Narrow Road to the Interior

Once again, before starting this blog, I would like to make you all aware of some startling new additions to the page. First of all, only the last three blogs will be posted now, instead of the last seven, so as to make the page a little shorter. So, check out the archive to see if you have missed any entries.
Second, on a semi-regular basis, there will be polls added to this blog on which YOU can vote. This is basically just to make sure the kids in the back of the class are still participating, but, hey, its fun for everyone.
Also, there are a group of links on the right side of the page that you should check out weekly to keep yourself informed. These are varied and asundry sites, including everything from a soldier in Iraq's blog to the most intimate secrets of strangers in America. You'll love what you get for the value!
Finally, at the veeeeeeeeeeeeeery bottom of the blog, you'll find the brand spankin' new "Kiss My France COOL BOX," a box dedicated to things everyone here at Kiss My France finds cool. Feel free to make suggestions, but be sure to do it on your own damned blog.
And now, on with the show!

A long, long time ago, on a continent far, far away lived a short, little man with a whole lot of wisdom. Note: he was not a muppet.
Basho was an ancient Japanese master of the poetic form of haiku, and it is from his book that this blog draws it's title.
Basho was the dude, y'all, and he new how to take things easy and appreciate the moments in life.
It is this ability that I have come to appreciate while here in France.
Man, I have read over this blog, like, a hundred times, and it seems to me that there are always moments that are left out. There are always things that I forget to put into the blog, or stuff that just doesn't fit, or whatever, that just don't make it in.
Too bad, its these things that make the time here worthwhile.
Like this past Thursday, my wife and I decided to take things slow and head to the local movie theatre to check out Sept Heurre Cinqente Huite, Ce Samedi La (that's "7:58am, This Saturday" in English) or as it is called in the American release "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead." It is the new film from Sydney Lumet, the director of such greats as Serpico or Network or The Wiz (unfortunately). It stars Ethan Hawk, Marissa Tomei and Philip Seymor Hoffman, and it rocked ass. It is the story of two brothers who decide to royally screw over their parents in a get rich quick scheme that, of course, goes horribly awry. It will open in the States in about a month, so go see it, yo.
What was so great about the movie experience, though, was that feeling you get when the lights go down. Here in France, they show a good twenty minutes of commercials before their films, so people are showing up a while after the posted start time for the movie, since they know the movie wont start for a long time. People are laughing and chatting, and cell phones are a-ringing and what not. To quote my wife: "Geez, what's with social hour, here?"
But the minute the lights finally go down, the moment the title screen lights up, there is silence. In the dark, I can feel my wife's arm snake through mine, and her head rest on my shoulder, and that magic of a movie starting fills the room.
At Chicago's Landmark Century Cinema, there is this promotional screen before all the art films that says "The language of film is universal." I tell you, in that dark room, it didn't matter what country I was in. The joy of anticipation is beyond international borders or cultures.
I am convinced: heaven is a movie theatre... air conditioned, with great popcorn and cold cherry coke, and maybe a box of Junior Mints; hell is the line of people who cant get in and are forced to wait outside in the Chicago summer heat. Its enough to make you religious.

Or another moment, when Ruta showed up in Paris last Friday- it was wonderful to see her, but as any sports fan knows, if there is an important game going on, it will always land on an important day in your marriage. That was just the case for me; for as much as I anticipated my wife's arrival, I was also really anticipating the France v. Ireland rugby match. This game would decide if France had any chance at all of getting into the quarter finals. Ireland, it should be noted, is the snotty kid brother of English rugby, reputed the world over (except in the US) for being ruthless and cruel when it comes to contact sports, like rugby or child rearing.
France, as you may or may not have heard, is not reputed to be very aggressive at much of anything at all, except maybe giving the look to foreigners.
I didn't expect much; in fact, I didn't expect to see the game at all, but my loving and understanding wife was insistent that we find a pub and hunker down to root for Les Bleus.
Aint she great?
We found such a pub. I ordered my beer; she got out her Volvic mineral water, and the game started out.
The streets were crawling with potato eaters. They are rowdy and loud and very patriotic. They draped themselves in green, orange and white; they ran shirtless through Paris to flex their similarly painted biceps, and they drank and drank to the glory of the Emerald Isle. Earlier that night, while in the St. Germain quarter for dinner, Ruta and I came across a group of the Irish sitting outside of a local bistrot shouting out songs from the '80's in celebration of France's immanent demise. They were a right jubilant group. Proud and nasty and borderline arrogant in the face of their French hosts. It was as though with every pint of Guiness drained, with every flying Irish flag, with every shout and beat of the chest, the Irish were proclaiming their victory over the French in what could only be their God given destiny.



Oh, how wrong they were.



The final score of the match was 25 to 3.

Three, people.

France was in Ecstasy. Every time the French scored, crowds from all over the area could be heard screaming and cheering.
The Irish were strangely quiet. So much for bleating out favorites of the '80's.
This win doesn't secure France in the quarter finals though. They will still have to beat Russian Georgia. This is a very important game, perhaps the most important of the cup so far for France, so of course, it falls squarely on my anniversary.
Do I need to worry? Not at all... Ruta has already scouted out an outdoor, big-screen to watch it on.
And as far as the moment the French won over their much favored opponents? What can I say?
God loves an underdog.

Last night, I was taking a walk. I felt restless. It was grey and drizzly. That is exactly how I felt too. My mood was grey and drizzly.
Then I wandered into a nameless neighborhood bar. Ruta was across the street, at home, reading her book, and I had just decided to get out for a bit.
The bar was one of those small neighborhood pubs that isn't kept up too well, and looks just as you might expect the bar owner's living room to look.
In the corner was a band, though, and this always catches my ear. They hadn't started to play yet, so I got a beer and settled in for the show.
There were eight of them, all in what had to be their late forties or early fifties. Three guitars, drums, sax, bass, keyboard and a singer.
They must have been tuning and sound checking for half of an hour before the crowd, mostly composed of their children and wives, started to get restless.
I do not know how to yell "Freebird" in French, or I would have, just for irony's sake.
Eventually, the belted out their very best You Aint Nothin But a Hound Dog. It was jangly and out of step. Musically speaking, it was awful, but it was a lot of fun. It made me smile, so I wasn't complaining.
Then she stood up.
The word over, a woman in her forties who is getting off of work as someone's executive assistant can be identified by her black work skirt and blouse, usually made of a mix of cotton and polyester, her black nylons, and her leg warmers with Reboks.
This woman had added to that ensemble unkempt and bushy brown hair that fell just below her shoulders and very thick glasses.
She stood from a table near the corner stage, and kind of shimmied her way over to the mic. She clutched the microphone stand and stared out into the audience, as though she were waiting for her death sentence to come down.
Eventually, the band finished its obligatory ten minute tuning up session and started out. I couldn't tell, but I think this woman was grateful for the long intro the song had. I could see her reviewing the lyrics in her head, and wishing she had brought her lemon water with her, to clear her throat. She looked around at the growing crowd of people like a woman desperate for the doors of the bar to be sealed shut, to prohibit anyone further from entering.
I felt so bad for her. I wanted to get up there and hold her hand, to reassure, to take her mind off of what she was so obviously living in dread of.
How long can you be an executive assistant before rock and roll is drained from your veins? How long does the corporate world take to kill someone? How many good men and women have grimaced their way through corporate trainings, company parties, sensitivity trainings? How many hours wasted in the lives of good people just waiting to do the best they can, so they can put food on the table, so they can make the rent, or pay the tuition or afford the car? How long is it before the corporate world sucks every last bit of inspiration from you?
It had been a long while since this woman had seen the inside of a neighborhood pub, that was sure, and the crowd smelled it on her. We grew anxious for her first notes to dribble forth, out of tune and time, and then to die away in humiliation, so that we could heckle, and laugh, and confirm for her that this dare, this chance she took at singing in front of people, just to shake things up, just to put her foot down and say, "No, today will be different. Today will not be another day that flows into the next. Today, I will step out of my comfort zone and scare myself into a good time, a victory! Today I will be more than an executive assistant!" We waited in hunger to prove her wrong and to close the case on stepping out of your box.
And then the moment came.
She would have to sing, and her sweaty palms slid up the mic stand and her eyes widened in terror and she gulped down air like a woman drowning in a sea of her own inhibitions.
Every pore, every hair, every inch of this woman covered in cotton/polyester mix channeled and exploded forth Janis Jopplin.
She closed her eyes and screamed from the very deepest place in her gut- the place that couldn't make the rent, that cant pay for the car, that doesn't know how to cover tuition, and she howled and rocked.
Every preconception I have about the ferocity of a person being crushed by the corporate world was banished. We're always bigger than that.
The bar was turned on its side. Kids clapped and sang, men roared and cheered, an elderly couple danced in the aisles.
She was ferocious and LOUD.
It was the most glorious sound I have ever heard.
Rock and roll is here to stay.