Futility Now » va-cation all I ever wanted

Pere Lachaise

hazel — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:12:39 +0000

You can go to Pere Lachaise with a plan to visit all of the important dead people, or you can show up with Vittel, cookies, some Orangina, and two mini-pitchers of chilled wine, and have yourself a picnic.

Then you can wander around looking for shadowy corners in which to exchange kisses, since cemeteries are sort of sexy. In an admittedly weird way.

The crumbly stone! The rusty metal! The fonts! The dead!

Unlike Notre Dame and The Centre de Pompidou, I didn’t cry at Pere Lachaise, but I think I still managed to have a religious experience.

Note: Yes, I realize the video is sideways. Shrug.

La Vie Veranda

hazel — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 16:12:26 +0000

Last stop in Toulouse? Coffee drinks with Nutella!

We met up with Kate and Zia in Beziers and headed to St. Chinian in a gigantic fancy midnight blue Citroen. Kate is an. . . exciting driver. Whew!

We could see why Kate felt guilty with just the two of them at the house initially. It is four stories tall.

J and I stayed on the fourth floor, where everything was butter yellows and smooth terrazzo tiles and gigantic bathtub. Ooh la la.

I haven’t done nearly as much traveling as J, and I’m sure it’s come up somewhere already that this is my first time abroad. What I will say is that the few times I have traveled have been longer trips that have allowed me to do things like grocery shop and cook and get a general sense of what daily life is like. It was great fun, then, to go to the supermarche and pick up some cured meats and pasta and veg, and then (over a gas stove, le sigh) throw something together with the sound of cicadas and the long sharp shadows of early evening in the background.

Rather unfairly, the next morning J had to report to work; Kate and Zia and I went off into the mountains, more specifically to St. Pons and Fraisse-sur-Agout.

It was very pretty, and hot. We wandered down to the source of the Jaur, under a rocky outcropping. The air was positively chilling, it was so strange compared to the direct environs. I find nature totally bewildering, in this case it was in a nice way.

After The Fleas we went to Montmartre.

jmags — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 20:39:46 +0000

After The Fleas we went to Montmartre.

Sacre Couer was, as you might expect of a Sunday, incredibly crowded. At first we opted to avoid going into the church itself and just hit up the dome and crypt. While we were in the crypt, singing began in the main level and echoed down the sealed off staircases. The effect was appropriately otherworldly and very beautiful. Hazel warily sampled the red velvet prayer kneeler and one of the old confessionals (sadly, there were no takers for her sound advice).

Ascending the spiral stairs to the dome was, actually, a religious experience. By the way.

(not pictured: Stunt flyers from the Paris Air Show that we saw drawing the French flag in colored smoke.)

On the way down from the dome we realized that we’d stumbled into the middle of a whole-nine-yards type Catholic service, complete with smoking censer, dudes in funny hats and dresses, and a massive singing procession. In addition to the fact that the singing was quite beautiful, the commotion allowed us to sneak into the interior of the church without waiting in line in the blazing sun. We didn’t stay long, but we were pleased to have gotten the opportunity.

We were tempted to check out Montmartre a bit more, but even away from Sacre Couer the whole thing was, shall we say, frantic. As this was not in keeping with our romantic notions, we demurred. Instead, we got a flight to Toulouse via the internet to make up for the fact that we couldn’t get a train to Beziers. I guess that wasn’t terribly romantic either, but there are far worse problems a person could have, mais oui?

The afternoon interlude involved finding another hotel for our newly-extended stay. Luckily our neighborhood was full of the quirky (hommes sleeping on a mattress behind the front counter) places where a room can be had for 50 euros a night, if only you can figure out the strange policies through French conversation. As in, of course you can stay here, but you can’t reserve now, and I won’t take your money for some inexplicable reason, but just come back on the day you need a room, at 2:00. It was difficult not to feel like maybe we were being a little tricked, but mais non. C’est ne pas de probleme.

Then we had tapas, which was notable for the pitcher of sangria. Maybe you know this already, but cold and drink are not by rule a happy couple in France, especially as regards water. The chilly sangria, on the other hand, was basically nectar from the gods. We also ended up going to a couple of bars, one of which was run by a woman who must have been in her late 70s and early 80s. The place (and the madame) were run down. There was a wonderful cat.

There were pictures of the bar from earlier in her career as its proprietor (she’d owned it for 35 years) and it had been quite beautiful. I wasn’t sure if it was magnificent that she was carrying on, or sort of sad to think about how different it had once been. As is invariably the case in such circumstances the right answer probably involves a mix of each, although the exact proportions of important things are always difficult to gauge.

Naturellement.

(For various reasons too boring to recount, you can only name one author per post, but we both worked on this.)

Paris Again

jmags — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 04:42:07 +0000

On Sunday we gave up on improving our transit situation and went to Marché aux Puces, which are these massive flea markets up in the north of Paris. To start out we had terrible coffee in the bar across the street from out hotel, which looks like this from said bar.

When you get to the markets you start by pushing through a ring of stalls that sell shoes and mobile phones, just like any street market in the world. Eventually you get to these sort of arecade-y (in the old sense, not the video game sense) buildings and everything gets Franch Franch Franch (“and Peru!”)

Then we ate delicious quiche because we’d been wandering around for hours and were well on our way to being tres fatigue.

Paris, Finally

jmags — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 19:30:27 +0000

So, we made it to France, Europe. It wasn’t easy. We made it to Atlanta easily enough, but then we missed two flights and one back-up plan flight to London (from which we would have taken the Eurostar.) Then we stayed the night at a Motel Six.

Here to summarize the experience for you is the lamp over the sink in our room:

In the morning we went to institution/chain restaurant Waffle House to invigorate ourselves for the day to come.

In the airport we missed 3 more flights and almost missed the opportunity to get on the standby list for the late flight to Paris, but we finally prevailed, much to our shock and glee. Our glee was. . . ameliorated by the fact that we taxied into a massive fucking thunderstorm. We sat around for an hour and then actually, you know, took off.

Also, somebody was really nice because Hazel and I were in the window seats of two adjacent rows, and he traded me for the aisle seat next to Hazel, and didn’t complain when it turned out to be a massive pain because the woman in the aisle seat of my original row was kind of crazy (not in the hateful way, but in the where is this non-functioning person’s family and why aren’t they looking after her way.)

Our first day was also a bit of a train wreck. We checked into our hotel without any problem, but our efforts to end the planning phase of the trip were stymied, when we realized that there was no way for us to get to Bezier by train on the day we’d planned to go. After a bit of stumbling about in a daze on the receipt of this news we opted for the better part of valor and got some fruit, cheese and wine and retreated to our room for the night.

What I Did This Summer, by Joaquin Maguire age [redacted]

jmags — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 05:34:52 +0000

So I took a week off and we went to the coast. It was fantastic. We stayed in the Tennessee Williams room at the Sylvia Beach hotel

We investigated intriguing rocks.

Then we went and stayed in a beach house with Portland’s greatest living author, Matthew Flaming and his wife and child. While there we ate at an awesome diner in Waldport.

and did some cooking at home.

We visited more beaches, this time with the sprout (who we see here looking sort of like Ringo on the cover of Abbey Road).

We also went on a serious fishing adventure and returned with a ridiculous quantity of bass. Unfortunately, only Matthew had the presence of mind to bring a camera suitable for wielding out the middle of the ocean. Perhaps if we plead enough he will pass on some pictures and we’ll get them up here eventually.

We left just in time to avoid it being sunny.

On the way home we made a brief stop in Philomath by this awesome building.

We were expecting serious abuse from Yoshi when we got home, but he came around fairly quickly. I wonder if he had basically despaired of our returning and was too relieved that we were back at all to punish us for staying away.

Come What May

jmags — Sat, 22 May 2010 23:27:55 +0000

Despite our well-documented efforts to tame the yard, it is already a total jungle. Here is a picture of Yoshi looking out the window in disgust at the fruits of our slovenliness.

Rather than taming the damn thing, we’ve run off to Parkdale again (geez). Here is a picture of Mount Hood.

When I turned the camera on to take that last picture, the shutter speed was set really low. I thought the grass looked cool all overexposed.

We Go Dumb

jmags — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 01:02:27 +0000

We flew to San Francisco in incredibly cramped planes.

We went to a bunch of really cool places, including this phenomenon called The Albany Bulb, which I had never heard of back when I was living in SF.

As disaffected youth hurled parts of older artifacts into the bay, our guide, Gnarles M, said that the last time he had visited the area had been more whimsical and less apocalyptic. I suggested it was merely a sign of the times, and then stared across the bay, soaking up all the bleakness.

Then we got drinks.

On the west side of the West Side, we meandered around a bunch of places that I really miss about San Francisco. The highlight of these was probably San Francisco’s incredible Conservatory of Flowers, my ardor for which had been stoked to a feverish pitch by the fact that I hadn’t been there for fifteen years (it was closed for restoration the entire time that I actually lived near it.) It was totally worth the wait.

Truly one of my favorite places on the entire planet. After the conservatory we hit Golden Gate Park’s charming carousel (totally enhanced by it’s proximity to massive dumpsters) and the California Academy of Sciences, which was rebuilt recently with a very cool living roof.

(For you nerds: looks sort of like an ohmu, right?)

We also made it out the the Sutro Baths, the site of many disastrous mishaps in the life of my father. With us as his guardians he managed to visit without falling off of or into anything.

Eventually we came home to suffer the torments of our neglected kitten.

As Promised

jmags — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 00:02:37 +0000

I was really tired of my office being bright blue, so over the break we did something about it. First we painted the middles of all the walls a sort of nondescript tan. After that there was a beautiful vision in which we would strip and stain all the wood, but basically the stripper was so toxic we gave it up. Even the curtailed version of the plan in which we only stripped the floor molding was pretty exhausting, probably more unctuous than all of the subsequent painting combined.

Then we masked things off, which actually looked pretty cool on its own.

Then there was the painting of the dark portions. I think it turned out pretty well.

And that’s good, because it ended up being pretty crazy. We actually finished on the 31st, just in time to put on more appropriate Champagne-drinking outfits, which is good because boy howdy.

Country

jmags — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:48:02 +0000

So last weekend we escaped to some friends’ country estate.

Hazel preparing for departure:

The digs:

(As you can see, we invited our esteemed colleague, Mr. Pillow.)

The view:

We mostly just schlubbed around the house, which is good because the outdoors are packed with incredibly frightening spiders.

Once we were done screaming, we noticed that the spider’s shed was kind of pretty in its own rustic way.