Koraali ja feraali

Kansa valitsee itsemurhan

Feraalikirja

KEVÄÄN ENSIMMÄISENÄ PÄIVÄNÄ maamme epävirallinen hyvän tahdon lähettiläs esiintyi koko perheelle kauppakeskuksen katolla. Vähän kuin Beatles aikoinaan, ajattelin, hyvin vähän. Kauppakeskuksen kattoa käytettiin proosallisesti myös parkkipaikkana.

Yleensä hyvän tahdon lähettiläs vietiin jonnekin, tiedättehän, ulkomaille. Tätä kaveria kaivattiin kipeimmin kuitenkin juuri täällä, missä hän myös vaikutti, vaikuttaisi, niin kauan kuin oli tarvis. Periksi antaminen ei kuulunut hänen keinovalikoimaansa. Vaan entäpä jos vastassa oli aina sama Karjalan mänty, oli tulokulma mikä hyvänsä?

Silloin, hyvät ystävät, kaivattiin keskustaa.

Pääesiintyjä oli päivitetty versio Esa Saarisesta, ajattelin. Olisi kumma, ellei hänen poliittinen kantansakin olisi samasta kylästä kotoisin.

Pääesiintyjää lämmitteli kaksi vähäisempää räppäriä. Heille teki tiukkaa ottaa esiintymisessään perheen pienimmät – lue: näiden vanhemmat – huomioon. Ehkä pojat eivät olleet ajatelleet, kuinka paljon kirosanoja heidän riimeissään piili. Oli miten oli, he eivät saaneet nielaistua jokaista rumaa sanaa karvoineen nahkoineen. Pääesiintyjällä ei ollut sitä ongelmaa. Hänen tekstinsä olivat alun alkaenkin puhtaita.

Yleisö kohotti käsiään, taputti ja pomppi kun pääesiintyjä pyysi. Yleisö lauloi mukana, vaikka esiintyjä ei varsinaisesti pyytänytkään. Ennen iltapäivän viimeistä numeroa nainen, jolla oli Downin syndrooma, otti liikennemerkistä tukea. Merkki huojui, kun nainen huusi ääni särkyen pääesiintyjän nimeä.

Vähän aiemmin kauppakeskuksen uumenissa, teleoperaattorin kojussa kaksi miestä oli seurannut formuloiden aika-ajoja. Miehet tunsivat toisensa, olivat ystäviä. Siltä ainakin näytti. Toinen miehistä istui pyörätuolissa. Hän oli huomattavasti äänekkäämpi kuin kaverinsa, josta ei kuulunut pihaustakaan sinne, missä me istuimme.

Ruudussa näkyi Kimi Räikkösen Ferrari. Pyörätuolissa istuja taputti spastisia käsiään. Hänellä oli päässään lippalakki – Kimilläkin oli, silloin kun pää ei ollut kypärän sisällä piilossa. Toinen miehistä seisoi kädet puuskassa ja nyökkäili. Teksti ruudun yläkulmassa vahvisti, että auto oli Räikkösen eikä tallitoverinsa. Lippiskaveri näytti peukkua ja nauroi. Ystävä vaihtoi asiantuntevasti jalkaa.

KORAALIKIRJAN MAALLISTUNUT PERILLINEN FERAALIKIRJA on yllättänyt kustannusmaailman niin, että puhutaan jo buumista.

Oletteko seonnut, kysytte. Ette ole kuullutkaan mistään feraalista, hikeennytte, älkää suotta. Rauhoittukaa. Kukaan ei syytä teitä siitä. Kaksi vuotta sitten kyseistä kirjallisuuden lajia ei ollut olemassa kuin parin visionäärin päiväunissa.

Nimitystä feraalikirja käytti tiettävästi ensimmäistä kertaa kriitikko S. Laurila vähän ennen kuolemaansa. Hän yritti olla hauska. Tai sitten Laurila halusi, että hänen luonnehtimansa teokset saisivat kipeästi kaipaamaansa paloa edes jossain muodossa. Tyyliin kovaksi keitetty vanukas.

Lajin siemen oli heitetty elokuvassa. Totaalisen taiteen puolella Aki Kaurismäki ja Quentin Tarantino olivat veisanneet feraalikirjasta jo vuosikymmenet. Juha Hurme jatkoi – Peter von Baghia kädestä pitäen – edellisen jalanjäljissä. Jälkimmäinen jäi vaille perillisiä.

Kaurismäen ja Tarantinon leffat olivat leikekirjoja, ihailijapostia. Mistä päästäänkin mieliaiheeseeni, määrittelemään käsitteitä.

Feraalikirja on aikamme lapsi. Se ei tarjoa yhtään uutta oivallusta, voita uusia opetuslapsia ainoassakaan kiistassa – eikä tämä ole fe(de)ralistin tarkoituskaan. Kirjoittajan ainoa, sangen vaativakin tehtävä on muokata jo esillä ollutta aineistoa, tiivistää sitä, leikata ja liimata ja laittaa materiaali taas jakoon vähän paremmin sulavassa muodossa.

Kertaalleen syötyä ruokaa, te sanotte. Ehkäpä. Mutta onko sen niin väliä? Nykyään kaikkea on liikaa. Ei vain jaksa lukea esimerkiksi uutisia. Kierrätys kunniaan! Ja vaalilausetta lainatakseni: “Saat mitä tilaat.”

Kaikesta edellä esitetystä huolimatta feraalikirja ei suinkaan ole uusi keksintö. Varhaisin teos, joka täyttää kaikkein ankarimmat feraalikirjan kriteerit on Arthur Rimbaud’n kokoama antologia Kausi helvetissä (1873). Teosta ei tule sekoittaa Bosnian sodasta kertovaan, samannimiseen reportaasiin.

SIRIN KUMMITYTTÖ OLI MEILLÄ YÖTÄ. Seikka selitti paljon, muun muassa maakuntakierroksemme kauppakeskukseen. Kummityttö kävi lukion ensimmäistä ja oli saanut uskontotunnilta kotitehtävän, kirjoittaa Aamoksen kirjan pohjalta eriarvoistumisesta. En tuntenut muuta Aamosta kuin Anderssonin ja hänetkin huonosti. Siri kaivoi raamatun kätköstään ja alkoi lukea. Hänen ääntään oli ilo kuunnella, vaikka teksti olikin tuhansia vuosia vanhaa propagandaa.

Mikä vuosisata käsille!

Feraalikirjoja muualta ja meiltä. Ja koraali. Florian Illiesin 1913 on poistettu joukosta. Se ei vastoin ennakko-odotuksiamme ollutkaan feraalikirja. 1913 palaa paikoitellen kuin viimeistä päivää, vailla ironian häivääkään, mikä huolettaa meitä kovin. Emme voi suositella moista teosta yhdellekään sivistyneelle Suomen kansalaiselle.

Rimbaud, Syria and...?

Having abandoned a promising career in letters, Arthur Rimbaud (1854—1891) started, among other activities, running guns to Africa.

He sold ancient, obsolete rifles—that’s what he told his mother, anyway—to the Emperor of Ethiopia, Menelik II.

We don’t know if his mother was worried. Maybe she should have been.

Ten years later Rimbaud was dead, and Menelik’s troops crushed the advance of the Italian army. In the battle of Adwa, the local militia slaughtered 6,000—7,000 invaders in a single day.

That’s how the Ethiopians became “the only African nation to thwart European colonialism.”

Read the whole story here or download a Kindle version here.

Burrito Deluxe / Song to the Siren

US commanders tend to attack the insurgent, when they should attack the insurgents' strategy. -- Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents

Coin: A Torture Flight to Syria



PDF

(Download or read on browser)

Kindle

(Download)

Smile, You're Dead

Add the book on Goodreads.

COIN a Phrase for This

*   *   *

Choose from the options below.

Check the the next blog post.

Or:

If you want the lamest version, you'll have to buy the book here. 

The front

The Latest Effort

Sorry, folks! No more bickering, no more blog posts... After this, I have nothing left to say. Bye!

http://www.amazon.com/Going-Run-Torture-Flight-Syria/dp/1506005748/
http://www.amazon.com/Going-Run-Torture-Flight-Syria-ebook/dp/B00RVDS2BI/

Soccer Blues Funeral

All periods of time have ends to them, and these fatal endings we anticipate. A period of time – a day, an hour… and this will end, we say; all this will end, the season will turn, and all will be over. We look in vain for some eternal moment, for happiness, felicity, that state of bliss that will go on for ever and ever. Is not happiness defined only when no term to its extent is imagined? So Rimbaud thought, it seems to me. His seasons are those stretches of time that open unawares and close painfully on our lives.

Wow. What a fine specimen of Many-Worlds Propaganda... and yet it hit a nerve in me.

Those words of Paul Schmidt's, from his Translator's Introduction (1973) to the complete works of Arthur Rimbaud, sum up my feelings at the moment like an epitaph on my tombstone on the grave that is today.

In the evening, I played a game of soccer with some forgotten filmmakers, plus a riffraff of hangaround members like myself. After the game I felt depressed. This is very rare, without a precedent, almost. I felt something lacking. I felt empty.

During the wannabe directors' game, one of the laziest players ever, a mostly harmless guy whose appearance was half Jacques Tati, half Woody Allen, suddenly started bossing me around. He told me to take a turn as the goalkeeper. After recovering from my astonishment, I said, "In a minute." And after the minute, I did as I was told.

During the game, I shrugged it off. Afterwards, it started gnawing at me. Who the hell Woody thought he was? The captain, or something? Lionel fucking Messi the Second?

Had it been nearly anyone else who gave me orders, it would have been fine. But being bullied by Woody was more than an insult. It was humiliating. What Woody lacked in technique, which was a lot, was emphasized by the absence, by the inhuman void of spirit which had consumed his performance on the field – before, after and during the games.

And yet. Yet it would have been okay, if he had just said please.

I needed another game. A real game, this time, where no neurotic would tell me what to do. I wouldn't let 'em. I would tell them to go fuck themselves, something they should practice.

I needed more.

I came home, gave Miina (Mine) something to eat, grabbed my bag and set off again. I headed to the green pastures by the river, the Rotten River, hoping that there would be at least one game going on, like a house party that I could crash.

Here's what I encountered.

There was nobody.

I learned an important lesson today. Or thought I learned. Whatever.

Don't let the idiots get an upper hand.

You may regret it later.

You might not get a second chance.

Get back, get back, get.

The moron might be Vladimir Fucking Putin II for all you know.

And soon the season will be over.

Boxer: The Real Jean-Michel Basquiat and Fake (Street Art, Recap)

We never went to Paris, Magyar, P and I. That was fiction. But the part about Magyar's publishing outfit moving from putting out books to printing cans, that was true. I heard Magyar was moving from the field of literature into the visual arts.

He wanted to be an artist, as had countless others before him. Good for him! Good luck on the path you've chosen. I had lost my appetite for art ages ago, while I was trying to preserve my brain in alcohol. But lately, I've been reading some books. And I can feel someone rattling the cage, ever so lightly...

We took a trip to Paris, my daughter and I, last July. Here are some of my notes from the three-day journey.

*

My daughter wanted to do some shopping, and somehow we drifted into Clichy. She wanted to see the Moulin Rouge anyway, and I knew exactly how to get there... thanks to Jean Rhys.

From the balcony Marya could see one side of the Place Blanche. Opposite, the Rue Lepic mounted upwards to the rustic heights of Montmartre. It was astonishing how significant, coherent and understandable it all became after a glass of wine on an empty stomach.

We took the obligatory pictures, then continued climbing Rue Lepic. I showed my daughter the building the main character in Jean Rhys's Quartet had lived in. Always in trouble with the landlady. Always the cause of one scandal or another, without knowing why, what she'd done. Until Ford Madox Ford came to the rescue with his squeeze, and the scandal erupted for real. I didn't tell my daughter that. I told her van Gogh had lived on Rue Lepic as well, I just didn't know where.

We bought some brie and crackers and a jug of ice cream (a touch of genius, that ice cream was, not my idea, of course), and sat to eat on a bench where I thought Rue Lepic terminated. We ate most of the cheese, some crackers and all of the ice cream, sitting on a bench in a clearing, and eavesdropped an American hipster making fun of the local hipsters. He called them bonbons or something, describing how cool they thought they were, living in Paris, throwing the weight of their parents' bank account around.

The guy was a tour guide for a group of his compatriots. The guy was in his twenties or thirties. He was slim, had a short-cropped beard of gold and copper; he wore the usual hipster-attire of jeans and shirt. He let his listeners in on a secret: just around the corner, right over there, you found an excellent restaurant with quite reasonable prices, big portions, huge salads, and so on. The business side being taken care of, he then came down heavy with the artsy.

He told a story of a female artist who had started painting her self-portraits everywhere to get back to an ex-boyfriend. "I don't wanna see you ever again," he had said. Now, of course, he had to. His ex-girl got incredibly rich and famous. There was a work of hers on the outside wall of a gallery:

To cut a long story short, she had realized the American Dream.

As street artists go, she was the perfect target for guided tours.

Then the guide said, "Well, other artists have lived here as well, and next we are going to see where one the most famous of them all, ever, lived."

The group ran away. I watched them go. They disappeared from view. I shot up from the bench, spoon in hand, and into the middle of the street to see. There. I saw the Americans, all right.

"There's got to be a plaque or something," I told my daughter. "I have to go and see, once they're gone."

While we were waiting for the first group to get out of the way, another group stopped in the same spot their predecessors had occupied, and another guide recounted the same stories, in another language, as far as I bothered to listen. I wondered out loud, why to tell the same stuff to everyone. Didn't they have any imagination? Didn't they ever get bored? Am I the only one who is always getting bored, besides King Arthur?

After a beat, we followed the tracks of the first group. There was no sign on the wall where they had stood, watching the van Gogh wannabe, the guide, waving his arms. There was a Asian café downstairs, that was all. It must have been here anyway, I thought, staring at the derelict building.

My daughter tapped me on the shoulder. She pointed to the other side of the street. And indeed, there were our friends from Group #2, standing in front of a carefully preserved white house, under that great, liberating plaque which said,

All I will hear is a drunken shout

When they are done and all worn out.

I will throw up and then pass out...*

We climbed on. And Jean Rhys wrote:

The lights winking up at a pallid moon, the slender painted ladies, the wings of the Moulin Rouge, the smell of petrol and perfume and cooking.

The Place Blanche, Paris, Life itself. One realized all sorts of things. The value of an illusion, for instance, and that the shadow can be more important than the substance. All sorts of things.

On the road to Sacré-Coeur, to the steps of Sacré-Coeur, we take another break. My daughter asks me if I would like to live in Paris. I don't think so. It would be like living in a museum. This substantial remark is preceded or followed by a sermon of mine on the subject of writers and artists and hangers-on and yes-men and tourists who swarm the place as soon as somebody has achieved anything, something of their own. Something original. It's the same as with the rock stars. People are just out to exploit them! Rock stars have nothing to do with it, my daughter insists. I insist that they do.

"But you have followed those stars here," my daughter says, "haven't you?"

Yeah. It is nice to visit those places, I explain. I'm not staying, feeding on dead people like a hyena.

Because I cannot stay. That is the real reason, the only reason why not. I didn't have the money. It was at this point that my daughter asked if I wouldn't like to live in Paris. She gave me an opportunity to safe face. She must have seen that the old man's logic "was incorrect even before it reached its 'ergo'":

It is wrong to say, 'I think'. One ought to say, 'I am thought'.

Coming down the stairs, the vendors pass us, running away from the cops or the soldiers with their Kevlar vests and machine guns. They almost fall to their faces, the vendors do, they are laughing so hard. The audacity of hope? Once again I know nothing. I don't even know that. We take a metro to the hotel in silence.

"Lady Gaga," one of the vendors called to my daughter earlier, as he was trying to close a deal. "No need to be afraid."

He offered his hand, we hurried past.

"Where are you from?"

"Finland," I shot back, stumbling into safety. And after that, the vendors stumbled past us. After that...

Who the hell is Haussmann?
Doesn't matter, really:
we want to be his protégés!

___

http://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-michel-basquiat/boxer
__

*) The quotes in red are from Arthur Rimbaud. I highly recommend an iconoclastic biography of the boy wonder, written by Graham Robb: Rimbaud. Picador, London 2000.

I had Rimbaud with me in Paris, sat reading it on the sidewalk of Boulevard Haussmann while my daughter did her shopping inside. Without a hint of irony, that was bliss.

The story... if there is one... goes on here.

Spiritual Hunt 2 How to Sell Syria

 to Children

[NOTE: The text has been made unavailable due to artistic disputes, copyright issues, the awe of Patti Smith... and my former employer, City of Espoo. You may contact Mrs Tossavainen, the boss of all the tiny bosses there. Or:

• Ask Amnesty to start an email campaign on behalf of all the political prisoners held in degratory conditions in prisons they call daycare centers in Espoo.

• Try getting in touch with the head of Matinkylän päiväkoti, whoever is supposed to be in charge of it at the moment.

However, those who are truly desperate, ready to break laws et cetera to get what they want, are able to buy my piece  soon enough.]

A taste won't hurt anyone anyhow:



Once upon a time there was a giraffe.
This giraffe was a freak. He was the combination of Giacometti’s nightmares or something. He had the tiniest head bouncing at the end of the longest neck you’d ever seen, even at the giraffe scene. The other giraffes found this amusing. The giraffe himself, our giraffe, didn't find it amusing at all. Not one bit – he found the situation tragic. And he crowned himself the King of giraffes, since he had the longest neck of them all, was more of a giraffe than the others would ever be. They laughed at him. Our Giraffe the Freak said the others should bow their necks to him. He was the King, after all. The other giraffes laughed some more. They didn't bow their heads, or their necks. So our Giraffe the Freak decided to kill them all.
Giraffe the Freak had a friend, a rhino whose face was like a baboon’s ass the color of an oyster. He had no neck at all. This didn't bother his pal Giraffe, since he wasn't a giraffe, but a rhino. And they were in love. They felt for each other, and deep down knew what the other one was going through. The rhino was terrified. He knew he was a freak of nature. He knew that someday the other rhinos might make a remark of him having no neck or a baboon’s ass for a face, and he didn't have to wonder about what would happen next. All he had to do was look at the Giraffe. And all of a sudden Rhino the Oyster Baboon wanted to kill the giraffes too. As a lesson to the rhinos, if nothing else. So he and his rhino friends, who still were his friends at this point, went on a rampage at the Giraffe Land.
[He throws the cane away.]
Enough of the animals. Let’s talk about the opposition.

Once upon the time there was a giraffe.

         He grabs his cane from the wrong end, holds it erect.

        He points at the skull at the handle of the cane.

This giraffe was a freak. He was the combination of Giacometti’s nightmares or something. He had the tiniest head bouncing at the end of the longest neck you’d ever seen, even at the giraffe scene. The other giraffes found this amusing. The giraffe himself, our giraffe, didn’t find it amusing at all. Not one bit – he found the situation tragic. And he crowned himself the King of giraffes, since he had the longest neck of them all, was more of a giraffe than the others would ever be. They laughed at him. Our Giraffe the Freak said the others should bow their necks to him. He was the King, after all. The other giraffes laughed some more. They didn’t bow their heads, or their necks. So our Giraffe the Freak decided to kill them all.

                 He swings his cane like a club a couple of times.

Giraffe the Freak had a friend, a rhino whose face was like a baboon’s ass the color of an oyster. He had no neck at all. This didn’t bother his pal Giraffe, since he wasn’t a giraffe, but a rhino. And they were in love. They felt for each other, and deep down knew what the other one was going through. The rhino was terrified. He knew he was a freak of nature. He knew that someday the other rhinos might make a remark of him having no neck or a baboon’s ass for a face, and he didn’t have to wonder about what would happen next. All he had to do was look at the Giraffe. And all of a sudden Rhino the Oyster Baboon wanted to kill the giraffes too. As a lesson to the rhinos, if nothing else. So he and his rhino friends, who still were his friends at this point, went on a rampage at the Giraffe Land.

                 He throws the cane away.

Enough of the animals. Let’s talk about the opposition.

Street Art

en route to Boulevard Haussman

A hepcat asked if I could kindly spare a cigarette. When he saw what I had to offer, he spat out, "Gitanes?" And for a second he became an animated, French version of Bartleby the Scrivener reincarnated some hundred years later here, on sweltering Rue d'Amsterdam.

I couldn't help but join a grinning game with him. We smiled so hard the sun was disarmed for a moment there. Then, as obligations caught me, I returned inside.

My daughter wanted to do some shopping, and somehow we drifted into Clichy. She wanted to see Moulin Rouge anyway, and I knew exactly how to get there... thanks to Jean Rhys.

From the balcony Marya could see one side of the Place Blanche. Opposite, the Rue Lepic mounted upwards to the rustic heights of Montmartre. It was astonishing how significant, coherent and understandable it all became after a glass of wine on an empty stomach.

We took the obligatory pictures, then continued climbing Rue Lepic. I showed my daughter the building the main character in Quartet had lived in with her husband. Always in trouble with the patronne of the hotel. Always the cause of one scandal or another, without even knowing what she had done. Until Ford Madox Ford and missus came to the rescue, and the scandal erupted for real. I didn't tell my daughter that. I told her van Gogh had lived on Rue Lepic as well, I just didn't know where.

We bought some brie and crackers and a jug of ice cream (a touch of genius, that ice cream was, not my idea of course), and sat to eat on a bench where I thought Rue Lepic terminated. We ate most of the cheese, some crackers and all of the ice cream, sitting on a bench in a clearing, and eavesdropped an American hipster making fun of the local hipsters. He called them bonbons [probably bohos] or something, describing how cool they felt, living in Paris, throwing the weight of their parents' bank account around.

The guide was in his twenties or thirties. He was slim, had a short-cropped beard of gold and/or copper, the usual H-attire of jeans and shirt. He let his listeners in on a secret: just around the corner, right over there, you found an excellent restaurant with quite reasonable prices, big portions, huge salads, so on. The business side being taken care of, he then came down heavy with the artsy.

He told a story of a female artist who started painting her self-portraits everywhere to get back to an ex-boyfriend. "I don't wanna see you ever again," he had said. Now, of course, he had to. His ex-girl got incredibly rich and famous. There was a work of hers on the outside door of a gallery:

http://parisdansmonoeilen.weebly.com/miss-tic.html

To cut a long story short, she had realized the American Dream. As street artists go, she was a perfect match for tourist groups.

Then the guide said, "Well, other artists have lived here as well, and next we are going to see where one the most famous of them all, ever, lived."

The group ran away. I watched them go. They disappeared from view. I shot up from the bench, the spoon in my hand, and into the middle of the street to see where the group had gone. There. I saw them all right.

"There's got to be a plaque or something," I told my daughter. "I've to go and see, once they're gone."

While we were waiting for the first group to get out of the way, another group stopped in the same spot their predecessors had occupied, and another guide recounted the same stories, in another language, as far as I bothered to listen. I wondered out loud, why to tell the same stuff to everyone. Didn't they have any imagination? Didn't they ever get bored? Am I the only one who is always getting bored, besides King Arthur?

After a beat, we followed the tracks of the first group. There was no sign on the wall where they had stood, watching the van Gogh wannabe wave his arms. There was a Asian café downstairs, that was all. It must have been here anyway, I thought, staring at the derelict building. My daughter tapped me on the shoulder. She pointed to the other side of the street. And indeed, there were our friends of Group #2, standing in front of a carefully preserved white house, under that great, liberating plaque which said,

You shall know the truth; and the truth shall make you free.

We climbed on. And Jean Rhys wrote on.

The lights winking up at a pallid moon, the slender painted ladies, the wings of the Moulin Rouge, the smell of petrol and perfume and cooking.

The Place Blanche, Paris, Life itself. One realized all sorts of things. The value of an illusion, for instance, and that the shadow can be more important than the substance. All sorts of things.

On the road to Sacré-Coeur, to the steps of Sacré-Coeur, we take another break. My daughter asks me if I would like to live in Paris. I don't think so. It would be like living in a museum. This substantial remark is preceded or followed by a sermon of mine on the subject of writers and artists and hangers-on and yes-men and tourists who swarm the place as soon as somebody has achieved something of their own. Something original. It's the same as with the rock stars. People are just out to exploit them! Rock stars have nothing to do with it, my daughter insists. I insist that they do.

"But you have followed those stars here," my daughter says, "haven't you?"

Yeah. It is nice to visit those places, I explain. I'm not staying, feeding on dead people like a hyena.

Because I cannot stay. That is the only reason why not. It was at this point that my daughter asked if I wouldn't like to live in Paris. She gave me an opportunity to safe face. She must have seen that the old man's logic "was incorrect even before it reached its 'ergo':

It is wrong to say, 'I think'. One ought to say, 'I am thought'. [...]

I is somebody else."

Coming down the stairs, the vendors pass us, running away from the cops or the soldiers with their Kevlar vests and machine guns. They almost fall to their faces, the vendors do, they are laughing so hard. The audacity of hope? Once again I know nothing. I don't even know that. We take a metro to the hotel in silence.

"Lady Gaga," one of the vendors called to my daughter earlier, as he was trying to close a deal. "No need to be afraid."

He offered his hand, we hurried past.

"Where are you from?"

"Finland," I shot back, stumbling into safety. And after that, the vendors stumbled past us. After that...

Soon:

Who the hell is Haussmann?
Doesn't matter, really:
we want to be his protégés!

I'm a healthy student.

Graham Robb, Rimbaud. Picador, London 2000.