Moving Pictures

 

So my plan to post something here every day in November kind of fizzled.  I did end up writing most days, but without time for ideas to simmer and for prose to get edited, quality suffers.  Maybe once a week is a better frequency for me.  Although I reread a few of the things I had written kind of offhandedly, and in retrospect some of them are not too bad. 

For example, from the day after Thanksgiving:

“Everyone sent pictures of food yesterday.  Aerial shots, camera hovering over plates and platters.  I indulge too from time to time, and I suppose it’s relatively harmless.  On one level it’s a simple celebration of a custom, and a way to share the experience, especially poignant this year, with (at least some) people abstaining from family gatherings.  But on another level it’s straight up narcissism: look at me and what I have done.  Not only in the sense of look at the dish I’ve prepared, but look at the status I’ve achieved, and at the comforts I have gathered around me.  Of course one could say the same thing about everything on social media, more or less.

Perhaps I’m just bitter and a little jealous.  Next year if I happen to be in the US for Thanksgiving, surrounded by my broader family, maybe I’ll send pictures around too.”

A handy transition to the news that we are moving to the United States in four days.  I choose my words carefully here: I resist saying “moving back” to the US, even though it is my home country and I spent the first 35+ years of my life there.  Because I’ve been living in another country for the past 13 years, and because meanwhile the US has changed and I’ve changed, I’m under no illusion that this will be anything like settling back into an old, familiar life.  Not to mention that, for my wife and stepson who have never lived there, this move is not “back” anywhere.

There’s also an element of not wanting to admit defeat.  As if by saying moving “back” to the US (or, even worse, “back home”), I would be classifying my time in Switzerland as an aside from the main plot.  There is a strong tendency among my countrymen to do this: to treat any experience outside the US as “an adventure,” fodder for future stories to be told to friends back in the states, delivered with a bemused fascination of the exotic Other and a glib satisfaction of being back in the Land of the Free.  See also “Emily in Paris” (or, rather, don’t, and take my word for it).

Meanwhile, we spend the remaining days of the awful year that was 2020 dealing with visas and pet vaccinations and administrative processes in different countries and finding new homes for appliances that won’t run on 110 volts. 

The other day we had to go to the caisse de chomage, which sits in the office complex on top of the big post office in Montbrillant, which I never knew existed.  The knowledge that we’re going to leave soon made Geneva feel different, as if the city’s existence was starting to cleave away from my own.  The people walking between the buildings in the office complex – a community into which I have been trying to assimilate for the last 13 years – start to become just another group of people in another country, who were here before and who will continue to go about their business when we’re gone. The big Swiss and Geneva canton flags which flank the Mont Blanc bridge were waving, and they will go on waving after we leave. 

Crumbs

I was starting to feel a little strung out and in need of fresh air from the perpetual CNN-watching here.  So I walked down to the bank in between Zooms to get cash for the cleaning guy. 

Passing the newspaper stand, I noticed with relief that the headline had nothing to do with the election, but instead was about whether the cantons or the communes should pay for something-or-other.  In Switzerland, power and resources are generally devolved as locally as possible.  To wit: around 80% of the taxes I pay go to the canton or commune, and only 20% go the federal government.  If you asked a random Swiss person on the street who the head of the federal government is, chances are they would have no idea.  I couldn’t tell you who it is right now either.  (ed: It’s Simonetta Sommaruga from Aargau, member of the Conseil Fédéral (and educated as a classical pianist), who is currently serving her one-year rotation as President of the Confederation.) 

On the way back from the bank, I picked up a few things at the grocery store.  I still had a little time before my next meeting, so I took the long way home to pass by the Tour de Champel, where I planned on sitting and eating a ham and cheese croissant.  The tower itself is fenced off for renovations, and the lone park bench in the grassy area next to it was occupied by a woman, speaking animatedly.  As I approached, I could hear that it was an American woman.  “I’M SITTING THERE *CRYING,* AND YOU’RE TELLING ME OFF!” I heard her yell to the man who stood in front of her, indicating to her left with a straightened arm, as if she were making a left-turn signal while riding a bicycle.

My first instinct was to approach her and say don’t worry it will be okay the election seems to be trending in the right direction, but I quickly discarded this idea and diverted to the grassy area across the street from our apartment.  I sat on a park bench and watched the birds and ate.  I made the tactical error of removing the croissant from the small paper bag, so I ended up with crumbs all down the front of my jacket.

November

I don’t hear so much about NaNoWriMo these days, if that’s even what it’s still called.  National November Writing Month.  I’m not sure if that’s because its popularity has waned, or if that’s a function of the social media circles I travel in (or not) these days.  In any case it came to mind a couple of weeks ago, and I toyed with the idea of trying to write something every day in November.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Last year I took a stab at this, and inspired by Flannery O'Connor, tried writing a prayer every day.  I didn't get very far before concluding that I was not a good writer of prayers, but I reread them recently and a few were actually okay.  Hope.

I set the alarm for 7:45 this morning, fed the cats, and drove to Gy (pronounced “zhee,” with a soft “g”), which sits at the edge of the Geneva canton on this side of the lake, around 10km ENE as the crow flies.  For some reason, I’ve done most of my running to the SSW of here, so this was relatively new territory.  I was unsure of how far out to go, as I needed to be back in time for online church at 11.  Originally, I was planning on parking in Meinier, a couple of villages closer to town.  But then I drove through Meinier and kept going to Gy, pulled by a similar desire that I suppose captures mountain climbers.  One wants to keep going.

I parked on the main street in one of those 15h disc parking spaces, close to a bus stop, which I would need later to go pick up the car.  I quickly oriented myself with my phone, then traversed the traffic circle and took the first left onto a chemin that was about wide enough for a tractor.  I was considering tracking the route on Map My Run, but I quickly decided against it once I heard the synthetic voice start talking to me.  I had my GPS watch for the distance, and anyway the whole point of runs like this is to not know exactly where you are and where you’re going.  

Sometimes, there’s a significant delta between what one thinks the terrain will look like from the map and what it’s actually like when you’re trying to navigate it.  What looks on the computer like a nice path along the river can turn out to be a parking lot next to the wastewater treatment center.  Happily, today was not one of those times, as a mile or so after departing Gy, I managed to pick up the Seymaz River, which trickles from the border with France all the way down to the Arve, and which I was hoping to follow back home.  Evidently there was some big restoration project around 10 years ago, and the trails along the entire way are well-tended.  Near Corsinge they have laid down a narrow boardwalk to span a marshy area.

Around halfway home I encountered the Prison de Champ-Dollon, which sits right along the path near Puplinge.  The contrast between the gentle stream and fall colors on the one hand, and concrete, barbed wire, and grated windows on the other, made my heart ache.  The walls of the prison have reliefed arches, which reminded me of the Reformers’ Wall in town, except these walls have prisoners behind them.

Here we are

The other day someone wrote on Twitter “I know we’re all just stuck inside…” and I nodded my head in appreciation.  It wasn’t until 24 hours later that I realized that the author was talking about the fact we’re all supposed to stay indoors, rather than our collective emotional state. 

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One of our cats has an artificial ureter.  It needs to be flushed out every three months, and the Kleintierklinik in Bern is the nearest place qualified to do it, so we drove up there on Thursday.  The notification boards on the near-empty highway urged us to “STOP CORONA.  RESTEZ A LA MAISON.”  Closer to Bern, the message switched over to German.

When we arrived, there was a truck with a University Hospital logo on the side backing up to the front door.  The driver lowered the hydraulic ramp-thing in the back, and I thought we were going to get to see them move one of the cows or horses (or camels!) they’re known to treat in Bern.  But instead we watched as they wheeled two or three ventilators out and into the truck, I assume for transfer to the regular hospital.  Human needs taking precedence over those of the Kleintieren these days.

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I’m avoiding the numbers this weekend.  For a couple of days at least, I’m eschewing the exponential curves in the NYTimes – the upward-right slope which in my day job signifies growth and success and which in this case signifies the opposite.   Same thing for the canton-by-canton breakdown in the Tribune de Geneve, Geneva now competing with Vaud for top of the table in Switzerland.  The cantonal authorities also publish daily detailed charts for Geneva, including how many new cases there are, how many people are in the hospital, how many of those are intubated.  Earlier this week I had a glimmer of hope that we had peaked, as the daily new diagnoses seemed to be trending downward.  On Friday, though, they modified the chart to show both negative tests and positive cases, and it was clear that the numbers had only come down because fewer people had been tested.      

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It helps that the Swiss are good at following rules.  On Wednesday I ventured out to the grocery store at the larger shopping center by the stadium, as we thought it might be less crowded than the one closer to our place in town.  A friendly security guard in a face mask was at the entrance, directing people to the back of line that stretched down the corridor, past the other (darkened) stores in the shopping center.  There were around 15 people in front of me in line, and we all idled our carts in between the hashmarks of black tape that had been stuck to the floor every two meters.

 

I made it to the front after only 10 minutes or so, but not before the guy in front of me (who wore a high-tech-looking mask with Velcro at the back and complicated-looking valves over the mouth part, giving him the appearance of a post-apocalyptic skier) had an awkward exchange with the security guy, who tried to hand him a laminated card with a number on it – evidently the mechanism they were using to keep track of how many people were in the store.  I couldn’t hear their voices given the masks and the hashmarks, but it became clear that high-tech-mask guy wasn’t thrilled with the idea of taking something from someone else’s hand.  Robot-dance-like gesturing and pointing ensued, until finally the security guy produced a bottle of hand sanitizer from his pocket, which settled matters.

I wore a mask myself, even though I’ve read the same articles you have about how they don’t really help.  I felt the odd warmth of my deflected breath on my eyeballs, and my glasses kept fogging up.  All of us in the store seemed to be moving at around 75% of normal speed, careful not to get too close to anyone else.  Fortunately, there was plenty of pretty much everything in the store; only the pasta aisle looked a little denuded, but not bare like last week.

At the checkout, an older guy in the lane next to mine was mildly admonished for violating the distance de sécurité.  The checkout woman in my lane and wore powder blue latex gloves and a mask.  After bagging and paying, I thanked her and said I realize it’s not easy for everyone who works in the store, etc..  She shrugged and replied, “Oui, mais on est là.”