Daisies for Boston

Just woke this morning to the shocking, sad news from the Boston Marathon. I just don't understand people, I really don't. The world is so crazy.

So I'm just going to post pictures of daisies. These are growing all over the lawn in front of our apartment building. When I look down at them, they remind me of a loose galaxy of stars.

Up close, their flowerness becomes more apparent. You begin to see something in each individual.

Like the fact that they aren't really all the same color, as they seem from afar. Some are a bit purple around the edges, while others really are white. Some of their petals are a bit bruised. They grow all together in an inhospitable place, on a grass lawn that gets mowed every few weeks, and yet they prosper.

Sunday in the Park

The sun came out, temperatures climbed and we had an unusually nice day yesterday, so Dave and I took Olga to Hyde Park, to let her run around off-leash. She had a great time, as usual. The two of them briefly grabbed a bench near the monument to John Hanning Speke, who traced the Nile River to its headwaters at Lake Victoria.

There were lots of people out and about, some relaxing beneath trees with a book, others romping with dogs and children. You know, the kinds of things people do in parks.

The buds are popping on the horse chestnuts -- at least, I think that's what kind of tree this is! It will be nice to have some greenery again.

Most of the trees right now are still twigs.

Frightened Pedestrians and Social Collapse

Well, things are returning to normal around here. I've done a couple of loads of laundry, took Olga on a long walk, and braved reopening my work e-mail after a couple of weeks off. Last night, I started rounding up substitute teachers for next week. Back on the horse, as they say.

Olga managed to terrify a woman (in complete head-to-toe Muslim hejab) and her little girl yesterday. It was so embarrassing. We were walking through a bunch of other pedestrians on Ladbroke Grove when Olga spotted a pigeon and shot toward it, diving between the woman and the girl. Olga then cut back toward me, wrapping her leash around the girl. Both of them were gasping and frantic. I untangled Olga and apologized profusely, pointing out that the dog was just going after the bird. The woman seemed to accept that, and I got the heck out of there. I'm glad the father wasn't around. (Muslims in general do not particularly like dogs, which they consider unclean. Olga isn't unclean, just impulsive!)

Dave and I watched a documentary last night called "Collapse," outlining the peak-oil, doomsday projections of a guy named Michael Ruppert. It was an interesting movie, though I'm a bit perplexed why Ruppert -- of all people -- deserves to be put in such a spotlight. I think some of what he's saying is being said by others with more credentials, in a more balanced way. (He argues that because we're running out of oil, the globe is headed for a period of sudden decline and starvation.) Listening to Ruppert is a little like listening to some old guy in a trailer park who's stocking up on bottled water and burying gold coins to offset the coming apocalypse.

I don't exactly disbelieve him, but I also don't think stockpiling gold and self-propagating seeds (as Ruppert recommends) and other goods is the answer. I don't see decline as such an immediate, rapid event. I think we'll have to adapt as it occurs, because who knows what will happen or when? Maybe we'll eat more locally, consume less, surrender our luxuries, lose access to high-level medical care, have fewer children. Farm in our backyards. (Or on our balconies -- ha!) After all, much of our energy use now is essentially waste. When that's scaled back -- inevitably as prices rise -- we ought to have time to adjust.

Big topic, I know. Interesting movie.

(Photo: A guy collecting discarded bread from a bakery in Hackney.)

Back Home Again

We're back in London, and back with Olga, who is none the worse for wear after her five days at the kennel. She's just as bouncy as ever. In fact she nearly went berserk when she saw me and Dave -- she jumped up and knocked her teeth against my face, giving me a bloody lip. Crazy dog!

Our final morning in Paris was rainy, and I spent it wandering around Montmartre, taking photos of the street art and interesting establishments like the one above, which appears to have been called "The Gold and The Salt" before it went out of business. Maybe that name was just a bit too abstract. Or maybe it's moved somewhere else and is prospering. Who knows?

I debated going out to La Defense, the skyscraper district, to see the ultra-modern Grand Arche and a part of Paris I have never experienced. But given the weather I was not inspired. It will have to wait until next time. It's always good to leave a few things undone.

Today is general cleanup and recovery, and continuing to catch up on my magazines. (I did very little of that in Paris -- who goes to Paris to read magazines?) I did read a fascinating article in The New Yorker from March 18 about the wisdom of allowing transgender children to take permanent steps toward gender reassignment before they are 18. Some people argue that delaying puberty, administering hormones early and even performing some surgeries can help smooth the transition, while others say children are too young at that age to know what they really want. According to the article, long-term studies show that only 15 percent of gender-dysphoric children continue to have those feelings as adults, though many of them prove to be gay or bisexual. "In other words," writes journalist Margaret Talbot, "many young kids claiming to be stuck in the wrong body may simply be trying to process their emerging homosexual desires."

I can vouch for this first-hand. I clearly remember in elementary school fantasizing about being a girl, and continuing for years to envy girls their relative maturity, their flexibility in fashion and other attributes. Had I been asked at the time about my inner gender, I'm not sure what I would have said. But this was my emerging identity as a gay man; as an adult, I do not want to be a woman. Then again, I'm not transgender, and I suppose transgendered people might argue that while my fantasies were just that, they experience a stronger awareness of a different identity. It's a fascinating subject, as is the fluidity with which many younger people approach the issues of gender and sexuality.

Mona and Meurice

Dave and I braved the hordes at The Louvre yesterday, in order to get some face time with Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace (among others). As you can see, Mona was thronged, as usual. It's kind of an extension of our culture's celebrity worship, isn't it? Out of all the 35,000 artworks in The Louvre, it's funny that we've settled on just one as the absolute must-see.

And that's as close as I got.

We spent several hours at the museum, wandering through the Italian and other European painting sections, gazing at Albrecht Durer's self-portrait and works by many French artists, like Poussin, that I barely know. (The galleries containing Vermeer's lacemaker were closed for some reason. Sacre bleu!) We also went to the African and Pacific Island rooms, where we spotted this character from Hawaii.

He's a good antidote to the toothless man banging pots that we encountered on Wednesday, isn't he? And aside from the teeth, he's wearing approximately the same expression.

Dave and I got separated at one point and I despaired of ever finding him again. The Louvre really is incredibly vast, and so crowded. But we both instinctively went back to the grand entrance foyer beneath I.M. Pei's glass pyramid, and somehow I spotted him amid the mob.

Last night we had dinner at Le Meurice, which Dave chose from among all the restaurants in Paris as the one for our special meal. It was stupendous, no question. We both got the tasting menu with wine pairings and I have never eaten so well -- pigeon, asparagus with caviar and other dishes simply too delicate and complex for me to describe.

We have also never paid so much for a meal. Holy cow. I have to remind myself that food is Dave's passion, and this is the equivalent of him buying a fancy camera lens. If I can do it, so can he!

We'll be back on the train to London this afternoon, to be reunited with Olga this evening. We keep joking that the folks at the kennel have probably locked her in a crate, she's such a wild thing. We'll all be happy to see each other, I'm sure.

Buvez Orangina!

More rain yesterday. I'm a bit fuzzy this morning after a big dinner last night and two martinis at Buddha Bar in the afternoon. I guess I should have been drinking Orangina, in which case, according to this surreal advertissement in the Gare de l'Est metro station, I would be leaping around like a muscular lion-man. I think I can manage to hammer together an adequate blog post, though.

Dave and I began our day walking to the top of Montmarte, from which there are incredible views of Paris. I can't even imagine how much it would cost to rent an apartment up there. It's funny that it used to be the Bohemian, artistic quarter -- seems like the bourgeois millionaires would have moved in long before the artists.

We walked downhill, along the Boulevard de Clichy and through the Place Pigalle, the center of Paris' neon-lit sex shops, where the facades made for some good photos. Then we took the metro to the Place de la Concorde, where we caught an open-topped bus for a tour through the city. We like those bus tours -- even though they're kind of cheesy, they provide a good overview. I saw a couple of things I didn't see at all on my previous visit, like the Opera and the Place Vendome.

When we were frozen through and damp from a couple of hours in a sporadic, drizzly rain, we repaired to Buddha Bar, a dark grotto containing a huge Buddha statue beneath softly glowing chandeliers. Despite wildly overpriced drinks, it's one of my favorite bars in Paris.

Dave did some research to come up with an ideal Paris bistro for dinner, and we settled on Chez George's on the Rue du Mail. It was fabulous -- delicious food (sole in a white sauce for me, entrecote of beef for Dave) and not at all overly opulent. No crazy toothless guys, either.

And now, I must go find some coffee. I would weep with joy if a coffee maker materialized before me. Seriously.

Zaza My Love

We experienced a deluge yesterday when the skies over Paris grew stormy. Fortunately, Dave and I were camped out beneath the awning of Cafe Lutece the time, so we had a dry comfy spot from which to watch all the Parisians breaking out their parapluies and running for cover. It was an intense rain, too, complete with tiny peppercorn-sized hailstones. Mon Dieu!

We love cafes. It's so fun to sit and people-watch. Monday, on the Champs-Elysees, we saw a nattily-dressed gentleman dump four packets of sugar into his large orange juice. (As a Floridian, I was horrified.) And yesterday in the Marais we were sitting out on the sidewalk when we heard a racket coming up the street, and were subsequently approached by a man with wild hair and no teeth banging two aluminum pans together in a rhythm that probably meant something only to him. Fortunately he didn't hang around very long.

Because the weather was so bad, we decided to find an indoor activity. A museum would have been our first choice, but as luck would have it, museums are closed on Tuesday. We learned this from a security guard outside the Louvre, where virtually the only people in the vast courtyard were a knot of flag-wielding anti-gay-marriage protesters. (I joked to Dave that we should go stand in the center of their little group and make out, like Act Up. But we did not.)

Instead we went to Notre Dame, where we watched boys feeding sparrows from their hands outside before we explored the dark recesses of the 850-year-old cathedral.

Funny thing about Notre Dame: Visitors are asked (quite reasonably) to remain silent while inside. But every few minutes a voice comes over the loudspeaker to say "shhhhhh!!" and remind people in several languages to be quiet. Which kind of defeats the purpose, it seems to me. (Particularly since all that shushing brings to mind the sibilant snake from the Garden of Eden. At least, that's what came to my mind.)

Fortunately the rain didn't last all day. We were able to explore lots of the area around the Pont Neuf, Ile de la Cite and the Marais.

For dinner we went to a place that literally translates as "The Crazy Elbow," and who should we encounter inside but our wild toothless friend, fortunately minus his aluminum pots! He quaffed a few drinks at the bar before stepping outside to rage loudly at the world, and then he departed.

Overall, the food has been excellent, of course -- I had a croque monsieur for lunch and entrecote of beef for dinner, along with an excellent panacotta for dessert. I'm glad for all the walking!