Now I live in an apartment on rue Francœur in a neighborhood where Lamarck and Darwin also have avenues in their honor. I find that particularly appealing because I am fascinated by the rivalry if only conceptual between Darwin and Lamarck (as much as I am interested in their intellectual collaboration that established a paradigm) and because I came to France with the intention of delving into the works of the biologist and physicist directly responsible for our current paradigm. I think the concept of the Will (individual and collective) as a driving or selecting, if you will, force behind adaptation appealing even if it does have little relation to actual biological and ecological development. In part the interest rests in the simple fact that even if the evolution of a fungus cannot be attributed to its cosmic or personal will or pouvoir de la vie, human activity certainly can and ultimately post-industrial, or even post-agricultural developments (biological or technological) have been determined on an individual, inventive basis. Now these adaptations have no primary relation to the immediate inheritance of a given genome but will undoubtable influence the movement of the human genome on a secondary level. Possibly this influence will be greater than any other environmental condition. In a sense biologist driven to theorize and solidify a paradigm that explicates or at the least classifies the development of all life have neglected to forge paradigm able to encompass the emergence of the organism at the center of the Anthopocene. This has been entrusted to historians, philosophers, sociologists and theologists. Actually the economy seems to me in a means of establishing human interactions within a Darwinian framework. I should say that I have read little Darwin and almost no Lamarck as of now and most of my albeit limited conceptual understanding has been derived from summations and commentaries. I have always found Darwin a romantic figure and have wanted to read him long before I began studying ecology especially The Voyage on the Beagle otherwise known as Journal and Remarks. Likewise I have wanted to read in part Flore françoise and the journals of Agassiz. I had not heard of Francœur before taking residence here but his Flore parisienne ou Description des caractères de toutes les plantes qui croissent naturellement aux environs de Paris, distribuées suivant la méthode du jardin des plantes sounds like an early example of urban ecology. Also there is the the fantastic figure of Évariste Galois! Galois was to equations what Rimbaud was quatrains. He transcended his medium.






I have always had an affection for Henry James. James like his compatriot Whistler brought sophistication and elan to American culture. Yes, their finesse may at times feel finicky but their wit and felicity always win out. Hemingway mentions James in a moveable feast as who his wife thought of as a good novelist. This is classic Hem. Remarks are not literature but they are.

Gertrude Stein (I am not sure where but I have read it) writes about Henry James (whose brother William James she studied with at Harvard) as being the forerunner to the modern "modernist" tradition. I think Stein wrote about how in James it is happening but not in the writing. James novels feature a simulacra of sorts. Things happen as they are understood and as they are remembered as also somehow as they happen. One focuses on the linguistic intricacies and feigns and devices and beyond the friezes and tapestries a human beings says a thing or does a thing and one is unsure of anything but the unveiling. Finally one looses sight of the veil and the scene seems real.

I love travel but once I have been any place long enough I want to establish a routine. I want to work towards. I want to have a lively devotion. I have gotten to that point with Paris. Actually I was there almost immediately. This is possibly because I knew I would be here awhile. I think it also has to do with how familiar I was with the city coming in. As Ezra says the Chinese say: Emotion is born out of habit. Or as Picabia pointed out: Pour que vous aimiez quelque chose il faut que vous l'ayez vu et entendu depuis longtemps, tas d'idiots. How to do and do honestly.

I have an easel and watercolors and once the springs comes I will open the window and paint with oils. There are plenty of geometric and spacial concepts I want to work out and the ever fulfilling balance of colors. Like Picasso said how Matisse paintings breathe, the colors together breathe. I wish I had a horn with me but hey I got neighbors and wood floors. I thought about buying a pocket trumpet but what I really want a guitar.