July 4, 2003 Brookline
Whatever it was or is has receded some, shrunk, been consumed, excreted, come untied, metastethsized, is anyway less. The strange turns of the body that the physicians always attribute to gas. Will someone read this and say, yes, this was the day the crisis began? The night much less worrisome and slept rather well, even if I had to be up at seven.

Walking up to the subway this morning, I thought about the importance of the expectation of beauty in my surroundings. In Chicago, it is truly surprising to see the beautiful lake, because the neighborhoods are so bleak. Boston is less surprising in this way, and therefore I feel happier. France is off the charts of course. I'm accustomed to visual pleasure there. From looking at the top floor apartments on the nameless place I cross walking to the tramline in the morning to watching the château from the tram car window, I'm fed beauty upon beauty. There are no abandoned cars, vacant lots, or billboards to ignore. There is nothing to mentally resist. The effect makes me feel I'm being given back to my natural course of thought.

On the subway a small troll, of whom I regret taking a picture of. Large backback presumably full of beer into which he had stuck as many American flags as possible. His T-shirt (does such a person own any other kind of shirt?) read FRANCE SUCKS. Boston has taken "X sucks" as its ciy motto, an echo of the "Yankees Suck" cheer that Red Sox fans raise, even when the visiting team isn't the Yankees.

Taught in a nearly empty school without air conditioning. An easy day before all hell breaks loose next week.

July 5, 2003 Brookline
Long interesting conversation with Uncle G. about chronicling and the courage to observe or record. How I simply didn't want to be bothered with a potential scene by hauling out my camera to get a photo of the "France Sucks" guy. G. asked me why I bothered to write a journal. To remember what I felt at a particular time seems somehow important, is the answer. I'm a chronicler of affect. (Do you agree?)

Big Americans eating "crêpes" the size of burritos with their hands, chatting about Paris, where they doubtless ate the same dish in the same fashion. The bastardized version of the Breton dish is commonly available on Rue Mouffetard. Red peppers in a sweet pancake! No distinction between a gallette and a crêpe! Whoever runs this café was justly run out of France for sleeping with the franchise rep from Taco Bell. "I have a ham, egg, and cheddar," shrieks the order moppet. An EggMcParis, in effect.

Who are these American Francophiles? Two middle aged nuns lisping at one anther about the second coming, Stephen King, and "that we'll never have the same status again," whatever that might mean.

The hardball in my gut is back again. Riding high and deeper. An infected kidney added to my imagination. Kidney stone?

July 6, 2003 Brookline
Called Dad to see if he would pay for a bridge plan so I can see a doctor before going back to France. Had to explain several times that the policy would have to be written before I had an examination in case there's something critically wrong. If I need an operation, I don't want to have to deal with a pre-existing condition. But what the hell do I know about anything? I'm just someone who has to ask for help from his parents to get health coverage, a taker, barely a citizen.

Taught six hours today and will teach six hours every day until the end of the week. Am beat, completely sapped, though I have a lively group of French girls who like to laugh in my last class. Any thought not associated with class preparation burned out of my head by the thousands of interruptions teachers make in each others' days.

Dad finally going to take charge of taking my fencing equipment out of the stores in Ohio, where everything of mine that my sister had removed from her basement after suddenly revoking her offer to keep it for me. And then he asks me if I really am going back to France. Hard to describe the disappointing effect this has on me. Tit for tat.

July 8, 2003 Brookline
Grey blur of fatigue. I have thirty-minutes to myself every day at the school. For all that effort, the money still won't amount to much. Want to buy C. a car, show her a good time in the States. Aunt P. is trying to find a way for me to have free health care. She's set herself to the task with all the experience of someone who was herself paid to find ways through the cracks for other people. What a country, to work this hard, for so little with no health insurance, no retirement plan, not a goddamn thing. Thank god I don't have to pay rent in this handsome city.

My time is such that the only meal I eat before 18h30 is consumed in thirty minutes. I actually have to chew fast if I am to eat enough. It's disgusting.

July 9, 2003 Brookline
Health care and sticking it to the man. I want to stick it to the man, but I don't even have time to do it(Aunt P. says not to worry even if I can't qualify as being poor enough--I'll be in France by the time the bill comes due to collect anyway).

July 10, 2003 Boston
Took the train, hopped the shuttle, got off the bus, walked past the state troopers with the submachineguns who made me think every guilty thought I've ever thought and watched them all. The Americans off Air France came first. One made a triumphant hands-in-the-air gesture as if he were just returning to paradise after a long stayover in, say, Tulsa. The French came afterwards and quietly greeted each other. C. arrived and walked past the submachinegunners to the shuttlebus and onward and so on into a green and blue day.

July 12, 2003 Boston
First day of setting foot outside. Went to the French Cultural Center and were amused by the children's Bastille Day celebration they had concocted. Walked through the Public Garden on a hot day and were amused by the children who were small enough and determined enough to swim in the shallow water of the frog pond. The gleaming industry of the citizens everywhere in evidence. Listening to the stark, somewhat brutal blues recording J. sent me makes me feel like one of those privileged worthies who know the blues only at a distance, as a bit of audio tourism through less fortunate lives. Do you feel it, Boston? Do you feel it even when you're on your sailboat or driving your Porsche Boxter?

"Boxter," I must say, is perhaps the dumbest word in the English language. Guess what, you're dumb and tasteless with a very fucked up sense of priorities in life if you happen to drive one. You are the problem. But tell me, how does Muddy Waters sound on your stereo system, richy boy?

We made our way down to the waterfront slowly and haphazardly. Stopped at the Brattle Bookshop where C. took the time to verify that there were no copies of Le petit remorquer rouge, a beloved childhood book now lost, anywhere in evidence. Bought lunch at Quincy Market, as choked with tourists as when I first saw it as a boy. The kindly fellow behind the counter asked C. in French if she wanted cheese with her salad. C. answered without noticing that she wasn't speaking English. (She says "Merci" and "Pardon" without a second thought as well. I need to speak to her in English more often but I am just so happy to leave the language behind for a while). We sat on a bench and were charmed by the apparition of a real remorquer rouge, a red tugboat, conducting a big rusty scow out into the harbor.