a day in paris

astrid kerr wrinkled her nose when i told her how paris hilton's special home video is for sale on the internet under the title of A Night In Paris;, but that is what we had, one night in paris.

it was raining when we landed which was a shock for me after months in turkey, and we rode in on a wet train where an accordion player walked from car to car playing waltzes. every surface lining the train tracks in to the city is covered with balloony or angular graffiti. really a sense of the republic and, separate, the youth that live in it. arrived in paris via Gare du Nord which has dozens of rail lines feeding in like dirty copper wires on a circuit board and the flow of people like water, stopped up in the train cars, then the gates open and everyone floods out and you can't help but be swept forward and into the rapids of the gare and from there out to open water, to the wide expanse where socialist automated ticket kiosks wait forever to serve you in a dowen languages, beneath the clack-clack-clack of the steam-era digital sign that shows what trains are arriving when using flipdown panels. i love paris. it is a city we will return to. for now simply traipsing around in the rain, enjoying the too-humid feel and tracing flowers in the fogged windows of the metro trains. no way could we ever get on each other's nerves in this town.