18 october

werd friends and family. i've been disconnected from the world for some time. but im still alive and moving into some french form of stability.

i must say its has been rough over here for a bit... but, i am now stoked that i finally dont have to depend on someone else for some basic shit. last week, i officially moved into my own spot. workers are still finishing basic details. i just got hot water yesterday, and the place is mostly unfurnished, with the exception of a couch and coffee table, but im certain that will all work itself out nicely. the place is nice, and well worthing having waited for, and i have, in fact, found a solid wifi connect that i am scalping (nice one!!).

my neighborhood is dominated by indian, sri lankan, pakistani, turkish types. some arab types too. great food of all kinds, all eastern and african markets and shops, with numerous bollywood video stores and kebab shops to choose from. my hood is actually considered part of montmartre, but not the part that you get to know in amelie. a couple of weeks ago the local temple of ganesh held a festival and procession on my street. ecstatic dancing, drumming, all things strung with garlands. beatiful religion. it is so refreshing to be a racially unique in my own hood.

you may know that the underground of paris is like swish cheese. hundreds of kilometers of hundreds of years of tunnels referred to as the catacombs. we happened to have connected with a pair of guys that wanted to take us down for a visit, as they work, and play, down there regularly. the consider themselves "cataphiles". a couple of weekends ago we made the decent. urban spelunking is truly the best way to describe it. we actually pulled up a manhole on the sidewalk between a main strip of traffic and a cafe. we filed 16 people, as quickly as possible (not a legal activity), six stories down into the bowles of paris. these guys, and many other young people that we ran into 60 feet below the city, were fully equipped with rubber boots, carbide fueled minors' lamps, hard hats, jumpsuits, and of course all of the amenities of candles, hashish, wine, bread, camp stoves, fondu (yes, fondu) and a small back-pack-stereo-system (bumping hardcore). we ended up in a nicely arranged, candlelit room, and we spent the night in splendor with about 20 others that intermitently crawled in and out of various passages. we returned to the surface as the sun was rising. we rode the metro home gathering some strange looks as we were absolutely covered in markings of white mud and black suit. shoes squishing with water. (i will post pics sometime later) we're headed back down next weekend for one of the cataphiles's birthday.

school started monday. each class is one day a week for 2.5 hours. ill be taking something like: arabic, couple of french classes, possibly a us history course (i thought that would be considered an oxymoron in this country), and as many music classes as i can. my school has a bunch of awesome music courses that i wanna take including acoustics of sound, sound engineering, writing, ear training, voice, rythms of the arabic world, and various computer assisted composition (electronic music production) courses. one can actually get a minor in such a subject at my school. its kind of a problem for me that there are more classes that i want to take than i have time for...

the school ive chosen to attend is in st. denis on the outskirts of paris. the "banlieu", known for its "inner" city culture, except its the outer city. such urban culture, is entirely embraced by the philosophy of the school, as are all cultures. again, a minortiy in my own house. that was one thing i had really hoped for my experience here- to be with the immigrants of france. i think its working out nicely.