Of projectiles and dorm rooms

Our last full day in Paris, S and I visited the Centre Pompidou, an almost unsettling structure whose viscera are its skin and which houses some of the most gloriously strange modern art on the planet. My favorite, if one can have a favorite among such exercises in the grotesque, was called "Huyghe + Corbusier: Harvard Project," a film/opera featuring very recognizably hip, modern marionettes (the young male not only wore a day old beard and an expression of too-cool ennui, but also sported little puppet Pumas) performing an interpretation--get this--of Le Corbusier's deal with Harvard to design a new academic building some years back, a bit of achitectural minutiae that I know nothing about: apparently it was a very controversial transaction, vexing both parties. To wit: the dean of Harvard ("the Dean of deans") was represented as a formless black mass, resembling the dark figure from Spy vs. Spy in the old Mad comics. There was also a hip, be-banged young girl who appeared to be ravaged by the black mass at one point, and an idealized Le Corbusier, making him look much tenderer than the photos I had previously seen of the steely-eyed, chrome-domed genius.

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Riding on a TGV (teh-jeh-veh) train is like being snugly lodged in suspended animation inside a great metal womb hurtling through space at all but silent and incomprehensible speeds--a breakneck pace that only becomes apparent when this titanium shell bursts past another of its ilk hurtling in the opposite direction. The sound of this mid-track salute as it blasts through the window reminded me, child of the mass media as I am, of the stylized audio-visual mania of films like Requiem for a Dream or The 300 (and lampooned hilariously in Sean of the Dead): that sudden, clipped editing, shifting instantaneously and without warning from one image to another and to another (focus on barrel of gun, dilating pupil of gunman, slow-mo bullet exploding with smoke and tiny particles of debris from opaline chamber, speed up double time as bullet enters chest of thug) and always accompanied by an equally frenetic rush of sound (heavy metallic click of bullet entering chamber, etc). It shocks and at the same time happens so quickly as to barely be registered by consciousness. After a while, it almost becomes lulling.

The ride from Paris to Marseilles thus happened in a dream, like much of this European tour, even while I remained wide awake for all but the first half hour. We slid into Gare St Charles promptly at 22:30, as promised (so far the EU has proven very trustworthy in this regard), and hopped on the metro to Rond-Point du Prado, but late as it was, and Sunday, the buses had quit and we had to walk, I with both Shenee's and my bag slung one over each shoulder, the remaining 3 kms or so in over the puddled cobblestones and uneven pavements to her house in the Bonneveine district. Stephane, her host pére, was kind enough to drop me at my hostel in his swanky Peugeot (he even offered to let me stay at the house but I demurred, eager to adjust to the dorm climate in which I'll be living for the duration, more or less, of my trip). This was, in retrospect, foolish to say the least: sleeping in a room on a single bed, with several other dudes snoring like old floorboards and rusting around like whales trapped in canvas bags, is not something anyone should ever be eager to do. 4 hours of sleep later, I now recoup at Shenee's with un cafe et le petit-dejeuner, telling my sad tale of stumbling in the dark with all my things, trying to constrain the arc of my clumsiness, staring blankly from my bed at the large curtained window facing me on the opposite side of the room, imagining it was a blank movie screen on which my dreams would soon be projected, disappointed hour after hour as this fantasy proved too fantastical, coughing (I've been fighting a cold since Madrid), sighing, and finally sleeping.

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Some pics for the visually-inclined:

Marseille upon arrival, Le Prefecture




Barcelona, my future home.

View of Madrid from our room on the 7th floor of Hostel Santillan, Grand Via.

Sangria and Jazz bar, Madrid. This watery piano sang us all the jazz pop classics of yore, mostly from the Casablanca soundtrack.
More pics soon...