Melodies and Words by Heart

I am a huge fan of memorization. In Mrs. Greenland’s fifth grade class, we memorized poetry and the Gettysburg address. I loved it and discovered I was good at something, better even than the smarter kids in class.

The words and phrases learned then have stuck with me, not with the clarity and sureness I had at 10, but close enough so that when I’m in a tight spot I can repeat “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation,” and so on until I hit the trickier spots and go around in circles.

My elementary school was named after Eugene Field, the poet. I wondered if that was why we got to memorize poetry. I knew that other schools were named after famous politicians or war heroes. What would they memorize, if anything?

Later, at UCLA in my third year of French classes, I got to memorize French poetry, songs, and plays. Speaking the phrases written by men (no women, c’est dommage) helped me speak with the rhythm and almost the speed of a real French person. I couldn’t express how I felt about a lot of things, but I could quote Paul Verlaine, “Le ciel est, par dessus le toit, ci bleu, ci calme.” Rolling the words in my mouth and savoring their rhythm was delicious.

On our 1961 trip, Mary and I hitchhiked from Austria into Italy squished into the back seat of a sports car. The guys left us off at a bus station in a small city. It was night. We needed to find a hotel. Into our lives sauntered a young man, maybe 17, whose English came from memorizing rock songs! My Italian came from memorizing opera arias. Mary had studied Italian, so what a trio we were! We laughed our way through a snack at a late-night café, and then he helped us find a place to stay.

It’s nice to have the words of others in one’s head. I remember reading a book by a Holocaust survivor, a musician, who had memorized enough classical music to keep him sane during the ghastly horrors he faced.

Mrs. Greenland had the right idea. Did she know that the words we learn by heart stay in our hearts for a lifetime? That they comfort us through tough times? They are our best friends when no friends are around.

Today’s students may live in a world that’s too fast for memorization. Their incessant songs whizz by on their ipods, leaving little time for words except via texting in short sentences.

I don’t want to be seen as the old fogey whose voice crackles, “Things were better in my day.” Maybe they weren’t. What I know is that for me, having these melodies and words in my heart is good.

Edith Piaf, Janis Joplin, and Sally

On my solitary desert walks, musing about the trip to come, I often find myself silently singing Edith Piaf (French) songs. Mary doesn’t remember that during one of the times we roomed together I bought a Piaf record and played it over and over, twenty times? Thirty? Enough so that the voice was imprinted on my memory along with the words, even the ones I couldn’t translate.

Years after that – twenty? thirty? – Thrim bought me an Edith Piaf cd and I played it over and over, thrilled to hear her again. It is now downloaded into iTunes and onto my MP3.

My favorite Piaf lyrics are all about love. “Dans l’amour il fait des larmes.” “Love requires tears,” and she has cried enough tears to deserve to love again. In her voice you can hear all the pain she has been through to reach that point. “Non, rien de rien. Non, je ne regretted rien. C’est payee.” “No, not a thing. No, I don’t regret anything. It is paid . . .” and now she can go on to a new love.

Sorry, I know she’s in my head, but not in yours. How about Janis? Can you hear Janis Joplin? Stand up, all Janis fans, and remember “Take it! Take another little piece of my heart, now, baby, Take it!” or Down on Me. “Looks like everybody in this whole wide world, is down on me!”

In that raspy voice is all the pain, the agony, the exuberance, the in-your-face I-have-LIVED energy that Janis threw out to her audience until there was nothing left to give.

Janis and Edith thrill me. Opera singers – Leontyne Price, Marilyn Horne, Jessye Norman, Renee Fleming, etc. – thrill me because they are also using their entire bodies and souls to convey to me, the audience, the feeling of their songs [arias, in opera speak].

Much as I love them, I can’t take the opera ladies on my walks. Their music and sound is way too difficult for my brain to memorize the way I can memorize the music of Janis and Edith.

Last week I stayed overnight with my sister Sally, a highly successful musician/writer. I needed to be reminded what it’s like to be in civilization. A whole blog could be written about Sally – maybe later – but for now it’s enough to say that as we drove down Ventura Blvd in her Jaguar on our way to meet Mimi and Colin at the Thai restaurant, Sally’s cd of stories played and I was crying with glee at her irreverent wit, the skill with which she turns phrases, and her voice that conveys a slew of types of people from southern belles to convicts to you name it.

Without divorce in the world, I wouldn’t have Sally. Without divorce, she wouldn’t have had all the men problems that inspire her writing, both in stories and songs. Janis, Edith, Sally. Women make glorious art out of pain.

Still, for me, Thrim and I are heading into our 40^th year. He is one in a thousand, fine with me running off for five weeks with Mary, a widow, because he understands that this 50-year anniversary is important to me.

Do I feel guilty about it? Yeah, sure. But I’ve got Edith Piaf singing in my head, Janis Joplin wailing to go ahead and take it, and Sally telling me she admires my courage! Imagine that! I feel more selfish than courageous, but I’ll take it. Yes, I will!

Tuning Up for Pastries

A girl who works in my dentist’s office was afraid to go to restaurants that had an A in the window because she thought the A meant that terrorists ate there. A for Al Quaida? (In case it’s different where you live, the Health Department issues an A to restaurants that pass their inspections.) The same girl’s boyfriend wanted to see a sunrise over the ocean, so she took him early one morning to Newport (California, not Rhode Island).

This was my first time at this dentist. I wondered about his competence, employing someone as clueless as this girl. Should I leave and face French pastries with a sensitive tooth and a missing filling?

At our age, Mary and I need to be tuned up before we go. My chiropractor is re-sitting my head onto my neck and putting my spine back where it should be. The dermatologist is checking out a spot on my nose that may or may not – you know. Mary is seeing the podiatrist for a corn on her right foot.

We want to be able to walk and eat and ogle easily.

In 1961 we didn’t worry about our health. Who would, at 22? But we had two accidents in France with our Lambretta motorscooter that led to discovering the benefits of universal healthcare. Mary was driving; I was on the back. It was raining both times and the scooter skidded, tipping over and cutting Mary’s leg as she leaped out of the way. Each time, concerned onlookers helped us to the nearest first aid station (or clinic or whatever) where she got inspected and bandaged at no charge. WHO (World Health Organization) ranks France #1 for healthcare.

When my youngest daughter’s babysitter went to Rome for a Catholic holiday, she slipped outside the Vatican and broke her hip. She was well taken care of. WHO ranks Italy at #2.

I think about those generous countries where a poor person is treated with as much respect as a rich person; where all contribute part of their wages to healthcare so everyone can benefit. Not so, here, where tens of thousands quit AARP because it lobbied for a wider healthcare plan for all.

Leaving the dentist’s office, pleased at how brave I had been, and happy that he did a good job, I was less happy to leave behind $222. (That still beats the $20,000 I had to pay when, at 64-3/4 years and uninsured, I had two stents put into a coronary artery.)

Bring on the pastries!

But what about the A in the window that kept the girl from going into the restaurant? Look for them, search them out, and enjoy Approved delights.

The Backpack is Packed!

Four weeks from today we’ll land at Orly near Paris. Today I stuffed my Kelty backpack with everything I am taking, then weighed it in at 12.5 lbs. Just right!

The choice of shoes boiled down to space and comfort. The winner (so far, anyway) was Bass. I chose the Bass shoes after first deciding on the Rockport ones, and before that, the Naturalizers. The Bass have a softer sole than the Rockports, and a lower heel than either the Rockports or the Naturalizers. My feet like that. The shoes are also roomier, and can handle an extra pair of socks on cold days.

This means I can’t take shower/bath shoes, or dressy ones, or the combo possible with Crocs. I had to send back the crocs because my right foot did not conform to their shape, and though I loved the feel on my left foot, I knew that walking requires two happy feet. I’m still waiting for the refund (note to Amazon).

The Ecco shoes suggested by my brother were too expensive. I could have bought a pair of them for the same price as the entire Bass/Rockport/Neutralizer combo. And I thought the women’s styles were not right for hitchhiking. You don’t want to clump around at the opera, but neither do you want to go fancy when walking and hitchhiking.

The Kelty backpack is comfortable and holds a lot. It has hidden compartments that remind me of my mom’s jewelry box with hundreds of tiny drawers, some hiding behind the others. Safe places where I can hide things and then forget where I put them. And then panic and empty everything out and still not find what I need because it’s in a hidden pocket, of course.

With my new Canon SX120 camera, I am sharing these pix with you. It hooks onto the belt thingy of the flowery purse thing I made (see the picture) that has, again, lots of hidden compartments.

That’s the end of the commercials. You might see some ads here in the future, or not. Who knows? It’s a way to earn a few extra cents, and for this senior on a fixed income who is running off to France when I can’t afford it, the pennies could save the day.

Note to self: Don’t leave chili cooking on the stove while writing your blog post. Also, keep saving because the power goes off when the Mojave wind blows.

The Gendarmes of Paris

Paris this time around will be a whole lot different for us than it was in the fall of 1961. The Eiffel Tower, the onion soup, the Seine will all still be there, but Mary and I won’t find ourselves flirting with a roomful of gendarmes at 4:00 a.m.

Here’s how it happened: As we told our story, the gendarmes were amiable, flirtatious (because they were French), but skeptical.

“Il n’etait pas Francais,” some insisted. “C’est impossible!” declared others.

“Non, non, c’est vrai!” countered Mary, using up most of her store of French. With her flashing eyes, long dark hair and perfect small figure, Mary was beautiful. That alone should have been enough to convince the gendarmes of the truth of what we were saying, but it wasn’t.

Too excited to sleep, we had gone out at 11:00 p.m. to find a place to have some good hot onion soup.

“Oui! Oui! Bonne soupe!” Mary chimed in. The gendarmes beamed. I was used her effect on men after being her roommate for two years, but it didn’t help my own ego.

The nearby restaurants were all closed so we had to walk a long way down the Boulevard Saint Germain before finding one that was still open. We were seated at a table on the second floor by a window with a view down to the street. A funny scene was taking place there.

Two young good-looking Frenchmen were arguing with a wild-haired “beat” girl – all in black, short skirt, tall boots -- who eventually kissed them both on the cheek and left. When we laughed at this drama, the guys turned to look up at the window and spotted us there. A moment later, they had come upstairs and were introducing themselves to us.

The nice-looking, rather short, peroxided blond claimed to be Richard Villiers, a movie actor. His friend, Pierre something, was not so handsome, but more real. Richard wore the open-necked shirt with suit jacket made popular by Elvis Presley, while Pierre’s blue shirt had a button-down collar with a thin dark blue tie. Their longish hair was slicked back on the sides and loosely waved on top, also a la Elvis.

After our soup, they asked if we would like to go to a “swinging cave,” a small bar with music and poets on the Right Bank. Excited by being able to see “beatnick” Paris, we agreed, knowing we could never find a place like that by ourselves.

We all squeezed into their tiny Citroen 2cv (nicknamed the douche bowl), Mary and I in back, the boys in front. The car, made from corrugated tin, was not very elegant transportation for a movie star. Richard excused this by saying that his other car, a Chrysler, was too wide for the narrow streets of Paris.

“Je ne te crois pas,” I laughed. His little fib wasn’t worth pursuing because we were in Paris at midnight with two young Frenchmen and it was delightful.

First he drove us along the Seine to the Eiffel Tower, parking right underneath it which you used to be able to do at night when no-one was around.

While our friends chatted amiably with a gendarme who happened along, Mary and I got out and looked up through the massive angel-hair girders, all gray against the moonlit sky. What a difference mood lighting makes! When I'd seen the Tower from a distance that afternoon, it had looked like a dirty pile of old steel. Now, close up by moonlight, the transformation was magical. This stop made up for what came next, but I didn’t tell that to the gendarmes, needing their sympathy.

Driving on to the “cave”, the Citroen started acting up. It stalled, and then, after much rapid, excited, discombobulated fiddling with gears and pushing of buttons, started again. The two men were mysterious about the whole thing, and I couldn't follow their rapid French. Mary and I paid them back by speaking just as fast in English, but we were so naïve we didn't realize what was actually happening.

After wasting an hour or so fussing with the car, we were getting no closer to the cave. Finally they said they would have to get out and push. Mary and I, in a spirit of international friendship, got out to help them. For at least forty-five minutes, we pushed that jalopy through tiny streets, wide streets and the wrong way on one-way streets. Romantic, gay Paris.

Finally we spotted a service station about two blocks away which happened to still be open. Richard and Pierre consulted, again in such rapid French I got lost. After coming to some sort of conclusion, they suggested that Mary and I walk down to the station and inquire if the attendant could fix whatever was wrong with the motor, using some technical term I have forgotten. They would stay behind and continue trying to start the car.

We strode to the station, told the attendant the problem, and pointed up the road to where the car used to be! Instantly, we realized what fools we had been. Our purses were in the back seat with our money and passports!

We'd panicked too soon, though. A moment later we heard shouting and honking a block away in the opposite direction. The car had finally started. Now, because it was so late and the car was almost out of gas, they were going to drive us back to our hotel instead of going to the cave.

At this point one of the gendarmes asked why Richard didn’t go to the service station and buy gas.

“Je ne sais pas,” was all I could say, never having thought of it. Since Mary’s French didn’t cover such possibilities, she shrugged eloquently.

It was a good move because the officers grinned or even laughed.

I continued with the story.

Nearing our section of the city, Richard became quite nervous, saying that they'd have to let us off soon or run out of gas. Pierre argued that it was too far for us to walk, so they compromised and dropped us only ten minutes' walk from the hotel.

We thanked them for a strange evening and started up the street. Almost immediately I felt my purse and realized it was much emptier than when we had started out. My wallet, a nice new red one, was gone. We had been robbed!

Our evening at the Eiffel Tower and pushing a car all over Paris was paid for by losing only four dollars, my driver's license and my Social Security card. It wasn’t much, but still, why would they have done it?

The gendarmes were shocked, every one of them. Like a chorus they repeated (in French), “He could not have been a Frenchman. A Frenchman would not do such a thing!”

As they were agonizing about this inexplicable breach in the Frenchman's code of honor, their Chief, a sour-faced, grumpy, sullen, short fat little man entered the room. I could tell that he thought the whole situation was ridiculous. From his viewpoint, his men were wasting time with two young female tourists. Mary’s beauty apparently had no effect on him.

In the sudden quiet that overtook the room, I stumbled through an explanation, trying to impress the Chief with the gravity of our plight. He shook his head, dismissing our claim to justice and turned to leave.

Suddenly the tallest and most handsome of the gendarmes, with sparkling blue eyes, dark hair, and Errol Flynn mustache, came to our rescue. Championing our cause, he made it clear that it was their duty as Frenchmen to erase the evil done to the national reputation by those unspeakably insensitive creatures masquerading as French. Miraculously, the chief succumbed.

Spreading a huge map of Paris on the central table, he had us retrace our car-pushing route. All the gendarmes gathered round, looking on. After a long pause, the Chief said, “Hmmm. Tsk tsk tsk.” The others echoed him and we waited for the verdict. At last the Chief announced that he could do nothing because the incident had occurred in another “arrondisement.”

We would have to go to the precinct office near the service station and explain the whole thing again. Uttering kindly little sympathies, he waddled back to his inner sanctum, closing the massive door behind him.

“Quelle dommage,” or “How sad,” the gendarmes murmured.

To lighten the mood, one of our new friends pointed ominously toward the Chief’s door and told us that girls caught roaming the streets at 4:00 in the morning go through it and don't come out until the Chief says so.

“Verdad?” I asked, and when I saw their blank faces realized I’d mixed up my languages yet again.

By the time we left the gendarmerie, it was 5:30 a.m. What an entertaining hour and a half it had been, bantering with fifteen or so delightful gendarmes! Of course, Richard and Pierre would never be brought to justice, but because of the charming gendarmes and the Eiffel Tower by moonlight we would call it even.

And that was only our first day in Paris! Fifty years later, we will gladly leave the flirting with gendarmes (or anyone else) to the younger girls. But still, it’s fun to tell the story and see the reactions. Sorry there aren't pictures.