Paris, Part 2

More thoughts, in and around my second trip to Paris, with Jen, for vacation:

So, on coming back to Paris for the 4th time now, I wanted to see all the little treasures I didn't get a chance to see, and master the city once and for all. Here's some of what I did:

Strolled along the Champs Elysees, and it's changed a lot since the last time I was there (6 years ago). It's a lot more commercial now. But, I stopped into a classic Parisian institution - Laduree - a tea house that sells these delectible little pastries, famous for its mult-coloured, multi-flavoured macaroons. Yummy. All was enchanted until I had to go to the washroom, and none were in sight. Never before was I so glad to see a McDonald's, I actually screeched 'how do I love thee, let me count the ways!' under my breathe. :) It was sweet relief, and I've made my peace with the golden arches. :) Even Sephora in Paris is amazing, and I spent some time spoiling myself with all the delicious smells. Then I went to Ile St. Louis, smack dab in the middle of Paris and frozen in the upper class 19th century. It's adorable, and I had caramel Foie Gras in a cute, classy place with Harry Connick Jr. being jazzy in the background under soft lighting & pink Iris flowers. I've also now had escargot for the third time (where a waiter kissed me - ick, not a pleasant story :p), and raw oysters - which are delicious. Next on the menu is steak tartare. :)

Even for all this there is still a melancholy/ennui in Paris, mixed in along with all the romance. So I don't think I'd like to live there after all. There are also the many crazies & beggars, like the Mr. Bean singer, singing so horridly off-tune in the subway at the top of his lungs, I had to supress my laughter with great difficulty... much like upon witnessing strange children with abnormally awkward movements... which also seem plentiful... :) I do, however, want a little French dog! There is nothing cuter, they are a different breed. :)

Then my troubles with Jen started, well, actually they started the first night we arrived, when she was acting like a princess and yelled at me for her own stupidity in not understanding the street name properly (it's French - she speaks French) after I forgot to write down the address of the hostel, meanwhile too busy smoking her cigarette to do anything to help the situation, and so heinously bad with a map that she deserved to sleep on the street that night. But ehrm, anyway... :) We (I ;)) figured it out & she gave a half-assed apology the next day, something about being cold & tired, but which I gladly accepted, only to have her be a witch the rest of that day as well, and things only got worse when her friends arrived; she barely introduced me, and they commenced speaking in Spanish as though I was not there. Things went from bad to worse & it suffices to say that since they insisted on taking a snail's pace, I ended up ditching them at Versaille, we had a very public blow-up at Mont St. Michel, they were so loud at the hotel that a family cancelled their reservation & went home two nights early & so were scolded (the girls were) by the hotelier (who took such good care of me, even giving me my own room without my asking), and we came home seperately and I haven't spoken to her since. I've never had such an interaction since Elementary school, and sometimes I feel like I'm making faster enemies than friends here, but I think it's safe to say I'm in the right, and I'm patiently waiting for her to grow up. My Achilles' heel is being too nice & letting (the wrong) people in. So anyway, after I ditched the skanks, ;) amazing things started to happen. Like the hotelier taking care of me, and meeting amazing people - which is the point, right? Like the Tunisian girl I spoke Arabic with & who invited me to stay with her in Paris... when she finally found a place, :) the guy @ the hostel desk who spoke 5 languages, including Arabic, the sweetest, cutest Spanish girl from Bilbao, who was both a dancer & studying engineering - lovely people, lovely accent, and sharing my room with this amazing Italian girl from Piza, named Maria Elisa (of course :)) who kept speaking in Italian, had walked nearly all of Paris already in the few days she'd been there, drank chilled corona from the balcony, rolled her own cigarettes, and was reading Baudelaire & Balzac at the same time. [Side note - I want to make her a character in my book, sitting in a chair by the open window, corona in one hand, cig in other, straddling the balcony & puffing through the side of her mouth. Classic. I've never met anyone so full of life, so uninhibited, filled with positive energy, & seeking to be quenched with experience - travel, congenialtiy, etc. Like my heart & hope to be. And Jen & her princess friends know nothing of. I find that lone girls travelling the world are the real soldiers, as they approach their lives with gusto. Girls travelling in packs usually have silly agendas. Girls travelling alone are on a solo mission...] Cutest thing ever and so makes me want to go to Italy, which is great as the Brazilian girl had scared me! (She'd hated it & cancelled her plans early, skipping Rome - crazy! :p) But I think Italy just may be even closer to home than Paris. We'll see. Yay for God for reminding me what goodness (& sane, normal people) is like. (There was even a very nice man at the hotel/bar who took care of my luggage - very U2 endearing cool. :)) I even met a very nice couple of professors from California, (the wife was originally from Nova Scotia actually, and very proud of it :)) who kept me company at Mont St. Michel, and told me all about their travelling adventures with their schools' education abroad programs. And, the north of France is filled with cute little towns & villages, in Brittany & Normandy. Very different from where we are in the south. Fat dairy cows, fatter fuzzy sheep, misty green pastures, and so it was idyllic. So, i'm rid of the Venezualan distraction... but now i've taken to talking to the mirror again, or having conversations with you all in my head... which is never a good thing. :) especially when i can't remember whether it actually happend. :) But with the cancer gone, the poetry is flowing.

Other musings, France-inspired:

I've been told to write a book, with all the things I've done. But my life isn't exciting or adventerous as much as patiently enduring one trial and experience after another. patiently getting through, until something clicks. Something, someplace, or someone. But patience is growing impatient in the mean time.

Sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in the middle - somewhere between childhood and maturity. It's time to grow up in some regards - in the regard of associating with nice work and nice people (nice work mostly :p) (and clean is a better word. Also, I have since met plenty of nice people... however only in passing... :/)

Sometimes I feel so at home here in Europe, my soul feels at home. Europe is healing & calming me (in some ways, and frustrating & restless in others...) There is so much more humanity, a full range of emotion and ways of being. Colours, not just 4 or 5. And Maturity. But my mind is still in North America, and my heart...? Who knows. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a suspended time here, a lost season, far away, where I don't really want to be, where I'm accomplishing nothing. I'm sick of French already... and classes are taking longer to prepare for than expected, so I'm not accomplishing my goals. I guess I have to keep focussed. My mind is both a blessing and a curse.

My own culture is home. Is rich and classy and warm and welcoming and celebatory. It is like the Prince of Egypt, and it is the best in the world... if not for all the fighting. :/ I wish I could be a part of it.

I want to have the kind of career that lets you take off to places for a while, rent a villa with the fam (buy an arabian palace? ;)), and where I can buy lots of tickets to the opera... and Bono.:) I want to have an upstanding, stable, classy career, marriage, & life. (& help people, like CSM, Paris beggars, Mother Teresa, the Italian Doctor in Africa.) I want a cozy, fun, adorable little life. A good life. Good as in goodness. I don't want to be stuck-up, even though I lean towards it. Fun is so much better. Noses can go shoot themselves.

It’s funny who we choose to make a part of our families. Who we spend time with, who we open up to. Sometimes I can’t wrap my mind around the combinations of people who get together and have children, but they do. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s still family. It’s still... a strange manifestation of the human spirit, that wants to make something of itself, that wants to belong to something. There are some great families here, most strange, but all ‘home.’

I am regaining my Jack Dawson, simple "air in my lungs" attitude. This is a good thing.

Sitting here sipping Cinnamon Apple tea & thinking of spending Christmas in London with my brother... heavenly.

The North American values of Daisy Duke women are so scewed. I think strong, Sophia Loren, Penelope Cruz types are much more interesting.
'He/she is out of your league' - why is 'league' measured by beauty? Since when is that the quality of most worth, that trumps all others? And is it really as Rob says, you never really know, you just decide...? :/

Ack! An Avril Levigne commercial! I can't escape her, even in France. :p Unbelievable... :)

And on that note... I have synthesized all... for now. :) Now write me so I don't feel like I'm talking to myself. ;-)