Postcards

POSTCARD 1: Lopsided

The world, the whole world, is lopsided. The world, and everything in it. First example is my jaw, so swollen that children recoil in horror and cling to their mothers when they see me (and the mothers in turn shield their children away from me, scared perhaps that I contaminate their darlings with the mumps).

It’s not the mumps. It’s the wisdom tooth. Rather, the departure of my wisdom tooth. My dentist, Dr. Striking Blue Eyes, pulled the tooth out in his posh 16th arrondisement clinic one sunny morning. To my disgust he dropped the tooth into a clear plastic bag (blood and all), pressed it to my palm, and told me to come back in 10 days so he could remove the stitches. I haven’t had the courage to take a look at the tooth since. It seems so sad that my wisdom tooth had to be taken away from his fellow… friend… teeth.

I find myself walking strangely, leaning to my right, to balance the feeling of lopsidedness I think, sort of like my robot Mahmud (christened “53-54″ by Apol on account of his bad leg). Everything feels strange. The weather doesn’t help. One day the sun shines, the next day it’s piss-raining.

POSTCARD 2: Sounds and Light

My upstairs neighbor plays the piano. Every evening, we hear sonatas through the ceilings. We also hear the occasional wrong note, and we find ourselves smiling ruefully when it happens. Our living room is much warmer than the one in Aix, and I sometimes lie on the couch, my feet dangling from the edge of the futon, staring at the swirling beam of light from the Eiffel Tower over the rooftops. Even with the paint peeling off one wall of our apartment, I think we made the right apartment choice.

POSTCARD 3: The Panthéon

I visited the Panthéon with my sister Dr. Doom and her husband last week, but I didn’t go inside; I sat down by the foot of one of the massive columns, pulled my hoodie over my head, and watched two Chinese girls trying to syncronize a cheerleader-like jumping-in-the-air pose for a picture to send back home. I also allowed myself to bask in a few minutes of self-pity as I watched a group of American girls savour their cigarettes. I counted the people who went inside the Panthéon. Thirty two people had come and gone before my tourist couple joined me out where I was sitting, complaining about the massive installation art set up inside. “They should set it up in the Pompidou, not here,” said my brother-in-law. I reminded them that they had closed off the whole fifth floor for renovation, so really, now is a bad time to visit Centre Pompidou if you want to view the permanent collection.