Paris, je t’aime… That’s right, j’adore Paris… Almost fifteen years after my last visit, I took a dream trip to the city of love earlier this month and, to be honest, I’m not sure if I’m ever able to write or even explain the beauty… I’m not a travel writer and even if I was, there is no way you can go through every single detail of the stunning culture and the rich history that could hardly even be described in the best travel guides… All I know is that spending almost 12 hours every day walking on the cobblestoned streets of Paris was painful yet amazingly pleasurable… It left my mind and my heart full of the most beautiful memories and unforgettable sceneries… And if the word “adorable” could be considered a city, that would be Paris…

My whole adventure was summarized by observing the loveliness of every single moment wandering in the city… cafés, yummy pastries, vin rouge, l’Opera, the Metro, effortlessly charming and stylish people, sexy French accents, Collette, smoking tobacco under the spring blossoms, macarons, crêpes, cathedrals, baguettes and cheese, art and fashion, the “Le Petit Nicolas” exhibit, laughing on the walkways beside the Seine like there was no tomorrow, the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore (better known as where my beloved Ethan Hawke held his book reading in “Before Sunset”), teenage kisses in a park beside the Eiffel tower, the Andy Warhol exhibition, my dear Sara and the lovely new friends… Just a snapshot of all that happened.. All in all, I can’t be more grateful for this trip… I’m refreshed, back on track and happy that I’m back home…

Not even a full 24 hours after my arrival, jet lag and all, I saw myself jumping up and down to Fran’s voice… Yes, Travis had their Toronto concert the day after I arrived home and their gig left me even more so in love with the boys and their tune… now can anyone say, why does it always rain on me? 🙂

S

“Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the Unknowable. But there it sits, nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.”

— H.L. Mencken

When: A Sunny Afternoon
Where: Unknown

So the girl finally picked up the New Yorker from the rack… She felt the urge to own it in desperation… Only because it had what she craved to read for a while… The poem that can’t be written…

is different from the poem
that is not written, or the many

that are never finished—those boats
lost in the fog, adrift

in the windless latitudes,
the charts useless, the water gone.

In the poem that cannot
be written there is no danger,

no ponderous cargo of meaning,
no meaning at all. And this

is its splendor, this is how
it becomes an emblem,

not of failure or loss,
but of the impossible.

So the wind rises. The tattered sails
billow, and the air grows sweeter.

A green island appears.
Everyone is saved.

— by Lawrence Raab

Everyone is saved, she is thinking… While puffing on her never ending tobacco, she read it again and again then wrapped it up in those magical hours that flied as fast as the smoke vanished in to the blue sky… She came back home with an empty mind and a bunch of yellow tulips by her side…

Just before the snow started to seize the sunny ride…

S