Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Disparu.

160. 9 am. A snapshot of a work Skype meeting.
Claire: Gazpacho-y?
Me: Claire?
C: c'est toi? 
M: Je ne suis pas Gazpacho-y.
C: ah c'est qui alors?
M: C'est sa mère.
C: Ooohhh
et elle est où Gazpacho?
M: Elle a disparu!
C: zut alors!
M: C'est très bizarre...
C: Bon, je vais dire ça à Geluck alors.
M: Donc, est-ce que tu as quelque chose à lui dire?
C: Non, en fait rien du tout, merci.
M: Bonne journée!
C: Allez, salut!


161. As customary, magazines often enlarge a sentence or a phrase out of an article, to emphasize a particular point. For this week's cover article Sex, Lies, Arrogance: What makes powerful men behave so badly? by its Editor-at-Large Nancy Gibbs, the TIME magazine highlights, "He had friends everywhere who called him far too brilliant to do anything so tawdry," a seemingly logical argument echoed by many journalists and several people I know, when supporting the hypothesis of DSK's innocence. Nancy Gibbs has written a second part to that sentence, "as though being smart and being decent were the same thing."

162. 7 pm. I come home to a complete silence. There is no sight of Gaston or Tintin. Because of a surprise birthday party for their mutual friend, our Tuesday tradition has been postponed to tomorrow. Even if we are not having dinner together, I have expected to at least see someone, given that the party is to be held at our place. Strange...

8 pm. The apartment is still eerily quiet. "Where are you guys?" I send them a message, just before getting into the shower. Turning on the radio, I try to imagine what went through our landlord's mind, when he recently replaced the warm ceiling light of our bathroom with a cold white one. Just as I get under the water, the hospital-like glow disappears. Without any window, the bathroom is pitch dark. Instead of trying to do something about it, or at least to figure out what happened, I continue to shampoo and start counting silently. One, two, three... Less than a minute later, the light comes back, yet another illustration for the theory that if you ignore a problem long enough, it will go away. By the time I start rinsing my hair, the bulb goes off one more time. "Thank you!" I yell over the loud music. The bathroom is instantly bright again. Either the landlord has also replaced our normal light switch with a voice-activated one, or Tintin is home.

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