Paris, je t'adore.

A painting of a snow covered street, from far away palpably cold, but up close the lines squiggly and gestural. A man sits upon a pedestal, imprisoned by his own thoughts. A meal that takes the most basic flavors and presents them in such a way that they seem utterly new, the way an artist shows you colors for the first time.

An impossibly full day that will live in my mind until I die.

Bloody Soil

After the consumerist nightmare of the Champs-Élysées, we stand atop the Arc de Triomphe and look out across the foggy city spread out below us in radiating spokes from here. I've spent most of the day imagining the wars and revolutions that have bloodied the streets of Paris, and now I'm looking down from a monument to a biggie. The high relief friezes on the front of the arc show men and boys (and the occasional very angry woman) getting ready to go to war, drawing swords and rushing off to do battle against whatever foe the state has mandated this time.

When we come back down to earth, a coterie of soldiers have taken over the plaza by the monument to the unknown soldier, and summarily we tourists are shooed away to make way for some solemn ceremony or other, of which we will never really be a part.

Life Skills

The Eiffel Tower soars to the sky, lattice and lace and much lighter than anything that enormous has any right to be. Every hour on the hour hundreds of lights as bright as flashbulbs go off across the girders of the frame work making it dazzle like it's giving off sparks.

Down below we watch in awe, until the guys hawking cheap-ass trinkets (plastic Eiffel Towers that change colors, key chains with names like "Kaatie" or "Lazaa).

Fortunately, my time in New York has taught me how to deal with the random street hustler: "No thanks," I say, my voice stern.

Check Your Bags (And Your Privilege)

"Whose is this?" the woman asks the people surrounding the charging station. She then unplugs someone's phone and plugs hers in. 

"That's mine," another woman says, walking up. "And it's not done," she continues and unplugs the first woman's phone, who looks genuinely surprised that someone would question her right to a fully charged phone.

The Elusive Glasses Are Somehow My Fault

The dull-eyed girl behind the counter becomes, somehow, even more dull-eyed as she talks on the phone to their storeroom. "But I told you to keep them here," she says sullenly to someone on the other end.

Finally, she hangs up and regards me with near-hostility. "They sent them over to the other store," she says to her boss who hovers anxiously nearby, all the while still looking at me.

Tales from High School

"And Tim would always ask if we were done with our food, so he could eat the leftovers," Kevin tells my wife. "So finally we just started licking our food so he'd stop asking."

"That was me," I tell him. "It was Tim who started licking stuff, and really, it didn't stop me." 

"Repent, Harlequin!" "Yeah, no, I'm good."

Once again, I look to the television for the time, only to remember that there's no clock there. When you give up cable, one of the things they don't tell you is that you may not have enough clocks in your house.

Sure there might be one or two in the kitchen, on the microwave, say, or the stovetop, and everybody in New York carries around a supercomputer in their pocket these days that's linked to a freaking atomic clock somewhere in Nevada or some such nonsense.

But there's something simultaneous frightening, and a little thrilling, about not exactly knowing what time it is, not caring, just letting the hours wash over you, living a slightly more elastic existence unfettered by the tyranny of time.