NOT BAD NOMAD

My hotel room balcony, Clamart.

I am back home but still floating in a nomadic space where 'home' is just the last bed you slept in and the last place you ate your breakfast. And despite the insecurity, strangeness and discomforts of that floating world, I must say it has its charm and its usefulness. For one thing it liberates you, temporarily, from the force of habit. Your time, your attention, your surroundings all undergo a transformation which may or may not be to your liking but it certainly kicks you in the inertia-zone and wakes up at least some of your somnolent neurons. I walked more, ate less, got up earlier, went to sleep earlier and thought less about myself than I have in a long time. Things which needed to be done got done and although a feeling of being a remotely-controlled robot occasionally surfaced, there were moments of zen-like discovery and intense engagement for which I am grateful.

My sister, continuing her astonishingly quick recovery, is going back to Rome with her daughter this week. They are together in Paris at the moment where Annie is enjoying her release from the prison, as she calls it, of hospital. I don't believe my presence was a factor in her speedy rehabilitation, she's got her own indomitable will for that. But maybe the old familiar rusty pattern of sisterly irritation takes on movement and meaning when seen out of an unfamiliar window.

Back a little later with report of the Cambridge Women in Comics Event which I attended on Sunday.

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MOVED AGAIN

This morning my sister and I travelled by ambulance out of the big Roussy hospital to a convalescent clinic further out of the Paris periphery, near a small provincial town. The doctor wants her to stay two or three weeks but Annie has never been one to do what she's told or to accept that she is not Superwoman. Her recovery from the operation, thanks to the brilliant skill of the surgeon, has been astonishing but she is still not fit enough to go back to 'normal' life. Arriving at the clinic, there was a bit of a kerfuffle - to use a gentle British euphemism for one hell of a drama - because the lady was not well pleased with the place or with anything, really.

Never mind. Things have calmed down now and I am installed in a cozy room in a small hotel in the town centre, with a WIFI connection that actually works. I like this area much better than where I was before, at least there's human life out there, not just cars. There are shops and restaurants, boulangeries and boucheries and coiffeurs (more coiffeurs than anything else, for some reason - maybe the ladies of the town are particularly hair-conscious). My hotel is one of those typically French romantic petits hotels where things that don't work (like the missing top of the hot water tap) are quite charming and attended to with casual good humour by the proprietor. I much prefer this to mass-produced anonymously efficient tourist-oriented establishments. My room is the kind where one could probably write a book, should one be so inclined. One is not, pour le moment, so inclined.

Pictures of some sort will be forthcoming, soon I hope.

PARIS UPDATE

Water towers near hospital parking.

The hospital, Institut Gustave Roussy.

Internet connection in my room is unreliable but it seems I may have to move very soon, maybe this week, maybe next. My sister, who is doing extremely well, is going to be transferred to a convalescence clinic which we hope will be in central Paris but all depends on a complicated admin system over which we have no control. I have to find somewhere else to live which will be near her but I can't even start looking until the hospital tells me when and where she's going. Because I'm too tense to write anything interesting, I'll post some photos I took of my current surroundings. Back soon, hopefully with better visuals and verbals.

The self-catering room where I'm living.

THE SLASH

Next week, on Saturday the 20th of September, my face will be slashed. Well, only the left side. The slashing won't be done by a plastic surgeon or a mugger (please God). The deed will be performed by a Professor, a top expert in the arcane domain of salivary gland surgery and will (please God, allright?) be for my own good. The Prof will delicately (please, please Professor) excise a small, nearly invisible and painless lump, presumed innocent after much analysis, which has been residing on or in the parotid gland next to my ear for at least three years. Why bother removing it, I hear you asking. Because it grows - very very slowly, but grows. And since I fully intend to live for the longest possible time in the best possible health and the least possible disfigurement, removal of the alien lump is recommended. The op will take about an hour, under general anesthetic, and I will be in hospital for only one night.

Am I worried? Consciously, no. Unconsciously, how do I know? There's probably a dark sea of trembling jelly down there, fearing metamorphosis into scarface or palsyface. The risks have been explained to me and I have listened carefully. But somehow, even my natural mistrust of any technical procedure performed by anyone other than myself has failed to scare me shitless. I will survive, oh yeah, and continue to be as beautiful as I am. (God, are you listening?)

Meanwhile, protective invocations, incantations and even incense will be most welcome.

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