Saturday in the park

It is one of the last days of summer. Sharp, cool mornings turn into hot days. Hurricane Irene is making her way up the coast. Soon, it'll be wet and even colder. Goodbye summer. Hello fall.

With a lazy day stretching out in front of me, I decided to go to the library and get some comics. I prefer the term comics to graphic novels. But the term I really like is BD because it is in France and with French friends that my love for comics really got its start. I used to read them a lot. Not the sci-fi-fantasy-sex-pot-violence ones, nor the mangas, but the sullen, ironic and silly ones. There is a scene in Lapinot that made me cry for the hilarity of it. It has a dog saying "whiff" and a cat, named Richard (Riri to his friends) saying, "tout doux". There is an amazing Swiss comic called "Priapus" based on the Greek myth about the boy with a huge penis. It has no words. It is amazing. I remember reading it in the park and being stunned by the artist's ability to convey his story through images (and no, it is not all dicks). Don't even get me started on David B or the Isaac le Pirate series.

It was with these thoughts in my head that I wandered over to the Bande dessinee section of the library (it had been so long since I had taken out comics that I stood blankly in front of the Large Text section before figuring out that BD was now where Foreign Languages used to be). I got three comics, one about life in Israel, one about a man with Alzheimer's and one about a depressed French guy (the last being a very popular theme in comics).

With my books in hand I went to the park and sat down next to a tree across from the baseball diamond. There was a baseball game on and participants and spectators had set up a barbecue. After a few minutes, I realized it was a deaf tournament and I had a frisson of voyeuristic glee before forcing myself to return my attention to Exit Wounds (the Israeli one). A baby cried and I thought, "Who will hear her?"

I opened the first page and noticed someone standing to my right. A tall man, in coke-bottle glasses and a black, sleeveless shirt. "Trouvez-vous quarante et seule?" he asked me. "Quoi?" I responded not quite sure I had heard correctly. He repeated his question. I puffed with indignation (readers of this blog will know that I do like a good indignant puff). "Je ne suis pas quarante ans," I said offendedly. He persisted in wanting to know if I was alone and I told him to piss off.

Really.

Exit Wounds was interesting, I couldn't get through the depressed French one, and I am saving the Alzheimer's one for another day.

Long live summer.