Wilma's Webworld

Reading Duras's Writing

There's a lot goin' on 'round here, though this blog would be no testimony to that.

But, for example, I'm reading Duras. She's crazy. And there's lots about her I love. Like this, read over a sea bream filet I treated myself to for lunch while evasively cruising this stunningly beautiful man who'd had the nerve to intrude into my purview at the Pause Café. See what I mean, about a lot goin' on? Duras, in a book called Writing, is talking about a fly she watched die one day while she was waiting for an interviewer to arrive. And she's talking about it twenty odd years after the fly died. Proof that he'd had some kind of funeral, just by agonizing under her gaze.

The precision of the hour of death brings us to man's coexistence, with colonized peoples, with the fabulous mass of the unknown to the world, the solitary people, the ones of universal solitude. It's everywhere, life. From bacteria to the elephant. From the earth to the skies, divine or already dead.

It's particularly the "fabulous mass of the unknown to the world" that struck a chord with the awakening Principessa in me. You could also translate it as "the fabulous mass of the world's unknown." In fact, I think it might be better that way. Or you could just say it, in French, "avec la masse fabuleuse des inconnus du monde." That works, too, in certain climes. And if you're Duras, the precise hour of a fly's death (3:20 in the afternoon, if I'm not mistaken) can take you lots of places.

Still more on monstrosity

Well, this sure is apposite to some of my earlier posts. I'm surfing bit by random bit through bookforum's new interface that's sending me in all directions. Not all are good: some libertarian edited one of the pages on intellectual life, and that started to get pretty damn depressing - like the world really had been entirely taken over by crazies like I fear it has. But then I came across this interview with Bruno Latour. I read a little bit of him in grad school, and should maybe have paid more attention, because this is really smart in lots of ways.

The etymology of the word demon carries two meanings: to cut and to share. Though we understand why, it is interesting to note that this term is equally articulated in two opposing meanings. We see that the demon of the political cannot be simple. It is necessarily a monster. Political philosophy is a teratology, the apprenticeship of monstrosity. Those who are dangerous in political philosophy are those exactly those who think that it is not about monstrosity. Historically, in the political realm, monsters have emerged from reason, rather than through monstrosity itself.

Nicolas Sarkozy is [still] not de Gaulle!!

So we lost. Sure won't be the first time, and no doubt not the last. And I'm not exactly sure what exactly went on at the Bastille last night because I sat around with friends last night sighing, smoking, and drinking. Like what you're supposed to be doing in Paris, right? These pictures, and the police that are all of a sudden all over the north of Paris--I've been hearing sirens all day--, lead me to believe that something is happening. In her speech accepting her defeat, which she gave with a big smile, Madame Royal told us that "something has raised up that will not stop, I am continuing with and among you." Meanwhile, the so-called rear-guard Socialist Party elephants, miffed that Ségo had nipped their potential campaigns in the bud and ended up losing (a fact which of course has nothing to do with the fact that they mumbled public criticism of her campaign in the news), claimed public surprise at her smile. One schmuck named Fabius even dared to say something about the left's flag being trampled and ready to be taken up again. In other words, they're mad they weren't the ones losing, and Ségo is trying to keep herself in the saddle for 2012. That's a ways away. In the meantime, the air in Paris is tainted with tear gas and Sarkozy is on a friend's yacht in Malta.

"Nicolas Sakozy is not de Gaulle!!!"

I forgot to mention one of the best moments of SR's speech. You'd have to have a good knowledge of weird, entirely unworthy elements of contemporary French culture to get the build-up, which began by saying that "André Malraux is not Doc Gynéco [a very spaced-out pop artist who supports Sarkozy], François Mauriac is not Bernard Tapie [a flip-flopping former Minister of Mitterand who supports Sarkozy, has his own soccer teams, was put on trial for corruption charges]," but all of this led to the fantastic line: "Nicolas Sarkozy is not de Gaulle!!!"
[Big cheers from a capacity crowd of 40,000 with 20,000 outside the stadium who couldn't even get in the door]
But there was also, in relation to May '68, "Today, I feel it, there is in France the very same anger waiting to erupt."

And in relation to Sarkozy, who wants to "rehabilitate" the value of work, and who has said that he is the candidate of "the France that wakes up early:" "Work value is not just a rhetorical figure; work value starts by remunerating work at its value...I don't want to see those women lined up along the fences of their closed businesses, the gazes of workers who've been fired without protection. Have those who are philosophizing about "work value" seen those citizens?"

And it's at the limit of demagoguery, but that's a risk worth taking when you've only got a couple of percentage points between you and the absolutely demagogic candidate across the way, at the end of the speech: "Do you want this victory? Then let's come together, take one another by the hand, love one another, start building together. Long live the Republic, and long live France!"

Segolène Royal keeps spitting it out

I'm in a state still over this election I can't vote in. We almost even went to the big gathering for Ségolène Royal at a stadium called Charlety in southern Paris, but instead we've got one eye on it on TV. It's labor day here-- like lefty labor day, and yet I've worked, preparing classes. Thingis, I won't know until Sunday what the next five years are going to look like. If Sarkozy wins, I think it is sure to bring on something like a civil war, though that could just be wishful thinking. That's at least where it should lead if he wins. And that could have its own kind of interest. If Royal wins, I realized last night talking to Titi de Paris about it, I feel like what's going on will continue going on-- there is no revolution in sight here in France even though it used to be the country where things like that happened. But the suspense between these two rounds is killing me!

An hour and a half later, now, I've just gone through the exhausting trial of listening to Ségolène Royal's speech at her big meeting. She was fantastic. Resolutely, she claimed her ties to the socialist past; said that if people wanted civil peace they should vote for her because there was sure to be violence in the streets with Sarkozy; wondered what fly bit Sarkozy when he claimed, earlier in the week at his big Parisian meeting, that he wanted to "liquidate the inheritance of May '68," especially given, as she described, how calm the streets around his bunker in Bercy were and the fact that May '68 happened forty years ago; basically said that France will be in a civil war situation should Sarkozy win, banked on it, signed and shit... I could go on and on. Politics hasn't sounded this good in years. I'm all interpellated and atremble and such. My thought at the end of the speech was, "Fuck, it's going to be terrible if she doesn't win." Titi de Paris's response was, "But if she doesn't win, think of how much she's learned and put into place over the course of the campaign." Thus we oscillate.

Ségolène and Spit

So you might have heard there's a presidential election going on here. I must admit I'm a little caught up in it. This poster is up all over my Parisian neighborhoods. It's a kind of variation on Julie Andrews: "The walls are alive, with Ségolène..." As I've been toodling along on my bike, I've found myself going a little soft over it, in a way that might not be so far off from the effects that old Sound of Music saw still has on my belly. And this is after an initial period of great hostility towards Madame Royal. Six months ago, I was amusing people at dinner parties by saying that if I ran into Ségolène on the street, I wouldn't hesitate to spit on her. That's because I considered her a symbol of the treason of what to long along little me was a Socialist paradise that played conterpart to my Reagan governed hell. I mean, in some ways, I ended up here because Mittérand was president for such a long time.

Nouvelle Star: Do I quit watching now?

OK, I have a whole weekend in Berlin for this to get my head around, but I don't even know how to begin doing that for this format. It sure was fun, though, but I think it was more than that, too. Monstrous fun, no doubt, but I'll try and quit boring you with that one.

But I did just want to say for whatever anglophone reader who crosses this page and lives in France and just watched the extremely tragique cut to 10 from 13 on La Nouvelle Star: aren't you just a little bit PISSED OFF?! And doesn't it scare you that in this country of France, which is just getting ready to have presidential elections, ALL FOUR of the candidates who were not chosen by the paying texto-sending customers of the show were people of color?!?! One of them sang like shit tonight, but each of the three others was fucking fantastic. The jury got to save one of the candidates. And I'm a faggot who likes Marianne James, as I said before, but now I'm also a non-voting citizen of some yet to be defined place that likes her, too, since she fucking called the French racist to their noses. "Funny how much color we have on the faces of these brilliant singers." Or something to that effect. She also mocked the television station that pays her: the show's hostess kept telling the jury to hurry up, and MJ's comment was "What, for some commercials? It's not like you're getting ready to broadcast any Marguerite Duras." I love MJ. But, boy, I sure am disturbed about the idea of living under a quasi-fascist in a country with a television public that votes like they did tonight. Titi thinks that the jury, who had given high ratings to three of the people left out by the public, should just up and quit. That could do that, or they could inflict live  and violent non-physical punishment next week on candidates who didn't deserve to make the cut. That would make for better spectacle, for sure.

Political Tears at The Lives of Others

Lulucat woke me up way too early Saturday morning. We all went to bed early Friday night. No sex last night. And it had been a bit of an issue. Titi de Paris had gone to work in the provinces for the day: his train had left at 7 or so from the Gare Montparnasse – not, as the Fransh say, the door next door – and I was feeling ambivalent about our sexual ritual. So when Titi de Paris went into crisis because a slice of super-juicy pear had fallen to the floor after ricocheting off his shirt – Calvin Klein s’il vous plait, but still, just a teeny bit of an overreaction to such a little incident – I abandoned all hope of being entered into, but not without a little overreaction crisis of my own. None of this stopped us from getting to sleep, luckily. I only made it through ten or so pages of Hugo’s Notre Dame, shamefully ill chosen passages of which are on my syllabus for Tuesday, before fading off, and Titi de Paris shortly followed me to the restful netherworld.

The sun was not even totally up when Lulu started prancing over her sleeping daddies. With an occasional meow just to make sure we noticed. After an entirely unaccountable amount of time, I snapped into sitting posture with a “Goddammit Lulucat!” and jolted out of bed to go shove all the books on the little shelf of one of the nooks where she hides when the atmosphere is tense right on her cat ass. She took shelter in the dirty clothes hamper and I made tea. 8:30 am on a Saturday. Sitting at my computer reading useless things, miffed that Israel’s latest provocation in Jerusalem did not get so much as a headline in the NY Times, while the US accusation that Iraqi resistance arms were coming from Iran (yes, so, yet again, WWIII is here and being waged under our refined consumer noses), I ended up thinking that I might well need something smart to chew on as much as I needed dick. So though Titi de Paris, as we were hitting our early sack, had promised to offer his services in the afternoon of today, I ended up getting him out of bed at 10 not for sex, but so that we could go to market together much earlier than usual – Christelle, the fruit and vegetable vendor noticed, telling us we were “en avance” – and get our asses to the movies. We went to see Das Leben der Andere.

Good choice. (“Go, Wilma. Go, Wilma.”) Because this movie rocks.

Memories of Integration

All this talk about the failure of the French model of integration makes me want to say something about the long, failed "integration day" I spent in the company of other foreigners happy to gain access to our living and working papers in France.

This "integration day" happened sometime last November, I think. After sweating big drops putting together a huge file of documents, testimonies, bank statements, and other things that proved useless for the French administration, I had, in the company of Titi de Paris and thanks to our pacs (a kind of civil union), been accorded the possibility of getting my living and working papers. I would get them on the conditions that I get a medical examination and a "ministerial attestation of linguistic compentence" (the sweet social worker who gave it to me said she felt silly given that I had a doctorate in French), and that I spend a day of "civil formation" at whose conclusion (exactly one year ago today, I note with some surprise) I was granted an "attestation of civil formation."

State of Emergency??

Just a quick note of protest against Dominique de Villepin's absurd decision to unearth an old French law that has, until now, only ever applied to French colonial territories, thus upping the obviously considerable stakes of the violence, to tell all near and far that the French government may well declare a state of emergency, I have yet to see a car burning, though I have felt some tension, it's been a glorious fall day, and I have the beginnings of a cold.