And the Winner Is…Comté

Forty days is a lot, but still kind of short.  Exactly half of those days I woke up and scurried off to class, to train a sluggish brain to re-conceive the world.  The goal is not to translate, but to forge new paths of comprehension.  One at-first-mind-boggling conflation for me was that of sensory perception—sentir (“sense”) is used to describe feeling (physical as well as emotional), smelling, and tasting.  And parfum typifies scent as well as flavor.  But think of how evocative it is to, for instance, sense garlic: do you really taste alone without smelling?  Is the taste not accompanied by various sensations such as a peppery bite, a lingering pungency?

Will, does this have to do with Pokemon?

Speaking of complex flavors, after much sampling and reflection, I have concluded that my favorite French cheese is Comté.  It’s pretty much just fancy swiss cheese, but it’s perfect in every way.  Aside from traveling well, you can sink your teeth into it, it’s tangy and rich and bright, and it is fantastic alone and goes with everything.  Apparently lots of other people feel this way, as it is the most-produced AOC* French cheese.

*government quality regulation

Thank you for following along on this trip to France—and huge thanks to Marta for hosting me and sharing her life well lived.  What’s next is a surprise.  Tune in to find out if I:

- return to the regularly scheduled program “Antarctica Part IV: Ice-Shattering Adventures in Cargo Loading and Unloading”

- enroll in more gratuitous educational courses and “Teach English in Mystery Country”

- manhandle questionable meat while awaiting auroras at “Alaskan Winter Truck Stop”

The Future Simple

After a mere eighteen language lessons, we were asked to project what our lives will entail in 2040.  In class we took turns impersonating palm readers, and later I waxed poetic in my written homework.  Inspired by my fantastically-romantic writer-hero Patrick Leigh Fermor, I will swim the Hellespont at an advanced age (I’ll be 57)—and do him one better, reciting Byron’s verses in between breaststrokes (another Europe-to-Asia swim club member).  The future conditional (to say nothing of the subjunctive) is a beautifully nuanced construction.  In English it’s so concrete to say “If I see him, I will talk to him”; I rather like the French finessing of the verb to express the potentiality of the action, with conjugative elements of the infinitive, future, and imperfect all wrapped up in one word (“Si je lui vu, je lui parlerai”): I totalkperchancewill to him.

Crossing the bridge to the medieval quarter of Lyon, where verisimilitude = bed bugs.

All last week the city slowed.  One by one the bakeries put up notices of August closure and the dive-bomb buzz of motorbike engines lessened.  It was doubly surprising to find that Lyon, France’s second largest city, was simultaneously near-abandoned and stuffed with tourists.  Lyon, I cannot fathom why in the still of summer holidays you hosted some WNBA showcase with commentary amplified to fifty miles around until after midnight in addition to posting willfully atonal brass bands on every third corner.  And in case I didn’t get the hint that Lyon doesn’t like me…bedbugs.  Universe, you were supposed to check off the box for failed/traumatic youth hostel stay when I was, like, 20: why did you wait until now?

Luckily, the near future (at the moment of bedbug horror) was good.  In French, any plans further down the road than the next hour or so qualify for the future simple:  

-What are you going to do today?  

-I will meet up with a friend, we’ll catch up, go eat a delicious lunch, drink a glass of wine, and then walk around town for a while.  

No finessing layers of meaning into as few words as possible; just, simply, the future.

Weekly World News

A quick comment about last weekend: If ever a lame marching band smiled slyly just before a performance, the one that played “Get Lucky” in front of Trump and Macron at the Bastille Day parade did.

This modern art project is perhaps a comment on the city's motto: "Tossed but never sunk"?

And now back to food news.  It’s hard to believe, but the past seven days included a ham-cheese-béchamel pastry, duck kababs, unlimited pastis (one of those licorice-flavored alcohols), some eggs I flipped with technical precision, and real hot chocolate (a mug of cream + three chocolate bars).  Fear not—these delicacies did not distract from fermented and aged milk products: the rucksack was graced by six kinds of cheese before they slipped down my gullet.

breaking grammar news: I guess it’s not really any different than in English (“to make happy/sad/etc.”), but the operative word of expression in French is rendre, “to render.”  Perhaps the association in my mind is with rendering fat into soap, or some other very tangible, physical process.  Things got much sillier when our professor asked where he would party this weekend.  He was horrified by the outdated suggestion of la discothèque.  But none of us knew the amazing phrase the French use for “nightclub,” the term created either by forthright lesbians or thirteen year-old boys clumsily employing double entendre.  La boîte de nuit is literally “the box of night,” or colloquially “night-box,” and the cool kids just say they’ll meet up at la boîte.  Maybe our minds were in the gutter, but this all-too-apt name set off quite a bit of laughter.

Allow Me to Introduce Pierre

This week’s mini-journey was to the conjoined towns of Fontainebleau-Avon, to visit the Chateau de Fontainebleau, a royal palace for kings from the 1100s on through Napoleon Bonaparte.  I crossed one of Paris’s least-charming bridges to get to the proper train station, whereupon I was stymied by the variety of ticket machines.  (Thank you for psychologically preparing me for this day, NY Penn Station, with your three hostilely separate train lines.  Oh, you thought New Jersey Transit would take you to a destination in NJ?  Not if you’re between the Hudson and Mahwah…)  Eventually, ticket purchased and validated, we slowly creaked our way out of the city.

This is Dante, in Paris; I didn't take any good pictures at Fontainebleau

The chateau is decorated to the hilt: silk upholstery, 1,000-pound chandeliers, wall-sized tapestries of intricate weaving, and gilded curlicues abound.  I wondered how Louis VI* would feel about us plebeians in t-shirts and sandals shuffling past their magnificent acquisition of artisanship, pausing for five or so seconds when impressed by a sumptuous bedspread, and moving on rather indifferently.
*Louis the Fat, apparently.

In grammar news, I moved up to the A2 class and am once again proficient with the past tense.  The more wily imperfect (more delicious sounding in French: “l’imparfait”) is tough to pin down, though, as it is not only used for continuous past actions but also expressing emotions or states of mind.  As part of an exercise I didn’t realize was going to include explaining my deep inner motivations, I described to the nice Japanese woman behind me that I bring home rocks from places I visit.  A stone or rock is “une pierre.”  Now I will forever imagine all stones as small Frenchmen eagerly awaiting being picked up and carried in my pocket.

Les Kata

In ninth-grade French class, we each selected a typical French name, perhaps so that we would more likely stay within the confines of proper pronunciation, or to make the dreary task of learning such basic elements as the alphabet and how to say hello a bit more entertaining.  I chose Sabine because it sounded funny, not like a person’s name, more like a plant or mineral, and would allow for some disassociation/alternative personality.  I, Claire, was academically driven; Sabine was free to be mediocre, or formal, or whatever she may be.

I’m not nearly cool enough yet, but among those who frequently venture into the catacombs it is common to assume a name for the underground.  My second time down was less fraught and electrifying than the first (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQpz8kV3eZQ), but still enchanting.  We passed a memorial for a man that disappeared when retrieving wine from a basement, whose body wasn’t retrieved for 11 years; later, we explored a bunker built to protect civilians during the war that had poured walls and floors, finished with mosaic tile and had included plumbing.  We toasted each other with boxed rosé and cheap beer, and, because this is France, “junk food” included not only potato chips and M&Ms, but ham and cheese sandwiches, and a little jar of foie gras.

But most adventurously, we crawled, first on hand and knees, then pulled with arms and slid on bellies, through a narrow tunnel of earth adjoining our passage to the sidewalk grate (*note the backpack there for scale).  I was third in a line of six people.  Two more or less easily navigated that bit, and I would never be left for dead.  And yet I flushed with accomplishment—I hadn’t been afraid at all.

Les balcons

Things that happened in 48 hours in Paris:
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- Viewed approximately 8,000 charming balconies.

- Visited the doctor, almost effortlessly and at low cost, and got prescription face cream.

- Stumbled across a fancy Moroccan patisserie and devoured flatbread.

- The equivalent of an SATII aptly identified that my high school French of ten (oh shit) twenty years ago places me in the...beginner class.

- A brass band played outside Marta's apartment for an hour, including spirited renditions of Havanagela and Something to Talk About.

- Entertained a baby for nigh on forty minutes.  (*Well, was adjacent to baby while it entertained itself with wooden puzzle pieces and a book.)
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Don't worry, there's a whole month chock-full of grammar news coming your way.  Paris: Where Your Culinary Dreams and Scholarly Anxieties Come True.

News Brief: Cleaning Gross Things, Part 9 of 17

                                                                                                  Kelley Street ca. 1979

I have identified the home renovation equivalent of dicing bell peppers -- it is chipping tile.  A hammer creates the same callus as a chef knife, the repetitive motion exerts the same force on your wrist, and while it only requires 10% of your brain you must be careful not to obliterate the fingers of your non-dominant hand.  Though it would be fun to just smear a layer of concrete over the shitty old tile and go blithely on from there, it wouldn't be structurally sound; and so, we chip.

I washed ten-year-old, ten-year-old boogers off a wall.  And scraped, like a fine balsamic vinegar, 14-year-aged fridge goo from the floor.  But after steaming off the wallpaper and painting, the desperation that previously saturated every cubic foot of the place has ebbed away.  Once I wash the mold off the (never opened?) windows and new carpet is installed, we will have recovered the house from its midlife (geriatric?) crisis.

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*Background note: Mom and dad are fixing up our old house, which they've rented out ever since we moved, in 1990.  The front half (500 sq. ft. or so) was built in 1940, utilizing several tree stumps as footings.  Twenty years or so later, someone dug a basement, most of which is cinder block, but one side just disappears into the earthy gloom beyond.  The street remained unpaved until the mid-80s, and the driveway through next month.  It's located very close to popular downtown as well as the beach, yet the neighborhood languishes on the cusp of gentrification: seedy middle-aged men leer from their porches at all hours, and we think the house across the street is either a rehabilitation home for pedophiles or Mormon group living.  It is also near my favorite donut shop.

Maybe We'll Do In a Squirrel or Two

Pourquoi non? Who knows what we'll do?

Anything can happen.  The day may come when you find yourself, for the fortieth time, cadging a meal at a graduate school reception (despite never having attended any quaternary education)...or you stop off for a pork belly taco at a bougie cafe in Mississippi (guilt mounting for having expected crumbling infrastructure and Deliverance locals)...or you resignedly chew a stale bagel (your last MRE, woeful sustenance) to withstand endless, soulless, artificial, McMansion-stuffed suburbs a dozen miles outside Denver.

These happenings are neither tragic nor that bizarre, but you get the idea.  Plans change; but happily, your wonderful, strikingly tattooed friend welcomes you into her home, makes sure you have plenty of cabbage and cauliflower, and not only gets you on your feet but takes you on some great hikes.

So I missed a few states and many miles, but I was a temporary resident of Boulder before flying back to lots of nephew-kiddie-pool-time and wall washing with my parents.  And there's a few weeks to dream of all the cheeses I will stuff in my backpack when I get to Paris.

Training Day and the Big Game

I went on a sort of proto-roadtrip throughout New York City before embarking on the real one.  It's rather disorienting visiting the place you spent pretty much your entire adult life (14-Year Club Member), feeling as though you're just returning from another trip, but no -- you're not here to stay.  Shout-out to Alex for meeting me fresh out of the airport and calming my outsider status with colorful drinks and plantains in gentrified Harlem; to Katie for fabulous cheesecake and reminiscing that transported us from Utica back to the city; to Ted and Faye for a comfy couch and cooking in my own Union Square; to Shengning for the best bucolic skyline view in Sunset Park; to Matt for the first oyster I actually enjoyed; and to Julien and his endearing family for garlic butter and peace and quiet on the Upper East Side.

And then just as I was starting to elbow people in the subway again, it was time to go.  Past the industrial battlescapes of New Jersey, just a quick stop in Baltimore, and into that land amorphously referred to as the South.  Huh...Virginia looks a lot like the rest of the east coast.  Richmond, anyway, was cool, rainy, and full of trees.  And pretty brick buildings, some with patrician columns.  We wandered and partook of barbeque with fellow Antarcticans.  We stumbled upon the grave of Jefferson Davis.

Surprise: a roadtrip involves a lot of sitting.  In a car.  Luckily Julien is a good conversationalist and has lots of music.

All Over the Place

How would you like to read about a five-week car ride through lots of sparse south-and/or-western states?  Cool!  Here we go!

First I'm stopping in New York, because some reasons and beloved people, and that's where my friend with the car is.  Julien the fireman/Frenchman/drummer/fellow-fan-of-gin and I will eat barbeque and think esoteric thoughts while gazing at endless wheat fields.  So stay tuned for VA, NC, GA, TN, OK, NM, CO, UT, and CA.

And I have to admit I'm not the most doting of aunts, but isn't this guy pretty cute?  It was fun smelling flowers with you, Lori.

Driving On the Left!

Whoa, hey -- I can do this from my phone...oh magic phone, is there anything you can't do these days?

Maybe I've had too much sunshine, or maybe the utter and complete silence of the deserted landscape around me is just a little too quiet; anyway, bear with the sleep-time thoughts and auto-correct typos.

So far New Zealand has delivered like a boy with a new paper route.  The weather is perfect late summer, and from the Christchurch Botanic Gardens to the sparkling coves of Diamond Harbor to the flawless views from majestically named Roy's Peak I am embarrassed by a wealth of natural beauty.  Throw in all the plums you can eat from a ripe tree, a host's kitten, and a friend with a functioning credit card, and you've got yourself a great vacation.

Hmm, yes, I didn't think I'd be driving on these narrow, sideless roads this time around, due to some lack of adulting resulting in me not having access to credit.  Luckily my roomie needed to tackle a certain mountain for the third time, and was happy to be dropped off at the trailhead, a mere 30km down a gravel road with several creek fords.

He reluctantly allowed this photo to be taken, wherein he displays his really long rope and cool solar charger:

PENGUIN PHOTOS

I know I've dangled the promise in front of you for months, and here they finally are!  These two showed up a few days ago to molt, which means they just stand in one place for a few weeks, not really flinching unless you get closer than eight feet.  FEAST YOUR EYES:

Words I Never Thought I'd Say

No, not like that. :)  For many years, I'd been hard-pressed to dream up circumstances in which I'd be willing to sing "My Heart Will Go On."  But then, against several odds, Corndog Addiction became a reality.  I've wanted to have a band that plays the Dead Kennedys' "Holiday in Cambodia" for years, and McMurdo's underground punk scene needed a shot in the arm.  But it turns out punk music isn't always as easy as it sounds.  So we settled on some manageable tunes and punkified some others, including "Time After Time."

I decided not to go into a lengthy disclaimer about Jello Biafra's overblown paranoia concerning left-wing fascism, and just went for it -- instructing people to "come quietly to the camp," and describing how "you'd look nice as a drawstring lamp," then building to peak furor:

Now it is 1984
Knock knock on your front door
It's the suede-denim secret police
they have come for your uncool niece...
you will croak you little clown
when you mess with President Brown

*That's past and current California governor Jerry Brown.  Watch out for that guy, he might really mess things up one day.

Because we only had five songs under our belt, Corndog Addiction played a smaller venue, for a select audience (the band room; twenty friends.)  It was pretty great.

Last week, my former coworkers really outdid themselves.  The galley folks set up a little theater and presented an original play/series of monologues, and then turned around the next night to put on 80s prom.  There was teased hair; there was helmet hair; there was crimped hair; there was a pregnant cheerleader; and I hung out with a friend who was actually of an age to be at prom in the 80s and said the verisimilitude was uncanny.

Perhaps best of all, though, I finally got together with my coworker who's shy about playing guitar.  He played some pretty flamenco stuff, and then mentioned he had compiled a bunch of Beatles and pop charts.  Turns out the acoustics of the chapel are perfect for "Don't Stop Believin" as well as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."

So, it was about forty minutes between "a-wheem-a-way" and "suede-denim secret police."

The Size of a Banana

There are lots of Post-Its on my desk, covered with tiny writing probably only I can read.  The contents change over time, and occasionally one is the victim of drips from my mug, but the cycle is unbroken and there are always new things about which to remind myself.  Instead of a memory palace of distinctive objects in notable locations, I have a mental wall of notes I refer to -- remarks of utmost importance in large-ish letters with permanent marker, nagging to-dos in smeared, thin blue ink.  In some way, physically writing the words conjures their spiritual existence in the ether of my brain.

We all (mostly) carry around a "green brain" here, a small notebook (titled in classy cursive "Memoranda").  This is another repository for important random facts, instructions, and date ideas corresponding to boys I have crushes on Department of Defense project code numbers.  The page I most frequently consult is my cheat-sheet for how to run the Weekly Numbers report,* which you think I'd remember after doing it twenty times.

*The Weekly Numbers report consists of me pulling data to show how much cargo we processed and shipped to various destinations...by weight.  For some reason.  I guess logistically that's a significant parameter; unfortunately for me, the amount of paperwork for a five-pound box of potato chips is the same as a 500-pound pallet of seismographic equipment.  And these scientists not only eat lots of potato chips but enjoy packaging them in many separate boxes, each with its own subsequent documentation, labels, and tracking.

That mention of twenty might sound flippant or exaggerated, but in fact, next week -- my last week -- will be twenty-one.  After all this staring at tiny numbers, staying up way too late in the band room, seal close encounters, eating meat of questionable provenance, and so very many artfully-dodged unanswerable phone inquiries, I will float around New Zealand for several weeks.  Just me and my rucksack full of cheese.

Odd Ends

There were these adorable, dense, and chocolately little frosted bundt cakes for dessert at lunch today.  That's about all I got.

Here's a part of one of my favorite poems:

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.


It's by Pablo Neruda, he was pretty cool.  Here's another literary tidbit:

It had snowed softly and thickly all through the hours of darkness and the beautiful whiteness, glittering in the frosty sunshine, looked like a mantle of charity cast over all the mistakes and humiliations of the past.

Gotcha, that's from Anne of Avonlea.

Winter Quarters Bay

They started as a trickle, but we are now inundated with a couple hundred people in completely irrelevant camouflage.  The arrival of US and NZ navy folks means long lines in the cafeteria and the introduction of exotic new germs.  Last night's intermittent, clammy 13 hours of sleep didn't quite kill whatever culture I clashed with, but I think I'm over the hump just in time for 12-hour shifts to start.

A friend lucky enough to have been coming back to town in a helicopter as the ice breaker made its way in took this:

The drama of several large ships making their way to the world's southern-most port occupied much of my boss's attention over the last week, but other than being privy to related news and gossip it didn't matter to me.  It's pretty neat to see a big red boat out in the endless stretch of white ice.  It was also pretty funny to see it plow a path, pushing ice against the pier, and then pushing the ice pier itself (this is bad).  Apparently, someone didn't have a basic understanding of physics -- that, like, the ice you're breaking up and pushing through needs to go somewhere.  Anyway, stuff is fine, the boats arrived and departed mostly on schedule, and containers of food, paperclips, engine oil, and everything else are being unloaded.

Who does this unloading?  A pleasant group of Kiwi truck drivers.  Tater Time is my favorite truck name.

Logistics coordination is done primarily by radio.  This is where another tedious admin-y part of me being an admin comes in: monitoring TWO radio channels (that's two radios on, full of chatter and static), in addition to extra phone calls, and mix in Kiwi accents and people unconsciously adopting that big rig dispatcher "Breaker, Breaker" way of speaking.

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Sidebar: I will never cease to be amazed by the fact that there are no deadlines, ever, as an adult.  Extensions can be obtained for taxes, foreclosures, court dates -- pretty much everything.  January 17?  What a fucking joke. If we can manage to throw a last-minute box onto the vessel as it pulls away from the pier, we will.  
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There was a small folk/country acoustic show, the McMurdo Grand Ol' Opry, with Heehaw-like comedy interludes between bands.  And Saturday night's main attraction was a 90s dance-music show at the Waste Barn, featuring covers of "Another Night," "Be My Lover," "Mr. Vain," "Blue," and all those other songs that played on an endless loop on the bus home from junior high.  Anthony Bourdain's cameraman captured amazing footage of raving Antarcticans that our official minders will ensure never sees the light of day, but believe me, it was quite the rager.

Snow, Slides, Sauce

We had our first storm in quite a while -- strong winds, lots of snow, it really felt like Antarctica.  And it reminded me of our laughably dire roof leak.  You see, the SciCo office is just two trailers with some basic interior finish (featuring asbestos flooring!), and where they were joined together some thirty-odd years ago there remains a significant seam.  This becomes apparent when several inches of snow accumulate on the roof and then melt.  Peak bucket count was five, collecting at a combined rate of one gallon per hour.  Dripping is a rare sound here, so we didn't mind it the first few days.

And like that, we're off to the races.  All of a sudden, everyone realizes there's one week left to submit cargo and paperwork to make it on the yearly supply boat, a.k.a. The Vessel.  For my part, vessel preparations involve the most mundane and humbling of secretarial tasks: scheduling meetings and advancing PowerPoint slides while other people speak.  I did subtly punish one guy for delegating this task to me by waiting too long every time he paused, forcing him to repeat "Next slide, please."

In case we weren't all reaching the point in the season where we're tired all the time, there was another delivery of ice core samples last week.  SURPRISE, the plane came early, so no one but neurotic me was awake yet, and I got to interrupt people's sleep to drive loaders around in the cold at 4am.  There's yet another, the last, shipment of ice cores coming in just before The Vessel, too -- and this one is going in the super high-tech freezer building with alarms.  More on that next time.

Despite all the shit talking of my desk job, I'm very much hoping to come back and do it all again next year.  We had our redeployment (go home) meeting and turned in our travel dates, and as always, I don't want to leave.  Sure, seven weeks wandering around New Zealand will be nice, but I'll have to find my own spaghetti and grilled cheese sandwiches and navigate the world again.  I actually had the thought while walking the other day, in freezing temperatures and biting wind, amongst beeping heavy machinery, approaching a road edge crumbling into icy waters, circled by fearless ravenous birds, "At least nothing can hurt me here."  

And then I did something totally crazy and not at all in character: watched softball for four hours.  The crowd was full of creative hecklers, and someone passed out empty beer cans to chuck at the fence.  It was fun, but not in the same league (see what I did there?) as the First Annual Natalie P. Chaddock Foundation Applesauce Chugging Contest.  There, wily competitors faced off in three rounds, the fastest chuggers advancing from one tall drinking glass full, to two, to three.  That's a shocking 14, 28, and 42 fl. oz., readers -- for a combined total of well over a half-gallon.  Only one person threw up.  The winner was completely unfazed and proudly held up his bespoke WWE-style tin-can-lid belt.  What great fun will next week bring?

Ringing It In

So we got to close/headline IceStock.

It happened to be on New Year's Eve this year, so everybody counted down, baby new year came out, and champagne sprayed everywhere.  And then we played for an hour and had a fucking good time.  I started the evening hop-dancing for warmth at 4:30pm in a stiff chill breeze with foreboding overcast skies.  But there were pots of chili, grilled sausages, hot chocolate, and friends all around.

DTF played our set at 7:10, and hit our stride after hiccoughing through the two jazz tunes.  We ended strong with improvised lyrics blues about our favorite topic, a fish fry.  This was the band's last hurrah, but various combinations of people playing together will carry the spirit on.

And then there was Midnight Rhythm: Carhart Edition.  Our bassist is famous for only ever wearing Carharts -- even on the plane down here, even leaving the sauna -- and so we decided to honor his awesomeness as a person and musician by all donning them.  He's a quiet guy, but I'm pretty sure he was pleased.  Other fun facts: someone collected old underwear all season, handed them out, and we were showered with boxers, longjohns, and a few lacy pairs while we played.  And I too-emphatically cheers'd my trumpet player, shattering her bottle of champagne in the cold.  Good thing we brought 10 bottles on stage with us.

I think it was my favorite New Year's; or at least tied with playing Taboo and waiting for the world to explode for Y2K.