Packing

Packing is like dying, or preparing for it, measuring the books for the box, the corpse for the coffin. Leaving for France -- again -- I shed everything, in hope and fear. Everything left is excess, there's Karen Finley. Can I part with Camus? Or Elizabeth Bishop? Of course. The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Racial Profiling

When they were handing out the immigration cards on the plane, the flight attendant gave me the customs card in French along with stuff about visas. I asked the guy next to me if Americans needed something more, and he said, "All you need is that one," and I said, "You never know these days."

He laughed a little. That was the most he'd said the whole trip. We were terribly discrete with each other. Still, he seemed nice, spoke French and had a little accent in English that reminded me of this Colombian guy I know. I'd peeked over his shoulder every now and then and looked at what he was reading. It was all about kidney transplants and rejection.

We got to talking. He was a medical doctor in the last stage of his training. I was a journalist. He was from the Middle East, but working in the Mid-West. I was from neighboring Kentucky.

He had a four hour layover in New York. I said it was terrible. And he said it was on purpose.

"I'm always picked during their random searches. It's funny." He giggled a little, and said it again, "I'm always picked in random searches. It's funny." He smiled faintly at how "always" and "random" could occur in the same sentence. Funny. So now he sticks in a few extra hours between changes for his pals at Homeland Security.

I said maybe it was his striped blue shirt that was threatening. Or they thought all the transplant stuff was code. That was hilarious.

Everything is code, after all, the list I compile during the eight hour flight of things I have to do over the next week is an SOS of a disgruntled American. I don't need plastique to explode.

Sego Wins!

So it's Sego and Sarko in the final round of the French elections. Smart money would bet on the guy, but the chick's not out of it yet.

And even if she were, you have to organize anyway, make an opposition that can survive the victory of the immigrant-bashing son of a Hungarian immigrant who seems poised to launch a new Us against Them society.

Go out into the streets. Work. What have you got to lose?

Like Cats and Dogs

There are feral cats in the garden, and one in the house. I pet her and she bites me. I don't pet her and she bites me and runs away with a wild glance over her shoulder.

I was sprawled out on the couch yesterday, the dog at my feet, when there was a sudden thump on my chest, the cat staking her claim. I didn't move because I was afraid she'd poke my eyes out, but all she did was shut her own eyes and snooze, so I did, too.

Mother's Day

Just had a conversation with my mom, calling up to let her know I had an article coming out in the hometown paper. It lasted all of three or four minutes, but that was enough.

At birth, when they remove the bloody umbilical cord of girl children, they stick a knife in there instead. Only your mom knows where it is, and when you get too close, she grabs the hilt and twists.

At the Docs

I went to the doctor Tuesday because my guts have been committing hari kari all on their own.

The guy wasn't bad. Asked questions like I was an intelligent human being that might know something about what was going on in my own body, and even listened to the answers without that little sneer doctors have when you venture an opinion.

He took my blood pressure himself, actually poked around my belly (unlike a gastroenterologist I had once that didn't bother to touch me) and best of all, when it came time to pay the guy's jaw dropped when I said I didn't have a French insurance card, or any kind of insurance at all.

Same reaction at the blood drawing place. Ditto at the pharmacy where I broke the woman's heart as she tried to imagine living in a barbaric country where health was a commodity you buy and sell to mugs like me.

Vive la France.

Vision of the Future?

Sarko's UMP headquarters, Imaginons la France d'après. Imagining the France to come. Looks blue to me.

The Bad Old Days—Japanese Americans Speak Out

Anyway, somebody remembers what it is like and isn't sitting on their hands as Muslim men in the U.S. get picked up by the cops and jailed for no good reason.

Japanese Americans whose grandparents were imprisoned in the World War Two internment camps are filing amicus briefs to lawsuits challenging the government's increasingly broad powers to imprison and detain non-citizens because of their race or religion.

--“I feel that racial profiling is absolutely wrong and unjustifiable,” Ms. Yasui, 53, wrote in an e-mail message from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where she works as a writer and graphic designer. “That my grandmother was treated by the U.S. government as a ‘dangerous enemy alien’ was a travesty. And it killed my grandfather.” New York Times.

Now, if everybody else would get off their asses...