Donnie’s The Daily News
Maxwell’s Black Summer’s Night
Whatever Anil Dash is up to in New York
More nieces and nephews!
Lots of Skype WiFi phones
Betty Black’s Sunbathing In Black
superfast ultra broadband Internet access
New flash unit (probably this one)
Finally rebooting!
The bulk of this trip was less eventful and much more meditative, maybe a little too meditative for my tastes. Don’t get me wrong - I felt right at home - but I was looking for more, um, connections to Orléans’ men of color. And at 32€ for each roundtrip ticket, it wasn’t feasible to head to Paris with any frequency. So I looked at a lot of French television. I went to La Mediathèque for WiFi when the trickle available from the apartment was too sporadic and unreliable. And I shopped at Carrefour almost every day.
We arrived in Orléans early that evening. When we took the train from the airport, I saw lots of beautiful graffiti and thought about the youth of color in France. Of course I’d heard about the violence before I left New York. Violence meaning the violence that drives someone with little to no chance of surviving in a capitalistic country when racist people don’t want to offer jobs to a largely immigrant population of people of color. And as ‘socialist’ as you, La France, want to believe yourself to be, this problem is your slip showing and proof that you dropped the ball a long time ago. La France, your motto of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” is a joke because, right now, there are Black and Arab people in your fraternity, in your brotherhood, in your family that don’t have either liberty or equality. La France, qu’est-ce que vous allez faire? I wondered that myself as more beautiful graffiti decorated the landscape between Paris and Orléans.
After some quick tartine (never before have I eaten so much white bread), we make our way to Gare du Nord. I must say: French train stations are so romantic! First of all, they’re as beautiful as the rest of the city. I kept wanting to take interior pictures, but the military walks around with these AK-47s. I’m really not used to that; they only do that ever so often here in New York subway stations. Another cool thing about these train stations is that you can leave your bags in a locker, so you don’t have the lug them around as you explore the city. That is so civilized, but it feels like it’s only a matter of time until they put the kibbosh on that - even with the airport-style security scans.
My very gracious host Joël welcomed me at the airport. He just kinda took my hand and took control. Went and bought tickets for us to hop on the RER (to get from the airport to the city’s center), the Métro (to get around the city) and the SCNF (to go from Paris to Orléans). So, our first stop: the 18ème arrondissement to go get my friend Philippe.
Okay, I really needed to get away. Recently and surreptitously canned from a job that, at one point, felt like it was going somewhere, I wanted to go somewhere else and regroup. Well, not even that; I just wanted to do something else and be somewhere else. Philippe had been pushing me to use my passport for some time now and wanted us to hang out in France for New Years. I found a cheap flight and went with it. Since I would be staying with a friend, I decided to extend the trip to almost 3 weeks. I’m so glad I did.
