School's out! School's out! Teachers let the Monkeys out!

At exactly the same time this morning - 8:16 (+1GMT) - the cell phone and the land line rang. I had only been out of bed for 2 minutes. Confusion followed.

I answered the land line, assuming it was Douglas calling from Germany (he's there for work). Instead it was a husky sounding French woman. She blabbed on. My brain tried to figure out exactly where in Kansas we were. 'French,' I deduced. "Pardon?" I said. She repeated herself. "Oui, c'est Tyrus," I said. It was my French teacher Charlotte. She has the flu and was cancelling class. I may have said "Merci!" too robustly.

Then I checked the voicemail on my cell phone. The teacher I work with on Tuesdays - Rachel - was calling to say "stay in bed, I have a doctor's appointment today."

It's like Saturday all over again. But without the hangover.

I am now fully awake. What should I do with my day?

Wendy Wasserstein

I was surprised to see today that playwright Wendy Wasserstein died. She was 55.

Her plays are noted for their depictions of contemporary "everywomen". If your concept of an everywoman is an ivy league educated, upper middle class professional flummoxed by her roles and desires in life. In college I read her Tony and Pulitzer-winning "The Heidi Chronicles". My classmates and I were critical of the story because the heroine wasn't a feminist the way we wanted her to be. She survived school dances as a teenager, was intimidated by radical lesbians in college, fell in love with two men - one married, the other gay - and opted to adopt a baby at the end of the story. She was milquetoast.

What was particularly troubling about the play for me was that critics frequently called it "feminist". I think it's more fitting to call it "contemporary".

Coincidentally, also today I took a nap while watching the HBO production of Tony Kushner's Tony and Pulitzer-winning play "Angels in America". The story is set in the mid 1980s at the onset of the AIDS crisis. In the show's first half hour the character Harper Pitt contemplates the weakened ozone layer over Antartica. She also, as others do in the play, ponders the chaos that may come at the turn of the millenium.

Which got me thinking, as I drifted off. Looking at history through a biblical prism, we often miss the signals God sends us. The Old Testament prophets predicted that a great leader would come to redeem God's people. Most expected a warrior king. We got a baby instead, the New Testament tells us. In a burst of Eastern Philosophy, God wanted to help us understand His nature, while experiencing His own creation as one of us. Was it not what we expected or not what we wanted? Was it what we needed?

When the millenium came - and went - we were warned by the Television prophets to expect calamity and destruction.

Inspired by Kushner, I thought about the destruction of the Earth. Maybe the calamity and destruction is here. But, like a Christmas infant, it isn't what we expected. The planet is falling apart. The fragile outer shell is a honeycombed network of oxygen molecules that we routinely neglect. Invisible poison sunshine, melting icebergs. And our leaders deny there is a problem. We don't get erupting volcanoes and raining sulphur. Maybe the quiet destruction is what we need. Because we've also been given the intellect to reverse it ourselves. Maybe self-reliance is the next gift we get.

Wasserstein's heroine lambasts a friend who indicates that by becoming a mother she has reached her potential. Kushner's hero refuses an offer from heaven in order to imbibe in more living. Both characters take what they want, and each worries about how they are perceived because of their choices. I'm slightly tormented by the fact that I'll never get the chance to meet Wendy Wasserstein and convince her to write a really great feminist character. But comforted by the thought that she probably wouldn't care what I think.

Le Gaudi Cafe

Cours Berriatt

Monday is my longest day. Six hours with four teachers. Today five hours were cancelled because one teacher was out sick and two other classes were away on internships. However, I didn't know/remember this until I got to school at 8am. So, I sat in the teachers lounge readjusting my lesson plans.

At 5:30 I met Eve and les Indiennes for a Monday after work drink.

Two cafe au laits and two cafe cremes (which might all be the same thing).

Le Local

Rue Brocherie

Briefly had a coffe with les Indiennes and Cho at this hippy-dippy, avant garde boutique/cafe. One of the three globe trotting proprieters reminded us that he was closing shortly after we sat down on our pillows around a table.

Nisha and I had Colombian coffees, Cho ordered a hot chocolate, and Leena really enjoyed her coffee with eastern spices (sort of like a chai tea latte, but without the tea).

Le Gaudi Cafe

Cours Berriatt

I met Odette, the half American half Portugese all French landscape architect, here for coffee. We discussed immigration policies, dual citizenship, and the mirror ball hanging over the front window. Her boyfriend David, the rugby player who flirts with me when he's drunk, joined us towards the end.

She had a petite noir, I drank down a cafe au lait.

Le Montplaisir

Avenue Joseph Rey

After my French exam, I went for coffee with the Indians - Nisha and Leena. We sat in a booth next to a table of two women and an infant. The women drank their cafes and smoked their cigarettes. The baby developed lung cancer. Leena observed that "Grenoble is a cosmopolitan and shitty place." Nisha said that "it's nice when the sun shines." Then she smiled.

Leena and I each had a large cafe creme; Nisha a petit noir.