It is 6:48 AM on Sunday, March 6th, 2022. I’m listening to Je te veux by one of my favorite composers Erik Satie
The title being French and the music a melody of light, playful notes make me think of perhaps a spring promenade in Paris. I’ve only been in Paris twice in my life and it has been twenty years since the last visit.
When I think of “The City of Love” the romantic aspects mostly come from movies I’ve watched with the most recent being Midnight in Paris. My own experience was not romantic but was none-the-less quite wonderful in other ways. When I think of Paris I think of small, strong expressos in a petite, corner-side cafe filled with smoke. Coffee and cigarettes, that is the Paris I know. Watch out for the dog poop on the streets before the dog poop motorcycle/vacuum comes!
I think of a night out in Paris when my sister came for a visit. We went to a fancy, white table cloth restaurant recommended by my English/French friend Rennie with whom I studied in Spain and who joined us for the evening. I also invited my friend Ning who I studied French with in Besançon. Both of them still live in Paris but with my the passage of time and exacerbated by my seclusion from Facebook I haven’t been in touch in quite a while.
After the restaurant we went to a club which I think was called La Bastille and was most likely in the same neighborhood as the fortress. It was very exclusive and the only way we could get in was by buying bottle service. Well, we did, got a table next to the dance floor, and danced the night away, my sister with Rennie and me with Ning. It was the type of evening one does not forget. Simply being in an international city one is enveloped in the exotic and its inherent foreignness makes even the most common things seem a bit magical. An international night it was indeed as between us we had four languages and three nationalities. Thanks to Rennie we were treated superbly at a fancy restaurant and thanks to flashing a bit of cash we’re also treated wonderfully at the club.
I wondered if I had written about that Paris night in my blog but only found an entry when I was on the way to Paris.
I had not intended to write about Paris this morning but the choice of music led me to do so. The time is now 7:20 AM and the household will be waking up soon. I’ll leave off by saying these types of experiences are the golden nuggets of life. We get older, follow the usual paths such as work, families, kids and life can often become rather mundane. Even if I’m not about to spend an evening in a fashionable club in Paris dancing with an available Chinese friend/possible romantic interest, life can still remain interesting so long as we seek out more adventures and break out of routines.
Therefore, today I believe we’ll be going on a bike ride along the coast. It may be just me and the boys as the wife likes her alone time. We’ll invite her of course but I strongly suspect she will decline. On our biking adventure I think it would be nice to eat lunch out which will probably be Rock’n Rob’s in Rockaway Beach. I much prefer Breakers but the kids are sold on the milkshakes at Robs.
As I end this post Claire de Lune has just come on and makes me want to continue my stream of consciousness post romanticizing experiences from the past or possible future. But reality pulls me away from springtime in Paris in the flower of my youth, to a midlife Sunday morning breakfast hoping to make a great day for my boys.
