Got my groove on, got my drink on, got my funeral hat on, for the funeral of Paris. There seems to not be much point to the funeral, the body was stolen, the pallbearers are themselves all dead, there is very little to recommend it other than the recommendations of the tiny girls with glasses. And the tiny girls with glasses, like the robots, like the monkeypants, are themselves a force at work in the universe. As important as gravity, more enigmatic than electromagnetism, the girls with glasses are some as yet uncharted subset of superstring theory. Let's look at them with hunger, let's look at them from the belly of hunger in this, the empty street of the empty funeral of Paris.

The jazzmen play instruments crafted from the bones of gulls at the funeral of Paris. The middle-aged men walk with a respectful bourgeois gait, trying to light their Gauloises and unseeing of the window gardens and the shuttered windows of the Rue Lomet. The jazzzmen play a role, I think it is safe to say that, but what sort of role might jazzmen play in the world of monkeys, robots and tiny girls with glasses?

Do they make the funeral of Paris more real to you? They do to me because the funeral of Paris is about the death of heart, the death of opportunity, and its replacement by its robotic doppelganger. Yes, Paris has been replaced with Robo-Paris, the fembot version of France's great city. If you had a hand large enough swipe off the Champs Elysee, you would see it is nothing but a giant rubber mask, and underneath the mutterings of electric geegaaws would distract you in their horrific appearance as Robo-Paris reaches forward for you with one clamp like hand, nattering "mrr-mee, mrrr-mee."

You'll get no argument from me. You won't hear anything from me. Across the street the children drown in pools of plastic balls in arenas shaped like pirate boats. Teddy bear pirates, fondly portrayed on the facade of the store, are known inside to be horrible bastards, raping and pillaging, fair only to their crew and abominable to all others. At some point in the merriment, he ship of children and plastic balls is fired upon and then boarded and the children have to choose whether to walk the plank or serve Captain Teddybeard loyally for the rest of their days.

Which is a lot like language, of course. You think you're only playing in it, and then suddenly you have to choose. Look at the guys who work at the hostel. Young kids who showed some sort of aptitude for English, now they're here, working for an okay wage, explaining the rules about sheet rentals to people who come in, and recommending from which tabac they should purchase phone cards. English has pressed them into service. Now they're some sort of horrible hybrid, not entirely French, not entirely tourist, but are playing some role between houseguest and cabin boy for the rest of their lives, just because of their ability, pressed now and forever into fealty. They sail the chimeric high seas now, neither fish nor fowl, but the members of the ship that sail below one and above another. They are the first mates of language and change, while remaining unchanging themselves. Arr, the sea is a harsh mistress boys, but I don't think it's anything compared to the harshness of language. Because there's no escaping language, lads. You can move so far inland, the sea only touches you with delicate fingers of rain, or with its breath, in the form of morning fog upon your window pane. But language laps at all shores. Language makes port in every mouth. Language sets sail when it pleases, and makes of its crew who it chooses, and drowning in language is the worst sort of death imaginable, sinking under the thick eddies and pools of words and thoughts and undelivered love letters, and thousands of miles away from the touch of another. Death by language is a brutal, brutal thing, and there'll be no jazzmen at that funeral, no bourgeois procession. There's only death by sea and if you're lucky, someone drapes a flag somewhere, and someone remembers what you were like before that wave of language, like a frothy fist, knocked you sideways and swept you from sight forever and ever, amen.

[…]

And whereto begin now but at the end? The end of the day, the end of the story, the end of civilization. Today, I held a skull at the Catacombs. Today, I beheld everything that could be held in my tiny mind and myself still be allowed to exist. The morning, missing rocking chairs, and the afternoon filled with the absences, driven from point a to point b to point c by the mystery of eternity, a riptide pulling all of all that is known and seen by me in toto, swallowing all, becoming all, relegating culture to the role of patsy and self to the role of clown--the capering of the eyes upon seeing room after room after room of human skulls. Having such questions about value and worth answered rather too directly, it's been the sort of day where my feet feel like they should be bleeding stumps, and my head should be rattling forth encoded distress signals. The terrible faces of the Champs Elysees, the bitter fruit of the mystery restaurants, our hats thrown at our feet like the gauntlets of challenge, nothing being my only reward and nothing being the only reward craved for. I can close my eyes and remember the nap that I just had, but can remember none of the details. And so it is with my trip through Europe today. First I write about the funeral of Paris, and then I lay witness to an ossuary, 6 million bodies and a single human skull in my actual hand, the atrocity participated with full knowledge and great curiosity by me. Did I create an act of monstrousness by holding the skull of someone long dead? Have I left myself vulnerable to the attacks of angry spirits? Or is the only crime that of emptiness, the same crime that everyone around me is perpetuating while we speak? Is there any other crime, and is there any way to avoid being both its victim and its perpetrator?

Screw characters, screw plot, screw the mystery of the mystery machine. All that I can wish for is the steady purchase of words, bought with the currency of time and attention, and then presented on a plain blanket and sold at the Circle of Tears--sure, why not, what would you call a set of eyes? If I could sing, this would be my song, running out the corner of my room and playing upon the abandoned courtyard below. As long as we can talk ourselves into being part of that song, we might be able to move at least for a minute longer, as the chill winds of November threaten to freeze us where we stand, the waters of the chill rivers being the only pulse upon the land. The winds of that day will sound a lot like this song, savage and yet monotonous, unending, unyielding and unforgiving, broken and laid out in semi-circles around the body. The body and the mystery, as every song, every story, is at its heart a murder mystery. Whodunnit is ever as much a matter of importance as much of that this is done. Every murder mystery revolves around trying to figure out how it can be allowed that the murder was done. How can we be allowed to die without ever knowing the purposes of our life? How can that inescapable crime help but overshadow all other smaller ones? Those who actually steal life are not nearly as responsible as the one who allows life to be stolen in the first place. As I sit here today, looking upon our world empty but for the changing of streetlights, the groaning of car engines, the gentle lapping of voices at the windows and the doors, I know there's nothing here for me. It's time to go, to the next city, to the next country, to the next possible hope that I can belong, that I will be accepted, that I can bring myself to be loved by someone who I also love. And maybe that's not even enough, but how eager I am to exchange all these construction paper cities and toy monuments for something as large and as tiny as that!

Previous: October 27, 2001--Barcelona, Spain

Next: October 29, 2001--On The Train From Paris to Berlin

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