* On the way to an old favorite writing cafe, Le Saint-Medard at the foot of rue Mouffetard, I spotted a classic Citroen 2CV, the kind with the canvas sunroof that slides all the way back.
[http://img.getyourguide.com/img/tour_img-10957-48.jpg] http://img.getyourguide.com/img/tour_img-10957-48.jpg <http://img.getyourguide.com/img/tour_img-10957-48.jpg> It was white, but painted all up in the colors of the French flag, with a logo that said, "Paris Authentic." Inside was a driver -- all bundled up against the cold -- and a couple in the back (similarly garbed), riding around with the top pulled back, on their guided tour of Paris. Really cool idea. Cooler (so to speak) on a day like this, but still cool... * A family -- mother and two teenaged kids -- on the Metro, rolling their suitcases, obviously on their way to the train station after a pleasant journey to Paris. What caught my eye at first was how *beautiful* they all were; both mother and kids got extra doses of the already-enhanced French gene pool. But then I noticed how *happy* they were -- both to be here in Paris, and to be in each others' company. Who knows what they're like at home, or in any other circumstances, but for the time/space of three Metro stops, they personified the perfect French family... * The church bells tolling at a few minutes before 11:00 from the church across the street. No one seems to be paying much attention to them, or rushing to mass, but they toll anyway. Somewhere in that church is the modern-day counterpart of Quasimodo, still yanking that chain, still hopeful... * Watching French families, hand-in-hand with their children, ignore the bells and walk past the church doors to the playground in the church courtyard. Priorities... * Finding out that zombies are now street legal in the United States... http://gawker.com/living-man-told-he-is-legally-dead-by-court-1444328116 <http://gawker.com/living-man-told-he-is-legally-dead-by-court-144432811\ 6> * A surge of gratitude washing over me towards the person who invented propane heaters for sidewalk cafes. I hereby nominate that person for the Nobel Prize in Physics, because he or she deserves it far more than those slackers who just won for theorizing about a particle that has far less to do with God than his/her invention does... * Chatting with some visiting Americans, hearing them all say, "We just *love* Europe...we wish we could live here," and then seeing their reaction to the news that I've been doing just that for ten years. It was a satori moment for them, literally the first time they'd ever allowed themselves to think, "Shit, I *could* live here. If this bozo did it, so can I." They were all nice people...I hope I planted a seed that grows... * The sound of the accordionist in the square across the street. He is playing mainly French cabaret ballads, but every so often he slips in something from the soundtrack to "Amelie," and everyone smiles. Everyone. My waiter actually paused in mid-drink-delivery, dancing to the tune for a few moments, spinning his tray full of drinks like a dance partner... * The remembrance that when I'm finished writing in this cafe I can walk a few hundred meters to a cafe called Mouffe Tard, Mouffe Tot (a clever pun, if you know French), and watch the patrons dance the Tango. There's a regular group that gathers there every Sunday to do just that. Sometimes I actually join in, having learned the Tango in a previous incarnation... * Discovering that I'd accumulated so many coins in my left pants pocket over the last few days that I was starting to list to one side from the weight of them, and deciding to relieve myself of this burden by giving some of them to every beggar I meet today... * Surfing the Net and discovering that just when I was starting to think that Fairfield Life is the weirdest group of people in the world, I was wrong...again... http://www.kernelmag.com/kernel-guide-to-the-internet/6047/f-is-for-furr\ ies/ <http://www.kernelmag.com/kernel-guide-to-the-internet/6047/f-is-for-fur\ ries/> * Older people sitting at tables by themselves this Sunday morning. Some are having coffee, some a glass of wine. Some are reading newspapers, some are just sitting and watching the passers-by. Not one of them looks lonely, or as if they wished for company. They are self-contained, content, enjoying what for them is a Sunday morning ritual that they look forward to, and with anticipation. It reminds me that for the French, sitting in a cafe can be a very Zen experience... [http://www.davidyerle.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/3710957239_77543c1\ ba5.jpg] http://www.davidyerle.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/3710957239_77543c1b\ a5.jpg <http://www.davidyerle.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/3710957239_77543c1\ ba5.jpg>
