NEEDLING

THE AMERICAN DREAM

I was wrong, it wasn’t no telemarketing job, it was the next worse thing, a door to door cutlery sales job. No cold calling, the “sales manager” kept saying, you work with leads only, people who WANT YOU to come to their houses and sell them some knives. Okay, I figured, lets hear him through. During his presentation, he was telling us all about how you sell the knives, the scissors, and other cutting appliances, to the potential clients… but nothing about how we got the leads. It’s simple, he finally got around to it, when you’re making a sale and you’re done with the presentation, the customer’s all happy signing you over a nice big check, you ask him to call a couple of his buddies and refer you to them… there’s even a little paragraph all written up and ready we give to the customer in question and which he reads to the person on the other end of the line… the company’s statistics show that we get an average of two references per client, that two out of three clients buy, and that the average sale is of two hundred buckaroos. BUT HOW DO WE GET THE FIRST LEADS? Guess… we figure, the sales manager said, that the best way to get started is to work with people you know, this way you as a rooky sales-rep you don’t get nervous and stutter too much, and them the clients since they know you they’ll give you some constructive feedback on your sales presentation. SHIT ME SILLY. I should have known this morning. That beer I drank last night did some nasty business to my intestines, and this morning I had the shits Bonanza. Should have known all about it… but went on down to South Austin nonetheless dressed in grey slacks and freshly ironed button-up shirt… once arrived, the potential candidates of which I was a member, first filled out a form with your basics questions. Then we went on a one on one interview with the region’s Sales Manager, during which time it was quite difficult to get said Sales Manager to tell me anything about the company and the products I was interviewing to work for and sell for respectively and inversely. Thirdly, the three out of five people left after the one-on-one were invited to stay on to listen to the company and product presentation. The whole guacamole lasted two hours. Driving back here to Flightpath, I got a call from Sales Manager. I didn’t pick it up because I was driving. The minute I found a parking lot, I stopped, listened to his message and called him back. He told me all about how he was impressed with my professionalism, the way I was dressed, my apparent good communication skills, my relaxed demeanor, et cetera… and told me to be back next week if I wanted for the training period. I’m gonna do it. By gawd, I’m gonna go out there and sell me some knives, cutting through chunks of leather with a steak knife in front of a gawky housewife all impressed pulling out her wallet and signing me a multi-hundred dollar check. Hell yeah, buddy, that’s what I’m gonna go and do. What the hell. This is America. The American Dream. Haven’t we all seen the door to door sales-rep movies taking place in the fifties? I want to be one of those sleazy guys. Those fat fwellows driving pink Cadillacs and wearing three dollar suits. Hell yeah.

DAILY GRIND ON THE PATH TO GLORY

My first job interview today.  Twelve o’clock sharp.  Be there five minutes early in business garbs.  Bring a pen and paper.  Okay… shit.  Was driving on the highway heading back to Austin when the call came in and I had to pull up onto a gas station.  We’re an employment agency and we deal mostly in sales and marketing.  Translation: Telemarketing… yikes… calling center blues, I can feel it in my bones.  Got to give it to’em.  They were Quick.  The day before yesterday, I was sitting at the Flightpath Coffee Shop surfing on the web when I started putting in addresses from the want-ads, getting tired of looking for a car.  Filled out this form with my name and phone number, answered a couple of questions, and in less than twenty-four hours, some young woman named Crystal phones me for an interview.  Well, I don’t really believe in it, meaning I doubt they’ll be offering me a paid trip to the moon with a cocktail waitress at my beck and call, but what the hell, can’t hurt none.  Though I’m getting a little ahead of myself, as I had promised not to do any job hunting before I’d purchased a vehicle, which I have not done… not entirely my fault as I’ve seen two automobiles which I could have willingly acquired in exchanged for a certain amount of cash.  However, can’t find access to my money stuck in my French bank account.  The bank in France says there’s no problem, my card works and all I got to do is find a willing bank this side of the big pound who understands the concept of cash-advance… thank you, mam… the several banks I’ve walked into over in this part of the country have all told me my card is simply getting refused by Big Brother International Visa Card Center and there’s nothing they can do… sorry, honey… come back soon, you hear… hope everything works out for you.  All this translates in No Wheels for Francois.  The rental car is starting to dig deep inside my wallet, so deep matter fact, it just might incrust itself a permanent wound which might take weeks if not years to heal.  This weekend is the limit, the magical line in the sand, the peacocks’ cry of glory is coming, the moon is mounting its celestial pedestal… we must arrive at showdown baby… got me some wheels and AM ready for the path to cruising haven on the drag… that MUST be done by Saturday, Sunday latest.  Smoking grass listing to Tex-Mex country music driving down into the desert… that’s the peyote goal, the hour of truth COULD come if I had me a set of wheels.  Shit, I even got me a haircut yesterday at the Hancock Barber Shop (first opened its doors in 1965) where I used to be a customer ten years ago, and told them so.  Got my sideburns trimmed, my mustache domesticated, my goatee cleaned of all excess little hairs.  That son of bitch barber even shaved the bottom of my neck, or rather the top of my back.  I asked him, when I sat down on the swivel chair, I want it cut about half what it is now, absolutely NO layering and all of it the same length.  He looked at me as if I was a strange alien coming down from God and the cumulous to test him.  Then I added, seeing his distress, just make it look good alright.  I can do that, he says to me, don’t you worry, we gonna make you look good, that we can do.  So, what did he do?  He layered the whole thing, cutting around the ears and in the back real short and leaving it long on top.  I look like a damn hick just got out of a cheap haircut all trimmed up for his step-sister’s wedding.  At least my sideburns look Smashing. 

FLIGHTPATH COFFEE SHOP

Austin, Texas. I’ve rented a car for one week with money I don’t have. I’m gonna attempt to purchase a vehicle with even more inexistent money. Living on Credit: The American Way. And since I’m in Texas, when in Texas do as the Bushwackers do... or something like that.

I won’t be writing much these days, not that I’ve been writing much at all for the last several weeks, however it doesn’t look like my production will augment any time before one or three weeks.

My stuff is at my folks packed in bags and boxes. I’ll be moving to my own place by the end of August. Brian and Tracy have just signed for a nice three bedroom home ten minutes away so I’m gonna move into their old rental which happens to also be the same house I co-rented with Brian ten years ago. Is that wild or what? Or is it just lame?

Anyway, I’ll have a bedroom, an office space, a living room area and a kitchen, all that with a garden, a parking space and several species of four legged animals running around the property. My neighbors will be Glenn and Kari, who invited me for a couple of weeks north of London two or three years ago, and who happen to be the best neighbors one could wish for. My landlord will be Janet, from whom I also rented a small efficiency apartment before I moved into the house with Brian. It was a real small place attached to hers and Ken’s house. They rent it for real cheap in exchange for house-cleaning work. I lived there for one whole year, doing the whole house once a week, vacuuming it a second time once a week, and taking care of their several dogs while they were away. Brian and Tracy will only be ten minutes away.

This blog is gonna go through a major revamp soon. Probably after I settle in, find a job, and all that. It’s probably going to become a “theme” blog, getting more or less away from the open-journal thing.

Any suggestions welcome. Something to do with food, books, et cetera. There will be no more of these open-journal entries, such as this one, which really aren't interesting at all to anybody... not even to me.

Until then...

INCONTOURNABLE

My last day in Paris. The studio is clean. All there’s left is my mattress which I will throw away today or tomorrow morning. Have to ask the landlord if he minds that I stay here till my early-bird taxi tomorrow. If he minds and I have to go somewhere else, that’s going to be a pain in the ass. We’ll see. Tomorrow at this very same time I will be landing in London, and just a few hours later I will be arriving in Texas. I haven’t quite comprehended that yet. In a few hours I will no longer be in this studio, I will not ever come back to this studio. That hasn’t sunk in. That by Monday I need to purchase an automobile, start looking for a job, find a new home, and apply to get back into school. Though I know all of those facts to be true, I haven’t realized them, apprehended the irrefutable, come to term with my new life to come. Or is it my old life to come anew? Going back to Texas. My last day in Paris, France, for at the very least six months. And when I come back here, if I come back here in December, then I’ll no longer have a place to call my own, as they say, I’ll have to get a hotel room or crash on a friend’s couch. Today my life in Paris ends, so that the day after tomorrow a brand new period in my life can start. The waiting period is almost complete. For better or for worse, it’s a done deal… just about. Now all I’ve got to manage is not miss my plane. All the airline has to accomplish is get me safely to the other side of the ocean.

A COUPLE OF DAYS IN AUVERGNE

Packing. Packing. Taking it easy but going about it non-stop. I got back to Paris on the train 1h¼ behind schedule and two days early.

Had a great day yesterday with my friend Claire, we started our day after breakfast going to a small dairy farm a couple of kilometers from the village of Orcival in the Puy-de-Dôme where we bought half a St. Nectaire Fermier, and visited the cheese cellar of dairy-farmer and cheese-maker Mr. Gratadeix, where the cheese ferments for five to six weeks before it’s sold.

The cheese is produced twice a day right after the milking of the cows. It has to be made with whole fresh milk. The cheese is then pressed for several days before it is taken to the cheese cellar and aged for several weeks. No additives. All natural Non-Pasteurized cheese. Mr. Gratadeix started digging the cheese cellar in 1946 at twenty centimeter per day until he reached the total of 100 meters of narrow tunnels large enough for shelving on each side to place the cheese and one man to walk in between the two shelves. The rock deep into the hill keeps the same cool temperature year round, which is pertinent for the perfection of this uncooked, light nut colored and tasting cheese. (Did I forget to say the tunnel is dug into rock, nothing but rock, not a sprinkle clue of earth? All pure rock.)

When you walk in there you can see all the different levels of fermenting. From the pure beige white of the fresh cheese straight from the press, merely three days since the milk was gushing from the utters, to the final level of fermentation where the small wheels of cheese are fully covered with hair-like gray and green mushrooms. The smell is wonderful. The smell of life because fermentation is the proof of life.

We then walked on up the hill which seemed to me like the Himalayas, but which was really just a couple hundred meters of ascension until we made it to the lake at the top. Five kilometers and 1202 meters above the sea level (Orcival is at 878 meters) all equipped with our half a wheel of Saint-Nectaire, one bottle of red Saint-Pourçain wine, quarter wheel of fresh rye bread and some dry sausage, dressed in our city clothes and with only one water bottle to the two of us, we took two hours… but what a climb… once up there walking along the gravel path with fields on each side, the farmers hard at work making bails of hay, you can see the whole “chaînes des puys” in the distance.

Once we arrived at the lake de Servières, we took our shoes and sox off, unwrapped our much deserved picnic and breathed in the fresh air looking at this small lake 1200 meters up there surrounded by pine forests. Though we hardly crossed anybody on the hiking path, up at the lake there were a few families installed also picnicking, but they came by mostly by car and at least one donkey! A young couple in their thirties and their two preteens girl and boy, rented a donkey ten kilometers away in Aydat and were walking their first of six days of hiking with a donkey who carried a good part of the load.

After only three quarters of an hour, we started our way downwards, this time going by the gîte d’étape on the main road to fill our water bottle and have an espresso. The innkeeper, a woman in her fifties, and a German tourist couldn't understand each other. I asked the man if he spoke English. Yes, he said. I then tried to explain to this German man what a galette is, and how it is different from a crêpe . I couldn’t think of the right words, so I told him it was like a crêpe or a thin pancake made with buckwheat flour… I explained that it is a “salt” dish rather than a “sugar” dish, meaning you eat a galette with eggs, ham et cetera rather than with sugar, jam, chocolate or other sweets.

After our coffee, we took back to the hiking path to return to Orcival. It took half an hour less to go down, and so we arrived much before our taxi, and sat down at one of the local café / hotels for a couple of drinks, during which a hail storm came down and destroyed all the flower pots throughout the village.

The office de tourism said there were thunderstorms all day the next day – today – so I decided to take the train back to Paris instead of risking having to stay in a hotel the whole next day figuring three good days in Auvergne was already a damn good thing. During these few days I ate some great food, gained even more weight, had a couple of fun walks in the countryside with my friend, invented stories about the people we saw, had loads to drink, laughed a lot, and saw some good country.

What else could I want?

CLERMONT-FERRAND

Quick entry as I'm in a cybercafé, and I didn't come all the way down here to be on a computer. Nice little town. I'm looking forward to stepping out into the countryside this afternoon and do a little walking around. Bought a detailed map of the region.

Had a steak Tartar last night. A little expensive really, but since it was the 14th, basically everything was closed except for the more touristic places.

Ciao...

LONGING FOR CONSTRUCTIVE MOVEMENT
LONGING FOR A VERTICAL POSITION
LONGING FOR AN HORIZONTAL PLANE OF THOUGHT
LINGERING SENTIMENTS OF EMPTY LONGING
THOUGHTS MOVING VERTICAL
WAITING INTERMITTENTLY BETWEEN SMALL PERIODS OF MOVEMENT

The telephone does not ring. It sits there undisturbed and full of dust. It does not ring, not even to make these final days go vertical into the sun. Nearer we get to the deadline – Dine on Lead – nearer I get to the bursting point of tomorrow when I will board the 747 plane, several tones of metal and flesh shooting several thousands of feet into the stratosphere, and start my Atlantic crossing journey.

Elusive Francois going into orbit
Big ironing Toto
I wait
I’ve waited
I will wait some more
A Fierce Sinus L.O.V.
(Lethal Open Vacuum)

Tomorrow is the beginning of the intermission – a period of a few minutes or a few days in between two waiting periods – a period composed of several small portions of waiting periods.

Elusive Evil Sue
a corn if
car of sin
Francois

A License of Virus

A 747 taking off the ground at outrageously dangerous speeds is a form of concrete matter detaching itself from the concrete ground and in so doing taking a concrete stand against my firm belief in keeping my two feet firmly on firm ground.

That’s not what I’m waiting for. I’m waiting for what’s on the other side of the plane ride.

Tomorrow however is what’s important right now, and tomorrow begins the intermission period, and what I propose is a train ride with only a small 3 ½ hour waiting period. The train will begin it’s waiting journey at Gare de Lyon in Paris, France. It will stop making me wait in Clermont-Ferrand. From there I will start walking to I don’t know where for a period of a little more than four days. Or till Monday morning… though nothing is written in stone… since the tickets where reserved on the internet and paid for with a credit card. Virtual reservation paid for with virtual money so that I can temporarily stop thinking about waiting. What's beyond the concrete flight, on the other side of the big pound?

Covering my ears, my eyes, and my mouth... I wait... elusively.

(A C E E F I I L N O R S S U V)

TODAY’S FILM

Any way the wind blows, de Tom Barman
IMDB
ALLOCINE

The Windman, Sam Louwyck, moves through a tunnel underneath Antwerp. And from there begins one day in the lives of a whole lot of people. The Windman seems to be the glue, the central element, the core around whom and from whom any way the wind blows the camera. Not always apparent. Sam Louwyck is a dancer. I had visions of him in that short film I never made. Apparently, he’s quite famous. Not that I would know. I don’t know a whole hell of a lot. There’s a point in the movie where the Windman is standing against the doorframe to a bar and he’s drinking a green cocktail from a tall thin glass. Though he’s blowing bubbles with his straw, the level of the green liquid is going down. I am aware that this is not exactly great special effects in action. But I liked that. I had fun in this movie. And it’s good not to see a tear-jerker every once in a while. The party, the point where most of the characters meet at the end of the movie, is way too long… it’s true… but then it becomes almost like a music video entrancing to a point at time I thought I was actually at the party, though only a spectator looking in from the door left open, being hesitant… enjoying the scene but feeling I don’t belong. Mostly, I was impressed with Louwyck. If I see this movie again, I believe I’ll have to be smoking some good strong grass. Watch it in loop – en boucle – for a few hours. Sounds like something I did before many summers ago living in the big house in Maine watching Dazed and Confused over and over again and smoking from a tall green glass pipe. Well, I didn’t live in that big house perched up on those rocky shores, but might as well have had as much time as I spent there sitting on the couch zoning on Linklater’s high school memoir. Those two movies have nothing in common, and really shouldn’t be mentioned in the same paragraph. All they have in common is pot. One of them I smoked pot watching it dozens of times, the other I only watched once during which time I was not smoking pot but wishing I was. Make sense?

(Nobody reads this blog anyway, so IT DOESN’T HAVE TO MAKE SENSE… not even to me.)

Time to go back outside and walk through the streets a little more. Maybe go see another movie? Maybe go have a drink in a bar? Maybe go lay down in the middle of place de la Republic? Something. I’ve got to do something. Soon, I’ll be doing just as much of nothing on the other side of the Atlantic. That’s a depressing thought. Okay…

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MOVIE

Al ouyoune al jaffa, de Narjiss Nejjar
ALLOCINE IMDB

A film set in a Berber village of Morocco. A woman’s been in prison for the last thirty years in Casablanca. She gets out after they close the prison. A man who was a guard in the prison and who has now become a bus driver recognizes her walking down the street. He stops his bus. She gets in, and together they go back to her village Tizit. This is a village of women were the only men allowed are those that come and pay for sexual favors. The man and the old woman are not really welcomed, but they settle in anyway. Behind this village, beyond the valley and up on the side of the mountain there is another village. In this second village lives the old women who are no longer wanted by the men. Their daughters come everyday to bring them wood to burn in the stoves and food to eat. They are the women banned from the rest of the world. The old woman who has spent the last thirty years of her life in prison and has now come back home, it is her daughter who runs the village of prostitutes. There the story begins. It is a beautiful story, heart wrenching. On top of a hill after their first full moon night, the night when the men from the nearby villages climb up the mountain to pay for sex, on the morning after their first time when they’ve given up their virginity and joined the profession of the village and in so doing joined the community of the damned, the young girls barely pubescent go to the entrance of the village and tie a red headscarf to a stick. On top of this hill are hundreds of tall sticks with red scarves tied at the top. The red scarves represent each of their virginity lost, the scarf they should have worn on their wedding night. The movie is beautifully shot. Simply shot. The mixture of Berber and Arab is music to the ear, even though the dialogues are often terrible. Not a dry eye in the theater.

STILL WAITING…

More I throw out, more I give away, more I get rid of in one way or another, more it seems the task is becoming unending. I’ve sent myself four little cases of books back to Texas. I might do a fifth one. Possible even a sixth one, though I’ll try to hold on that one. I’ve got one large bag, one large suitcase on wheels, one small carry-on suitcase on wheels, and a small carry-on bag. My journals and my computer are coming on the plane with me. Some of the unfinished manuscripts and notes have left with the post – cross my fingers, spit on my grave, curse the evil spirits six times, and cross myself seven times standing on my head – some books, the leftover notes and manuscripts, and the clothes I didn’t get rid of are in the large suitcase and bag. In sixteen days at an ungodly hour in the morning, I’ll be on a plane to Houston via London where I have a two hour stopover or something. I hope they’ll have some bar with some good English beer. I doubt I’ll have the time to swing by the Tate museum or Trafalgar square, but if I could down several pints of creamy ales, I’ll be one happy man. Maybe I can even buy some Yorkshire tea. The only tea I’ll gladly drink in the morning instead of coffee.

SOME OF THE LAST FILMS I’VE SEEN IN ORDER OF THE LATEST SEEN LISTED AT THE TOP
(still working on this entry)

Vénus et Fleur de Emmanuel Mouret
ALLOCINE
IMDB
At times touching. Very low budget. The Boom Mic is in the frame it seems most of the movie, and that kind of ruined it for me. I can understand it once, and only because it’s a very low budget… but throughout the film! Too bad to, there were some real touching moments when the actors took us to a level too close for comfort.

The Soul of a man de Wim Wenders
ALLOCINE
IMDB

Le Plein de super de Alain Cavalier
ALLOCINE
IMDB

Le Rôle de sa vie de François Favrat
ALLOCINE
IMDB

Le Dernier des immobiles de Nicola Sornaga
ALLOCINE
IMDB
Nicola Sornaga tells us about meeting the poet Matthieu Messagier, and then takes us to the poet’s province and starts to interview him… we think we’re about to enter a classic portrait… and then… and then… M. Sornaga surprises us. He takes us someplace else, keeping us within the reach of the poet… He introduces us to the poet’s various friends… He takes us into the world of the poet, into his own world as a filmmaker… the film is sprinkled throughout with wonderful moments... images or scenes or single lines which seem to have little in common with what’s happening but somehow fit. I was completely surprised by this film. Refreshing experience.

O Drakos de Nikos Koundouros
IMDB
Beautiful film. I don’t know what else to say. The poetry of the movement, the letting go of the filmmaker towards a world which is not a real world but which works with perfection on the screen, the choreography of the scenes between the actors and the camera… I was disgusted with cinema after Tarantino’s last masturbation… and with this movie's magic, I felt a lot better about it all...

Kill Bill : volume 2 de Quentin Tarantino
ALLOCINE
IMDB
I didn't like it at all.

Mariage mixte de Alexandre Arcady
ALLOCINE
IMDB
Schlock French style. A bunch of rich people trying to be funny by trying to make us feel sorry for them.

Ma mère de Christophe Honoré avec Isabelle Huppert,
ALLOCINE
IMDB
Pretentious masturbation, though at times it is interesting. We’re never sure however whether it’s because the film has actually become interesting, or because the rest has been so blandly longish and trying so hard to shock that the smallest instance of descent cinematography / storytelling / and or acting gives us a sense of relief which we mistake for worthy moments. At first I was going to walk out, then I started getting a little bit involved in spite of myself… though I’m not entirely sure why. I normally enjoy Isabelle Huppert quite a lot, that’s probably why I stuck it out. She can be such a wonderful actress.

La Mala educacion de Pedro Almodovar
ALLOCINE
IMDB

THE LAST DAYS : WAITING

Nothing to say so I say nothing. On the 23rd at seven in the morning, I will be flying off to Houston via London. On the 22nd I plan on sleeping at a hotel near the airport because I need to be there two hours before the flight and the metros don't run that early. That day I also have to give my studio keys back to its rightful owner and proprietor. To whom I’ve been paying rent for almost seven years and who, as a thank you & goodbye present, has raised the rent on me for my very last month in Paris. Maybe I shouldn’t pay? What is he going to do, come get me in Texas?

This movie was a lot of fun. Hell, I might go see it again.

This waiting period when the decision has been taken, all the engagements are unalterable, and there is no going backwards… this waiting period when all there is to do is wait, when there is nothing left to do, no more decisions to take, nowhere to go – because everywhere you go it’s going to be the same thing really – this waiting period is the longest period of all.