Parlez-vous français?

It's not easy to be fluent in any language. French is no exception. Bien sûr (of course). Grammatical rules like not pronouncing the 'h' in words, and combining words so the delivery is like a smooth wine, or something savory spread on la baguette. I look for logic in a language, but that isn't always easy. For example, why is it "la baguette" and not "le baguette? because a baguette resembles male anatomy, not female. For instance, most nouns in French that are openings are female, like la fenêtre (window) and la porte (door). And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Native French speakers have sayings that aren't in guide books or classrooms. 

My daughter is quite fluent. She's lived in Paris for sixteen years and is married to a Frenchman named Grégoire. He is quite fond of soccer and cheers on his favorite teams with "Allez! Allez! Allez!" (Go, go, go). He also likes tennis.

I've been to Paris a few times. I lived in the 19th arrondissement for a month in a huge apartment. The owner was a middle-aged Italian woman. She was an urban planner from Tuscany who was losing her peripheral vision. Her three children were beginning to help her by leading her around. Her keyboard has Braille on it now. My adventures have led me to write a novel titled 21 Days in Paris. Normally, a screenplay is adapted from a novel, but in this instance I did it the backwards way. I completed the screenplay in 2020 and submitted it to a handful of screenplay contests. It was the finalist in the 2021 Paris Film Festival. I have had six invitations to submit my "film" in various film festivals worldwide. So in 2022 I began writing the novel. It took a year or so. Because I am not fluent in French I had a lot of research to do. My son-in-law, Grégoire, read the first draft of the feature  screenplay and made some suggestions. The problem with this story is that most editors have no keen interest in France unless it is a horror story about a lesbian black woman. I wish I was exaggerating. That's how narrow a submissions window I am dealing with. Mostly women editors. And the male editors are mostly gay. So that's what they are looking for. It has been disheartening, but I am still trying to get the novel published. It's just one of six novels. For a francophile it's a good idea to read as much French as possible, and this memoir by Sarah Turnbull was an easy read. It reminded me of my daughter's story, although Turnbull is a journalist from Sydney, Australia who met a frenchman named Frederic while on assignment in Romania. Frederic is a lawyer and is used to a certain way of doing things. But relationships aren't easy, wherever they sprout. As of 2024, Sarah Turnbull and her husband, Frederic, are still together. Not sure how many children they had. The book came out in 2004. Here is Sarah on a 2024 podcast: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNsEjfJjZu4

This book is not my only francophile read. My father-in-law, Laurent, gifted me with his big memoir, Un Homo sapiens contemporain (A Modern Human Being). which is all in French. I have not been able to read much of it. In summary, he made his fortune in heating and air conditioning and now splits his time between his Paris apartment and a place in Croatia. I envy his decision to seek a Mediterranean climate.

My favorite place in France isn't Paris. I am in love with the Côte d'Azur (the South of France), and have been since I first visited it when I was eighteen years old. The hardest thing is to follow your heart. My life is slowing down, but I am hoping to visit the South of France again. You have to do what makes you happy. 

Ever had an experience where it seems the world has gone mad, and bad things arrive to bring you down? 

Yeah, anyway, I had my 'Dirty Harry' moment. But let me back up and tell you my tale in chronological order. I almost didn't want to mention my bad week. Better to move on and pretend it never happened. In my experience, good and bad things occur like waves. In comes the good things and then here comes the bad things. Is this the way the universe works?

Last week I gave away more bookmarks than usual. I make the bookmarks as my Johnny Appleseed effort to make a world a little happier place. On the backs of the bookmarks are quotes from famous and not so famous people, which I skillfully write in calligraphy. I have discovered that things go well if I explain to the potential recipient that they are to use their intuition and choose the bookmark they are drawn to. Without exception, people pick a bookmark with a quote that is in line with their lives. It's a fun game and it appears to work 100% of the time. I don't know why this is true. Maybe we're all psychic.

For readers who don't know my background, let me give you an overview. I worked as an illustrator for at least thirty years. For many of those years I also worked as an art director and creative director at advertising agencies. But making the transition to doing only fine art with my artistic talents has not been easy. It is like relearning to throw a baseball. To let go and let the artistic feelings guide me rather than client's preferences. It's freedom when you aren't enslaved to creating for others instead of yourself. I can turn on the realism whenever I feel like it, but I like the surprise of literally whipping the paint at the canvas in an abstract impressionist way. Here is a painting I did years ago that I recently framed. It is titled 'Un bel après-midi,' which translates to 'A beautiful afternoon.' The process for doing this painting: I had used a board to test various colors and one day I saw the woman and her daughter in the blobs of paint. Voila; true story. I wish all paintings were that easy. 

The day after I framed this art I gave away many bookmarks. I gave a couple of mandarin oranges to a lady and her teenage daughter who were begging outside Trader Joe's. I was a good person. But then the bad things began. Xfinity doubled my rates without telling me. The third world Xfinity agent I reached via phone could barely speak English. So I went to Xfinity's office and asked them for an explanation. They said there was nothing they could do. So I quit Xfinity and went to T-Mobile, who provides service for my cellphone. I told them I already had a NETGEAR router and modem that worked just fine. They said their equipment would work with what I had. All I needed to do was check if my modem had a place for a 'Sim-card.' Nope, it didn't have one. Then they said all I needed to do was get an adapter between an Ethernet cable and an HDMI cable. I searched all over town. No such adapter. I went online and found a few. All made in China. That raised my antennae because in my experience the Chinese have no scruples about lying or selling things which get Prop-65 warning labels. Products that will give buyers cancer. So I was pleased to find an adapter with the headline 'Made in America.' It arrived in a few days. A large metal rectangular box was in the kit. It had an Ethernet port on one end and an HDMI cable of the opposite end. They also had power cable ports. What? The alarm bells went off in my head. Danger! Danger! The poorly written instructions had a disclaimer that the manufacturer was not responsible for the product causing a fire or damaging my equipment. Nope. So I returned it without using it and got my money back from Amazon. Later, I learned that Ethernet to HDMI is not a reliable option, and even dangerous. The next day I went to T-Mobile to return their equipment. As I walked to the front door of the T-Mobile store the sidewalk was blocked by a bicycle. Old couples were having to squeeze by it. But I squeezed by it and entered the store. A Hispanic guy was arguing with the Hispanic woman, Maria, that I'd had a pleasant conversation with the previous day. I'd even given her a bookmark. I was about ten feet from them and asked the guy if that was his bike. And if so, could he please move it because it was blocking people on the sidewalk. He looked at me with contempt and said no one should touch his bicycle. I stepped closer, and was now about a foot from his face. I said it would only take him fifteen  seconds to move it. He refused to move the bike and said “Who are you to tell me what to do with my bike?” I was ready to fight. I wanted to say, like Dirty Hairy, “I’m the guy who’s going to kick your ass in a T-Mobile store.” Or say as I showed him my concealed pistol, “This is a 357 caliber pistol, the biggest handgun in America. And if you don’t move that bike I’m going to blow a hole in you big enough to stuff a taco in it.” 

My mind was calculating the repercussions of my fighting this guy. Why is he dressed all in red? Was he a member of a gang? And, if so, were his gang member buddies nearby? I wondered where the Hispanic manager and Hispanic assistant manager were. Then Maria told the guy that she couldn't help him and he stormed out of the store, got on his bicycle and left. At that very moment the manager and assistant manager came from behind a metal door at the back of the store. They looked relieved the guy had left. Oh, I thought, now I get it. The troublemaker was a gang member. They hid, rather than deal with him.

Vigilante justice isn't appropriate in every situation. Having a Dirty Harry mentality is dangerous. But trusting intuition, just like when I paint, is a good idea. If the Hispanic guy, who was dressed in a bright red jogging type outfit, was a gang member, and I'd fought him and won, he'd have phoned his pals to hunt me down. I was on camera in the store. He would have to make the first move or I could be sued. Perhaps if I was a Superhero I could have used my talent to melt his bike with my laser beam eyes, or encase him in a block of ice. But I'm just an old white guy who happened to have high testosterone near the time of a full moon. Never a good time to reason with anyone. As the song lyric goes, "Saturday night's the night for fighting, get a little action in." Fight only if you have to fight. It's okay to walk away. Bravery is important, but think it through.

After my T-Mobile store situation I went back to Xfinity. A Hispanic store employee said I qualified as a new customer, even though I'd been their customer for over two years. He gave me the new customer rate, which is half what I'd been paying. Oh happy days! The good things had returned. The fickle finger of fate had decided to give me a break. A tech guy arrived the following day who set up the system in a half an hour. I am riding the wave of good things again.

 

I've had Paris on my mind. Again.

My daughter has lived in Paris for almost sixteen years. She's married to an Assistant Director named Gregoire, and four months ago they had their first child, Olive. Which means I am officially a grandfather.

So I'm thinking about visiting Paris this year to see Olive. I've been to Paris a few times. I stayed in the 19th arrondissement for a month. It was a celebration of my recovery from having broken five vertebrae of my back. Three of the breaks were on the wings of my lumbar vertebrae, and there was nothing the doctors could do for that other than have me wear a brace for eight weeks.

Which means, I was pretty lucky. I don't think I'll be pursuing a new career as a stuntman. I'm like a cat with nine lives, but I've used up about half of them. When you've had near death experiences it deepens your faith in God and maybe it also brings up a few questions about why bad things happen to good people. Yes, I consider myself a good person. But nobody's perfect.

My Paris experiences and breaking my back led to my writing the novel and screenplay, 21 Days in Paris. Here is a link to one of the two promos I created. I am still hopeful a publisher or literary agent will love it. I have shared my 'elevator pitch' with over one-hundred people. Everybody loves it. Often they ask when the film is coming out. I have had five invitations from all over the world to submit the "film" to festivals. Oh, if only it was true. Here's the promo link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dsjHFUvpO8

I was excited when the screenplay was the finalist-nominee in the Paris Film Festival. It also placed in many other screenplay contests. I took a wait and see point of view because I know it takes years for agents and producers to make decisions about novels and scripts. Most of them want copycat type stories, that is, stories that are easy to sell. They don't want Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. What is surprising, and disappointing, is the numbers of literary agents whose wish lists contain requests for LGBTQ stories. I guess I was happy that Trump made it a law to keep men out of women's sports. I could write a book about the gay people I've known. Like, once I was romantically stalked by a transgender professor. It's like that song, Lola, by The Rolling Stones. But thankfully, I never joined the other team (as Seinfeld described it). I understand the phrase: Saved by grace. Thank God for angelic protection.

For the past two years I've had an interesting hobby. Well, I think it's an interesting hobby. I've created about 300 original art bookmarks. They're quite beautiful, with quotes on their backsides. Here's one from Anne Frank I especially enjoy: "In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. No one has ever become poor by giving." 

    

They're often splatters of acrylic paint on multimedia paper. 

I enjoy the freedom of random art because for decades representational artwork was how I made a living. Like this potato chip bag I created in 2005 for Pinnacle Foods (a Bird's Eye brand). Some people are impressed by this art and design. I got out of the advertising game a long time ago. I wrote copy and art directed print and broadcast campaigns for products I mostly didn't like that much. We have such short lives. Why spend it doing work for someone we wouldn't hang out with or agree with? 

I have samples of my art on Wix and Fine Art America. 

https://denismortenson.wixsite.com/mysite

https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/denis-mortenson

Anyway, I digress. What I do with the bookmarks is fun. I take a dozen with me everywhere I go, and give them away to strangers. Some people think I'm a fool to do this. I mean, it costs me money to create them, right? But I view it as giving back; tithing to the universe. I give to make the world a better place.

My reward? Talking to strangers, seeing their reactions. People want to be loved and appreciated. By bringing happiness, I receive happiness.

Anne Frank is absolutely right: "No one has ever become poor by giving." 

It's better to give than receive because giving feels good. I wish we were all wired to be givers, but many people are takers. Imagine a world where giving was the normal way to live our lives. Wow, what a wonderful world it would be! 

 Living happily and drama-free.

    

The front of my Nissan Pathfinder after the accident in Mississippi in 2021.

The past two and a half years has been taken up with the arduous process of settling an auto accident claim using an out of state lawyer. 

My accident happened in the worst conditions. It was just before the snopocalypse that paralyzed America and made Texas a land without good gasoline. Normally, Siri can be trusted to give good directions, but sometimes it really gets it wrong. On my way back from Florida, as I entered Mobile, Alabama, a heavy rain began. A major snowstorm was forecast. Thus, when Siri directed me north into Mississippi, I listened. Fifty miles later, not far from Hattiesburg, on a wet highway, a young woman (who was texting), ran a red light and collided with my beloved low mileage Nissan Pathfinder. Our cars spun like inebriated dancers on the wet highway. In the collision I held onto the steering wheel so tightly it permanently bent the steering column. When the state troopers showed up it was a scene out of Smokey & The Bandit. The lead cop pointed to two unopened bottles of Pellegrino water and said, "You been drinking, boy?" I replied, "No sir, those are Italian mineral water bottles and one cracked my dashboard and the other hit me in the head." The other driver replied, (briefly looking up from texting while sitting at the wheel of her late model Toyota SR5), when I asked her what he problem was, "I didn't see you!" It was madness, and I was injured. The hospital was a zoo. A line of injured people stood in a hallway waiting to be evaluated. No doctor examined me. I received too many x-rays. A woman appeared with a handwritten note to help me find my vehicle. A week later I began to recover. I had brain fog from a concussion. I learned my Nissan had been towed fifty miles away, to a redneck town in Mississippi. It was the script from a drama set in the South.

Unfortunately, I could not hire a law firm in California because the law requires being represented by a firm in the state where the accident occurred, which in this case is Mississippi. Thus, there was a slew of medical appointments and the usual three ring circus that ensues when lawyers and insurance companies try to work together. But I am happy to report I received the lion's share of the settlement last week after mitigation. The remainder is being held in trust until the liens are sorted out. I won't go into the detail of the case because I'd rather not think about it. It's the same reason I refuse to go to carnivals. The clowns give me nightmares. It could be a made for TV movie. When the money was agreed upon a group of criminals in Las Vegas impersonated the Veterans Administration and tried to extort monies from the settlement. This is the kind of world we live in. You cannot make this stuff up. You can never be too careful or too thankful.

I have not written on this blog for a long time. I have been writing a fair about of fiction, and honestly have spent a great deal of time watching movies and reading books. I guess I have been checking out of reality because my reality wasn't that pleasant. The other thing that took up a lot of my time was the daily texting, emails, and phone calls from a woman in Pasadena who was convinced I was her soulmate. I won't share many details about that because there's no point. But I broke off that relationship a month ago. I walked the tightrope of trying to not hurt her feelings when I said goodbye. We're theoretically still friends. I am not a cruel person, but this lady had way too much drama going on. For example, her sister in Santa Barbara is an extreme hoarder, and incapable of making decisions. She insists in taking charge of everything to do with money. The sisters butt heads every time they interact about anything. For the past six years they have been fighting over how and when to sell their parent's house. Somehow they managed to agree to sell their grandparent's house, so maybe all hope isn't lost. In summary, I ran screaming into the woods with my clothes on fire. I wish families did not have drama, but they do. In their case it is  as simple as one sister not getting along with her sister. The sister who pursued me had way too much going on in her life besides the drama of selling her parent's house in trendy West L.A. She has physical things I can't get over. She walks with a strange canter due to a curved spine, and has a missing tooth on one side of her smile. Why not fix it? She led me to believe the missing tooth was a new thing, but it has been like that for six years. She is rich and can afford to fix it, not because of having worked all her life, but because she has lived on trust money from her grandparents and parents for the past thirty years. I guess that makes me an idiot, being unwilling to marry a woman for her money, but I have an old fashioned idea that you don't marry someone for their money. You marry them because you are crazy in love with them. Thank god this woman and I never slept together. I told her I wanted to remain mostly platonic. Normally, that would cool the jets of most people, but she was not easily put off.

 
At a wildflower location in 2023.

That woman's family issues are not that unusual. Most families are screwed up. Take for example, my brother Neil and his recent battle with esophageal cancer. Was I told in a timely manner about it? No, of course not. Is he fighting a losing battle with cancer? I expect so. He will be my second sibling to die of cancer. My eldest brother, Paul, died of three types of cancer ten years ago. The two brothers had smoking in common. I am thankful I have never had an interest in smoking. I also have an older sister and brother who smoked for decades. Thus, I expect they will eventually get cancer. Strangely, not every long term smoker gets cancer. I learned of Neil's cancer from my son, who learned of it from my daughter, who lives in Paris with her French husband. I was kept out of the loop. It made me paranoid. I guess I shouldn't have cared. Neil was never friendly. For example, when I was eleven he slapped me in the face for no good reason. You don't forget things like that. Years later I was gifted with eighty-one acres of land in southwest Utah. I was naive and shared the good news with my siblings. None congratulated me. Neil's response was to tell me to sell it because it was worthless land. He pronounced his opinion without knowing anything about the land. Being cynical is the way of my family. We have a talent for judging people. I will probably mail Neil a get well card, but I don't think he will believe that I didn't know about his cancer. So maybe it will be a waste of energy and a stamp. I won't attend his funeral because nowadays I avoid any social situation that will make me uncomfortable. You only have so many hours and breaths left on this planet, so use your time wisely. And since my accident I have been without a car. I don't want to be around my family because they make me unhappy. I need to avoid unhappiness.

Maybe you are like me, or maybe you are the opposite of me. I suspect all families have problems. I know a 40-something woman in Omaha, Nebraska who has family issues. The main problem is she was her grandfather's favorite. The controversy began when he decided to change his will and give her everything. Like, millions of dollars.  Her mom tried to have her father declared incompetent, and the will voided. It's a mess. She has a sister who hates her for getting the money. Before this will debacle they got along fine. I wish these sorts of dramas weren't commonplace. Every single person I know has drama going on in their lives. My goal is to live drama free. If you don't take chances, the odds of something bad happening go down. If I ever consider getting in another relationship, I will have a list of maybe ten questions. I guess I could call it the Drama Free Relationship Form.

I still buy lottery tickets, but never excessively. I aspire to have more happiness in my life. I still pray, though I'm not sure it does much to change anything. Remarkably, I have managed to live my life the last year without a vehicle. I paid for shuttles, and a couple has lent me their vehicle a few times. You can survive without a car. It's not easy if you are in pain, but it can be done. It has required me to walk almost a mile to the nearest store. The post office is two miles away. I might be training for being a marathoner. I view it as part of my physical recovery. Every morning I do an exercise routine that involves thirty sit-ups, twenty pushups, repetitions with barbells, and freeform dancing to music. I think it's helped me. But some things aren't right. I have a cyst on my left kidney, a Schmorl's Node on my spine, a few bulging disks, occasional numbness on my left foot and left hand. These things are to be expected after an auto accident. You get used to pain. And if the pain is too much I hook myself up to my MedicPad device for a hour or two or six. It's like a ten-step device physical therapists use. I bought it in 2016 at a Gem Faire in Santa Barbara. It came with socks, flip-flops, and other accessories crafted to electrically stimulate nerves. I normally don't tell people about my personal life. I tuck that info into my screenplays, novels, and short stories. My daughter says I should write a memoir. Maybe I will eventually. Maybe I won't. If doing it makes me unhappy, I will avoid it. I don't have any time left for unhappiness.

        Jim Morrison's modest grave in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris still brings fans.

Paris was having a heatwave and I was wandering the unevenly cobbled sometimes shady lanes of Père Lachaise Cemetery, trying to find the legendary graves of Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde, aided by two Russian women.

I found myself in the company of two lithe blondes, a Russian mother and daughter, who were equally enamored with the Lizard King. The daughter shared that she played drums in a band and they were going to a Queen concert later that night. I had my eye on her mother but the daughter seemed to think, since I was from SoCal, that I was going to be the father of her children and keep her in the lap of luxury. They were following a Google map to Morrison's grave, so we walked together, me in my fantasies and they in theirs.

The grave was modest and tucked between monolithic tombs. With the helter-skelter angles of some of the ancient graves that had settled into the sloped grounds it would be easy to miss Morrison's final resting place. But unlike the other tombstones, his was festooned with momentos  from adoring fans. It would be creepy to be in the cemetery on a cold, dark, wet Blue Sunday. The mother and daughter were model material, and I thought of the lyrics of that song: I met my own true love one, on a Blue Sunday. She looked at me and told me, I was the only, one in the world, now I have found my girl.Then I went in search of Oscar Wilde's tomb. It was on the far side of the cemetery and I was in need of a guide because the Russian ladies had wandered away when I didn't show proof I was a multimillionaire American in need of a Russian hottie. Suddenly an old Frenchman showed up. He seemed to like me, so I explained, in bad French, what I was seeking to find. He was amiable and led me there, all the while I thought it was a coincidence that he was also on his way to the tomb of the man who wrote, "A friend stabs you in the front," but mais non - he was just being neighborly, and once we arrived he bid adieu. The tomb appears to be an attempt by a shabby artist to replicate a Babylonian ruler's crypt with its winged weirdness. It's surrounded by an eight feet tall plexiglass panel, to cut down on the many lipstick kisses applied to the megalithic tomb's stone. Even so, the plexiglass has quite a few lipstick marks. But why? Was it because of his wittiness, or what? Most people of his time saw him as a degenerate. Nowadays he would be a conservative.

My daughter had married a young French film director the previous day, and I had the hot afternoon was no longer thrilling me. My last visit to Paris had been overly long, and this one was overly short. But that's probably just as well because the temperatures were way above normal and I still hadn't recovered from my troubled arrival at Charles de Gaulle airport, where I'd almost not made it into the country due to my passport having been stolen. The fully booked flight on United could certainly be blamed for keeping me from sleeping during the ten hour flight from San Francisco. Losing a passport is serious, especially when the French TSA apparently aren't used to passport cards, which turned out to be my salvation when all else failed. And who took my passport? I have my theories. It had forced me to spend over half a day at the U.S. Embassy to get an Emergency Passport, which I thought I needed to board my flight out of Paris, and get back into the United States. Both of these assumptions were incorrect, but I'd never lost a passport before.

The second party was was a somewhat lavish but casual affair. Cheese platters (fromage) arrived, with the champagne.

The wedding had been held in the stylist second floor of a Marie, not far from my Airbnb, Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, and my daughter's and son-in-law's apartment. It was administered by an assistant mayor of the 19th arrondissement, and his secretary. The assistant mayor wore a three color French flag banner from his right shoulder to his left hip and he was in a jovial mood. The half-hour ceremony was entirely in French, and most of the forty guests and witnesses were French, so I only understood some of the language. At a certain point my daughter and son-in-law stood and were asked if they were willing to wed and they each said, "Oui" and that was that. Then the pronouncement was made that the lovebirds were officially wed and the guests mingled and posed for photos on the marble staircase and tossed rice on the newlyweds as they came from the building. In most ways it was like a justice of the peace wedding, but it had a nuance of something more stylish. 

It was probably just fine because my daughter and her fiancé had lived together for nearly fourteen years in Paris. Why get married? I heard at least one of their friends remark later at the first of two parties. The first party was in a bar a short distance from the Marie building and I tried to fit in and chatted with some of my son-in-law's film friends. Perhaps it was bad form to try to learn how I might sell my 21 Days in Paris screenplay, but what else was I going to talk about with strangers? I spoke little bad French and they spoke little bad English. Like most parties there were superficial conversations going on. Kudos to the French people I met because they were kind enough to listen to me going on and on.  My son and his wife were also there and some friends of my daughter's from New York. People were mingling; noshing on slices of cured meats, fromage, and sipping wines and spiked cider. A few kids were going stir-crazy. The following day there was a party in Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, and I have to say that everyone should spend time in this lovely park. I was lodged in an Airbnb just a block and a half from an entrance to the park, and I'd already taken two walks in it. I imagined myself living in Paris next to the park and how pleasant it might be. I was having a make-believe life in Paris. Oh-la-la.

You can see surreal things in any park. For instance, on my first walk in Parc des Buttes-Chaumont I found a lovely young woman sprawling on a tree limb, several meters off the ground. She gave me a flirtatious glance and then whistled to her Gypsy boyfriend and pleaded for a cigarette. And here I thought she was an earthy Mother Nature type. So I snapped a quick photo before her boyfriend arrived, though if she'd been alone she might have been my segue in Paris. Not that I need intrigue in a city enamored with l'amour. I'd previously spent more time in Parc de la Villette, which is also in the 19th arrondissement, and while I was there there were many outrageous sculptures beside the broad sidewalks. That was before the pandemic, in October of 2016. It would have been an ideal time to travel from Paris to Menton on the Côte d'Azur. But, alas, that trip will have to wait until later this year, or next year, such as the Lemon Festival (Fête du Citron) in February. My time in Parc de la Villette gave me lots of ideas for my novel and screenplay. The promo for 21 Days in Paris is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dsjHFUvpO8

Paris was in the mood to party when I was stuck in the U.S. Embassy trying to get a new passport. Grandstands were set up along the Champs-Elysées. But I'm not a big fan of fireworks.

Kudos to my son-in-law, Gregoire, for spending half the day with me at the U.S. Embassy, helping me get a new passport. It was probably a waste of a day because  my passport card would have sufficed. TSA people aren't deep thinkers; if I flashed my old man American smile and showed that passport card I probably wouldn't have been hassled and have to hear a stupid woman at the Newark, NJ airport police station say, "We don't who you are, sir." It was a philosophical question that needed me to reply, "Does anyone know who they are?" My recommendation, unless you have a gigantic head of hair, is to never used the photo booths in Paris, or even the one at the U.S. Embassy. My photos showed me as being a creature from another world. It appeared that my face was melting or on my way to becoming a deep sea creature. My lips were far too low on my face, and had a fishy look. 

So after the horrendous morning and afternoon at the U.S. Embassy, I was happy to go exploring a bit further. My bucket list included a stop at the I Love You Wall, which is easy to get to. Just hop a Métro to the Place des Abbesses stop. Le Our des Je t'aime is a must see, even though the middle of a sweltering afternoon isn't as romantic as a sultry early evening before its locked up. The garden is pleasant and it doesn't take a romantic rocket scientist to imagine sitting on a bench in that garden doing a little French kissing. More tongue please. Merci. 

Sacré Coeur de Montmartre offered a spiritual reprieve from somewhat stressful short visit to Paris. I was just warming up emotionally to the City of L'amour and wanted to kiss and make up, but my time in Paris was coming to a close.

My son-in-law and I walked up steep stairs and narrow cobbled streets to the top of the Montmartre hill to take in the view from the Basilica of Sacré Coeur. We joined a crowd entered the cool, dimly lit church, hushed by a church priest, and told to remove our hats. You see, it's bad form to be in a church with your hat on. Now, this isn't the case in a Jewish synagogue, where men wear yarmulkes and women wear head scarves. Does God care what we wear inside a man-made building? Nope. I suspect if we wanted to wear nothing but fig leaves it would be fine with God. I will leave you with Les Champs-Elysées by Pomplamoose. Will I be going back to Paris later this year? Maybe so. I found an unused Metro ticket in my wallet, and it states it's good until December. Voila.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B4CLQGxHmI

 

Oh la la, 21 Days in Paris!

T’es pas du quartier, toi? 

Every time I reflect on Paris it's like falling in love with the idea of love. It's like kissing someone you are falling in love with, and just when you are on the verge of breaking up, your love is renewed. You can never grow tired of Paris. She will haunt your dreams, and the dreams will be light and airy, impossibly delicious, dark and sullen. Because Paris, like all big cities, and all big love affairs, can make you morose.

Paris is a wine with a complicated aftertaste. Slightly oaky and bitter, but then it warms and does a 360 in your mouth and delivers warm notes like birds in the trees of the Champs-Élysées, titilating to the tongue and palpitating your coeur. Oh la la, your giddiness begins as the gray of Paris skies give up the last of their rain, the sun kisses your cheeks, the love affair is renewed, and the sadness is washed into the Seine. Each day is a love affair in Paris.

Alors, am I speaking of my time in the 19th Arrondissement? Mais oui. Am I so stuck in time that I have no realistic view of Paris? Bien sûr! What did I do with my brief and magical love affair? Why, I did what any aspiring author does: I wrote a screenplay and a novel about it. You see, I went to Paris to visit my daughter, and her husband, Grégoire. He is an assistant film director, and has worked on some big projects, such as Midnight in Paris, Lucy, Valerian and the City of Ten Thousand Planets, and many French TV and feature film projects. My plan was to spend two weeks in Paris and then travel to Menton, on the Côte d'Azur. But as I've mentioned here, Paris is like an addiction. Like all love affairs, in the beginning you fall under its spell. I felt powerless to leave Paris. So I stayed for twenty-one days.

Naturally, this became the title of my screenplay and novel, 21 Days in Paris. Here, watch a promo I created to get a feel for what they story is about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dsjHFUvpO8

Here is a summary of the story. 

Ryan Hollister, a professor of art in Seattle, has fallen off the roof of his house. While in a coma, he dreams he is  in Paris, where he meets and falls in love with a French woman named Aurélie. Landscapes regularly morph into Impressionist paintings, and he has conversations with Degas at the Musée d’Orsay, and elsewhere in Paris, and with Mimi, a mysterious, magical, older woman who seeks to help him in his quest. On the eve of his asking Aurélie to marry him, while in a pedicab after seeing the Louvre, a bomb goes off. Ryan wakes in a hospital in Seattle, and discovers his magical experiences in Paris were a dream while in a coma for twenty-one days. He decides he must go to Paris to see if Aurélie is real or a fantasy. 

I suppose it's human nature for you to want me to tell you the ending of 21 Days in Paris. Sorry, I can't do that. Grégoire, my French son-in-law, said the ending of the screenplay was "sweet and satisfying." When the novel is published, and I see you at a bookstore signing, I will be happy to sign your copy of 21 Days in Paris. And if it becomes a movie after that time, and you recognize me in the snack bar, I'll buy you a bag of popcorn. I may be wearing a disguise, and be dressed like Degas.

The story in the screenplay and novel is partly based on my experience. You see, I fell off the roof of my house and broke my back. I was in and out of consciousness. After I recovered I needed a break from my job in Orange County, California so I went to Paris. It was the last stop on a vacation that included most of England and Denmark. 

Most of the story happens in Paris. So naturally the protagonist, Ryan, visits the tourist destinations in the city, but one I didn't go to was The I Love You Wall, which is off the steep street that leads to Montmartre. It's located at Square Jehan Rictus, Place des Abbesses. At the top of the hill is Sacré-Cœur, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. In the 19th Century, and earlier, the hillsides of this hill were covered with vineyards, and there were many windmills. Now there are only a couple of windmills, and the Montmartre Vineyard, by Renoir's former house, which is the Musée de Montmartre. My favorite place in Paris is difficult to say. Of the major museums I most enjoyed and visited the Musée d'Orsay. It's where some of the magical parts of story happens. I did a video of the museums of Paris. Watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybOxdHK6P0A

You won't go hungry in Paris. If you have a sweet tooth, Paris will certainly satisfy you. They are big consumers of meat, and their pastries are to die for. There was a study done a few years ago to determine why French people have such a low incidence of cancer because they are prodigious smokers, and ravenous meat eaters. It was determined the reason for their robust health is the resveratrol in the wine they have at nearly every meal. It's their fountain of youth. So rush right out and buy some in your local health food store and you might live a little longer. You would have to drink a bottle of red wine a day to see any effects, so buy a bottle of resveratrol. You can find it in Paris, so don't worry. But if you go all the way to Paris, and other places in France, you would be much happier to go on a wine tour and forget about taking pills. Order wine with every meal, like most everyone in France.

Bonne journée!

When in doubt, chill out.

This is Avila Beach, near Pismo Beach, north of Santa Barbara. It’s a great place to chill out and think things through. And God knows I need to chill out. There is a row of shops by the beach, and I’ve gotten into the habit of ordering a fish sandwich and a cup of chowder from Mr. Rick’s. Yesterday I had a Corona with my usual order. Now I get those iconic ads for Corona.

My life the last few months can be summed up by the lyric from a Grateful Dead song, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.” 

The craziness began when I left the Seattle area last summer and went to Utah to sell my eighty acres of land. I went with the expectation that the sale would be quick, but when two buyers backed out, I had to fire my real estate agent. Months later, after camping out on my property in a big tent, buyers were found near the end of September. Unfortunately, I believed I might be able to buy a house on the West Coast, so I began driving around coastal California, Oregon, and Washington. I had a lot of misadventures, but my bids were outbid and my eyes were opened to the fact that the world had gone crazy not only via the Covid virus, but also in the real estate market. But I suppose I've got my feet wet if I ever decided to take up travel writing as a way to make a living.

 

After some looking around I discovered northwest Florida had affordable houses, so off I went to the panhandle of Florida. Was I worried about the Covid pandemic? Nope. I was apparently immune to it. I wore my mask, but saw a lot of people who didn’t. 

 

For anyone who hasn’t driven across the United States, it takes a lot of time and tanks of gasoline to cross Texas because it’s bigger than a lot of European countries. I arrived in Pensacola and honestly thought, "This is it!" Oh how wrong I was. 

White beach sand, gentle waves, pretty girls. What is there not to like? Yeah, Gulf Breeze, just south of Pensacola, is where I went to unwind. It's easy to be seduced by good weather, and wonderful beaches. Mea culpa. I used to hang out at the Artel Gallery, playing music with local musicians. It was an okay way to spend my time. I thought I was buying a house. I thought my life made sense. I even hit a few golf balls at Bubby Watkins driving range. Pensacola seemed like a cool place to hang out. I had blinders on.

I immediately put bids on many houses. Again I was outbid. I was also beginning to be educated about why the houses are so cheap in Florida. Hurricane Ivan and Hurricane Sally, who arrived in the panhandle of Florida sixteen years apart to the day, September 16, 2004, and September 16, 2020, had caused damage to the majority of the houses. I was two weeks away from closing on a house when the inspection showed leaks, wood rot, and the need to replace the roof. On the last house, a week from closing, the Veteran’s Administration said the repairs would have to be done by the owner, or I would have to show I had the excess funds to do the repairs. So that was the end of that. I could have opted to stay in Pensacola, there are nice beaches in nearby Gulf Breeze, and the weather is pretty nice. But I was burned out, and had spent a fair amount of money already, so I decided to head back to the West Coast. 

 

Siri, which had provided a mix of correct and incorrect directions in recent months, directed me on a rainy night into Mississippi from Mobile, Alabama. This time it was wrong. That’s when a young woman ran a red light and I got in an accident. It was everything the movies portray of the South. The cops were more interested in gathering together to shoot the breeze and not inclined to find out what caused the accident. The doctor at the hospital ignored and never examined me. My Nissan Pathfinder was totaled and I was stuck in a hotel room for two weeks. My insurance company, USAA, said I was on my own because I only had liability. The other driver’s insurance, State Farm, was equally unhelpful. Thus, I hired a legal firm in Hattiesburg, Mississippi to recoup my losses, and I paid the towing company to help get my Pathfinder running again. Miraculously, they resurrected it by pulling out the front end, replacing the radiator, and two new lights. I was in pain, and fed up with everything, so I got in my ruined truck and drove to Saint George, Utah to load a U-Haul with my things, and my truck on a trailer. And off I went to California. I was in no condition to drive due to having aggravated my sciatic nerve damage from when I’d broken my back in 2014, but I kept going. That is how I arrived in Santa Barbara County for the second time in six months, and decided I had no reason to go back to the Pacific Northwest. 

As of this writing I am still in Santa Barbara County, awaiting a financial settlement from the accident. There's not much chance of my buying a house in this area unless a miracle happens. I’ve used this time to finish writing my seventh novel, 21 Days in Paris. I’ve submitted it to a handful of publishers, literary shops, and producers. This story is based on a true story (mine). While in a coma after falling off the roof of his house, an art professor dreams he's in Paris, where he falls in love with a French woman. A bomb goes off on the eve of his asking her to marry him and he wakes in a hospital in Seattle where he learns he's been in a coma for twenty-one days. He goes to Paris to see if the woman he loves exists in the real world. Here's a promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oveaQGVrSsY  

Summer will soon be here. I’m not sure where I will end up yet, but sometimes it's best to simply stop and think things over. Chill out, kick back, and let God decide the best thing to do. The weather is nice, I'm eating beach food, wearing sunglasses and flip-flops. Life is good. Still feeling phantom pain in my lower back from my damaged sciatic nerve and lumbar vertebrae. Somehow, I don't know how, everything's gonna be all right.