| Paris Encore 2006 GOING HOME 1/4/2007 |
|
TRAVEL |
|||||||
|
THAT'S ALL FOLKS |
|||||||
| How do you say goodbye to an old friend?
To a lover? To a piece of your soul? Au revoir. Literally
... to the seeing again ... to the next time I see you! And each time
I leave Paris, I pray that I see it again. Some thirty-five years ago, I met my first love, Paris. It was so easy to fall in love with her. She was the first big city that I had ever spent any time in. I was the guest of the parents of my friend. They were celebrating their 25th anniversary and dragged along their son, and asked him to invite a friend so that they could have Paris to themselves and he would have companionship, and not be lost and a tag-along to what I could only think of as a "romantic" second honeymoon. These people were easily close to fifty, so how much "romance" could we be talking... I stupidly thought. Vern and Barb were truly gracious people. they were my best definition of Class. They seemed to be financially "well off" to me. This impression was easy to come by, as I was being raised by a single mom, and money was tight. This invitation to come share the 10 days with my buddy in Paris required for me to only provide any "souvenir" money that I might wish to spend. My father provided me with the $100 that I had to exchange for French francs to spend when I wanted to buy a rosary for Gramma LeVior or this truly moving pastel of a nude alien (E.T. kind of alien) female. This was purchased on Boulevard St. Germain, on the same night that we saw a street juggler do a great street performance. I had a few centimes to throw in his "bourse" ... a large leather circular change purse that folds in on itself. I have owned the pocket versions of the same thing, but this guy had a unfolded circle of about half a meter. He juggled and rode a unicycle inside of a circle that was drawn on the sidewalk in front of the Cafe Les Deux Maggots. A few years later I saww this same guy on the news. He strung a cable between the North and South towers of the brand new World Trade Center In New York City. Philipe Petit was very recognizable. Vern started each day by walking up to the fifth floor hotel room, that I shared with his son Paul, and gave Paul the daily allowance of $20.00 for food and travel and stuff. This was a big chunk of change for 2 teenage males, ages 16 and 17, to piss away. Paul and I took the Metro from the Latin Quarter, on the day that we arrived in Paris, to see the Eiffel Tower. We stopped and got ham sandwiches and boldly ordered 2 beers. Two sandwiches and two beers arrived at our table, and the rest of the vacation was planned around pissing away our $20 a day allowance. It started as French wine or Bière Allemande (German Beer) and found its way to the sewers of Paris. I had a couple of years of high school French, which I think influenced the choice of friends that Paul was told he could choose from for the trip. Vern and Barb also had no solid evidence or inkling regarding the level of my delinquency, and I was not too much like Eddie Haskell when I spoke to them, so I have been in their debt from Day One of my first visit to Paris. Paul and I returned 2 years later, without Barb and Vern or the daily allowance. I had continued studying France and the language through the first AND ONLY year of college. As you will find elsewhere on this web site, I gave my lover a gift, of a trip to Europe, for Christmas of 2004. We took the trip as a honeymoon in the Late Spring of 2005. Paris impressed my bride so much that we went to Paris again for Christmas 2005, a little over six months after returning from our first trip. We had discovered how to visit Paris and live like a native by renting an apartment. This was so easy to become part of the neighborhood. We were "living" in Paris instead of merely "visiting". Staying in a hotel, and being subject to the hours of the maid and the front desk clerk. It makes it necessary to take all the daily bread out in cafés or bistros or restaurants. It is for tourists. We no longer are tourists in Paris. We have become part-time residents of Paris. I can't express how grateful I am that my wife loves Paris as much as I love love it. As "part-time residents", we live it at our pace, seeing what we want, when we want, as often as we want for the reasons that we want. We had such a great experience this year sharing Paris with Ron and Meg. I have put up a page of some of the photos that Ron and Meg shot. The day that Ron rented a car and we relived the car chase scene from Ronin, the film with Robert De Niro. I believe that the car chase scenes in Ronin to be on the same level of intensity as those from Bullit. The scenery is different, and I think the narrow streets of the French villages add a dimension that makes the location another character in the film. France is definitely a character, so was our driver, Ron. My son-in-law has owned some nice cars, has studied driving under professionals that know how to evade bad guys, and has driven with other people in a style that can only be characterized as COMPETITIVE. He has always made "road trips" an experience! All the memories of the last 15 days were strolling around our apartment as we packed away all the loose ends that we had not tucked away Wednesday night. Some memories from 35 years ago got mixed in with yesterday's socks and boxers. The chipped plate featuring the Chat Noire (black cat), that Marsha "broke it and bought it" was stashed along with a similar one, unchipped, in my carry-on. My collection of "medals" from the various museums, cathedrals and monuments was stowed in my laptop bag. I tossed more than half a pack of mini Cohiba Cigars from Cuba in the trash. Ron had picked up a pack and I bummed one off him and smoked it. The first tobacco that I had smoked in some four years, and I "rationalized" that what happens in Paris stays in Paris, and it was CUBAN, therefore it was an exception. I readily volunteered this information to Marsha who was not on the walk with Ron and myself. She was verbal, and self-righteous about how my transgression, and I told her my rationalizations. She continued to express her displeasure. I explained that if it happened in the USA, she could tell "I told you so", but this was a fact I was willing to live with. The first night that I went walking after Ron and Meg departed, I bought the box of 20 mini-cigars, as the Tabac store did not have Single CUBAN Cigars available. I smoked my second that evening, and 2 more over the balance of the stay. When I returned from a walk that I had enjoyed a cigar, and Marsha "asked" if I had consumed one, I told the truth. She also "asked/accused" on other times that I did not consume. I considered it a Closed Issue, not open for further discussion, unless it happened in the good ole USA upon our return. I have always loved to smoke. Paris always seems like the place to smoke in cafés or in parks, or on my solitary walks as a "Resident of Paris", fielding questions from locals and tourists on how to get to the local RER train stop or a wine store. Mostly, the cigar was something that hung from my lips, half burned, needing a fresh light. It was not uncommon for the cigarette sized "coffin-nail" to last an hour. To tell the truth, they contributed, along with the weather, to an irritated throat. But it was an indulgence in an old vice, that had never been enjoyed on any previous time in Paris. During all of my previous times in Paris, I was a non-smoker. I always did enjoy Gauloises when I was a nicotine addict in the USA. Paul's Pipe Shop in Flint had them in stock along with other "hard-core" imported cigarettes. I had hoped to see some other smoker on the street that was smoking the "brown cigarettes" to give them this costly contribution to the last load of trash to go out to the courtyard trash cans. The ban on Cuban imports wasted these tasty souvenirs that friends in the states might have enjoyed. C'est la vie! Ou la mort.... Paris Shuttle, very prompt the morning that Meg and Ron departed was scheduled to pick us up at 10:30 am for a 1:55pm flight to Detroit from Charles de Gaulle Airport. The cleaning lady was scheduled for 10:00am and was also prompt. In excellent English, she politely said that she could wait for us to clear out and proceeded to light up a Marlboro (red pack) and smoke it in the courtyard of our apartment building. She assisted me with some of the luggage that I was parking just inside the HUGE wood doors that led to the sidewalk. One last pit stop each and another sweep of the apartment for stray possessions, and the Paris Shuttle van arrived PROMPTLY. We loaded up and Marsha sat between a young man named Henry, and your humble narrator. As we started to the final stop in town to pick up the last two passengers for the airport, we got to know Henry. Possibly around the age of 30, Henry was born to Lebanese parents, in Canada. He lived for many years in Nigeria, until his father died when Henry was a teenager, and was sent to live in Canada with relatives, along with a younger sister, to wait for his mother's paperwork to be approved to allow the family to reunite some 2 PLUS years later. These events created a strong family that eventually were reunited. Henry became educated, Very Well Educated, in business and commerce. He works in the "Alternate Banking" industry (one of the many types of money stores that service the low income comunity) and lives in Ottawa. He had welcomed in the New Year in Paris with his girlfriend ... and her sister. He was on his way to Lebanon to reunite with his girlfriend for the next month. Henry's younger sister had gotten married seven months ago, and this changed the dynamics of the family and he was finally in a position to start planning for his own future and his own plans for family. It also freed him up to see what the possibilities for a better income could be in that part of the world, closer to his girlfriend, and other members of his family. His education and experience in commerce and economics, and fluency in English and Arabic make his possibilities hopeful. He charismatic personality will serve him well. We talked a bit of current events, and he hesitantly explained that he was about to make an UNPOPULAR statement that might be a bit too controversial. When he was given the permission to speak freely...he dropped a very strange observation. At this point in the trip, we had picked up two more passengers that were seated in front of us,. They seemed to be a married couple, also English speaking, and not really part of any of the conversation that Henry, Marsha and I had been sharing. As we had been discussing the recent execution of Saddam Hussein, Henry said that he thought that he had not been the man in the noose. He figured that one of his several Look-Alikes had taken the drop and once again fooled the public. That is when I very quickly and VOCALLY thanked him for saying what I had been thinking for days. As I have been getting a lot of news recently from Aljazeera International, many of my recent opinions that I have shared with Marsha were considered CRAZY at best. She declared that she was sitting between two lunatics. Henry was surprised that a 52 year old bald "white" American male would share the same controversial opinion. Saddam would be more valuable to the USA right now, than he would be under six feet of dirt. I know that the other couple in the front seat were definitely wondering what the helll they had gotten into. I was enjoying the ride. We got to get a young man's opinion, that was at least controversial, and his background and experiences so totally different from mine, yet we shared an opinion because we know what is possible today. The only thing that we could not pose a full opinion on, together, was how deep the plan might be, and who all players are. then we started to lose the couple in the front as we dropped them at Continental Airlines. Marsha and I were next at Air France. Marsha had formed a maternal feel for Henry and the potential for his future with his girlfriend. I had met someone of similar cynicism, and was a fellow WACKO! Amazing how much you can share in a 45 minute ride to the airport. This is the time when I would like to have swapped email addresses, but as I think about it, the sweetness of this conversation is the fact that it was a one time thing. We were open and honest with each other, because we were total strangers, and there was no need to cover our thoughts because we would never encounter each other again. The emotional investment was short term, no real ties except our butts were sharing the same bench seat in a van to the airport. No need to be careful of political correctness, it was something like the conversations that we occasionally pick up in the Latin Quarter. We share a language, a few opinions, the maeal or bottle is finished and we never see them or communicate again. There are some people that we have met in our travels that have had a few emails go back and forth, and those are also sweet. drop s H
|
ut o