Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Observations from the Window 8.1

I love to fly and I always have but its been a long time since I flew anywhere let alone a flight the length of JFK to Paris. I thought this would set some kind of record for me but the close to 8 hour flight time to Paris is still an hour short of the 9 hours from Chicago to Honolulu. When I think back that trip seems like an entirely different life but it did land me on Kee Beach on Kauai, still what I think is the closest this planet gets to perfect. Getting back to this life, due to the crazed world of time zones this flight is still going to be something totally new to me. As of now I'll be leaving JFK around 10PM and arriving at Charles de Gaulle around 10AM the next day. According to the Air France website "hot and cold drinks, with or without alcohol, are served."
Without alcohol? Seriously? Why?

I'll be staying in the Montparnasse area of Paris close to where Ernst Hemingway rented an apartment on the Rue du Cardinal Lemoine and about a thirty minute walk to The Louvre. I'm going to load A Movable Feast on my netbook and maybe see if I can find some of the spots. I don't expect to run into Hemingway's ghost but if I should I have plenty of questions to ask him about his years in Paris but also about his third wife the journalist Martha Gellhorn. Still if I don't see him I'd be perfectly happy to run into his very much living great-granddaughter Dree, that would work for me too.

At the turn and early part of the 20th century the Montparnasse was the heart and soul of artistic Paris. A list of its more famous inhabitants includes not only Hemingway but Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, Ezra Pound, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Montparnasse and its cafes was also the social center of the large American expatriate community in Paris of which Hemingway wrote so much. Marc Chagall said he had gone to Montparnasse because at the time "The sun of Art then shone only on Paris." Living in the Village it may seem strange but at times I think the same thing.

For now beyond that I haven't made any major plans. Work, walk, shop, walk to the Louvre, and try not to look too out of my element doing it. The shopping may be a major plan because I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get anything. I toyed with the idea of taking an empty bag but with the Paris weather all over the place, 60° one day and 75° the next, I have no idea what to pack.

Finally, a friend sent me this video, totally gets me in the mood ....

Paris In Motion (Part I) from Mayeul Akpovi on Vimeo.

Soundtrack: Angel - Massive Attack, Mezzanine (awesome tune)
Mayeul Akpovi Photographies - facebook
© July 2012