Paris, July 16, 2'5, late afternoon Hot afternoon in Paris today. I was visiting the squat at 59 rivoli on photo business, and stopped to say hello to an artist who became my heroine the first time I saw one of her paintings -- Aurelie. Her specialty is portraying women depicted in advertising recreated as comic-book styled cow or pig-headed humanoids, carrying designer purses and shopping bags from the finest shops in Paris. She has an atelier, or studio, on the top floor of this ancient, rather large industrial building that was taken over by a collective of artists five years ago, which they occupy without paying rent; hence a squat. Everyone there spoke English. A guy named Sandy who gave the feeling of being Sri Lankan or Indian spoke perfect English, and Sara and Aurelie are pretty good as well, so for my sake we talked in English. This was one of my first opportunities to speak with peers in France about things that interest me. The soft, indirect light filled up the studio, which was cool and fresh high above rue Rivoli. For a while I talked to Sandy about Saturn in Leo and he had no specific background in astrology but a good working grasp of the subject. That's where I happened to be at the time Saturn began its new era, surrounded by people I appreciated deeply and feeling free and welcome and I could actually stay with the conversation in France. This turned to politics. We were joined by Anita, who served everyone a strong, alive-smelling herbal infusion. The discussion followed a track from HIV fraud committed by the United States against France (as I understand the story, a famous US scientist stole the discovery from the Pasteur Institute back in the mid 1980s, and he happens to get a royalty every single time the most common HIV test is used), various related scandals, and eventually to politics, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the issue of depleted uranium. The subject of the London bombings came up, and they were well-versed in the numerous issues that that event has raised. There I was in paradise, with some of the most intelligent young people I've met in Paris, all of them accomplished artists and social activists -- and we were talking about politics. I'm used to the subject enough that I could keep it from being a total downer, and I don't get so emotionally involved as I did, say, in the days when I was directly involved in covering PCB and dioxin scandals. But I could feel the weight of the subject. And how serious the problem is. I felt, suddenly, that I didn't want to be dealing with it. It was just too much. And I got grasped suddenly why the subject, this whole issue of the world condition, is not so often spoken of. I could see suddenly where it was less about apathy and more about a range of responses from distaste to the whole thing just being emotionally too much to confront. And when you dwell on this stuff, I've noticed that a feeling of paranoia can creep up. Eventually, I broke the spell and roamed around the squat, photographing details, the floors, and different artists I encountered -- without planning to do something like that, I've got an informal documentary project of the space going. I came back and the discussion shifted to art, painting techniques and who our hero artists are. I mentioned Lichtenstein as one of mine and Aurelie came out with a catalog from a retrospective of Roy's work, and she showed me a book of one of her pillars of art, who I'll tell you about soon. We ended on that note, and I walked down the the stairs, the Sun finally having passed the peak of heat, photographing drops of light, the installations put into every corner of the space, every last thing painted, and burst into the light on rue Rivoli, photographing Paris as I wandered the half hour home listening to old Talking Heads songs on my iPod.