Chilhood
“But I do have a happy memory of childhood,” said Laure, my best friend in Paris, the photocopy woman at the University, who, at age two and a half, had been abandoned by her mother to a “nourrice”, then sent to one foster family after another, to end up, in her teens, in an orphanage. Her face shown as she stood in front of the file cabinets, her dirty-blonde hair in ringlets to her denim shirt. “I was very small, and I ran through a field, my little arms swinging, in the sun,” she pantomined a running child with a trill of a happy laugh. “So much sun! The air so fresh! I ran and ran, so full of joy—really joy!—my arms out!” I watched her glowing face so alive in the office light—her tiny...
Story of A Self-Hating Butterfly
A butterfly got trapped under a doormat, its wing, just the tip, snagged on a thread, and so its purplish dust settled into the grit under the mat, and its antennae, finely tuned, slender and long, reached out for what, it knew not. If it were to tuck its antennae down, it would die and its body of soft pulsing blood would dry into a bone and hence, we could say, the butterfly was no more. But the butterfly remembered other days when its wings flew higher, light as the sky, connected to all through the wiry fibers of these wings. And so it gave a big tug and flew out—through the window, congratulating itself on its strange unexpected strength. A girl was sitting under a tree, and the butterfly noted the nape of her neck, the softness of the hair that...
Inspiring Story for Those Stuck in a Bad Relationship
Inspiring story: my 45 year old maid, a good fairy who whips the apartment in sparkling shape once a year, is always laughing. This time I wondered why she laughed so much. Perhaps because she is not “really” a maid, but an artist? But, with a laugh, she set her bags down on my sunny table and said she wasn’t doing art anymore, but bee-keeping in Burgundy, and why bee-keeping, she added with a laugh, because her new boyfriend has bees! And where did she, a mother of two, and (as far as I knew) a wife, meet this Boyfriend? At a party for architects and other professionals, she said with yet another laugh. He had asked her what she did in life, and she, with great pleasure (“I love breaking convention”), responded: ...
Strawberries and Apples on the London Tube
A British brother and sister in school uniform, on the Tube, kneeling and facing the window, looking out, with their brown loafers sticking out equally behind them, while the one eats a red strawberry, the other a green apple, both commenting excitedly on what they see outside: the tube roof, the pole, the platform…. Boy (in serious upper class Brit accent): Look, Clara! (points at her apple) That is the Core of the apple. This brown thing, you see, that is the Core. Clara: Yes, James. This is the Core. Isn’t it funny, James, how all apples have a Core? James; If it didn’t have a core, you know, Clara, it would not be an apple. An apple has to have a core to be an apple. Clara (points): See—all those seeds. ...
Getting to Cannes is Half the Fun
Preparing for Cannes begins back in March: the train tickets, the apartment rental, the interview scheduling, not to mention the full-time work of dashing in every store in Paris to find the right chic “maille” (a sliver of a sweater, at 345 euros) and the right stockings as well as batteries for the camera. The biggest challenge : the bike: I use my bike at Cannes, but trains in France are un-bike friendly. One Cannes, I even had to seduce a passing bartender for his bungee-cord ability, to get that bike on the train (another story). But this year, it all seemed set. Ticket purchased for the bike, months in advance. Bags packed. A leisurely two hour swim and sauna planned before the train the next day…. Until I checked my...
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