Fezzik In Paris

Beginnings are hard. The difficulty of a given beginning is complicated by the number of concurrent beginnings and their size; thus a new job with the same home is difficult, but manageable, as is a new home with the same job.

Then there is changing both your job and your home (or even worse, your perceived home).

Throw in the temporary removal of your support system (spousal and even furry).

Add in linguistic and cultural differences, a hearty serving of fatigue, and top it with the knowledge that things were comfortable, that they were going well, that they would have continued to go well for a while.

Walk into the grocery store (closed on Sundays, the savagery of it all). Feel vaguely shocked that you didn’t have to swipe a card or feel like a dumbass as the doorman tells you how to get in to your own hotel. Start reading labels. Boeuf: no. Jambòn: no. Poulet: ok. Perrier: I might just starve to death, but dammit, I now have six liters of Perrier, so to hell with it. “Read” the names of the aisles while wondering how the illiterate function back home. Contemplate the fact that those are words on the signs. I can not, however, read those words. I can read, but I can’t read these words. Language seems almost primal, even reading does, but only when it’s your language. Language and reading, which I can not conceive of being unable to do, is fake. It’s all so fake, just some bullshit a herd of people agree upon.

Turn a corner; wonder if chips is a cognate.

Fuck yeah: pop chips. I understand these. I know what these are.

Oh christ. Now to figure out how to get through the cashier.

paris is and is not what one expects.

the drive from the airport was entirely expected, in that the taxi that I was in had, by my count, a minimum of six near misses with other taxis and the various other small cars.

one expects airports and indeed, the surrounding areas to be industrial looking, but what I wasn’t expecting was architecture reminiscent of eastern europe, compete with brutalist loading docks and associated areas. Paris, or the nominal outskirts between CDG and La Defense, is an odd mix of familiar (I’m almost positive that I saw a big box store of some kind) and the unfamiliar (nearly indescribable multi-level street shops, replete with graffiti and an old man staring at what appeared to be perfume ads plastered in the window of a pharmacy). gas stations are markedly odd as well; they strongly remind me of eastern-seaboard rest stops more than anything.

As for la Defense itself, our hyper-modern business district looks like it was built in the 1970s (it was) by the same people responsible for the various commercial buildings that Godzilla knocked down in his various films (it wasn’t – or so I think).

At the moment I am waiting out a somewhat frazzled and undoubtedly grumpy hotel clerk who lectured me regarding actual check-in times. While I understand the reasoning, one would think that, with corporate bookings, the poor bastard getting off the plane doesn’t have control of said plane or when said plane arrives, and furthermore just wants to pass out in a bed that’s available after the nine-and-a-half hour lorazepam-dulled flight.

A case could be made that I should be out exploring, but with the lack of sleep, residual ativan, lack of food beyond two pieces of toast, two plain bagels and a bottle of sprite, and complete unfamiliarity with the locale, there is a non-zero probability involving me hopping on a plane back to Houston and calling this entire thing off.

but hey, i’m here. i’m sure that counts for something

Fezzik In Paris

Two Americans, three cats, and too many places named "de Gaulle"

pop chips

An arrival