Observations from le Voyage 8.26.1, mobile update

I may have mentioned last week how stunning it was flying into the sunrise. A week later chasing the endless sunset isn't quite the same thing. When your body thinks it is about 1AM and the sun refuses to set you start to feel like some human version of the British Empire. Than to taught you the sun finally sets just an hour out of JFK. To make matters worse we were delayed in the air over JFK for 20 minutes because of TS Issac related delays and airport closings to the south.

I'm not a big fan of baggage claim so when my bags were the last out all I could think was that my best two leather jackets had been lost over the Atlantic. It was not the case however and all my leather arrived safe and sound.

So I'm back, a bit sad maybe, most assuredly exhausted,
but back just the same.

Observations from the Window 8.16

At times I may mentioned horoscopes because I have a fondness for them, not that I live my life by them, I just like horoscopes. Seriously, they are often dead on so shoot me if you must. This isn't about my horoscope though but about dreams. Some people actually believe you can predict your life by interpreting your dreams. Thankfully I was never one of them because that's just crazy. My lack of belief in dreams may be a result of my lack of dreams which  may be because of my lack of sleep, or maybe my non-lack of alcohol and caffeine. I'm not a doctor so I wont get into why I don't dream.

The thing is with my big trip coming up Saturday I don't want to take any chances so when I actually had a dream last night I was forced to act on it. It was a simple dream of which I remember little but I do remember I had a pink pillowcase on my bed. I have so many pillows on my bed you could drown in them but they all have black pillowcases so I was forced to buy a pink one today and to be safer I bought another pillow too. This means I have a virgin pillow with pink pillowcase on my bed as I write this. That is too weird, but than so am I.

My flight to Paris leaves JFK at 10 PM Saturday night and today I made a discovery that has far reaching implications for my time until than. JFK is in New York which is good because I am in New York along with my tickets and semi-packed luggage. This is all good. What i discovered today is that my passport is NOT in New York it is in central Pennsylvania. This is not good, this is bad. As a matter of fact it is very very bad. At this point I can't even trust FedEx so I'm going to have to take Foxy on a road trip sometime before Saturday night. Maybe I should have bought pink sheets too.

Less than 48 hours now, stay tuned.

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 20^th 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