Chapter 3: Lollipop Les sanglots longsDes violonsDe l’automneBlessent mon coeurD’une langueurMonotone. The slow weepingOf the violinsOf AutumnStab my heartWith a monotonousLassitude (Verlaine, 1844-1896) May 13th 1944. In less than a week, on May 18th, I’ll be 18. Ha! I don’t think I’ll ever celebrate my birthday again after that. Not that this coincidence of turning…
A “Time Patrol” Movie After driving 500 miles and change from San Francisco in December 1966, we finally made it to San Diego. I‘m sure San Diego is a lovely city, but my personal vision is just this: a lone warship in the Bay. “That’s what we drove days for?” Freezin’ cold “on the dock…
Chapter 2: The Station 1943. It’s been three years since the war started, well, really started. In 1940, after six months of doing nothing, we got beat up in a snap of the fingers. It’s been three years since Rennes, the city in Brittany where I was born and live in, has been occupied. Since…
A “Time Patrol” Movie 1966. We were living in Holland. A drastic change in weather after five years in West Africa. Came December, an old friend of my parents, Marie-Andrée, whom we’d known in Africa, invited us to San Francisco. She was teaching ‘God knows what 501’ at Berkeley. So off we flew to San…
Chapter 1, Exodus. Cont’d Previously on “Exodus”: the narrator, Renée is a young girl of Rennes, in Brittany. When the WWII offensive starts in May 1940, her parents send her to stay with her cousin, in Morlaix, a distant town. When France collapses in June 1940, Renée and her cousin, Maryvonne, decide to walk the…
Chapter 1: Exodus I just celebrated my birthday. I turned 14 on May 18th. At last I can stop wearing knee-high socks. I had my eye on a pair of stockings or platform shoes. I thought my birthday would be fun. But not really. Despite my mother’s delicious chocolate cake, the overall spirit was gloom.…
An “African Childhood” movie Lake Hannington in Kenya hosts one of the highest concentrations of flamingoes in the world. Now a National Park, in 1969, it was totally wild. We set off early that day from Nairobi. To the north via Nakuru, another, better-known flamingo lake, following our friends the Savary, in their rugged Land-rover.…
Equinoxio 