Montmartre

My last day in Paris I decided to walk all the way across the city to Montmartre, the distant and distinct little bohemian enclave of Paris. It was raining slightly but I plodded along for over an hour, refusing to catch a metro so that I could watch one neighborhood blend into the next, the cityscape changing with each arrondissement. Montmartre is something special, though, high up on its hilltop, the only place in Paris where a vineyard still thrives and you can find silence broken only by birds’ chirping. It’s dense with the histories of Renoir, Eric Satie, and Edith Piaf to name a few, plus the famous Moulin Rouge nightclub. The tourists, thankfully, cluster at the tip-top of the hill around Sacre Coeur Basilica and the most stunning view of the city, but what amazed me most is that aside from that spot, Montmartre retains a peaceful detachment from the rest of Paris.

I immediately entertained fantasies of living in this little oasis like the heroine in the movie Amélie. The full French title of the film, which I count among my all-time favorites is Le Fabuleux Destin de Amélie Poulain and how could you not have a fabulous destiny in Montmartre?! For all who have not seen it, well, see it, ok? She is a quirky, shy waitress with a clever and eccentric style of generosity and a will to help those around her. It’s a beautiful story and I was thrilled to find the actual café where a great deal of the movie took place, Café Deux Moulins. Other than a large poster of the film’s main character, the café did nothing to tout its fame; a down-to-earth, chill spot, it was probably the most comfortable one I’d found in Paris yet. The tables were intimately close, yet the diners pleasantly aloof, everyone seemingly lost in their own little pools of contentment. The waiter danced over with my espresso, w inked, and was gone, and I was overcome with the impulse to be part of this place. I visited the bathroom upon paying my bill (you must see the movie to get the hilarity of that) and floated out the door with the conviction that I would return. Someday. As a Parisian.

$$$$$hit! The current state of currency

A brief and sorry note to Americans everywhere: our Dollar is one wimpy piece of legal tender. And the Euro is one merciless bully. Multiply everything by at least 1.56 and watch your bank account dwindle. Cringe at the cost of cab fare and mourn the museum entrance fee. It makes you sip your wine a little slower and choose your extravagances carefully, which is not a bad thing, I guess. The only kicker is when your company (ahem, Cirque du Soleil) pays you in dollars while you work in Europe… and that is fair how???

La Langue Française

For one week, I took the metro across town to the France Langue school near the Arc de Trimophe. It gave me a sense of purpose as though I were commuting to my “job,” and not a bad job, either, getting to listen to and try to speak the language I most adore. I think I’d renewed my determination to learn French when I met a guy named Roberto in Mexico City. He was a few years younger than me yet spoke Spanish, English, Italian, and French, purely out of his own will to speak the languages of the art and music he so loved, mostly piano and opera. He explained that mastering these languages, he could integrate some of their cultural elements into his own life, adopting words and phrases and concepts into his own understanding and expression.

Well I wanted to do that, too! I realized that without becoming a “-phone” you couldn’t be a true “-phile” of anything; without the language of a culture’s expression, you couldn’t get inside its collective head. So I dove into French, which I hadn’t touched since Cornell, where there hadn’t really been time to absorb it anyway, since it was often more about getting assignments done to merely survive to the next semester. I re-opened my daunting grammar book, downloaded the “French Pod Class” podcast from iTunes, and made an appointment for a manicure with my friend Isabelle, an esthetician from Quebec who I made promise to only speak French with me while doing my nails.

This all gave me at least a refresher before arriving in France, where I found that all those warnings I’d received, that the French would be intolerant of anything less than perfect pronunciation, were unfounded. I received much more encouragement than snubbing, found that I could ask questions about menus, sizes, directions, opening hours, all the necessary stuff with no problem at all. I even bought a pair of shoes once because the store owner I chatted with declared my French “formidable!” (This compliment had the effect of boosting my confidence yet making me temporarily forget my budget).

The language course at École France Langue was an eclectic mix of five Germans, one Moldovan, one Korean (who it turned out had seen Quidam in Seoul), one Swiss, and one Brazilian (who was a freelance writer eager to give me tips on breaking into the business). The school itself, in fact, is about half Japanese students, and the combination of Japanese accents plus all the other nationalities’ layered over French words filled the crowded hallways, making me feel part of a small-scale Parisian United Nations.

I still have a long way to go until I am fluent and no longer have to frantically conjugate in my mind before speaking, but it feels like the most beautiful, indulgent work to do, this language-learning. It’s like watching my mind grow, and discovering in myself new ways of thinking and feeling as I learn new words to express things. It makes me think of Steven Pinker’s theories on how language shapes thought and whether we are limited in what we can conceive by what we can describe, even within our own heads.

Bread of Fantasy

La quête du pain peut même être appréhendée comme le catalyseur de la grande histoire des hommes.

The search for bread may well be considered the catalyst of the history of man.

Le Pain Poilane, considered Paris’ “best bread” (which is one out-of-this-world distinction, really) takes itself very seriously, as you can see from this quote on the brochure that comes with your order there. But then, I take bread seriously, too. I’d choose a perfectly crusty baguette, a hearty brown pain de campagne or a traditional pain au levain over any decadent dessert or rare delicacy you could dream up to offer. Before the trip, I’d searched for some place where I could learn how to bake the good stuff, but it seemed that most cooking schools would rather teach how to roast a duck or prepare mousse au chocolat. I came to realize that, in France, bread is thought best left up to those bakers for whom it has been a life-long métier. So I opted for the much easier post as bread-taster and made an un-scientific study of the best boulangeries in the city.

Poilane is the only bread in Paris distinguished by its brand in the restaurants it supplies. Bistros and brasseries boast “Nous servons du pain Poilane” in their windows, and for good reason. Once at 7am and again at 4pm, a line forms outside the Left Bank bakery as they bring fresh loaves out of the oven and customers salivate in unison. Getting bread there, as I did one weekday afternoon, is choosing a diamond or deciding on a child to adopt; it’s that weighty. I wasn’t allowed to serve myself at all, but was assisted by a bread technician who spoke in one long string of descriptions of grain type, fermentation methods, baking temperatures, chewiness, density, flavor. I left with way more bread than one girl can eat, with loaves in a rainbow of colors and the most delicious scent wafting around me. I discovered that the best way to lighten one's load of bread is to share it with the homeless. It's more delicious than centimes and it makes everyone feel good.

And the thing about good bread is, it would be a crime to spoil it with anything other than pure butter. In France, this is a given. There’s an accept-no-imitation dogma that runs deep. PAUL Bakeries, the chain that produces what I’d consider the second best bread and the tastiest croissants, advertises Patisseries pur beurre, Pains de Fantasie! After just finishing Michael Pollen’s awesome treatise against the offenses of industrial food processes, I cringe to think of the enthusiasm over calorie-less “I can’t believe it’s not butter” spray. Putting it on Poilane bread would be like pouring paint thinner on a Picasso – unthinkable.

Cafés

The cool thing about my job is that it allows for plenty of café time, something I consider one of life’s priorities. I have clear, linked memories of which cafés I have read certain books in, written certain journal entries in, met certain dates in, even thought certain personal revelations in. I spend hours in every city just people watching and sometimes bumming wireless internet while getting buzzed on caffeine. The French have a similar reverence for the café, and unlike in America, it’s not just a refueling station for commuters with 24-ounce cups; it’s a laboratory for philosophers, a sanctuary for newspaper readers, and a meeting spot for social papillons.

Cafés are everywhere in Paris, just everywhere! But I had only so many days there, and only the capacity for so much coffee, so I employed my nerdy tour guide, Rick Steves, and his guidebook’s tour of the “Grand cafés of Paris” to narrow things down. I hit St. Germain de Près first, home of the side-by-side institutions Deux Magots and Café de Flore. I randomly chose the latter, with its crammed-full outdoor tables and reputation as Picasso’s favorite hang-out. Without looking at the menu, I ordered my favorite, a noisette, which is basically espresso with a teeny dollop of foamed milk like the Italian macchiato. The whole beverage takes about three sips to finish off, but in this instance, I was paying dearly for sipping in such a prime location. Cafés in Paris may serve nice coffee, but your Euros are really going towards rent, which is why having your drink standing up at the bar can be a third of the price of sitting at a table. It’s all about real estate, and once you splurge on that table, it’s yours til the end of the day if you can sit that long. Once I got over the shock of the bill (€4.60 for those three sips), I milked my spot for all it was worth – wrote three postcards, visited the bathroom to wander around the art deco interior, observed my fellow café-sitters, and watched the frenzy of ancient waiters with extraordinary mustaches and penguin vests.

Because of the cold, it sometimes seemed that my time in Paris was just a race to see things between the many café breaks that were necessary to warm me up and keep me going. And they were sometimes strategically useful. I really wanted to visit St. Chapelle, the 13th century church of exquisite stained glass built to house the relics of Christ, only the wait to get in was outside and endlessly long. One morning, I got up early, found the entrance, and camped out in a window seat of a café just across the street. I waited cozily til I saw others start milling around the ticket booth, quickly paid my bill, and made it just in time to claim the first spot in line.

Bikram Paris

The first thing that hit me in Paris was the cold – it wasn’t a touch of chill, either, but a full-on collision of freezing wind and rain that struck me dumb. I was used to the heat of Mexico, and my body had grown wimpy and complacent in the warmth. To think that I’d packed my favorite thin, strappy dress and even open toed shoes, I cringed at the wasted suitcase space and gave up on the idea of strolling elegantly through the city. I am a clothes horse and more than a little obsessed with my wardrobe, and layering everything I’d brought on top of each other wasn’t in the fashion plans for this trip. I had no choice but to bundle up til I was unrecognizable (though who would recognize me anyway...?) How you feel about yourself in a place is half the story, and both my pride and body were sore from being dorkily dressed and frozen stiff.
So I made a detour into a vintage clothing shop for some used and funky boots plus an eclectic, floppy hat that I will probably never wear again and one of those classy scarves that French women seem able to tie over fifty different ways. It was a start.

I’ve basically been doing the splits every day since I was six, so my joints were freaking out a little about being neglected and numb with cold. Luckily, I was pointed in the direction of a yoga studio in the wonderful Marais neighborhood. It was Bikram yoga, or “hot yoga” where the room is heated to 105 degrees and 40% humidity while you sweat yourself silly for an hour and a half doing 26 postures and breathing exercises. I’ve usually hated this style, since sweating from my eyebrows and elbows isn’t really my thing, plus Bikram’s competitive philosophies and legal controversies over the copyrighting of the founder’s teaching turns me off. I walked in hesitantly, and almost made a 180º turn right out the door again when I saw the prices. €25 per class! And that’s for a group class with about 30 other students, not including the rental fee for towels and a mat. Still, I was intrigued because this place seemed mega-popular, full of steaming, fit yogis and a sense of vitality, and I needed to feel alive again. I went for the introductory special, that new-student hook 'em deal that so many studios offer but that was just the right length of time (ten days) for my stay in Paris. For €35 plus the cost of a giant water bottle, I could come to unlimited classes with the added bonus of practicing my French comprehension. I was in.
Bikram class was an ordeal involving massive perspiration, special attention to hydration, and a full shower afterwards, but I was so happy to do it! I came away glowing and buzzing with new French vocabulary for words like menton (chin) and phrases like étirez vers la plafond! (stretch towards the ceiling!) I discovered that the whole thing was more mental than anything (which is what they always tell us in yoga, isn't it?) and that if I could calm down about the sweating, it could start to feel good, amazing really... how could I not? I was a yogini with a Paris address!

First time in France

PARIS

My arrival was rocky, as I knew it would be. I’d need to employ my shaky French skills right away and call the property manager of the apartment I was renting to arrange a key hand-off. I’d been warned by the American woman I was renting from (who I’d found on Craigslist) that this guy spoke not a word of English, and though I’d been working hard on my French for the past few months, the idea of a phone call was daunting. There’s something about face-to-face conversation, with all its context clues and facial expressions that makes speaking a new language easier. Thinking I’d rehearse first (and feel a bit more at ease), I asked the nearest official-looking guy where the toilets were, in perfect, French-class français. Thrilled that I understood and was understood myself, I thanked him sincerely… and in Spanish. Those months in Mexico were still with me.

Without a cell yet, I found a credit-card-operated phone and dialed Fred. I explained who I was and that I guessed I’d be there in, I don’t know, an hour?? He gave an enthusiastic yet incomprehensible response; I chose to believe he’d understood. Skulking around the arrivals lobby were taxi drivers looking to line up complicated fare deals but I refused to pay the €50 for the convenience and searched instead for the train. One shuttle, one long line, one train, and one short taxi ride later, I arrived on dark and creaky Île St. Louis. It was 10pm by then, more than two hours after my call to Fred, and I was at a loss as to how to contact him next. The island it seemed, was too posh for such things as public telephones. Finally, after wandering the streets pathetically, I asked a grocer at the small market next to my apartment if I could use his phone s’il vous plaît, because otherwise he’d have an American girl and her pink suitcase sleeping on the street outside his shop that night. To my surprise, he looked at the address and said, “Oh, you’re Barbara’s tenant? Of course! Bienvenue à Paris!” I was welcome in France. I had been expected! It was as though I’d waited all night to get into this club, and now the bouncer was telling me my name had been on the guest list all along.



One Chic Shoebox

The apartment itself was the size of a shoebox… make that a kids-sized shoebox. But it held a futon, a kitchenette, a miniscule bathroom, and even a private outdoor terrace (which I would never use, alas, since the weather never ceased to suck). I don’t have a date for the building exactly, but it is surrounded by others with plaques listing years in the 17th and 18th centuries, and if it could make me feel like a giant Alice in a shrunken house, I knew it had to be from an era of shorter-statured people.

But the location! In the theater of Paris it was the best seat in the house! (On Easter morning, it was just three minutes from my doorstep to Notre Dame Cathedral for the most spectacular mass I have ever seen.) The smaller of two islands on the Seine that splits Paris in two, Île St. Louis is a nucleus concentrating all the charm of Parisian culture into a few cobbled, narrow streets. How I’d managed to find a place here that cost half what a bad hotel would anywhere in the city… I was lucky. I tried not to feel like an interloper, since the ritzy few residents who do actually live on St. Louis are notoriously annoyed with the crowds drawn to it for its famous Bertillon sorbet. (The stuff is so good, it was even worth me huddling in freezing rain under an umbrella to taste. Imagine fruit at its most godly ripeness, made coolly, scoopably luscious… it makes sense that the islanders might want to keep it to themselves). The density of loveliness on the streets surrounding me was overwhelming – nothing but the finest boutiques, frommageries), boulangeries, creperies, specialty shops, and galleries. But it was fine in a way so completely different from Madison Avenue or other elite shopping districts; Gucci and Prada are, to me, so laughably beyond reach that they fail to even trigger my temptation. But here, oh, these places had character; it just shone through the shop windows, oozed out under their doors, wafted in the air outside and drew me in.


Hedonic Refugee

For so long I had sensed that I would love France, that it would fit me just right. In Eric Weiner’s Geography of Bliss he introduces the concept of the “hedonic refugee,” one who emigrates to find the place that best provides his or her requisites for happiness, his or her unique version of pleasure. Weiner’s book centers on this idea that surroundings affect state of mind, contentment, and the tenor of daily life. And being on tour is like one big test of his hypothesis! Not to sound unstable, but I’ve watched my mood swing wildly from one city to the next: I am beautiful – no, ugly. I am active – no, lazy. I am social - no, an utter hermit. I love this world and everyone in it! No, humanity is basically depraved.

Yet I felt that France and I might hit it off. And while it tried to discourage me by raining all the time and making everything so damn expensive, I’m sure I was right. It didn’t disappoint. I met a cynical guy at a party who told me, “You know, most of what you think of France is just cliché…the Frenchman with the baguette under his arm and all.” To which I responded, “But you do carry baguettes!” He smiled and admitted I was right. And since my own personal brand of hedonism merges so well with French culture, I think I’ve found my match. What follows, I guess, is just a demonstration of this, the proving of my theory that France is where I belong.

To be continued...

The Renaissance Man of Veracruz

I was sure that Veracruz was going to be another non-city for me, meaning that I would never fully realize I was here until I was gone. It was like that with Monterrey, our third city on the Mexican tour, which I spent holed up in Starbucks cramming for my trip to France. If I once looked up from my French verbs or Paris maps, it was to go to the gym or catch the bus to work. This was fine with me, since the last two cities in Mexico are record short ones: 2 1/2 weeks! Packing and unpacking become a continuum of disarray. It's like being on an extended layover between other, more real destinations. By now, most of Quidam has adopted an apathetic, last-lap approach; Veracruz was made for beach lounging and not much else, so why fight it?

So I was surprised when, last Monday, my friend Josee and I met perhaps the most fascinating man in Mexico. We were resigned that day to wandering aimlessly around the Zocalo, or downtown plaza. I had a fresh mango on a stick, cut into the shape of a flower, and was content to let that be the highlight of my afternoon. We then came across a tiny, crumbly pedestrian street, lined with disintegrating colonial houses that had become cat castles. We stopped to take pictures of the still-colorful tiles, half-collapsed balconies, and feline proprietors. But not all the buildings were ruins - a small shop remained intact with bright blue pottery and woven fabric in its window.

Ferruccio met us with a resonant voice and perfect English, offering to show us the crafts filling every corner of the place. They were not just souvenirs, either; each piece held a rich story for Ferruccio to tell. He pulled out a doll so delicate that her hands needed tissues to protect them. She was La Katrina, a Mexican representation of Death, with a skull for a face but the clothes of a refined Victorian lady. Miniscule earrings dotted her ears, and beneath the tissue, a ring circled one thin finger.

I started to understand then the uniqueness of everything Ferruccio had to show us. He knew not only the history and cultural significance of everything but also the lives of the artists. Knowing who has crafted a piece is special, and rare now. To think that in the past, every item you could buy was made by an artisan, a human who imparted both skill and imperfection into what he produced. It amazes me how, with the proliferation of cheap Chinese imports and the ubiquity of low-quality mass production, that this kind of artist-to-buyer transaction has become a chic habit of the rich in the U.S. Everything old is new again. Peasant-this and rustic-that. But not everywhere, not yet. I revel in the wholesomeness of a plain, steaming-hot tortilla made from nothing but maize by an abuelita at a roadside stand, and I see that here it's still poor man's food. It has not yet had its renaissance, it's chance to be remade as authentic and therefore cool. Maybe I had to go through something like that with my travel shopping. Back on my first real trip, with my 8th grade class in Williamsburg, VA, I swear I gobbled up those souvenir spoons and thimbles like there was no tomorrow. I am more selective now, though not necessarily more knowledgeable about what to bring back from my trips. That's when a friend like Ferruccio becomes indispensable.

I fell in love with the least practical thing in Ferruccio's shop: a bulky statue of La Danza de los Voladores. The traditional dance of the Totonac people is not unlike an aerial circus act, though the ritual was more about drought relief than performance art when it began 1,500 years ago. Four men fly out from a central pole, suspended by ropes tied to their feet. It's spectacular, and this statue was remarkable in that it was constructed entirely of recycled parts. It had been an assignment for students from a Mexican school, to create art from trash. Nuts and bolts and screws and washers somehow came together to give the illusion of flight, don't ask me how. Unfortunately, it was mounted on a mammoth hunk of hardwood that would be a nightmare for air travel, a burden on my parents, but a fascinating feature in a future home.  

So we sat down for an expresso with Ferruccio, and learned how Mexico's coffee industry has been ravaged by corruption, the same corruption that disillusioned him into giving up his government curator post. Instead, he has countless independent art projects around Latin America - exhibitions, conferences, even plays that he produces and tours with. After hours in the shop, Josee and I invited him to see Quidam the following week, while he, in turn, invited us to visit his "villas" in Boca del Rio, a 15-minute drive from our hotel.

*****

Josee and I woke early (okay, "early" for people with our schedule means before 10am) to meet Ferruccio.  I was groggy from the previous night's end-of-Mexico-tour party at "Piratax," the tacky beachside bar with a hard rock pirate theme.  Their sign is a skull and crossed guitars.  

We drove with Ferruccio past miles of sand dunes that are fast becoming trash heaps and housing developments.  When he bought his land 20 years ago, there were no other buildings in sight, but rash and foolhardy businessmen want to blanket the landscape with tens of thousands of shoebox condos and soulless mansions.  They don't know (or care) an ounce about urban planning, Ferruccio explained, no thought to infrastructure at all.  The building is out of control, not quite on the scale of Dubai, but with the added hindrance of Veracruz's bloody awful weather.  Build a road one day, only to find it has been swept away by another bout of wind.  A lost cause, a sinkhole for investors, but the hottest trend around for developers.  Nature here does not wish to be messed with on that scale.  

In contrast to the utter ugliness of the construction sites, Ferruccio's land was an oasis.  He had reigned in nature most artfully, planting a wind barrier of trees that offered shade enough to drop the temperature noticeably.  More than just a residence, this was a compound of homes with a central road connecting the fifteen or so houses. They belong to Ferruccio, his brother, his mother, and, in a most enlightened relationship, to his ex-wife and her new husband (more to come on that). The extra buildings comprise the "Villas Palmira," vacation cottages for tourists that Ferruccio opened some years back to better afford the land.

Our first stop was to visit Marguerita, Ferruccio's ex-wife and an exceptional potter. Her studio was beautifully dusty and clay-strewn, with her signature blue stoneware stacked on every surface; classical music peacefully ordered what could have been a mess. Marguerita herself has the calm, patient demeanor of an artist who works gradual wonders with her hands. She had seen Quidam the previous week and, in fact, I had bought a piece of hers from Ferruccio's shop. Although most of her work depicts the fauna of Veracruz - lizards and fish - she has also created pottery as social commentary, her most recent to bring awareness to the brutal homicides of the past decade and a half in Juaraz, Mexico. She depicts the tragedy of hundreds of women's murders (and nonexistent government action) by placing graceful, white ceramic sculptures of women in a field of dark sand. It is a dramatic contrast to her pretty and light vases and bowls, but a strong political statement.

But it was probably the next part of our visit that made me think the most. Marguerita introduced us to her husband, Joel, who is also a potter and with whom she lives in their lovely, airy home next to the workshop. Ferruccio gave him a friendly slap on the back and boasted of Joel's talent, before we all moved out to the courtyard for a cup of tea and pleasant conversation. "We used to be married and now we're business partners," Ferruccio had explained originally, and I thought about the long process it must have been to get to that point. The acceptance, tolerance, love, and unselfishness that must exist for such a situation to work. It's a good place to return to in my still-jealous mind, as I learn how it is to love a person who is no longer mine.

We then joined Ferruccio and his and Marguerita's daughter, Luciana, for lunch in the cafe (for guests of the villas). Halfway through the meal, we were greeted by his mother, a spirited woman in her 80s. Her house, according to her wishes, was built to look like a ship, with a terrace from which she can look out onto the ocean and navigate. She had to stop by the table to show us a picture she had found in a book that morning, of her with Fidel Castro twenty years before. "How young I look," she said of her image in a flowered dress, "and I was 65!" We then discussed Cuba, which has now intrigued me, though I cannot get there from the U.S. of course. Ferruccio brings theater productions there regularly, and in his opinion, there has never been a country where the people were so over-educated and so underpaid. Great geniuses of music, medicine, and sports, stifled by one of history's binges of ideology. We can hope, for their sake, for changes from a younger Castro sibling.

Finally, stuffed from a long and lingering meal, Josee and I got to see Ferruccio's pièce de résistance - his library. An entire wing of his house contains over 50,000 books, mainly on the art and history of Latin America, but including geography, philosophy, literature and politics. It is a devil of a thing to keep up, he explained, what with the humidity, tropical insects, and the labor-intensive task of cataloging and restoring the books. His project now is to adapt it into a research library, a status that could qualify it for grants and support. It is massive, smells of old and musty pages. Interspersed among the books are miscellany that I could spend eons discovering. Odds and ends in an art curator's home are anything but junk.

After I mentioned my upcoming trip to Paris, Ferruccio insisted we look at his section on France, if not for practical help then at least for historical perspective. There were no Lonely Planet guides in this dusty collection. Many books were from the earliest decades of the 20th century, sans photos but with detailed illustrations of La Tour Eiffel and Versailles. He then gave me one of the most recent pieces of the France file, a National Geographic map from 1970. I am absolutely bringing it with me! While not terribly old, it offers laughably retro travel tips:
LODGING: Average rates for big-city luxury hotels are $20 per day for a single room. Less expensive rooms run about $5, while France's 200 youth hostels offer lodging for less than a dollar per day.
TRANSPORTATION: Modes of travel popular with youth include hitch-hiking, the ultimate in inexpensive travel (this is recommended?!)
LANGUAGE: English understood at most hotels, shops, and restaurants in large cities (what about French?!)

So, thanks to Ferruccio, I plan hitch-hike my way to a hotel and inquire loudly in English, "It says here I can get a room for five dollars, no?"

As I said before, I wasn't expecting to find anything of substance in Veracruz, but it's been a pleasant surprise.

*** I'm leaving for France in a few days with stomach butterflies (may be the Mexican lettuce, actually) and, well, expectations, which I should probably let go of. I am expecting the trip to help me feel okay on my own again. I'm expecting it to help me learn slow down and really see my surroundings. I'm expecting it to force me to speak French! And maybe it would be nice to have some romance, good weather, and a nice croissant... so you see why I need to simply let this unfold without pressure.
A bientot!

Gran Cafe de la Parroquia

A tradition in Veracruz, and the reason why there is no Starbucks here: El Gran Cafe de la Parroquia. Coffee here is not a subdued, pensive affair or a chic see-and-be-seen thing. Instead, people gather around large round tables, clink their spoons against their glasses of potent espresso, and await the show. The spoon-dinging summons a waiter weilding a large kettle full of steaming milk, which he pours from heights up to three feet above the glass, combining it with the brown stuff into a frothy Mexican "lechero." Not unlike a latte, but don't mention that to a local, as there seems to be a lot of pride in this Mexican version of the drink.
Click here to see la Parroquia in action, and no, this is not my most recent trip with my new Mexican amigos, just a youtube find.
Enjoy! Back to work, where we're anticipating another windstorm soon... didn't anyone check that out ahead of time? We're down one tent already. Hopefully we get paid to endure cabin fever in La Fiesta Inn should the show be cancelled again.

I'm back

Today would have been dress rehearsal, but we're opting for margaritas at the hotel bar. It's not our fault, really. When you work in a tent, hurricane-force winds mean a day off. Locals tell me they haven't seen it blow like this in Veracruz for at least a decade. It's howling like a hound out there and churning the pool into a boiling stew garnished with debris. My curtains billow and I find myself coated with a thin layer of sand that's snuck through window cracks. Meanwhile, I experiment with cooking an egg in my coffee maker.

I don't have the energy to go into all the nitty-gritty, but I almost gave up this blog, among other things, including hope. Scroll back through my posts and you'll see an oh-so-different trajectory from the one I'm on now. No more being a San Franciscan. More Cirque touring. I tried unpacking the suitcase, settling my feet on solid ground (as opposed to 30 feet up and in a hoop) and assembling a new life for myself. It didn't work (I won't name names) and so I'm learning the art of being alone.

After wallowing around for a while in a thick pool of self-pity, I bought a ticket to France. Cirque's touring Europe next, but we have almost a month off. I'm hoping it's not a cliche after Eat, Pray, Love and Under the Tuscan Sun, but I'm doing it anyway. I'm adamant about doing it solo, and am consequently scared witless. But I've rented an apartment on an island on the Seine in Paris, listen to "The French Podclass" daily, and am gobbling up Peter Mayle's Provence. It's my all-consuming project for now, conjugating French verbs and reading up on Cezanne. What will follow I don't know, but it's a good kick in the derriere.

How nice to have returned to blogging, having been daunted by the idea for a while now. I've enrolled in the London School of Journalism's Freelance Travel Writing course, and while I'm equally daunted by the idea that everyone and their itinerant grandma wants to be a travel writer, it's an enjoyable thing to pursue.

Time to check on the egg. Add a little herbs de Provence and some Kosher salt (always carried in the suitcase, of course) and voila! Hotel cookery at its finest. Should I survive tonight's tempest intact, I may someday have my own kitchen.

Big Time

The excrement has hit the air conditioning, big time.

-Kurt Vonnegut

Viva Mexico!

It's taken me a while to start writing about touring in Mexico, perhaps because it smacks more of the familiar than the exotic. After growing up in Watsonville, I am accustomed to the rolled R's of Spanish, smell of tortillas and frijoles, the trumpets of Mariachis in the plaza, and the wide brims of sombreros. If anything, coming to Guadalajara is like a trip around the corner from home.

We're being housed in the El Presidente Intercontinental Hotel, an aging yet dignified accomodation that, despite its chronic inability to provide fast internet access, is cozy and welcoming. Following our harrowing time in Shanghai, with all its discomforts and cultural puzzlements, I can't stop feeling utterly grateful at how outrageously nice everyone seems here. There is a pervasive laid-back-ness in everyday life, yet the Mexicans go wild for Quidam, giving us a full big top night after night. We've been warned over and over about crime and security issues, and I won't deny that it's probably a valid concern, but I feel here like an honored guest.

It's interesting to see, in various countries, whether I will be ogled or ignored. In the Middle East, there existed a type of staring that felt like bugs crawling on my skin, less flattering than invasive. In Asia, it seemed, I was a conspicuous outlier, for the most part disdained and not bothered with. Here, though, there is a culture of suavity and gentlemanly appreciation - a whistle is less a lewd cat call than a gracious nod of approval. Mexicans love the art of wooing. There is a park nearby where, as darkness falls, a small cluster of Mariachi men in full velour regalia gather to await their customers. Lovers in need of a love song can, for a small fee, be serenaded on demand, either by listening in their cars or picking up a Mariachi "to go." The romantic Mexican version of a drivethru.

Now this sounds all nice and sweet, until I came across one wooer who was more cheese than charm. I was in the elevator after a trip to the grocery store, and was bogged down by two giant jugs of drinking water. I was claustrophobically crammed in with about six guys loaded down with musical instrument cases and my patience was supermodel-thin. "Hola Senorita," said the curly-haired man on my left, "Tienes mucho agua." While I have been taking Spanish lessons, I didn't really feel like striking up a conversation about my liquid purchases, so I just nodded. "Hablas ingles?" he persisted in a slightly sleazy way. Exasperated, I intoned in my most flat American English, "Yes, I'm from the U.S." Despite being eager to get out of the small space and the annoying interrogator, I endured a few more questions about what I was doing in Mexico, whether I was a student, etc., before we reached my floor.

It wasn't until later that evening that I recalled the encounter and curly-haired guy's uncanny resemblance to Kenny G , the famous smooth-jazz saxophonist known for saccharine love balads and sentimental Christmas specials. I quickly googled the G's tour dates and found that yes, indeed, I had been sweet-talked by the celeb himself. I only wish my star-sighting had happened a few nights earlier, when The Killers had been playing in Guadalajara, and because they share the same sponsor as our show, were staying in El Presidente tambien! Oh, if only the stars had aligned....

Guadalajara is a quick stop on our Mexican tour. With only four weeks of shows, I have yet to tire of the routine here. The hotel is so close to our circus tent, only a 15 minute walk. At night, it gets interesting, since (Cirque doesn't usually tell us things like this ahead of time), we are situated in a neighborhood somehow distinguished as the hub of Guadalajara's transvestite community. If nothing else, we are given entertaining fashion inspiration nightly. Only last night did my walk home get a little more exciting (and treacherous). Walking along what had been, yesterday morning, a solid-as-can-be sidewalk, I suddenly felt the ground beneath my foot disappear as I sunk knee-deep into wet cement. The construction workers nearby (facetious fellows who apparently didn't believe in orange cones of caution tape), laughed their heads off and thought it a fine time to chat me up. Fearing an iminently-fossilized foot, I demanded they do something about it, and I was soon subjected to a thorough hosing-down in the middle of the street. I squished and dripped all the way home. Dad says, "At least you've made an 'impresion' in Mexico!"

Letter to Barbara Kingsolver

Dear Barbara Kingsolver,

I spent yesterday holed up in my tiny studio, kneading bread while listening to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle on audiobook. I would have been completely alone, were it not for your voice recounting the wonders of asparagus and my active little baking companions, the yeast. They soon got to work filling the apartment with the most divine smell, and I recalled a silly line by Kurt Vonnegut:

“Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne."

My boyfriend, Andy, is an incurable Vonnegut fan and an unrepentant bookworm in general (as am I), so I prodded him to write to this quirky man whose words he couldn’t get enough of. He did, and beautifully, while I looked up the address and bought some stamps. A few months later, Vonnegut died. Of course we wonder about the letter, but what I like to think about is how Andy was changed by the books, and how he wrote the letter with such integrity and wit. (It makes me love him more). Every time I rave about your books now, I get a little reminder from him that it’s my turn to write a letter.

And so the yeast and the bread and the book and the quote just came together and told me what I have to tell you, that I am so thankful for your writing. In college, your novels were the reading indulgence that kept me loving books even after studying well past the point of burnout. But it is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle that’s speaking to me now – right out of my iPod and into my soul.

I’ve sensed for a while that something’s amiss with our food, something that’s screwed us all royally, myself included. What you’ve pinpointed as a loss or lack of a solid food culture has left us ignorant and anxious about eating, a natural, wonderful part of being alive. So many of us eat as though doing so is a necessary evil (and with the prevalence of low-quality food, evil it may be). We’ve been duped by fraudulent food and perverse eating patterns to such an extent that it seems weird, weird, to go through that most lovely process of cooking, eating, and enjoying a meal.

I miss meals. I think I lost track of them at some point in college where the choices included the all-you-can-eat binge buffet or the air-and-artificial-sweetener ice cream imposter known as “Tasti D Lite” (the mainstay of skinny sorority girls). As a child I had planted my own cherry tomatoes, entered homemade pies in the County Fair, and experimented with ethnic cuisine from books I checked out of the library. Somehow, though, these pursuits became embarrassingly bumpkinish and breakfast soon deteriorated from Dad’s whole grain pancakes to a large coffee with Splenda, even while I was majoring in nutrition! My peers and I were too busy, too hip, too impatient for authentic cooking and dining. To even admit that you liked food was almost seen as a weakness, as though we should still feel guilt over Eve and that apple. Even now, two years out of college, disordered eating and a pervasive disquiet about food are what I face daily, especially in my career as a performing artist, where healthy diets are rare.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is helping me see the beauty in food again. That I can honestly love cooking and eating while still being intellectual, sophisticated, and even feminine is a delightful idea to wrap my mind around, an attitude that will take practice to internalize, but is a worthy aim. Having read books by Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle recently and learned a great deal from them, I feel the need to do my part in straightening out our communities’ crooked food systems. It is your story, though, that has helped me make the connection between my own personal food philosophy and the larger issues of sustainable agriculture and public health nutrition in our country. Thank you.


Best wishes and be well,


Meghan E. Miller

It's mid-September, midway through one of my month-long breaks from Quidam, unsure if this means I am on hiatus from or have rejoined the "real world." Coming back to San Francisco is one great halleluja after my distressing wrestle with China. I need this month to repair and recoup some things seem to have broken or gone missing in Asia, namely, my digestive system, my love of the outdoors, and my sense of tolerance for humanity.

I'm back in my role as professional dilettante. I can really kick my own ass with such self-prescribed tasks as picking up dry-cleaning, reading the NY Times, and buying a new box of bandaids (after my recent cantaloupe-slicing incident). I tell myself to chill, really, but what makes it so impossible is that there are so many WAYS to chill and it can be excruciating to choose how best to fill unstructured time. One problem is that my temporary status makes it impractical to sign up for anything long-term, like book clubs, dance classes, or local activist organizations, all of which I'm eager to be part of in a future where my feet are glued to one spot for more than a couple weeks. For now, it feels like I am peering through a window into a city I will someday fully inhabit.

This break, though, I've definitely made my way closer to becoming a San Franciscan, mastering the public transportation system and spending a significant part of every day on the Muni bus on my way to the SF Circus Center, where I'm working hard to craft an aerial hoops solo act of my very own. I want to have material that isn't copyrighted by Cirque du Soleil, Inc., something I can sell, perform at gigs, and know that it is 100% me. Spending every day at the studio has at least made me a "regular" somewhere and given me some new friends.

Wearing Pearls to Walmart

Some months ago, during my yoga teacher training course at the Kripalu Center, I came across a quote from the center’s founder, Swami Kripalu. While a whole lot of yogic philosophy soars over my head without ruffling my hair, this particular phrase has stuck:

“The highest form of spiritual practice is self-awareness with compassion.”

Self-awareness is neither nombrilisme nor egoism; it is a way of watching yourself react to the world without giving your whole being over to the petty problems that invariably arise. Hassles, nudniks, aches, and failures push their way to the foreground and you’re often not even aware of them stealing the show. But zoom out just a bit, detach just enough to see them getting your goat and it somehow takes the edge off the nuisance du jour. Self-observation allows you enough perspective to avoid letting stress make you snap… its like keeping an eye on your skin to avoid a sunburn.

The last word is the most important, though – compassion. If you’re going to constantly watch yourself traveling through the world, you will often see yourself (even knowingly) go in the wrong direction. This is why self-observation must be tempered with compassion; seeing yourself screw up sucks, but countering it with self-loathing sucks like one of those jumbo straws they give you with bubble tea. Instead, file all the disappointment in yourself in a nondescript folder labeled “Just Another Observation” and move on. In theory this certainly sounds like a cool way to do life… at least it’s something worth striving for.

Why am I writing about this? (I’m trying to remember, myself, in fact). It’s probably because I am noticing how much my lifestyle and perspective change with each city on tour. My priorities shift, my routine is different, and it’s easy to find fault or pride in myself for these changes. I’m trying for neutrality, for compassion in what I see myself become each time. During much of the North American tour, I felt like this vibrant, active, natural girl, walking everywhere, eating all macrobiotic and taking yoga most days of the week. I could easily wear the same pair of leggings and tank top to yoga class, to the bookstore and to work. Andy was on tour with me, sharing my days and giving me a teammate to care for and be cared for by. My memory of last-year’s me is quite cool, I must admit.

And then I came to Asia. And now I wear pearls to Walmart.

There is also now an Armani dress hanging in my closet and a whole line of custom-made clothes tailored to fit only me. There is silk, cashmere, and leather. My nails are polished pink and my hair’s a new chocolate brown. These things are buoys, and so I’m floating, coping, in the shallows (for now).

Maybe I’m fickle, but rather than judge myself too harshly for having traded the transcendent for the temporal, I prefer to allow for some flexibility in my self-image. Sometimes you have to experiment with the face you prepare to meet the faces that you meet.

The truth is, my world has become rather small here in China, which is ironic, what with its unparalleled enormity. Aside from going to work, which is a chore in a place where it reaches 120 degrees and GI grief is the norm, my options are limited. I have a few cocoons – Starbucks, Superbrand Mall, Dragonfly Day Spa, and the hotel gym, all air-conditioned down to a goosebumpy chill. I am hiding out in a sense, and feathering my nest with luxury goods I couldn’t afford anywhere else but in a place where I am the luckiest of ducks. My money goes pretty far here, and it’s more than tempting to take advantage of the situation… it’s my little stint as a material girl.

I know I am not wholly changed; I still read like a madwoman , learning about Jewish pilgrims, the Taliban, and industrial agriculture over the past weeks. I still practice my yoga daily and work on my dancing. And I do see the city’s poverty and dysfunction as clear as day … But I don’t know what to do with what I see, other than convince myself that buying a leather jacket will give a merchant some business and give me a little buzz of temporary happiness.

So I put on my pearls, a sun hat and heels and I walk around the corner to Walmart, where $10 buys me more groceries than I can carry. I smile and befriend the women behind the tofu counter. I no longer cringe at the chicken feet or hold my nose at the durians. A woman wearing pearls has more class than that.

Hard Rock Cafe

Want to visit the Hard Rock Café in Beijing? Check your WMDs at the door. I did, and enjoyed the only veggie burger I’ve found in China thus far… totally worth it.

Beijing

For our first double dark of the city, a group of forty or so Quidamers convened in the Chinese capital city for a quick and dirty tour arranged by the Flowing Spring Travel Agency. Beijing is a two hour flight from Shanghai, a journey enhanced by the super cool magnetic levitation (“Maglev”) train ride to the Pudong airport that hurls its passengers forward at speeds over 400 km/hr with only the slightest side-to-side sway of the coach.

Our tour guide, Iris, met us in Beijing, explaining that Iris was her western name, and that her Chinese name consists of two characters, one meaning “before” and the other meaning “beautiful.” The combination, she lamented, suggests being past one’s prime – how unfortunate to be saddled with such a name from birth! Iris (who still looked to me like a pretty 30ish woman) also told us to rest assured that our bus was driven by the “second best driver in Beijing” and that “the number one driver is in the hospital.” We grimaced… some jokes don’t translate, and I’m still at a loss about this one.

As we settled into our bus seats, Iris demonstrated the complexity of Mandarin by describing the four tones of the language. The syllable “ma,” for instance, can mean everything from mother to horse to curse to a question mark when intoned differently. From that point on, you couldn’t stop certain rowdy members of our group from shouting “mamamama” sporadically, in wild inflections, whenever the opportunity arose.

Our first stop cemented my suspicions that this would be one of those pre-fab tours designed to extort as much dough from duped tourists as possible. I almost think, though, that it’s the only way to go – you certainly get your money’s worth in absurd stories and hilarious situations. We entered the restaurant through a gift shop full of Chinese kitsch into an equally tacky dining room decked with dusty paper lanterns, a stageful of “cultural performers”(apathetic teenagers in Chinese garb), and the ubiquitous round tables with lazy susans at their centers. No sooner had I sat down then Iris waved her flag and asked if there were any vegetarians in the house because if there were, they needed to move to a “special” table. My fellow veggie friend, Billy, and I followed her over to a teeny, isolated table situated ironically within inches of a man ceremoniously carving a duck. It was a bit like being relegated to the kid’s table on Thanksgiving, making Billy and I the center of attention and subject of everyone’s pictures, taunts, and quips about veggie discrimination.


From there, we spent hours plodding through Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, learning of ancient emperors and their thousands of concubines, of bow-and-arrow battles with Mongolian tribes, and of the glory of Mao Tse-tung. Sunstroked and weary, we eagerly checked into the Kingwing International Hotel, looking forward to luxury accommodations after being informed that we’d been “upgraded” to a five star establishment due to the size of our group. It was immediately apparent that these five stars fell somewhere on a rating system that could have included an entire constellation. I was reminded of my hotel overlooking Red Square in Moscow – stoic, socialist chic, probably renovated some time in the 60s. The water ran rusty from the pipes, bulbs flickered dimly in their timeworn lamps, and the beds were… good for the back. But the two-day itinerary didn’t include much time for sleeping, so we couldn’t complain.

We were taken to another tourist depot and presented with a traditional Peking (former name of Beijing) duck dinner. The fowl is famous for its tender meat and crispy skin, which we learned is achieved by filling the bird’s belly with water and roasting it. In this way, the insides become moist while the outside obtains a delectable crunchiness. The meat is then thinly sliced and served inside folded rice pancakes with sliced cucumbers, onions, and hoisin sauce. Sans duck, the meal was still delicious, especially when paired with light Chinese beer, a safer beverage than the always-suspect glass of tap water.

After a ridiculous attempt at finding some cool nightlife (resulting in our rejection of countless shady bars specializing in the extortion of foreigners’ cash) we endured a painfully early wake-up call at the Kingwing. Unless we felt like loading up on MSG from the hotel breakfast buffet, the majority of our group found salvation in the Starbucks next door, and piled into the bus (though we soon regretted the coffee upon learning that it would be a two hour, no-bathroom-stop ride to our next destination). Starbucks seems to be the one place around here where you’re guaranteed to find someone with at least a limited grasp of English, even if their vocabulary is highly rooted in espresso options and muffin varieties.

Our aim that day was a pilgrimage to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, a less-touristy area two hours outside Beijing. The trip brought us out of the city and into the higher elevations and lush greenery of the countryside; the contrast was dramatic. Our lungs hadn’t realized what they were missing, and we gulped the fresh air greedily. From the parking lot where the bus stopped, there was a tram station where tipsy gondolas aided our final ascent to the wall. It looked eerily unreal, like a dinosaur or a strand of DNA that seems only to belong to textbook pages and Discovery Channel specials. While the air was clear, it was still blazing hot, but I had a sun hat, two walking legs, and three hours until the bus left, so I started hiking the wall.

For the first minutes I nursed historical fantasies of the wall – its builders, its battles, its romances, and how awesome it would be to traverse the whole thing, a feat that really seems possible when your legs are fresh and you’re high on dizzying breaths of clean (but thin) air. The wall wasn’t built for a stroll; it’s craggy with uneven stairs, towers, tunnels, and ladders. I was soon more than happy to pay way too much for a water bottles sold by a little old man with an ice chest parked ingeniously at the top of a nasty incline.

The thing I hadn’t realized about the Great Wall, is that parts of it aren’t so great – you can only walk so far before it drops off into what must look like cookie crumbs from space. So I climbed and sweated until my legs shook and I ran out of wall to walk on, at which point I gazed down from a high spot, my eyes falling serendipitously on the scene unfolding below…

My coach, Chris, was trying desperately to hold a handstand long enough to have a picture taken of him being all acrobatic on one of the Seven Wonders, while no more than two feet away, my good friend Tony was suspiciously lowering one knee to the ground in front of his girlfriend, Grace, also a long-time friend of mine. Chris continued to throw himself upside down, determined to get the perfect photo and totally oblivious of the marriage proposal he was in danger of kicking a leg into. About three of us up on the watchtower saw Grace extend a hand and accept the ring, and we burst into applause, mistakenly boosting the ego of a very red-faced Chris.

I couldn’t be happier for Tony and Grace, especially as I recall the three of us nervously discussing our hopes of all being cast in Quidam some years back, and the mushy romantic in me loves the fact that I witnessed a proposal that will no doubt be the stuff of family lore for years to come.


After the giddiness of the day, we cleaned up in preparation for the evening’s entertainment, a show by the Beijing Acrobatic Troupe. The company has had a contract with Cirque du Soleil for over a decade, providing its shows with specialists in disciplines particular to Chinese circus arts. Our four “little Chinese girls” who perform the Diablos (Chinese yo-yo) in Quidam are from the troupe, following in the footsteps of many acrobatic envoys before them. The meeting of Cirque and the BAT was a much-anticipated event, now that our company is finally performing for the first time in mainland China. It felt special to be part of this delegation, a circus ambassadorship I hoped would help me feel more connected to the Chinese people and less like a flailing alien in this country that continues to confound me daily.

We should have known that no amount of good will and optimism could keep the evening from turning into an imbroglio. With China’s particular mélange of bureaucracy, corruption, and fakery, there is little reason to ever assume smooth sailing. We were dropped off at a nondescript theater just as the first stilt-walkers, tumblers, and hand-standers took the stage. We sat raptly, our view colored with the rosy tint of high expectations and happy encouragement, as we were determined to support our sister circus. Soon, though, I’m sure each of us had the same guilty thought – the show was, well, amateurish. I tried, as no doubt we all did, to smile and nod and clap, while feeling the slightest, apologetic disappointment.

At intermission, though, we shuffled outside to find a heated confrontation between our Cirque director and the tour guide. “Somehow” a “mistake” had been made (not by the tour company, of course) and we had watched the first half of a lesser production put on by a children’s circus school. Did they think we wouldn’t notice?! They had duped us, most likely buying these cheaper tickets and keeping the difference, banking on us pleasantly and ignorantly sitting through the show. And the truth is, we would have. It shows, I guess, the power of self-convincing and the pressure of propriety, when the script demands a generous spirit and you rush to fill the role.

More than anything, it was a big loss of face for Cirque, a faux pas that would involve an embarrassing phone call and an attempt to explain the situation without conveying too much disgust over the crooked way things tend to work in China. The Beijing troupe had been practicing especially for our visit, had prepared gifts and everything, and we hadn’t shown up! After intense interrogation, the tour guide told us that the real show was a 45-minute cab ride away, and that the extra cost would be covered by Flowing Spring Tours.


The troupe’s show was over by the time we reached the empty theater, but they had waited for us, still in costumes and make-up and still eager to perform a couple of their biggest acts for us. They were amazing, specialists in the intricate, ever-more-difficult acts like stacking teacups on their heads, jumping through tiny hoops, and scurrying up poles like squirrels. At this point, there was no choice but to be the best audience they’d ever had, clapping and hooting and standing for a long ovation at the end, everyone exhausted and emotional. There were speeches, handshakes, photos, and a general conclusion that things had gone the only way they could have – with a little excitement thrown in to make it memorable.

Pedaling “Strong”

I mentioned a few weeks back the idea of buying a bicycle, and as you can see from the picture, I’ve got a snazzy new Walmart special, a baby-blue model complete with a generous white basket and “STRONG” emblazoned on its frame. I don’t really know why I decided to join the throngs of bikers, except for the adventure and the independence; all other signs point to “Are you crazy?!” For one, the traffic is mayhem, untethered by stoplights or lanes or limits on just what kind of speculative vehicles can be driven or pedaled. Technically, there are “bike lanes,” but not only do they merge at some points with bus stops, but they are traversed by motorcycles, electric bikes, and people pedaling tipsy loads of all sorts in both directions. It is not uncommon to see a family of five coming at you head-on on one motorbike, babies held football-style by mothers riding side-saddle. And then there are the vendors, with vats of soup or watermelons or live chicks strapped ingeniously to the handlebars or racks at the rear. Actually, the commute to work is a daily circus show in itself, and I recall how traditional Chinese-style circus arts include teetering balancing acts and fitting multiple people on unicycles or in tiny barrels. It’s true, raw entertainment.

Don’t worry, though, I’m careful – ultra-vigilant really. The most dangerous part of biking for me is that I am an absolute spectacle on the road. People slow down to stare at my shiny new wheels, shout at me as I pass, and honk incessantly at close range, all of which adds unnecessary risk to my ride. Still, it’s fun! At night after work, I can zoom through the less-crowded streets along the smelly river to the deafening sound of insects, often swerving to miss frogs on the path. (If I wanted frog soup I could find freshly decapitated ones at Walmart any time).

Shanghaiese

Unsure if peace and quiet is a valid request around here, I’ve been shushing the combative conversationalists seated at the table to my left. I’ve brought my computer over to Thumb Plaza, a shopping center close to the Cirque site that offers a nice locale for an aspiring writer and relief from the sweltering heat in the form of an enormous, air-conditioned Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. (And why am I drinking hot coffee on a day when a cactus would wilt? I am sorely addicted, and I don’t mind a bit.) While I may be escaping the unbearable weather, I cannot, it seems, get away from incredibly loud and pugnacious dialogue that assaults my ears at every turn. I’m coming to realize (or trying to convince myself) that people are not perpetually apoplectic, but that it’s merely my interpretation of the tone of Shanghaiese. I have to laugh, really, to look around this café and see pairs of men engaged in fiery discourse in between sips of their froufrou iced Frappacinos.

Maybe I should invest in some earplugs, though they would do little to solve the inevitable and disturbing dispute that I encounter almost daily with Shanghai taxi drivers. For every jolly driver I get (and there are some out there), I find myself facing irate old men who all but refuse to take me where I want to go. I’ve begun to employ the hotel concierge to explain my destination, and let the two of them duke it out, but it’s still not the kind of thing that inspires confidence in customers. Usually I am told by the concierge, “I’m sorry, but this driver does not know his way around, so I will tell him.” Uh-oh.

On a positive note, I am here now, having made it to my destination intact, which is something I should remember to be thankful for.

After prodding from yours truly, Andy has enrolled in Mandarin lessons through Google. I’m so proud of him for tackling such a daunting language with its counter-intuitive intonations and incredibly difficult pronunciation. The only thing is, when he visits in August, I have doubts about how far his Mandarin will take him in Shanghai. The city really does have an accent all its own, so strong a departure from Beiing Mandarin that it verges on a separate dialect called Shanghaihua. Maybe it’s somewhere along the lines of Alabama drawl vs. Scottish brogue.