 3 shirt changes and a lot of random moments punctuated by rock n’ roll bliss and snapshots of greatness-D and I have to bail.  We keep sticking it out waiting for Paradise City, but the last BART is loooong gone, and Dave’s car is in a garage that closes at 1:00.  Having no desire to take a transbay bus through Oakland at 2 am, we make a dash out of Warfield at about 12:53 & barely make it out of garage before closing ($50 re-opening fee for those who don’t make it).

So I don’t know if he did finally sing Paradise CIty last night. Rather, this morning.

D says he missed Paradise City the last time he saw G’nR as well since Axl stomped off the stage in a huff that night years ago and never came back.

Somehow, the chaos is appropriate to the show-more authentic even.  They are headed to Fresno next and then Oakland Arena in Dec.

I got over my Axl Rose fixation many years ago but never got over the music (Welcome to the Jungle is on my "angryrun" playlist for running) or being partial to leather pants…

Hell, I think it’s pretty cool that these guys can still make a living as rockers for like 20 years.   Their fans were kinda paunchy (not D and I of course) but as wildy enthusiastic as ever. 

I am  member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  Here is a prayer from this issue of Freethought Today.  We would do well to remember the simple golden rules as we go about our business on this sad anniversary of tragedy:

Atheist’s Prayer

Let us remember our brotherhood with others as we hear this prayer which is addressed to us rather than to our gods.

Let us rise each morning, and strive each day, to do only that which brings happiness and joy to others, and avoid doing things that cause others hurt or pain.

Let us use our minds and our reason to foster behavior based on the mutuality and reciprocity inherent in human relationships, and let us always respect the dignity and worth of each other.

And let us, above all, love one another,

not to obtain rewards for ourselves now or hereafter or to avoid punishment, but rather always to bring each other contentment and peace. So be it.

(credit to Theodore M. Utchen of Illinois)

One of our very young (20 something) & cute new hires today told me "wow, I’ve never seen you dressed like that, you look so fly
today".
It took me a long minute to even register what on earth she had
said…
sigh.
So I think that means that I normally am very NOT-fly,
and also that I
am getting perilously close to an age where I won’t know what any of the
whippersnappers are even talking about!
Phat and Fly and Saucy I can decipher, as well as the grills and the thizzin’ and the Hella Messies…but a few more years and it will be a lost cause.

Last few nights I’ve been stressed to the hilt and stewing in my own repressed miffy feelings-
but a nice 7 mile run through the beautiful trees on a fire trail w/ my Mudy Buddy sure patched things up in a jiffy!   
I think it over and over again: I aspire to be as fit (and as fun) as Tim is when I am even close to his age…(a spry "pushing" 60).

I am a fountain of random information. Now if one wants to converse about things such as the scientific use of intestinal parasites for allergy control, Genghis Khan, plantar facilitis, the distinguishing characteristics central to bird-watching, the forensic utility of "lividity", the key factors in fine chocolate making, Argentine society, Japanese mental health, Hello Kitty, coral reefs, posture differentials in kung-fu/ballet/modern/jazz ,S& M communities, or famous people with mental illnesses-then, I am your cocktail party companion.

But to write…there is a sort of accountability that seems to come with putting thought into form.

I remember reading once about a professor who started his Writing class by facing the students and stating something to the effect of :
"Are you waiting for your parents to die before you write anything worthwhile?!"
(if anyone finds the source of this, I’d appreciate the info. But it was one of the thousands of anecdotes I read that month and filed away mentally-unable to properly credit)

I want to write. This is second only to my urges to read.  I have lived lifetimes within books since I was a little girl.
Going to the library was our treat as children.  Soon the books I checked out were arm-straining stacks.  I read The Godfather and The Shining in 6th grade.  I learned about  Hiroshima, learned in a stomach-churning, innocence puncturing way, through a graphic novel I bought for myself at the flea market. I read a book called "Hot Flashes" when I was 16 and found communion in the longing hearts of menopausal women and their reflections on life.  I have ached and cried perhaps more freely with a volume in hand (and in bed) than ever I have with human witness.  In these tomes, I have been to China, Mexico, Afghanistan, Paris, England, Mongolia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Japan, Tibet, Hungary…ad infinitum.

When P goes out of town he sternly warns me "Don’t stay up all night -Reading!!".
I giggle about the ridiculousness, chide him about how other husbands would be glad if that were the only problem they have to worry about…this lifelong habit of staying up all night until a good book is read through. But yes, if he let me, these books and my affairs with them would surely ruin our sleep cycle.

There are powerful social fears which plague all of us well-fed folks. 
No longer fighting for survival, we navel gaze and preen and lament ourselves into addictions and (if you’re lucky) a good therapist’s office.
I shed many of those fears 10 years ago when most of what felt certain in life simply went away.
I saw the man behind the curtain, you might say. The wizard, was quite frail in fact.
Working a year at hospice in the bereavement department was pretty much the final nail in the coffin, so to speak.  Time is short. Too much of our lives is wasted on silly dust bunnies of stress.

If an artist’s role is to live aloud, to share the truths and then stand the scorn-OK.
Bring it on.
I already know what a complete jerk I can be. And I already know that I can attain loftier accomplishments than previously imagined.

Yet as a reasonable human being-
how can one subject familia to such…social abuse? 
Surely I can not wait for my parents and brother and spouse and friends and past loves to all die or become senile or comatose before "writing something worthwhile". 
Certainly if I had my way I would be senile and deceased long before any of them.
I never handed them a disclaimer form that described the limits of confidentiality that being in my life and heart entails.   There are rich depths in these stories, the roads we have created. I value them and reflect back upon them often.  Would sharing them be the proper way to pay respect as I intend-or would it cheapen it like a horrid reality TV show?

Shall I liberate my thoughts to bond and bridge with an unknown reader who may judge these innocent parties?  Shall I be the black sheep baby who discloses the family skeletons?  Could my marriage stand mortifying reflections and TMI? Will I ever stop feeling the compulsion to protect my parents from the follies of my youth and the errors of their young parenting?
Somehow I don’t want to find out by trial. (or attorneys bearing libel suits)

Perhaps such worries are for naught. Writers and therapists tend not to be glamourous enough to serve as tabloid fodder.

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something-a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things-which you had thought unique and particular to you.  Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead.  And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours"     —-A. Bennett

Ah, art. Cultures debate endlessly about "What is art?" Is that abstract bunch of paint really art? Is street graffiti art? How about artifacts of everyday use like my tea cup? Is that motorcycle art? Is performance art art or is it glamourized acting out? Aren’t my neice’s scribbles a kind of art? I’ll be the first to admit that even in a fantastical shrine of art such as the Louvre in Paris there are times I am in total awe, yet there are times I feel like "I don’t get it" or the even more blasphemous "well, even I could do that…"

Walking with P and 2 friends at the Fremont Art & Wine Festival, we came upon a booth of paintings-and I had the bizarre sensation of seeing much of the contents of my head upon these canvases.

My first reaction was sort of a joke, "Hey, P look it’s ME. Books flying everywhere and a cat (my apparent past life form)."

Then as we browsed further, holy cow, this really is me. Books, cats, birds, birds, more birds, trees, more books, messed up bedsheets, a flying person, a modern dance/semi-tortured person, fruits, disorderly order.

Upon reflection, this is one of the true meanings of art to me.

To see so many of the symbols, powerful, loved, denied or identified with…depicted in a medium that allows another to share an inner experience, another world.

The artist, Ted Wen was chatty and seemed pleased to meet someone who spoke Chinese and loved his work so much. (too bad I am too poor to buy any original pieces). Oddly, we don’t seem to have  damn thing in common other than being from Taiwan.  And frankly, he has the mildly abrasive manner of many a Chinese man, and the unintentional bluntness of English as a Second Language speakers.  If this were a movie or a novel I suppose one would discover a soul mate through the medium of art.

Alas, not to be. But I loved his work. And we lamented together how impossible in this callous and shallow world, how impossible it is to feed oneself relying soley on art.

Check it out-

http://www.tedwen.com

If I could paint, this would be a lot like what would come out. (or perhaps I merely I flatter myself!)

I bought a tiny reproduction-not actually my favorite one, but one that is "normal" enough to put in my office. Some of the more conceptual "weird" ones could be interpreted as too scary or depressing to clients, or too scary and weird for our home. But not nearly as weird as what I think about on any given day…

Which reminds me of a conversation I had w/my mum.

About how much I loved Van Gogh works, and she said that they are good, but that they are too "unhappy". She preferred the "very pretty" more aesthetically pleasing works such as say, Monet’s famous waterlilies.

I seem convinced that true art, (much like true love) always contains suffering that keeps it real (spoken like a true masochistic Chinese person…). But I concede that to pooh-pooh someone else’s artistic choices as being fluff just because it’s pretty is also quite narrow.

But that my friends, is a whole other story…

"It is not only what we do, but what we fail to do, for which we are
accountable."
–Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere (1622-1673)