Sacre Coeur de Paris

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Hello dear friends,
Missing you and love to tell you of my adventures!

In Paris it is easy to feel part of humanity. Bustling, smiling, moving with complete awareness of the arbitrary destination having overtaken the day, Parisians (as an outside observer at least) seem acutely at ease with the absurdity called city dwelling and therefore not in the least at the effect of busy, metro life.
I had four days in Paris, and it seemed I needed to get the tourist out of me before I could strike out into unknown territory to glimpse, I hoped, Le Cœur off Paris. Experiencing the requisite Tour Eiffel proved for a breathtaking view from the top. A trip down the Seine on the Bateau Mouche and the glittering lights of a rainy, cold evening reminded me that even Paris has winter; A stroll down the Champs de elysee with my twin sister and on to musee d'art moderne got us a little closer to the arrhythmic beat I was searching for and the bohemian Montemartre sitting on top of the hill has a sense of humor with its, tiny shops, full of "Paris" emblazoned berets, picturesque Eiffel Towers on everything from socks to ashtrays and for the unhurried some unique items and handmade art too. As the full moon rose over Sacre Cour-Montemarte and the believers came to the ringing bells we fell in love with the city, impossible not to.
On the third the day we went Le Louvre with my mother, the three of us as in days of old when my mother would take us to museums and explain the art. Time had it's way with us though and now we were pushing her clumsily in a wheelchair reminding us that there is no immortality; not even for da Vinci.
It's easy to abandon self-consciousness in Paris, well maybe it's the wine; but there is an acceptance of the bizarre that runs so deep it is almost as if it hasn't occurred to question that there is an "ordinary" and something other than it... That some of my favorite writers and artists, Miro, Picasso, Kandinski, Hemingway, Kundera and now David Sedaris all chose to spend extended time in Paris is no surprise; where else would a suffering, creative soul in need of acceptance rather be?
After my family left, I had eight hours in which to solely search Paris for a reflection of the inner artist as a tortured soul unable to produce; I headed to Monteparnesse and walked through drizzling rain on the cobbled streets that have seen so much history. Un petit peu hungry, I stepped into a cafe whose owner's English was as weak as my French (hard to believe) but between us we recognized there was nothing that a baguette au fromage and a little Chablis wouldn't cure. I asked for her photo and after a schoolgirl blush, she obliged and had a waiter take our tableaux. On a notebook she scribbled '73'; her age of which she was proud, and rightly so as restaurant running is no small gig.
On my way to the airport, I felt I could understand Paris as the center of the world. It appears to course through one's sense of life the way that red courses through abstract art, an anchor in a random pool of all that can be touched by the senses... In my short stay in Paris nothing appeared linear, and what art-appreciator, Californian, techno-geek, Burningman-inspired traveler can’t love that?
There is a magic in the logic of the senses: We are here such a short time, to paint, love, eat and drink in the colorful temptations of the temporal is surely as logical as café au lait to begin the day and claret bordeaux to see it go.

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