What You Can Learn in the Immigrations Department.

I didn't go to class today.

No Monsieur Le Professeur.

No "HORRIBLE! Adios immediately!"

Even more heartbreaking, no: "Would we be sad if this man left the stage and did not come back for a long time, or am I drunk?"

Not today.

Today, another visit to the prefecture. And as a bonus, a visit to the sanitation and health department convenietly located about 40 minutes and a bus ride out of central Paris.

If I got on a train now, I could probably catch an hour of class. If anyone would admit me into the building. But frankly, I feel a little sick and exhausted. Maybe it is the compounded stress of the blackmailing process with my former landlord, the lease complications with my current landlord, the missing wire transfer of 4,000 dollars to one bank, the other bank which has rejected my wire transfers twice on their own fault and charged me for it and now refuses to accept responsibility, the month-long process of opening a french bank account that doesn't actually work and the person who has hung up on me twice when I called for assistance, or maybe it is the nagging notion that if the French government finds out certain things certain people WILL be put in jail and it is all over me, or maybe it has something to do with the series of older men who have taken advantage of my vulnerable situation to try and force me into horrible sexual relationships in exchange for help I think at this point I could snap one of these days and go on a rampage with these creeps, maybe it has some connection to the cellhpone company problems and University of Minnesota bill problems in the United States that refuse to resolve, no no no I cannot imagine why I feel a little tired and exhausted and am gaining weight eating junkfood all of the time because I am exhausted a little depressed and don't have energy for much of anything any longer and frankly after all of the problems that I have encountered I don't have much money to solve the problems that remain which are more than a few and now I need to find a job where do I find a job when my french is still so horrible and people still sound like automatic weapons when they talk to me not that I really have time or funds to sit down and study french right now some mornings I think I still have enough grant money that I could flee to southeast asia and fat chance anyone will be able to track me down any time soon well it could be worse I could still be living in Minneapolis hahahahaha Minneapolis jesus christ can't find a good baguette to save your life in that city at least here I have a fighting chance of eating a good baguette I also can go to the louvre and look at winged victory for hours at a time sure as hell beats the cherry spoon

En fait, I need a vacation. And what timing! I fly to Athens a week from tomorrow for a three week spell of rest. Not a moment too soon, to be sure.

But this blog entry had a title. And that title had a point. Did I begin this blog entry with the intention of a rant that wishes it were the last 80 pages of James Joyce's Ulysses no I did not but sometimes these things happen. The blog was getting a little sterile anyways. Dusting off those cobwebs.

Oh right. So what did you learn today at the immigration department Harlan? I learned the need for play. The need for the clown. Everyone in their jobs looks so bored, so unhappy. Where is the poetry, the imagination? And how essential I feel these things to be to the life. How can we go about our days being sterile, nasty, by the book? Well god knows I've done it. King of the Tight-Assed Overachievers, c'est moi. But as I get over myself a bit, as I watch my ego start to relax a bit, I am realizing how dead to life we can be in our daily routines.

And the clown who plays, the actors who play cannot be dead to life. A healthy individual or society must have this dangerous presence of play that flouts utility, that defies order and logic, that refuses to be part of a corporate logo. The naughty play of life, like animals fucking.

So today I learned in the Immigration Department, I learned anew, what it means to be dead to life. Oh how badly I wanted to make a joke. Frankly, I was a little preoccupied finding a way to cheat on my eye exam. I managed the latter without too much of the former, although the opposite would have been much more interesting.