PARIS IN DECEMBER
Because in the book of life, everyone should have a chapter about Paris. – KC Blau
There’s a lot you can do in two hours time. If you’re adventurous and bad at planning and expecting guests for dinner, you can attempt the 2-hour turkey cooking recipe. If you’re bored and your electricity is down you have to entertain a bunch of friends, you can suffer through 2 hours of monopoly together. If you were an average employee with an average work day back in 2007, you wasted an average of two hours a work day every day. If you live in Chapel Hill, it will take you about two hours to hit the waves (unless it’s hurricane season and they come to you). And if you’re a good date, you can spend 2-hours of quality time with that special someone experiencing the new Star Wars film in 3D. And if you live in Vienna? You can fly to Paris.
Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris – final resting place of Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Modigliani, Proust, Rossini, Moliere, Edith Piaf and Getrude Stein.
Which is what I did this past week. Which is why I didn’t blog. Forgive me because I’m not sorry. Passé, perhaps, but I love Paris.
Clock at the Museum d’Orsay on the Impressionists floor overlooking the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur
In Paris, with over 300 types of cheese to choose from, you have to leave off most of the endings of words, just to give yourself enough time to have a bite or two. And you find yourself forced to slaughter a language that when spoken by a native French person, sounds so seductive that even the subway guy announcing the metro stops makes you loosen the top button of your blouse. Nothing in Paris is in English and no one ever seems to know any despite the songs and films from – gasp! – America. But Pierre knows he’s strict and after letting you flounder a bit, when your Parlez-vous’ start to provoke some Parlez-Please-don’ts, Pierre and his Parisian friends will indeed toss their sweet boorish foreigner a life preserver with a sudden epiphany that, oh yes, well maybe they do indeed perhaps understand and speak a little — well some — English after all. A Parisian miracle.
Christmas exhibit in the Notre Dame
Ahh Paris, the City of Light. Every museum holds a masterpiece, every masterpiece a deep underlying symbol, every guy a fashionable scarf, every girl a colored brassiere, every street corner a cafe, every cafe eclairs, and the Eiffel Tower always keeps a gentle watch over her cultivated flock. Visiting Paris from Vienna is like a whirlwind tour with the crazy friend who makes you dance, laugh, eat, drink, spend more money than you intended, and then eat, drink and spend more than you should. When you finally wave a remorseful au revoir, you drop into your cattle class 5B contraption called a seat and before the stewardess can tell you to turn off your electronic devices and the guy in 5C can give her an I-dare-you-to-say-something stare as he inserts his earbuds, you instantly fall into a 2-hour recovery coma. Paris…
Me in Paris but from another trip – the book of life is big enough for many Paris chapters
Because in the book of life, everyone should have a chapter about Paris.
Some interesting literature:
Mentioned in this blog: Average Work Day Wasted Hours
The book I picked up in the apartment where I stayed and couldn’t put back down again: Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
The movie I downloaded from i-Tunes and watched while in Paris: Paris, Je T’aime
The song that always makes me think of Paris: “Comptine d´un autre été: l´après midi” Yann Tiersen
