“A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility.”
L. Cohen
I’m going to Paris. I’m assigning myself a mission, one very few visitors have accomplished, fewer still who stayed five weeks.
I will enter no art museums, visit no cathedrals, browse no cemeteries, view no monuments. Not the Louvre, not the Arc de Triomphe, not the Champs-Élysées, not Notre Dame. Not Jim Morrison’s grave. Five weeks in the City of Light and I’m not going to the Eiffel Tower. Though I won’t avert my eyes from horizons. Horizons are good for the soul.
I may hunt down the Impasse Maubert - I’m reading Eco’s The Prague Cemetery. And I’ve been given a mission to track down Sam Beckett's manuscript of Molloy. The Sorbonne is exempt; tourists are barred. Not the sewers; it breaks my heart but I have spoken.
What if I meet an enchanting nymph named Angelique, and she says, “Nous nous rencontrerons par la Pyramide.” I’ll reply, thumbs hooked in my belt, “Pas possible. Par le bout du Passage Ramey, ou pas du tout.” And she’d say, “Formidable! Emportez-moi! Ici, maintenant, Milord!” Which is to say, I will not be moved.
Five weeks. That’s scary. Can I do that? Will I be the first? Who wasn’t brought there in chains?
Will I get a statue? At least a plaque? A sidewalk café?
L. Cohen
I’m going to Paris. I’m assigning myself a mission, one very few visitors have accomplished, fewer still who stayed five weeks.
I will enter no art museums, visit no cathedrals, browse no cemeteries, view no monuments. Not the Louvre, not the Arc de Triomphe, not the Champs-Élysées, not Notre Dame. Not Jim Morrison’s grave. Five weeks in the City of Light and I’m not going to the Eiffel Tower. Though I won’t avert my eyes from horizons. Horizons are good for the soul.
I may hunt down the Impasse Maubert - I’m reading Eco’s The Prague Cemetery. And I’ve been given a mission to track down Sam Beckett's manuscript of Molloy. The Sorbonne is exempt; tourists are barred. Not the sewers; it breaks my heart but I have spoken.
What if I meet an enchanting nymph named Angelique, and she says, “Nous nous rencontrerons par la Pyramide.” I’ll reply, thumbs hooked in my belt, “Pas possible. Par le bout du Passage Ramey, ou pas du tout.” And she’d say, “Formidable! Emportez-moi! Ici, maintenant, Milord!” Which is to say, I will not be moved.
Five weeks. That’s scary. Can I do that? Will I be the first? Who wasn’t brought there in chains?
Will I get a statue? At least a plaque? A sidewalk café?
