Welcome to Coriolistic Anachronisms

 2001 - Club Med St Lucia

«Solo dives were a scuba diving instructor’s privilege. On our rare days off, if bored on land, we could always go on a personal dive, une plongée perso’ as we called them - if and when the boat dropped anchor. These taboo dives greatly helped protecting our interest and motivation levels that might otherwise have been blunted by the repetitive babysitting of clumsy Sunday divers.

At first, the concept had posed an ethical problem. Having solemnly preached against solo diving while teaching classes in the much harsher Quebec environment, I couldn’t conceive of it being so casual under the Tropics. Eventually, though, I realized that for all practical purposes, an instructor is always diving « alone ». No matter who they accompany or supervise, dive leaders are used to counting exclusively on themselves and certainly wouldn’t expect or even want help from beginner divers.

Solo hence represented a mere additional step down and since the thought of being alone underwater was fascinating and I was in Club Med where everything was forcefully easy and superficial, I stepped down. It was implicitly agreed that staff doing solo dives would jump in quietly before everyone else, not really to hide but rather to avoid attracting too much attention, which in the end was exactly the same thing; it is incredibly complicated to explain to beginners they must NEVER dive alone when you are doing it yourself. But jumping in ahead of the pack guaranteed freedom and perfect visibility, and it also greatly increased the likelihood of pelagic encounters. Solo dives were usually rather deep and short, allowing for an early – and unnoticed – return to the safety stop bar under the hull.

I decided to do my first deep solo on a night dive trip and to bring our bright yellow underwater scooter along. I had rigged the electric vehicle with two large halogen lights that made it look very futuristic. As soon as the boat was at anchor by the Arch, I jumped in discreetly while people were still fumbling with their gear and waiting for the briefing. The Arch, just north of Soufrières, was our only night site because of a large sand patch permitting us to drop anchor; all our daily dives were otherwise done adrift. Thoroughly familiar with the local topography, I left the rocky arch-shaped formation behind me and headed straight towards the drop-off.

The sandy bottom dropped down slowly to 50 feet and then broke sharply into a steep slope sprinkled with scarce coral patches. I hadn’t yet turned my lights on, careful not to attract unnecessary attention to my destination. Despite our strict night diving rules, I intended to drop down to 100 feet, maybe even 130 feet, I’d see how things went. In any case, and despite common belief, it is rarely completely dark down below at night and if by luck there is a moon, one can navigate just like in broad daylight. That’s what I did until I’d left far behind me the white flash of our safety stop strobe, which could be seen from much further away than a simple dive light.

Just to be sure, I glided down the top part of the drop-off, effectively disappearing from the boat’s visual range, and finally turned on the two spotlights. My universe suddenly shifted from a nuanced and infinite world of shadows and dark shapes to a harsh explosion of bright colors, limited to the halo of the lights beyond which now lay an impenetrable darkness. A shark could now have swam 5 feet away from me undetected unless it happened to cross my beam.

I dove downward as fast as my ears allowed me to. Passing 100 feet, I did a brief mental recap. I was approaching the sacred 130 feet no-decompression limit. My dive computer showed an elapsed 3 minutes and the pressure gauge was reading 2650 lbs/in², out of the 3000 lbs/in² of a full tank. I decided to bust my depth limit, taunted by the tales of French instructors who bragged about going very deep, and banking on the air economy the scooter undoubtedly would yield.

At 130 feet, I promised myself to be very careful and kept going down.

Depth: 160 feet. I noticed that I must have been a little narced¹ because dropping from 130 to 160 feet had been a much lesser deal than going from 60 to 90 feet with a group of divers on my tail.

At 180 feet, I switched one light off, to keep a back-up just in case.

Depth: 200 feet. I marveled at the simplicity of this descent and told myself that I might as well keep going a little deeper since I’d only accumulated 5 minutes of bottom time.

Depth: 211 feet. I suddenly realized that my heart was pounding in my chest and pumping blood to my head in an incredibly loud fashion. Opting to stop, I kicked my fins a few times to right myself. No result. I crashed into the sloping reef and had to admit that I hadn’t added any air to my buoyancy compensator since I’d left the surface, trusting the scooter to control my movements and thus becoming as heavy as a prisoner’s ball and chain.

A little stunned, I had to wrestle frantically to free myself from a long soft coral branch that eventually broke and stayed in my hand, as I numbly inflated my vest, astonished at how much air fitted in it before neutral buoyancy was restored.

Blood was still rushing maddeningly to my head and breathing remained short from the battle with the coral. I gave one look at the computer: Depth: 234 feet. Close to 8 atmospheres. 7 minutes. An ascent ceiling and a mandatory decompression stop. In the middle of the night. Alone.

Too deep!

Depth: 235 feet. My thoughts were tumbling clumsily one on top of another. I restarted the scooter and let it drag me towards the surface. But a buzzer sound began ringing and eventually bothered me so much that I fought to find its source, my mind groggy.

It couldn’t be the scooter. Nor my dive watch. Ah, the computer. The damn thing was warning me that I was exceeding normal ascent speed. Of course, the scooter was much too swift for a safe vertical climb. I tried to orient it sideways in a diagonal but still couldn’t seem to manage my speed. So I stopped it and resumed kicking. But using my fins had become exhausting and the yellow machine, now a dead weight, was cumbersome and heavy.

Depth: 190 feet. The air tasted funny, metallic and tingling. Waves of pins and needles were rampaging through my body and it felt like blood merely spun behind my eyes without leaving the head. I was hitting the reef with my knees and fins but didn’t pay attention to that, concentrating on the two variables on which depended my fate: breathing rate and ascent speed.

Depth: 150 feet. The dizziness began to recede slowly and I finally regained control of my lungs.

Depth: 120 feet. I spotted faint light rays drawing shadows on the top of the wall, far to the right and above me. I had climbed straight back up and would come up too far from the boat. I corrected my trajectory and checked the computer: 11 minutes. The deco stop wasn’t increasing.

At 80 feet, I found some sand and followed a long funnel that I recognized from past daytime dives. I was almost out of trouble. The computer gave me a few minutes back.

Upon reaching 50 feet, I landed on the sandy bottom and took a minute to recap the situation, my thoughts now straight and clear. I had 1200 pounds of air left and according to the computer, no longer any mandatory decompression stops to be done. Bottom time: 14 minutes. I decided to stick around in the shallows for a while, to break the ascent even further.

Finding a group of divers under the boat in some 30 feet of water, I turned my second spotlight back on and aimed my scooter towards them, showing off. JM, the instructor leading the dive, immediately borrowed it and took it for a spin, leaving his group for me to watch.

Not really knowing what to do to entertain them, I found a cute little ray on the sand, of a pale beige color and softly rounded shape. I pointed it out to them and, breaking the absolute no-touch directive, tapped it with a finger to make it swim away. A strong shock made be back up with a jerk. I’d managed to pick an electric ray.

Disgusted, I recovered my scooter, showed the ray to JM vaguely hoping that he would touch it too and headed back towards the surface, defeated. I paused a good 15 minutes at the safety stop, suddenly quite worried about what I’d just done, and then climbed back on board and broke down my gear silently. I drank a few precautionary glasses of water to re-hydrate and laid down at the bow, not too sure if I was proud of myself.

I had just beaten – and by far – my own depth record. Solo. By night. Without any training or planning. Then there was the second record, much less glorious, leaving a sour taste in my mouth : never so close to a catastrophe, never so stupid.

I did, however, keep on doing occasional deep dives for about two years. Mostly, it was about the thrill of going places most people wouldn’t even dream of, and the privilege of swimming at uncharted depths, on unexplored walls and healthy reefs. But deep inside, I knew all too well that what was truly calling me down there was a very conflicting duo of emotions: the eternal wish to know myself better and the need to taste the very essence of life concentrated within a few dangerous minutes. It was the razor’s edge call. That devious, handsome voice that makes people climb incredibly hostile mountains or cross an ocean on a kayak or walk to the pole, risking everything for the sole gain of living harder, faster, higher, deeper or not at all.

I relied on my mounting experience and the two simple rules I had crafted for the circumstance: double the gear, half the buddy system. While diving with a partner on a recreational outing was absolute logic, it became quite the opposite at extreme depth. Down deep, where everything hung to a thread and anything could go wrong so easily, helping a distressed diver became incredibly dangerous because of one’s own weakened faculties. Another diver in trouble was a serious threat, and no one wanted to either face that threat or inflict it. So we dove alone.

I did my last deep dive off the North Wall in Provo, in the Turks and Caicos Islands. That day, our boat captain had the same idea and so we went off separately, out of sight of one another, straight down the magnificent wall. At 257 feet, I leveled off. I had just wanted to pass 250. I was nervous and quite ready to ascend back to the sunlight, but I caught a glimpse of movement below me and looked down. There was my captain, some 30 feet below, following a graceful eagle ray, his bubble streams trailing behind him in gigantic columns of intricate texture, white slashes of human presence on the deepest ocean blue, rising all the way to the surface and the real world beyond it.

At that moment, seeing him as I must have been myself, an infinite spec of pure human silliness, irresponsible to the point of greatness, alone in the middle of a killer water mass of immeasurable crushing power, at the mercy of the slightest hiccup or mechanical failure, irremediably isolated from the surface by the physics of pressure and time and gasses, fragile mind, small footprint, deep commitment and blue coffin all around, something clicked in me that would never again be forgotten. As far as I was concerned, it was not worth it and would likely end in tragedy.

I never dove casually below 150 feet again.

Many years later, I was involved in a tragic recovery attempt in Little Cayman when a fellow divemaster disappeared underwater and I had to briefly scan Bloody Bay Wall down to 180 feet in a major, multi-dive-operator search and rescue effort.

The razor’s edge is everywhere. The missing diver hadn’t, it would seem, been able to resist the call of the deep. He might even have welcomed it. »

 ¹ Narced: Common diving expression, from the word narcosis. A diver breathes regular, compressed air, which is composed of roughly 21% oxygen and 79% nitrogen. Nitrogen narcosis, also called rapture of the deep, is an insidious effect of that nitrogen when breathed at high pressure. It makes divers lose their grasp on reality while diminishing mental and motor faculties. Narcosis is progressive and increases with depth; however it has no lasting side or secondary effects and is relieved by ascending back to shallower depths.

...

« Many dead divers have been found inside [deep] shipwrecks with more than enough air remaining to have made it to the surface. It is not that they chose to die, but rather that they could no longer figure out how to live. »

Robert Kurson – Shadow Divers

 Posted at 4:41 PM in Quotes: 9 Comments » Toggle display • Reply

• 1 - dinahmow says:
  
  

  « What does Marie think about this?
  
  If my French was not now so basse qualite I’d buy your book. I find it tough to use a dictionary so much. »

  Date of comment: 2009-12-03 21:32 • Reply
• 2 - Sigrid says:
  
  

  « Really? Selfish as I am, I never realized you went through the futile exercise of « looking for a body that never will be given back » as well... Ah, but the attraction of the deep... I never did a deep dive myself without toying with the thought of heading straight down and never coming back up. It’s a bit like having a gun in a house... making one option too easy... »

  Date of comment: 2009-12-04 08:30 • Reply
• 3 - Vince says:
  
  

  « Sigrid: yeah, I relate that to gummy bears. When I have some around, I’m never too sure I can resist them...
  
  Dinahmow: maybe I should write a French dictionary, then... »

  Date of comment: 2009-12-05 10:14 • Reply
• 4 - Sigrid says:
  
  

  « Tartuffe! »

  Date of comment: 2009-12-05 14:23 • Reply
• 5 - marie says:
  
  

  « ..or Doritos in the house...
  
  Phew.
  
  My heart was in my mouth. I married the Camel Man. Without the camels...
  
  http://www.euro-cig.com/gal_images/20060405112652.jpg »

  Date of comment: 2009-12-05 14:33 • Reply
• 5.1 - Vince answers:
  
  

  « The Camel man??? Ok, admit it, it’s the haircut... »

  Date of comment: 2010-01-07 19:08 • Reply
• 6 - Craig says:
  
  

  « I have been away from your blog for some time but I was very happy upon my return to find this excerpt from your book.
  
  Truly an awesome recount of your travels to the razor’s edge! Do you have similar tales of your aviation exploits?
  
  My Amazon shopping cart is at the ready waiting for an English version of Les aventures d’un GO désorganisé. :) »

  Date of comment: 2010-01-07 14:53 • Reply
• 6.1 - Vince answers:
  
  

  « Hi Craig,
  
  LOL, no such foolishness from the flying days, I was a very safety-conscious pilot. And look where it took me. Maybe I should have been more daring.
  
  I’m working on the full translation, though. I shouldn’t take longer than a couple of decades. »

  Date of comment: 2010-01-07 19:10 • Reply
• 7 - Craig says:
  
  

  « What about a Kindle or audio book version? ;)
  
  Maybe I should just learn French. :) »

  Date of comment: 2010-01-08 10:49 • Reply

Last Thursday, at Marie’s suggestion, I got up at 6 AM to go watch giant balloons float through Manhattan streets. I wasn’t there alone. An estimated 3 million of my fellow homosapiens had converged on the city. We were a little cramped. Marie had stayed in bed. Une femme avertie en vaut deux.

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is the 2nd or 3rd largest in the US, they say. It begins at 9 AM and lasts about 3 hours, winding its way from mid-Central Park level down to Macy’s on 34th. Spectators arrive at dawn and camp on sidewalks to reserve a front-row spot. They bring makeshift scaffolds to elevate themselves above the multitude. They come equipped with cameras and warm clothes and thermos. And they wait more patiently than I have ever seen a crowd wait.

My plan had been to push on early all the way to the start line, to have a curious look at the parked balloons inflated the night before. Once on the subway, however, I made a fatal mistake and remained aboard an express that whisked me 7 stations - or 50 streets - passed my destination. By the time I’d backtracked and landed at 72nd St, it was 8 AM and the incoming human flow was backed up all the way down the subway stairwells. Up in the street, there was a mob piled up against the intersection and no way to even approach the parade’s path.

I bailed. I was going back to bed. The most I would have seen of the event was hundreds and hundreds of participants lining up on the platform of various stations in their colorful outfits.

But approaching Times Square underground, I changed my mind. I decided to emerge, do a quick recon on the surface and if needed escape via the F line that could take me straight home. The crowds there were much more manageable, as we were half way down and hence much later along the parade’s path. I walked around the neighborhood for a while, negotiating road closures to find a proper photography angle. Finally, I settled for the corner of 41st Street and 7th Avenue, looking north. I was right at the front of a thin row of people facing a clear half-block of open space to the next corner where the balloons, coming straight down towards us from the park, would turn east.

Then we waited. The gigantic balloons appeared on the horizon - 18 blocks above our location - long before they reached the corner, and long telephoto lenses sprang into action. The weather was overcast but rather mild and pleasant, the light subdued; a pale cloudy sky, however, made for a harshly bright background that would be hard to reconcile with much darker buildings and balloons.

Then for hours, the show went on and on, balloon after balloon. Eight thousand people were taking part in the parade, either controlling the helium-filled crafts or just showing off like people do at such events. I couldn’t really see them nor did I care. I was looking up high at the cartoon figures flying by neon signs and framing themselves gracefully between the long row of 7th Ave’s tall buildings.

Apart from a very annoying little girl (blame it on the parents) who kept sticking her fingers on my lens from her dad’s constantly moving shoulder, the crowd remained tame and civilized. Even the cops were in a seemingly good mood and well mannered. They appeared to enjoy the show.

I made my exit a few balloons early to avoid the final assault on subway lines and found my way back to Brooklyn. Everywhere else, the city was still asleep, enjoying what in French we call « la grasse matinée ». Back in the peaceful Cobble Hill ‘hood, I looked around me, surprised. Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I never would have believed that 3 million people were tightly packed against each other on sidewalks and street corners a mere 5 miles from me. It was as if the balloons had been a dream.

I pinched myself. It hurt. I’ll be smurfed, I said out loud, so I really did see a smurfly big Smurf in the Manhattan smurf*.

*Schtroumpf alors, j’ai vraiment vu un schtroumpfement gros Schtroumpf dans le schtroumpf de Manhattan. Let’s not forget that the Smurfs are originally from Belgium and speak French, in which language it is all much funnier.

 Posted at 10:55 AM in New York: & Photoblogs: 5 Comments » Toggle display • Reply

• 1 - Marie says:
  
  

  « My favourites are the cop pictures. Black and white cops, cops under the eye of the elephant, and the last picture, above all, on the horses. Classic and stunning. It’s like Disney meets Robocop.
  
  The balloons and the fuss? I don’t really get them, I guess. I’d love abstract ones. I do NOT want to see Ronald Macdonald floating above my head. But I did like the hephalump. »

  Date of comment: 2009-11-30 08:51 • Reply
• 2 - Sigrid says:
  
  

  « WOW... the 2nd picture, cop pulling on his cigarette... EXCELLENT pic!!!! »

  Date of comment: 2009-11-30 09:02 • Reply
• 3 - Vince says:
  
  

  « Well, glad we all agree. The b&w are my favorites too, and neither do I really get the fuss about the balloons. But then again... I think after all the parade isn’t really about the balloons, it’s about itself, and the city that hosts it. About glamor and size, and outrageous means to a frivolous end. »

  Date of comment: 2009-11-30 09:17 • Reply
• 4 - Amber says:
  
  

  « Hey Vince - Your photography skills are getting to be out of this world!! Every time I look on your site I am awed by the amazing photos you turn out! Who would have thought that NYC would provide so much better substance to capture than Vancouver??! Well done! :) »

  Date of comment: 2009-12-03 08:03 • Reply
• 4.1 - Vince answers:
  
  

  « Thanks my dear, very kind of you, and encouraging. Vancouver sure is hard to top. Happy holidays to you and your sister, by the way! »

  Date of comment: 2009-12-03 23:05 • Reply

Here are - following no particular order nor theme - a few more grainy glimpses of the City, day in, day out.

 Posted at 7:53 PM in New York: & Photoblogs: 2 Comments » Toggle display • Reply

• 1 - marie says:
  
  

  « Looks like I fell out of the box... »

  Date of comment: 2009-11-26 17:15 • Reply
• 2 - Anonymous says:
  
  

  « The Eye and his Muse... »

  Date of comment: 2009-11-27 09:54 • Reply

Well, fame will have been short for the newcomer SexyLightbox. At 1:30 AM the same day, I have just decided that Shadowbox was stronger, more polished and better built.

Inspired by SexyLightbox’ rounded corners and colour schemes, I’ve adjusted Shadowbox to resemble it using CSS3’s new border-radius property. It’s a work in progress, but Shadowbox prevails...

 Posted at 1:37 AM in Web site news: & Web winks: No comments yet »  Post one!

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Starting with the previous post « Taming Coney Island » and on, all slideshows will be powered with the SexyLightbox script, replacing Shadowbox - at least temporarily. It’s not necessarily better but looks very slick and was worth a try since I am always on the hunt for new tools. Click on these links or the images below, have a look, and please don’t hesitate to leave feedback!

 Posted at 12:28 AM in Web site news: & Web winks: No comments yet »  Post one!

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There’s no way around it, the place is a zoo. Too close to the city to be off limits yet far enough to yield a vague disorientation, Coney Island is the closest ocean-front beach as the famous crow flies from Manhattan - and that bird doesn’t fly so well.

For those unfamiliar, Coney is no longer an island. A creek separating the peninsula from the mainland was filled long ago and what had been the southernmost barrier island of Long Island was integrated and tamed. Its name is widely accepted to be of Dutch origin and would mean Rabbit Island. These are long extinct. Man is cruel. And hungry.

Yet if summertime Coney Island is a wildly animated place with its amusement park, aquarium and beaches, come fall the madness subsides. Doors are closed, metal curtains lowered and locked, rides deserted and the beaches, left empty. A cold wind blows, garbage piles up on abandoned streets and the wild cats become braver.

At that point, if your eyes are curious and your mind awake, a walk about turns into a pleasant expedition across a strange land. Walls remain painted in loud colors and complex murals, old signs await in silence the return of summer, rare people hurry past, the waterfront sleeps. You’re in the other Coney Island.

On my last visit, with sunset in mind, I set out for the Easternmost tip of Coney Island, walking down Neptune Ave and onto the beach as soon as I could reach it. On my way back from the point, as darkness was gaining, bizarre « No Trespassing » signs seemed to restrict access off the beach, but I found a gap and ventured back into a residential neighborhood. Strange high fences were cutting right through the area and I couldn’t figure out why. The houses looked identical on both sides yet razor wire separated them. A few people gave me suspicious looks as I walked along hurriedly with my photo back-back.

Eventually, I reached a heavily fortified checkpoint - and realized I was coming in from the inside of the restricted zone. I approached a policeman at the gate and apologetically asked where on Earth I was. « This is a gated community, » he said. « So I’m in the wrong place? » I asked. He smiled and nodded. I looked up. The huge sign crowning the entrance said « Seagate ». I’d never heard of such a community in New York. My suspicion rose exponentially as I analyzed the implications of such a thing. But since I was persona non grata, I thanked and moved on.

Further research has revealed a self-contained municipality founded around 1900 and allowed its own laws and police force. It’s about 10 blocks long by 5 blocks wide and includes everything west of W 37th St. If you are a resident, you need a permit to enter, all your beaches are private (a major crime if you ask me, waterfront should never be private) and if you’re expecting visitors from the real world, you must report them to Control or they won’t be allowed in! Weird. Has anyone seen Les rivières pourpres (The Crimson Rivers)? Remember the Faculty, living in autarky and selecting their... But I’m getting carried away.

The bottom line is this: Coney Island is full of surprises, some good, some bad. That alone, in my opinion, justifies a visit. And of course, there’re all the cats. Wild, it would seem, and given food by good-hearted souls. Cats, as you can imagine, know no gates. How lucky they are.

The following is a longish photo essay on the « other » Coney Island. Piers, beaches, sand, signs, doors, colors, cats and skies. The few people shots go back to early fall. The rest are from this week. Enjoy!

 Posted at 2:03 AM in New York: & Photoblogs: 7 Comments » Toggle display • Reply

• 1 - Marie says:
  
  

  « There are some extraordinarilly wonderful photographs here. Disorienting, too. The Hasidic family trekking over the sand - it looks like Spain, some blasted area near a bullfight arena...
  
  Stunning. »

  Date of comment: 2009-11-20 13:13 • Reply
• 2 - Sigrid says:
  
  

  « No! The black and white is the prettiest! »

  Date of comment: 2009-11-21 07:26 • Reply
• 3 - NewYorkangel says:
  
  

  « Beautiful, beautiful pictures!!!!!!!!!!!
  Looove them.
  You rock, Vince!!!!!!!!! »

  Date of comment: 2009-11-21 07:50 • Reply
• 4 - bonbon oiseau says:
  
  

  « les chats are trés jolie! and the signs of coney island are like nowhere else in the world-well captured man! inspiring me to paint our door orange and write « don’t piss here » in decorative letters. »

  Date of comment: 2009-11-21 12:15 • Reply
• 5 - Vince says:
  
  

  « Hi everyone, glad you’re enjoying the pics.
  
  Marie: Yeah, Spain or maybe a North African beach...
  
  Gitte: The black and white... cat?
  
  Emma: Hola!
  
  Deb: Paint sales must soar on Coney Island. »

  Date of comment: 2009-11-21 17:35 • Reply
• 6 - Sigrid says:
  
  

  « Claro! l’adorable p’tit chaton noir et blanc! »

  Date of comment: 2009-11-22 09:46 • Reply
• 7 - donna says:
  
  

  « such a mix of great images. « the wreck » compelled me to track down the field guide to stray shopping carts. i think we have a definite example of class B, type 21 shopping cart.
  http://www.strayshoppingcart.com/shopping_cart/4_ts.htm »

  Date of comment: 2009-11-23 10:43 • Reply

New York, as it turns out, is plagued with late season-blooming mosquitoes. As the temperature rose yesterday to 18°C and is now hovering around 15°C, the little bastards manage to rise again and again, like Peter Sellers failing to die in the hilarious opening scene of « The Party ».

By late autumn, one grows weary of slapping around frantically - and often missing. Fly swaps are messy and leave red stains on the walls. So let me give you a trick that has done wonders for me lately, especially for the late night buggers that won’t let us sleep - a mosquito buzzing around your head in a dark silent room is like the sound of bombers approaching London during WW2. Or so I imagine.

So my trick in two words: shaving cream!

No, seriously! It’s instant mosquito glue. Rub around a bit of cream on the palm of one hand and merely wave your hand close to the insect. Make sure to be in its path as it takes off. It’ll stay stuck as surely as if the shaving cream was contact glue. Wash your hand up. You’re done.

 Posted at 11:24 AM in ICMOL: & Ticks and tricks: 2 Comments » Toggle display • Reply

• 1 - Anonymous says:
  
  

  « There was an ultimate (or so I hope) mosquitoe in my bathroom this
  morning, huge, ferocious looking. With a top-gun quality kleenex in
  my right hand, I aimed, and missed, four times.
  The shaving cream might be the ideal solution, for household blessed
  with a man and a razor. Any idea for the others ? »

  Date of comment: 2009-11-16 15:28 • Reply
• 2 - Sigrid says:
  
  

  « Whipped cream?
  
  As for calling having a man and a razor a blessing, I wouldn’t go that far. You really can’t leave them lying around. They’re a liability, and they lose their edge so quickly.
  ;) »

  Date of comment: 2009-11-17 09:00 • Reply

« Dying, that doesn’t frighten me...
It’s losing my life that would make me sad. »

Le grand Marcel Pagnol

 Posted at 11:04 AM in Schtroumpfissime: 2 Comments » Toggle display • Reply

• 1 - Anonymous says:
  
  

  « He’s the one for every occasion.
  He’s comfort, sun, thyme and cicadas,
  rocky mountains and bartavelles.
  How does he manage to always catch us
  « ... en flagrant délit d’humanité » ? »

  Date of comment: 2009-11-18 07:24 • Reply
• 1.1 - Vince answers:
  
  

  « He doesn’t catch us, we catch ourselves... »

  Date of comment: 2009-11-21 17:39 • Reply

I know I’m not posting much these days. It’s just that, there’s that thing. It’s sneaky. It comes in stealthily and creeps into daily momentum, coating all things great with a fuzzy interference blanket. It’s a kind of existential static, the white noise of life that sometimes obstructs clear line of sight to the essential stuff that Saint Exupéry confirmed invisible to the eyes any way.

Like a fog bank over complicated shores, existential static renders simple navigation tricky and makes my ship vulnerable to shoals. It blurs perspective and adds a grainy texture to the sequence of events that make life. That static is born from routine and the repetitive small tugs of trouble at my sleeves. I become annoyed and concentrate on the sleeve rather than on wearing the coat with grace and confidence. When perspective is lost, it is replaced by a series of uninterrupted obstacles challenging me like a horse on a difficult course.

The approach of Christmas, bureaucracy bearing down on sore shoulders, a sense of purposelessness, receiving a lot and not being able to give much back, miscellaneous computer issues, a cold and another and some laziness, urban distraction, much to see and do, still, well these all contribute to the static.

I do promise the blogging rhythm will eventually pick up, but first it will slow down even further - you see, growing nearer every day on a shimmering horizon is our next episode of travels. Quebec and South Africa are booked and hooked, and there’s yet another road trip brewing.

Then at our return to the US, critically important and exceptionally busy days await. So it will be a while. But posting will resume. In the meantime, I will do my very best to keep the blog from going into random mode. Have mercy.

Note: QRN sur Bretzelburg was an album of the Spirou et Fantasio comics series by Franquin and Greg. It featured the fantastic Marsupilami and was set in a fantasy European dictatorship-kingdom. The term QRN is taken from the old radio-communications « Q » code and means there is static in the transmission.

 Posted at 11:01 PM in Schtroumpfissime: No comments yet »  Post one!

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