Apparently, Jane’s been ‘blogging and twittering up a storm, since she began working on a Broadway play.
Now, my Broadway show is going to open roughly never, and I have only been sporadically going to the gym so not feeling the burn. In other words, I’m no Jane Fonda. I mean I’ve only flown over Vietnam and haven’t slept with any California politicos. I am one-degree of separation from Ted Turner through two different people, though.
Here was my only thought for today.
I have officially become cavalier about world travel and that surprises me. When I was a kid, a veritable child of dreams and aspirations, I was learning high school French and the poems of Rimboud, not exactly the drunken boat, Est-ce en ces nuits sans fonds que tu dors et t’exiles / Million d’oiseaux d’or, ô future Vigueur? But, I was poet enough to know that my French teacher was raping the text with her literal translations and discussion of the words over the images. (Not to mention the nice sanitized version of his friend Verlaine sans the getting it on.)
I reasoned back then, that while never called or self-identified or otherwise called out as “poor,” there weren’t no spare money lying around, and I was unlikely to see the world. Back then, while in high school I thought through what it would take and realized my best bet was heading to a college with an international program. So there I went. And, from there I went to London, now a 200-mile-an-hour train ride through a tunnel to my fantasy city. Of course, back then trains went at slower speeds, and the tunnels hadn’t been dug, and ferry boats roamed the waters. Still and all I eventually got to cross off an item on my life’s “to do” list and managed to see the White Cliffs of Dover fade into view from the Channel while Calais came closer.
I’ve been to Paris three times. Once, I went for a weekend with my art history class accompanied by our great, kooky, story-book odd duck of a British history professor. She unwaveringly enjoyed her repeated sherries and chats about art, while all around her passengers on the ferry rolled bile rising on a winter’s storm in the English Channel. Every toilet and every trash barrel was visited by some woeful seasick victim, while merrily she ordered up another glass.
The second time, I went back with the small number of crumbled pounds I had saved from my student per diem and an early edition of the Paupers’ Paris (purchased fittingly secondhand at a London charity shop) with a goal of finding the cheapest possible, non-frightening room and to live on baguettes and jam. I actually managed to hold out for over two weeks after juggling at the Beaubourg and falling in with like-minded on the poor front folks. (Pat died never knowing that I wasn’t “with friends from school” but hanging out pretending myself to be an exotic ex-pat.)
The last time I saw Paris (hmmm, that sounds familiar), I deliberately stayed near the Champs d’Elysee at a hotel that actual had some star ratings (that I found a deal on through Orbitz.com). Even better, it was the Hotel California, no finer a name has been written for a hotel thanks to the Eagles. Again I went alone, but as a bookend to a vacation that I spent with friends.
Now, today, I work where heading to Paris is about as exotic as heading down the street for a gallon of milk. The countries and continents where my coworkers (and even me) are, shift, but the travel is constant. It’s boring. It’s commonplace. It’s omnipresent. My dream, the world traveling, the meeting people from different places, the romantifying and exoticizing and fetishizing and just unbridled curiosity from my high school make believe is nearby.
Ennui with fabulous accessories and beautiful images.