I've always seen Paris as a sister-city to my home town of San Francisco. I grew up immersed in the cuisine and glitter of both. I already had kitchen knowledge of French when I started studying it in school. I've watched so much footage of Paris over my lifetime, I feel like I've lived there. Worked there. Walked narrow streets home in a dirty chef's jacket after midnight to paint through the night.
In a significant way, the Charlie Hebdot attack and the attacks last night, 11-13-15, hit me harder than the Twin Towers massacre. I felt myself crying out, "My city! My people!" And every new piece of news was like a dagger to my heart.
Then, this moring, I wrote a poem about it. It wasn't eloquent, it wasn't long, it wasn't deep. It was very personal. Those who get me, got it. I appreciate that a lot more than I would had it gone viral. It's a VERY personal piece. It imagines the last moments. It looks at the pain. And it commiserates on a level most people are not willing to reach down to.
And of course, one of the terrorists came over with the refugees. Because the GOP needed a little justification for their continued spiral down to insanity, dragging us all down with them. They make me absolutely sick. And again, I want to run from this country. But then I think, where? Doc's homeland is nuclear. His other homeland is South Korea, and, no. Sweden would take us. Germany is terrifying. Paris is out, at this point, borders closed. GB? Doc would hate the UK. Canada? Possibly. As long as I never have to leave the house and accept the weather. Canada makes the most sense, politically, they are doing the best right now. And they aren't hated outright by anyone.
I fear for this country with this Paris attack. But not of a terrorist attack. No, I fear who it is going to give power to. Could Trump be the anti-christ that proves Christianity? That's pretty much what it would take for me to be a believer. He's such a fucking pig. And there is no point trying to parse that. He is what he is. Putrid swine. The whole GOP "presidential" roster is made up of really obvious psychopaths and sociopaths. People who mean to do harm to their own. People with driving interests that have nothing whatever to do with humanity. And so many people are just so completely blind to it. I really don't get it. How can so many people, educated poeple, be so completely ignorant when it comes to voting their own interests, when everything else they do in life is motivated by their personal interests?
No. I'm not an American, if that is what it means to be an American. Anyway, the point is moot. Tonight, I am a Parisian.