It’s hard to quantify experiences, but to coin someone else's
original phrase, ‘you know it when you feel it.’

Now that I’m living in Paris, at my Grandmère’s 76-room ‘hôtel particulier,’ I find myself on the itchy edge of wealth, influence and power and while I don’t consider myself necessarily of that class, I’m certainly exposed to attempts to drag me into it.

Many afternoons, as I come home wearied by classes and braced for hours of study, there are these silver trays with little white, gold embossed envelopes (invitations), casually placed where they’re unavoidable, and it’s not unusual to find that one of the CMs has laid out a dress for me and a suit for Peter - though we seldom attend these events.

I find myself vociferously defending my schedule (for the thousandth time) - and I’ve only been in school three weeks:
“Grandmère, I’m in med-school, I have homework.”

Let’s wax freeversely of the upper-class (as if I belonged)..

In elegant but confined houses
where lives unfold in drawing rooms
and the inhabitants are sharp and snobbish.
They struggle against social and ****** constraints -
frustrations essential to the drama and pathos of wealth.

Let the rabble be messily heterogeneous
and agenda-set “inclusivity.” It’s nothing to us.
It hardly foregrounds harmony or authenticity.

Civilized people are more reticent and buttoned-up.
it’s sexier and more romantic, to drive toward marriage,
where lovers work to deserve each other,
and individuals integrate into couples.

Failing this urbane integration, love degenerates
into solipsist libertinism and eventually, these
sad outcasts catch their deaths - apart and alone.
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Songs for this:
Am I the Same Girl? by Swing Out Sister
It Hasn't Happened Yet by William Shatner

Does a jest...
Exist in all things?
Apparently God, has never to seek a lesson
At what exception is, of worthier sittings

A city of liberty
Taken to mercy, for a judgment
Of a noble wish, a confirmation to serious
Futures in low, if not love with life's reasons

Rage with me...
Sour notice oft a tender misery
With which; we have sight's anarchy
Run for the worldly stone, of promise in history...

Eyes that did...
Eat a nosey dream, for speed
Chasing the shadowy mouth, of privilege in biding
The time of a God, that does refute a tear's heed...

Need of a colossal seem
To these we awaken the real, with problem's
That saved now, with normalcy to deem
The world of an angel to make him, their whim

kisses.
feel them
the tension and aliveness
they’re loaded with psychology and social context

its an intense observation
mouths connect our inner and outer worlds
they cross the exterior-interior divide
they’re simple forms of passion and expression
but they’re drastic and emphatic

I wrestle with wildness
I desire less breathing room, less layering
I riot with instinctive response
I long to obliterate feminine’ restraint
and share inner experience
.
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A song for this:
Only Love Can Break Your Heart by Saint Etienne
Fly Into Your Arms (a cappella) by X-Cetra
As Above So Below by Fievel Is Glauque

Dried and crispy coats the lawn
Bright or dull it matters none.
Crying out their silent protest
Against this quick and second death.

And yet their friends keep coming
Dropping in, joining the parade,
“Wait don’t start without us”
Not knowing they’ve been betrayed.

Hiding in weeds or fleeing with the wind
They resist their fate in quiet desperation,
But the mower knows no empathy.
Inevitably they face their final destiny.

Some say anger and pain are cousins
Always traveling as one.
I’ve felt them both in my days,
Intertwined, solidified,
Almost premeditated,
Enjoying their journey.

But I prefer laughter with my pain.
True partners in survival
A touch of humor in the sorrow
Tempering, if even a shade twisted,
And each glad day
Can carry its drop of pain.

we live behind palace walls

“I’m in love,”  I said, sighing into the fall-like, Paris afternoon, “I have to admit it.”

My 85 year old uncle Remy, gently stirring a pitcher of American martini he was conjuring, said, “You should marry an insignificant lawyer - if you’re going to have a cross-class love affair.”
Uncle Remy was a lawyer, of sorts, once.

“I think you’re leading the witness,” I said, looking down at my shoes.
“I’m in love with my Havaianas,” I clarified - my new, white, square-toed flip-flops.
“Besides, no one thinks in terms of class any more - and Peter and I are NOT an asymmetrical match or relationship or whatever.”

But it got me thinking. Half, or more, of what Uncle Remy says is politically incorrect. And I don’t judge him harshly..

I wrote, last week, about a guy who
(gasp) told me he found me attractive
like it was some crisis.

Hadn’t I schemed to get with Peter? (my bf).
And hadn’t he admitted that he’d schemed to get with me?

Was I ready to diagnose this guy as a walking red flag
- for a gentle admission of interest?
Because he's a big, intimidating guy?

What are the small, social rituals
we’re allowed to use - to signal desire?
Sure, buying someone a drink at a bar
- but what else? It’s a Catch-22.

Must every comment face the court of
public opinion, verbal consent protocols,
uni regulations and the behavior authorities?
Should we ban serendipity and spontaneity too?

Monday morning came and I didn’t ask to change seats
I moved my pencil back - a little.
He actually could use a bit more room than me.

I smiled a little, asked him about his weekend,
there’s no use in being unfriendly.
His name is Jacques (Jack).
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Songs for this:
So Sorry by Lola Young [E]
The Hardest Part by Olivia Dean