If you find us a place to stay.
Oh my fucking God.
I am now on a mission people.
I was chatting with a friend tonight who has not really been to Paris, except to fly through Charles De Gaulle on his way home to San Francisco, who has some vacation time he has to use before the end of the year.
Paris came up.
We looked at tickets.
I talked his ear off.
Art, art, art.
Museum, museum, museum.
I showed him photos of my bicycle in Paris, cafes I used to hang out at, places I walked around, the Rodin museum, the Louvre, the Palais de Tokyo, Musee D’Orsay.
Oh.
My.
God.
SERIOUSLY?
Seriously.
I could be leaving for Paris two days after my birthday and be there the week of Christmas.
My heart just is leaping about my chest.
The Eiffel Tower at night with glitter lights splashed all over it.
Sitting in Odette and Aime over a cafe creme.
Going to the market at Square D’Anvers.
Apples.
Rabbit sausages in a paper packet from the rotisserie.
The ferris wheel in Place de la Concorde.
The one I never got around to riding on, although I so wanted to on my 40th birthday, but I was taken out to a birthday dinner in the Belleville and wasn’t able to make it to the ferris wheel.
I would go this time.
Oh.
Walking through the Tuilleries at dusk.
Going to see old friends at the American Church and crossing over Point d’Alma to the American Cathedral and heading up Rue George V.
Sacre Couer, midnight mass on Christmas Eve.
The singing in Latin.
I would go to my favorite book store in the 20th, Le Merle Moqueur and buy a book or two and also lots of postcards and then promenade through Pere LaChaise cemetery.
I have posted on Facebook, texted a friend, and e-mailed another already before starting this post.
My friend was dead serious.
I find us a place to stay and he’ll buy the tickets.
Holy moly man.
Fuck.
I’m putting out the feelers.
Just to walk around again.
And play tour guide, since I know the city and my friend doesn’t.
It would be fun.
Also, since I was there last I was broke.
So broke and hungry and trying so, so, so hard to make it work and well, everyone here knows the story, it didn’t work, but damn I tried.
I’m grateful it didn’t work.
It wasn’t supposed to, but I leapt and I moved there and I tried it on for size and found it too tight, too constricting, too much effort to just get by, barely, scantily, scraping by.
“I was going to say it, I’m so glad you brought it up, I think it’s time you went home,” she said to me as we finished doing some reading in the book.
I had tears sliding down my face.
I knew she was right.
It was time to go home.
But.
Oh, the humble pie I had to eat.
When I thought I was going to be there so long.
Forever.
Years at least.
A decade probably.
Nope.
Six months.
But still.
How many people give themselves six months in Paris?
Even poor and scraping and just barely getting by, it was six months of walking the streets of one of the most beautiful cities int the world.
Just saying the museum names makes me giddy with delight and childish greed.
I want to eat it.
Let me lick the Kandinsky Accent En Rose in the Pompidou, let me saunter around the Warhol’s at the Musee Moderne.
Let me go to the Musee Marmottan Monet.
Or just let me walk the bridges.
Pont Neuf.
Pont D’Alma.
Walk over the Trocadero and up the stairs to the Passy Metro station.
Or down towards the Seine and out onto the island with the Statue Of Liberty on it.
The things that I would do that I didn’t do or allow myself to do because I was on such a tight budget.
The opera house.
I never did see the Chagall’s there.
Or the new LVMH Gehry museum.
Or eat oysters on the half shell at a cafe.
I could handle that on Christmas eve.
I would go to Cafe Rouge again in the Marais.
I would go to the little shop I found on a twisty, turning, winding bit of road and buy a hat from the millinery shop in the Marais, I believe it might have been on Rue de Victoire, and I felt like I fell down a little rabbit hole of hats and ostrich feathers and fedoras, felts and velvets, and ribbons, and I just touched with such reverence and looking with my eyes and heart.
I swoon thinking about it.
All the sweet treasured spots I have in my heart for the city.
The churches.
The smell of incense and the warmth.
I could always get warm in a church after much walking with cold toes through the streets.
I would go to Place Vosges and sit at the Victor Hugo cafe.
I would have many cafe cremes.
Many, many, many.
I would buy posters and postcards from the book stalls along the Seine.
I would walk through the Garden du Luxembourg at dusk just to hear the gendarmes walking through with their whistles clearing the park.
I would buy some the de Mariage Freres.
Tea.
That is.
I would eat some cheese.
Hello.
And tartar.
Oh.
I would have some tartar thank you very much.
Put it in my mouth.
Sushi face, try steak tartar face.
It’s fun just to sit here and think about the silliness I would get myself up to and sharing it with a friend who’s never been, tres cool.
Oh the delirious thoughts in my head.
The lights at night.
The Christmas lights too.
So beautiful, very different from the United States, but still so pretty.
It would be cold.
But I know what that’s like and I also know to dress warmer then I did when I was living there.
Mwahahahaha.
I just got pinged.
Message from a friend in Paris with a studio near the Eiffel Tower.
She’s looking for a rental, but I bet a good price could happen.
I don’t know that it’s a fit.
But, it’s a start.
And worth investigating.
The hunt is on.
And hey.
If you know of anyone who’s looking to do a San Francisco swap, my friend has a great big gorgeous room in an awesome house out by Ocean Beach, he’s open to a swap.
Hell.
If I could swap my place too I would, but my housemate isn’t into it.
Anyway.
Paris?
Christmas?
What do you say Universe?
I’ve been a really good girl this year.
Pretty, pretty please.
With the Eiffel Tower on top.
Auntiebubba 