seeing you again

i was in brussels this weekend, after a rather extended gmail conversation about how, with both of us on the continent, we might manage to see one another. after nine years. nine, the number on your house.

the things i remember about you. the way you walk, with your feet pointed out. you singing, in the kitchen. how you plan, grandiose, rapid, up-in-the-air.

and have you changed? it was more comfortable to speak english with you, because your spanish is different. a lot different. but your mannerisms, your terms of engagement, these are all the same, if not intensified.

i wasn't nervous about seeing you, and i didn't have many expectations about what you would be like now, a mobile IT worker in a european capital. i thought perhaps a bit more yuppie, put together, the way i remembered you from d.f. but you unravel at the edges.

you said i was the same, and maybe so. i guess i can't remember.

Latin@ in Paris

Paris has hosted its share of Latin American literary figures. Miguel Angel Asturias studied here, at the Sorbonne, and returned later in his life both as a political refugee (from Guatemala and Argentina) and as an ambassador. Julio Cortázar and Alejo Carpentier were also here, along with Luis Cardoza y Aragón and a whole group of Guatemala’s generación 1920. They hung out together, and I was curious what there is now, in the city, as far as a latino community.

After a disappointing experience with pimient fort (but not strong enough) I tried to find some good Mexican food. An ex-pat chilango referred me to Anahuacalli which was pretty good—especially the salsa and beans—and to an épicerie on Dante street. The épicerie wasn’t exactly what I imagined—my fantasy was a French version of Detroit’s Mexican-town shops with lots of dried chiles and beans and maybe even some nopales. Instead it was stocked with an incredibly surly shopkeeper and a selection of La Costeña canned goods (vastly superior to Monoprix’s selection of Danish distributed Taco Bell knockoffs, however). A jar of mole was 12 euros, and a kilo bag of MASECA 18 euros. Next time I’ll come better prepared, and maybe make myself some extra spending money.

I’ll also have to be a better salsa dancer. Salsa from the 70s and 80s is hot, there are tons of clubs, and folks are really good dancers. Very ballroom, and in the few times I’ve been I’ve yet to encounter a Spanish speaker. I hear Spanish in the street though—lots of Spaniards, and some Colombians, Mexicans and Cubans too.

Crossing the Seine on my way home I encountered the 9ème Collectif des Sans-Papiers, handing out the following bulletin:

Pour dénoncer les practiques scandaleuses et intolérables dans le pays des droits de l’homme, qui ont pour but d’intimider les sans-papiers en créant un climat de peur afin qu’ils se cloîtrent de plus dans la clandestinité.

NON A LA MACHINE A EXPULSER LES

SANS-PAPIERS

NON AUX RAFFLES

NON AUX ACCORDS BILATERAUX RATIFIES

ENTRE LA FRANCE ET L’AFRIQUE

REGULARISATIONS DE TOUS LES SANS-

PAPIERS

The television coverage of immigration here includes interviews with organizations, and African immigrants, in Spain, and juxtaposes images of boats with the ever-growing fence of the U.S. border, presenting different immigrations as a common, global “problem”. One channel showed a map with a red line like the Río Bravo stretching from California eastward, almost one-third of way across the entire Mexican-U.S. border. I don’t think I’ve seen that same image on television in the U.S. And probably with good reason. It’s ghastly. I wish I could better compare immigration policies between france, europe and the u.s., and more importantly, the resistance to the expulsory machine (as the flyer so aptly puts it) but they're both overwhelming.

Towards heaven

this would be my catholic monument habit—and, i should probably add that i’ve been to both the begininning and end—the church of the nativity in bethlehem (and a hideout during the first intifada) and the church of the ascension in jerusalem. but this is paris so…

goth on the seine

notre dame

sacre coeur

St. Ambroise

and the almost-but-not-quite-classy-enough art deco church right across the street! the clock tower never reads the same time on all four sides (like every clocktower i know—Evergreen, The University of Michigan, although rebecca just told me that Evergreen’s clock always reads 4:20—friends, is that true?) and my favorite thing is that it doesn’t chime in the morning, except on sunday, and then it waits until 11 a.m.

It’s snowing at home. And i’m missing it.

The imperial inventory

Musée du quai Branly is dedicated to the cultures of la Oceania, la Afrique and las Amériques and is just east of the Tour Eiffel. It’s not dissimilar to the Met or any robber’s lair of exotic goods, but it’s appallingly ill-lit and lacks detailed information about any of the cultures, art or clothing represented. There are the usual stolen pieces from ancient graveyards (tombs, skulls, jewelry) and a piece of a temple from Teotihuacán. There is also a small section dedicated to the “Esquimaux,” including a display of couteaux (knives). Unfortunately they are all grouped together: knives for hunting, skinning, cutting…and story telling.

I couldn’t help wanting Empire to better organize, and document, its spoils.

And here I am, in Paris, happily perusing the mostly organized archive of an anti-imperialist Guatemalan-sometimes Mayan-nobel laureate author and wondering why he left it all—most of his manuscripts, correspondence and, most importantly, his notebooks—to the national library of the French Republic.