Fiction and Life

If you haven’t read the seventh Harry Potter and are planning to—this post has some spoilers.

I finished it this afternoon, sitting in my backyard. Midway through chapter 33 I started crying. Harry Potter was going to be killed—he wouldn’t grow up, he wouldn’t even see the end of all the horror. And it was that horror that made me cry, too. That things were so dark, that people lived in fear and couldn’t move about and live freely. That he saw the bodies of his friends.

It felt ridiculous that I listened to the leaves rustling in my backyard and thought about these tragedies. JK Rowling writes fiction, so it wouldn’t ever matter what happened to Harry Potter the literary character. But I was bothered, in the back of my mind, by how that battle scenes and dying aren’t restricted to works of fiction. And that real battles aren’t so clearly divided between good vs. evil. Real life is so much more complicated than that—good and bad are all mixed together. Like in Iraq. I imagine both sides (if there even were clearly defined sides) feel they are fighting for country and for a good government and for freedom.

I had always wondered, had I been born in the midst of the American Revolution or in Nazi Germany or during the Civil Rights movement, what I would have done. I wonder what side I would have joined—or if I would have even recognized what was going on around me. I have a feeling that, in such extraordinary circumstances, I would have kept my head down and my nose clean. Which makes me feel guilty.

The Toilets of France

I have been meaning to post these pictures. It was after the second Turkish toilet during my France stay that I decided I needed to document the toilets of France.


Rouen.

The toilet in the sewer museum in Paris really should have been part of an exhibit.

It is within the last year, I believe, that the public toilets in Paris have been made free of charge.

At the sculpture workshop in Jumiège, housed in a nineteenth-century stone barn

A shopping center in downtown Rouen. Cost: 50 centimes.

The bathroom of my host family (Rouen). I always found it disconcerting that there were large holes in the door.

Cherbourg, near the sea.

At the Caen train station. This whole room was tiled, and jets of water would come out of the walls and wash the entire floor. 30 centimes.

SNCF train, somewhere between Cherbourg and Caen.

Bayeux. I have never seen fancier.

Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

California: there and back

There is no ocean in Utah. Maybe, technically, there isn’t in California. But there are beaches. My brother-in-law directed the group of us to this one Friday night, and we stood and watched as dusk got darker. As we were leaving, we saw three guys in a white pickup attach a chain to a sigh and tear it down, then drive away. We took down the license plate, but I don’t think anyone got around to reporting it in the end.

Waiting for our flight Saturday, my Mom and I explored a bit—in “Little Italy,” apparently. There were a fair number of antique-style shops, including this salvage hardware store. Buildings getting torn down has always bothered me. It is so permanent once they are torn down. And old ones so often disappear to put up new ones, which bothers me as well. I have always thought salvage was a good idea. Save what you can—the old is often so much more beautiful.

This is the Great Salt Lake from the plane. Electronics—like digital cameras—aren’t allowed at this point, as the plane is landing. It was so lovely, though. So I took the picture.

Airports and Musicals

I spent the weekend in San Diego. My sister and her husband and baby just moved out there. We spent Saturday morning on the beach, and I took some California sun home with me.

Traveling was awful. Coming back from France was the same thing. As I went through Paris Charles de Gaulle, and London Heathrow, and New York JFK, I kept thinking “this airport is awful.” But then it wasn’t just one airport, it was the next one, too. At de Gaulle, I spent longer waiting in the line for my passport to be checked than the length of the flight: the distance between the airport doors and the passport people was farther than the distance between Paris and London.

But of course, no one really needs to hear more complaining about the airline industry.

While I was in France, I never figured out how to say “airline”--and I ended up talking about them (or trying to) a fair amount. I think what I said most of the time was “airplane companies.” Close, but not quite....

I saw the movie Hairspray tonight. As it got started, I was reminded of another blast-from-the-past high school musical, Grease. Well, actually, first I was reminded of the Sponge Bob Square Pants movie, and then I was reminded of Grease. I think Hairspray should get higher marks. Rather than singing about cars and conformity, they sang about things like racial integration and accepting yourself.

Harry and the Potters...again...

Watch a video of the Harry and the Potters concert at www.fourbysix.net. It's like being there. Well, five minutes of being there rather than two hours of being there.

Cody the Giant German Shepherd

I’m working part time at my parents’ veterinary clinic while I’m home for the month, before I start back at school in September. Both my parents are veterinarians, and I had a brief veterinarian phase myself, followed by a neurologist phase and a little later by the longer lasting foreign language teacher phase that has coincided with my major at school. I have realized a taste for things medical has remained, though.

The other day my mom showed me how to intubate a dog--stick a tube down its trachea. The word “intubate” I learned from watching “ER” (which went with an emergency-room physician phase), but it turns out that’s really what it’s called. Anyway, once the intubated dog was out and my mom started doing the dental, I moved on to clipping its toenails. I cut one too close and it started to bleed. I stopped it by dipping it in some powder, as shown, then Stephanie asked me to go get a dog from the kennels that needed to be prepared for surgery--to be neutered.

“Its name is Cody,” Stephanie said. “It’s a 116-pound German shepherd, you’ll be able to find it no problem.”

“Isn’t he mean?” asked my mom.

“Yeah,” said Stephanie. “She can handle it. Can’t you, Carrie?”

“Yes,” I said. Automatically. Without thinking.

It was as I was walking out to the kennel to get Cody the 116-pound German shepherd that I realized what I was doing. Going out to find giant dog. A German shepherd, the kind of dog that rips the arms of criminals. He would probably smell the blood on my hands from the dental’s toenails, and then that would be it.

Cody was nice enough, though. A little overweight. Not an attack dog after all.

Harry and the Potters

I went to a concert Saturday with my friend Jessica. We went to the Salt Lake City library to see Harry and the Potters perform--opened by Draco and the Malfoys. Draco and the Malfoys sang songs like “My dad is rich, your dad is dead” and “99 death eaters go by.”

Harry and the Potters, after singing about topics including saving Ginny Weasley from the basilisk, the enchanted ceiling, and Fluffy the three-headed dog, closed with “The Weapon We Have is Love.” The weapon against the forces of evil is love.

I know it is cheesy, but I left inspired.

Visit their HP Alliance page to be uplifted. And to have a listen.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=41713428

Home!

Everything is so familiar. It is good to be home.

So many times while I was in France, I would wake up and think, “I’m in France!” and simply be amazed. Since I’ve gotten back, it’s switched to waking up thinking, “I’m in the United States!” When it all comes down to it, that’s pretty amazing as well. I’m an American. I’m in the US. How cool is that.

I started reading Harry Potter today. Not the seventh yet. I was planning to read all of the books before the seventh, then that looked like a lot of work, so I decided just to review the sixth. But then…I decided I really did have to start back at the beginning. I finished the second book today, and it felt wonderfully like summer. I laid in the hammock in our back yard. It was hot, beautifully and so dry-hot. The mountains, which I missed, the hammock, and a good book. After all the rain in Normandy, it finally felt like summer.

Today I finished my bas-relief, ate lunch along the Seine, kissed two dozen French people, had an apéro at a sculpture workshop, talked to a communist, and had a midnight hot chocolate at a sidewalk cafe.

I can't believe I'm leaving.

A Little Too Academic (sorry)

Today we went to see the abbey of Jumièges. It is an extraordinary place--a huge abbey in ruins. Most of the main building that is still standing is romanesque, and an amazing example of a romanesque structure because it is so tall--a demonstration of the power of abbeys at the time, and of the afluence of the area. The abbey, and an accompanying legend of the "enervés" of Jumièges, illustrate as well the former path of the Seine. The river currently flows a good kilometer from the abbey, but once must have been closer.

The legend of the "enervés" tells of two sons who commited treason in leading an army against their royal father. Their crime merited death, which their mother, the queen, could simply not support. So the king agreed on a lesser punishment. The two were "enervé"--the nerves in their legs were cut--then they were sent down the Seine in a boat filled with food. The monks at the abbey of Jumièges took them in and cared for them. This painting depicting the scene, "Les Énervés de Jumièges" by Évariste Vital Luminais, is at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Rouen.

I had already visited the abbey a few weeks ago, but hadn't gone on a tour like we did this time. The coolest part, though, was when the tour ended, for some reason just the people in the workshop got to go down and see other parts of the abbey campus--or what used to exist of the abbey campus: a bakery, stables...they think only about a fourth of the buildings that stood at the abbey's heyday exist now. The tour guide went and got two flash lights that could have been used during WWII and he unlocked an iron gate in a wall. We desended--it was dark and damp and a bit slipery--a staircase into a chamber with a vaulted ceiling, then turned around and walked down a long tunnel that lead to another dark, vaulted room, then down another tunnel that ended, bricked off. I had forgot my camera this morning. The picture, that I found on Google, is pretty close, but think no lights, a dirt floor, and peaked (gothic style), not rounded.