Strangely Home

I'm home in Mendoncino and was in fact writing this blog last night just about this time when my loyal laptop bit the dust in a drama of inappropriate behavior. I've tried to revive it, but with no luck. I believe the hard drive that was its brain is no longer. I'm not sure what is lost and what is saved. That's a topic for another time.

If it had to go the way of all artificial intelligence, I'm glad it had the wherewithal to wait until I was home. I suspect it was the journey that is to blame. Something about the journey was slightly askew, although, the universe was so good as to keep the plane ride simple—no turbulence, no drama. I'm most grateful for that.

But Friday morning, as I drug two very heavy suitcases out of my apartment along with my purse and a small cloth carry-on that had my computer in it, the elevator, that I had patted and thanked and prayed over for three months, chose to rebel. It would not come when fetched by its button. There was a taxi downstairs waiting to carry me across town to the 13th arrondissement (the FIAP building, which is a youth hostel where my classes were held and where most of my fellow travelers were housed). There a bus waited to carry me to the airport where a plane waited to carry me to San Francisco where a friend was waiting to drive me home. None of these conveyances would wait for long. I had to go down a flight with half my luggage and then back up it for the piece I'd left behind, the biggest of the bags and bring it down. Floor by floor, up and down, up and down, all five floors.

It's was like some kind of last laugh on the part of all the staircases (of which I had admittedly complained) in Paris. In any event, I imagine that it was during that unexpected exertion that I did not attend to my laptop carefully enough. I probably banged it on the staircase. It was not packed for such a journey. I had expected to use the elevator.  Such is life. I don't believe the elevator answers to a call on the fifth floor. Perhaps that's the issue.

I had been prudent with the words I wrote, saving them. But all the photographs that I downloaded onto my laptop—alas, I never backed them up. I even thought about it and ignored the thought. I have not abandoned my belief that some technological genius will rescue them, but that remains to be seen. Meanwhile, not only am I home. My routine is entirely altered by the fact that I cannot use my laptop.

It turned on courageously on the plane. It even turned on here at home, but once it had been on for awhile at home it froze and made what can only be described as a most unnatural noise. That was that. The end.

I am writing this at 2:30am Mendocino time, which is 11:30am Paris time. My body's clock is still in Paris. I'm wide awake. Furthermore, I just finished the last fifty pages of Stendhal's The Red and The Black. What an amazing book. It has left me in this odd mood however and is responsible for the voice that is seeping into my blog entry. Poor Julien Sorel. He dies. In fact, he is executed for a crime of passion, he attempts to murder the woman he loves. It's a long story, and Stendhal was able to move me from amusement to despair with ease. His political and cultural insights are exceptionally interesting to me. I feel like he has educated me to the mindset of Paris in the 1830s. He manages to communicate the travesty of class division and the plight both of women and of the common people, however well educated.

I'll have more to say on that subject in another blog. I'm writing tonight to say, yes, I'm home in California. Yes, it is strange to be home. Yes, I miss Paris. Yes, I will return, yes. I say yes. I will, yes.