Reading French Novels With Maman

I just wrote my friend in Marseille an email. He could be elsewhere by now, but he always gets his email at the same address, and replies in due course.

I told him how I had been reading some French novels later, in translation and the original, and wanted to share my thoughts with him.

I told him I'd gotten ahold of a copy of The Camp of the Saints (translation from the French), by Jean Raspail, written in 1973. It was forbidden novel during last winter, that everyone was talking about it. But it was out of print, and used copies on Amazon going for several hundred bucks. Then someone put out a new cheap trade paperback edition for fifteen bucks and I scooped it up. I gave it a try. Très lourd, I told my friend in my email. Very heavy.

I decided I needed some lighter fare, something to pick my spirits up, but also something in the same line of artistic inquiry, namely science fiction, so I ordered a copy of Les Planètes des singes by Pierre Boulle, written ten years earlier in 1963. Amazing that within five years this earlier book had already become a famous Hollywood sci-fi movie with one of the most iconic scenes of all time.

My late father probably didn't even hear of Raspail, but no doubt he read Boulle's novel in translation. Certainly he scooped up all the classic science fiction back then. He was a voracious reader to the end of his life, and he was one of those men of that generation who could provide a deep background to science fiction literature as it evolved over that time period.

Boulle turned out to be a much easier read. It's short, and the French is easy for me to read, with use of a dictionary maybe once a paragraph so far. It differs substantially from the movie adaptation in the early chapters, which are in the form of a framing story that doesn't exist in the movie, that of two oisifs (loafers), Jinn and Phyllis who are travelers in a bubble-like spaceship and who push their journeys to the ends of the traveled realms of space, hoisted on the solar winds. In other words they are the far distant versions of the trendy travelers of today who seek out the most obscure experiences, always outrunning the ennui, with a sense of joy in the momentum of pushing the envelope of travel.

Then they find something floating in space...

Like I said, a fun read so far. I got the chance to read parts of it with mom when I was back in Colorado a couple weeks back. I just started reading from the beginning outloud in her living room. She was able to understand most of it, with the help of my interruptions of my own narration to explain certain words, many of which were the ones I had had to look up myself.

We got all the way up to Chapter 2, which begins the inner story, of Ulysse Mérou...

The Moments When You Really Feel the Heat

Bakery Open Today The forecast was for a couple degrees cooler, only to reach 114 locally. I took home a croissant and a sticky bun. An occasional indulgence there, instead of the coffee house chain, and its wonderful sandwiches.

The few degrees does make a difference. I was just out walking on the patio in the noon sun, with my wide brimmed hat. Thermometer says 110 even. Barely felt the heat.

Even yesterday when it was pushing 118, sitting in the shade, one felt the dryness more than the raw heat. Except when the wind blew, even just a gentle breeze. Then one feels the heat like a blast from a nearby fire.  Stillness is better.

Extreme Heat

It's supposed to be almost 120 degrees here. This morning before seven I drove down into the main part of town (Fountain Hills, that is) to get a cup of coffee, and afterwards I went to the bakery, but it was closed, with a sign saying it was because of the heat warning today.

Personally I love this kind of extreme. I'm looking forward to sitting outside a bit today during my breaks from work. I love feeling the air that temperature, at least for a little bit. The pool really helps on these kinds of days.

The Difference Between 2012 and 2017

2012: Bilderberg Group holds their annual meeting, having chosen a site this year in Chantilly, Virginia. Meeting is protested by several hundred activists, including Matthew Trump, a digital nomad software programmer of little account and consequence.

The group does not return to North America in their scheduled rotating in the coming years, but instead holds all their meetings at various secluded places in Europe.

2017: Bilderberg Groups returns to Chantilly, Virginia, their first meeting in North America in five  years. The meeting attended by a delegation from Donald Trump, President of the United States.

The Bilderberg Group was (and still is) a semi-formal annual gathering of (mostly European) elite, designed to share ideas among each other to seek possible common ground in moving forward the history of Europe and the world. In some ways, it can be seen as an attempt by the old European aristocracy, so devastated by the wars, to form a bloc that could rival American influence in the west. In many ways it has been extremely successful, as it has brought the old European elite back into parity with the Americans within the spheres of global influence again, at least according to their own view.

On a related note, I am of the opinion that the Chatham House Rule (which the Bilderberg Group follows in their annual meetings) is one of the key technologies invented in the early Twentieth Century crucial in forming the entire history of the century. Without an understanding of it, it would not be possible to understand the method by which ideologies became established and propagate among the global elite. By this, one can achieve a clear agenda ascribable to no one in particular, at least in public.

The Difference Between the TPP and the Paris Accord

TPP: For America to remain a nation, the United States must reject the TPP. (Status: rejected)

Paris Accord: For the Establishment globalists to retain any shred of being coherent cadre of world leadership through the existing structures and relationships, the United States must accept the Paris Accord (Status: rejected).

That's how far we've come in so short a time.