VAGABOND PICNIC: Paris, Living in a Dead Mans House

VAGABOND PICNIC: Paris, Living in a Dead Mans House

Paris, Living in a Dead Mans House

 Paris, Living in a Dead Mans House.
No that is not metaphor, I am in Paris, living in a dead mans house. I fold out the fold out couch and sleep amongst the dusty detritus of another mans recently abandoned life. Boxes containing the gathered personal history of a holocaust survivor attempt to interrupt my sleep.  Today I took a moving mans load across Paris on the metro. I felt a bit like one of the men in Polanskis first film, "Two Men and a Wardrobe".  Hobbled by goods too large for public transit in a city too large to care as we cajoled our goods via our only possible conveyance.

I came here to visit a friend convalescing. Glad to report he is doing well enough to challenge me to the daily duel that is cycling the streets of Paris. We get the "Velolib" bikes, available throughout Paris. We ride to galleries and cafes and places I am lucky to see through the eyes of my good friend who has lived here for many years. The streets are a constant movement. The streets live and breath as some being made of  all the attempts, successes and failures that surround us.
Still I am not convinced.  I love the history, the Paris Commune, the very birth of a socialist notion. The French Revolution and the very clear fact that none of that history is forgotten on the streets of this city. People may try to hide it but like the bad behavior of a tiresome brother whose thoughts provoke and annoy, it is never forgotten.
Oh ya, there are buildings jammed with art. But you knew that.

I have insinuated myself into the Pere Lachaise  neighborhood through my friend. As in every city every barrio is a small town. Small gestures. I saw an old man having difficulty with groceries. I helped as anyone would. Gesture noticed and now I am a neighbour in a city I do not pretend to know, but a barrio I recognize as the barrio I always know.

Paris has a special place in collective memory, well deserved. Still as I dig into it's history I wonder if all here know that streets have names changed  from " Scratch ass street, or, pull the sausage street to ""Rue St. Martin Rue saint no look away nothing here to see street".  We once had a more colourful language.

Paris does not fit my usual travel routine. I was asked to come here.  Still every obligation is an opportunity. Paris to me is the Paris Commune and the birth of socialism. A hard task that.

There also exists a weird tourist Paris but I need not see it. I went to the wall in La Pere Lachaise Cemetery where the brave and betrayed remnants of the Paris Commune were executed. I regretted that I had not written a poem to pin to the wall three blocks and three days away. I promise to write it and tuck it in the crack that is the Paris I have come to know.

VAGABOND PICNIC: drug war

VAGABOND PICNIC: drug war

Canadian Desert

The frozen north with a pocket of dry west. Ashcroft British Columbia is a small town in a Canadian desert.
I last wrote of a need to earn money. I don't have money and I don't worry about it but I do what I need to do to participate in the vague notion of our current economy.  As luck would have it I was hired by Brazilians to location manage a TV show in British Columbia.  If you have followed this blog you may have wondered how I travel with no visible means of support. I am not a trustafarian.  I organize film production and show off the Canadian landscape for movie making.  I am a location manager. It was once a pretty good gig. In the new economy, I am adjusting.  Today I am thankful for Brazil.

The good fortune of this illusion of a job is that occasionally I am paid to travel. The best part of this travel arrives in the form of relationships I often develop with people I would not have otherwise known. If the script has a dentist I will learn about dentists, if it is logging then loggers I will meet.  So the Brazilians rented a Ford Iraq Invasion and sent me to the Canadian desert.

In Ashcroft I found the kitty litter mine. Really they mine kitty litter. As a Canadian this is endlessly amusing. The cour de bois head to the yukon, fighting cold and wild animals to pan for ...kitty litter.
Actually I suspect they may have had kitten scouts fed dangerous levels of fluids.  On leash they roamed the desert in search of the ideal material to lay their scent. The miners with picks and shovels ever ready to exploit the absorbent earth.

The desert has never treated me well. I suspect that is why they call it a desert. Dry and barren. People tell me it has a beauty.  To me the desert is a place that makes it clear it will not make your visit easy.  You need water? Look elsewhere. You need shade, shelter, comfort...not here. Yet cultures thrive in deserts. Sadly the Bedouins would probably give Ashcrcoft a pass. This is a working class town without work. There are many towns in British Columbia like this. The mine is dry, perhaps too absobrant, but heck there is a town here, maybe the mine will reopen, my house is here, I guess I'll wait it out. Sadly that waiting out can last a generation or two.

As I have a job here I meet with the local people of authority. This is a small town area with very wealthy ranching interests. Cattle are burgers and we all want them.  The folks who own the land here do well. There is a large first nations presence. They do not do as well.  I did have the pleasure of working on native land. As always happens I was welcomed and got to spend a day with an elder of the Kamloops band. We drove the  back roads and he taught me the ways of bighorn sheep and we talked of the youth of the band.  The band provide the opportunity to see the original way but there is no pressure. "They come to it when they see it".  We also went to a house the band owns that had white renters. All was not well but I was very impressed with the way the situation was handled.  A kind of cordiality bankers don't offer.

Movie bear

Big Horn Sheep

Another great trip. I am amazed by what I don't know.

Vagabond Picnic at sea

As you are aware the recession is over.  Myself and most of my friends are unemployed but apparently we are not that necessary to a healthy economy.   So the sea.  I decided to venture to the Northern Gulf Islands of British Columbia.  I loaded my 35 year old sailboat and on a windless morning I motored to my first stop at Lasqueti Island.  Lasqueti is unique.  The citizens of this special outpost voted against electricity.  BC hydro offered to provide power but the curious folks on this pirate island said no thanks.  This says a lot about who lives here.  On my visits to this area I have heard many stories of rum running, gold hoarding cults and the general rejection of conventional forms of social order  that existed on the Gulf Islands of the 30s and 40s.  While most of the Gulf Islands have become hobbies for retirees who enjoy a good committee, Lasqueti seems to continue in the spirit of the originals.  Original they are.  There is no car ferry but there are cars. Most of the cars on the island look like they were imported from a Mexican village that used wood as a main aftermarket component.  Wood does make a good fender.

 As any sailor knows the best days of sailing are those spent hitch hiking on remote islands in search of the ship boneyard which you hope will have something resembling the part of your boat that just broke.  At the boneyard you will meet a man named Jim or Jake. Jim or Jake will climb out of some hulk of a fluid oozing vehichle  to greet you. The greeting ritual will consist of ignoring you for as long as possible. Jake or Jim cannot count to ten using his fingers. Eight, nine and a half tops.

 So yes I had a major breakdown on my first stop. Being at the mercy of a local and unknown community is a good way to measure a place.  You are easy picking,  the low fruit dangled in front of the mechanically inclined.  I met most of the wrench wielding philosophers on Lasqueti.  Never was I asked for a penny.  Indeed I was invited to everything and felt like an unexpected guest more than anything else.  I saw a woman walking down the road with a wheelbarrow full of hard to identify items and asked if the wheelbarrow was the island equivalent of the the downtown eastside shopping cart.  Her wry response "everything I own is in here". No paucity of wit on this island.  You will also find a bakery that is a kiosk of cookies with a cash box running on the honour system. Make your choice and deposit your coinage.  Several fruit and egg stations work the same way. I was drawn to one vegetable stand by the plaintive wail of old time country music being played on battery powered radio. A note informed me that I must leave the radio on and tuned to this deer repelling station.
  I was glad to discover a small rebel island in my midst and I hope to return with a new engine aboard.   My mechanical issue insists that I visit a bigger place with a shipyard.
To do that I will have to solve the employment issue.
Next up: A trip to the interior desert to pay for the time at sea.

Americans in between

After a few days of furious driving through northern Mexico I hit the US border. It is quite a shock to be in the US again. I do enjoy traveling through the US although I can never figure out who votes for the dangerous right in this country. I guess I just instinctually avoid that lot.
I often stay in the Motel 6 chain in the US as they don't argue about the dog and they are cheap. The parking lots in these places are always filled with rusted and overloaded cars, some with Uhauls, heading west or south. Not traveling for pleasure but desperate traveling. Traveling in hopes of never finding out why they failed  at everything else everywhere else. The recession may be removed from the headlines but it clearly continues on the breadlines.
There has always been a bit of America that is transient in nature but as I have said these people are not the wandering souls of noble fiction. They are economic refugees.  They are an insular group. They stay to themselves. Petty crime is not uncommon. Roadstops and refueling at the truck stops the kids run wild as parents load up on junk food and gas to a achieve another days mileage.
I already miss Mexico. For all it's problems the family situation remains strong and neglect is never seen.

I am back in my little hideout on Gabriola Island. I will continue to share these musings on this site. I am organizing some pics to post soon.

Mexico Snapshots

• These are some snapshots of everyday Mexico. You can click on photos to enlarge.

Rural Chiapas

Palenque

Reno in old town Mazatlan

Government make work project. A better way to fight a drug war.

Every day in every town people rise early to sweep their streets.

My favorite movie house.

Lemonade vendor

Scout

Charcoal 

General thoughts and observations on Mexico today

Despite all the excited news stories Mexico remains much as always. It is more militarized. In my last months traveling around the country I have been through a wide variety of roadblocks, military, police, special police, drug enforcement and my favorite, fruit and vegetable inspections. To a one I was treated with respect, even courtesy as they would look through the van. The funniest one occured in Oaxaca. An ice cream hand cart was just leaving the military shelter as I entered. All the armed troops had their automatic weapons in one hand and ice cream cones in the other. They of course waved me through rather than put down their ice cream cones. As I drove through they were all smiling and laughing amongst themselves and I realized they were children. Teenagers who were still anticipating first dates and pleasures  that a teen anywhere dreams of.
The country is under the thumbs of the military but most people I met were going about life as always.
I was in one of those great old barber shops having a shave when I saw a picture of Andres Obrador on the wall. This was the second time I heard that he was the real winner of the last election. He is a socialist and many Mexicans I met believe that he won the election and the gringoes put in Calderon as they would do anything to keep a Chavez like government out of Mexico. This story was repeated many times. Obrador will run again in 2012.
All in all I was treated with the warmth and generosity I have always encountered in Mexico.

Last Mexican history lesson


Malinche: Malinche was Cortez' native concubine. She is considered a great traitor in Mexico. She also began a curious assimilation between Spanish and native Mexicans. The Spanish bred freely with the natives. One result of this was that an estimated population of 25 million Native Mexicans at the time of conquest was reduced to 1 million 2 years later. Mostly through disease.

Lastly,  Mexico prevails.

Tepic

The US government has an extreme travel warning against  any travel toTepic. Also some Mexicans I know warned me that it was a very violent place and I should never go to Tepic. So I went to Tepic. This wasn't some kind of danger quest. The Toll road I wanted to take lies ten k north of Tepic. I thought I would  just find a way to go around the town to my road.  As it turns out this was not possible. In my attempt to find a way around Tepic I briefly found myself driving the wrong way on a one way street. The first car coming the other way was a police car. He stopped me. Now these guys are not like cops you see in other places. They are very heavily armed and well trained. I rolled down my window and said. Very sorry about that but I am lost. I thought to myself I really don't want to see the Tepic jail. They started telling me I was on a one way street. I said I realized that and thats' why I turned down this street. They asked me where I was going and I said "Mazatlan" They gave me directions and wished me a good day. Three blocks later I am headed straight downtown. I hear sirens and 4 pickup trucks with four cops in the back of each came wheeling around the corner with automatic weapons drawn. They were clearly looking for someone as they pointed weapons at the people  who always crowd a Mexican street, They pulled into a light manufacturing plant and joined 3 similar trucks as they continued to aim around as if on a rabbit hunt. I was stuck at an eternally red light. It turned green before the suspects were found.  Dodged another bullet. Now in the centre of the town I've been so correctly warned about I find myself in a police road block.  These police were special forces called Fuerzas contra la corrupcion.  I thought wow a police force looking for corrupt politicians. But of course they are another anti crime outfit. They waved me trough.
Finally I see the sign to Mazatlan. I was very happy when I hit the toll booth. After 2 months of bouncing around mountain roads and pot hole filled little towns I am on a super highway northward bound.

I always talk to the people I shoot but this one was hard. 

Church in San Cristobal

Always use your sunblock

blue shoes

Blue shoes scatter the casual sidewalk I encounter on this distant morning. Blue shoes looks at me from a cafe across the street. A woman, a concern she investigates my mood. I decide on a swim. In the ocean that is.

So in my lazy days here I met a couple who were in a combi of older vintage but much like mine. I suspect they were trustafarians but I could be misjudging. So I took them to see a film in a theatre that was a converted garage run by a gringo who likes movies. He was screening Harold and Maude. When I was 20 I loved that film. Now it showed its age but the kids loved it. They kept at me for days in thanks of seeing this little film in the garage. Even the Cats stevens soundtrack was to their appeal.

So my last missive was a bit bleak. Drug war. I thought I had to discuss it. But on a brighter note. Mexico continues to enthrall as the people I meet are generally a delight. I read some B. Traven in Spanish that was good for me to do. Traven is an inspiration and he was writing in a second language. So it was good for me to read. To secure me in another language.

I have been meeting a lot of young people as I seem to be of their ilk but not like them. That is I am old they are young. When I met the trustafrians I was reminded of a story by Robert Hunter. He wrote all the lyrics for the grateful dead. He said that on a tour he was in Paris and wrote box of rain and three other songs in a day fueled by a case of wine and the pleasure of Paris. He said "those days will be back, not for me but for someone".

Ah the youth and their pleasures.