Puking in Paris

1/3/07 Jose’s Apartment, Le Marais area, Paris

Drinking a 33cl Coke in the cold little apartment of my hosts Jose and Florencia, the Brazilians I knew and enjoyed so much in Golden, Colorado. The floor is a red concrete or something that similarly communicates the hard January weather outside, and my native accustomedness to central heating is proving an annoying liability. There are books in four languages about art, music and philosophy lining the walls, and a stained-glass translucent contact paper over the windows that separate us from night on the sidewalks outside. I did not know until this morning that the average height of a building in Paris is six floors, or that the average width of the streets is a third the height of the buildings that line in (or really just seems to be) – for that matter I was expecting to at some point be able to photograph my first step on Parisian earth, but because it is not allowed to walk on grass planted in the squares, I have not yet encountered any earth I am allowed to step on; my definition was going to be ground not placed there, ground not synthetic like street paving or stone – but I think that was a naïve expectation, a result of my having grown up under endless Colorado skies with prairie stretching to eternity.

I am surprised also that I can miss my love so much and still be having such a fantastic time here. The clock on my computer remains trained to the days as they pass for him – it says now 3:51pm, so he is sitting (as am I) in front of a computer screen in a building in a city. I think of him often here – when Jose and I were walking tonight along the stone path that lines the walls of the River Seine, with the Notre Dame towering her impossible Gothic detail into the night above, Brian’s absence was as tangible as his presence should have been. Instead he sits now under florescent light with his charts full of tiny squiggly lines rolled up around him, most probably wishing he weren’t working, but by doing so making it possible for me to have the exquisite luxury of being here. He is the ally I never thought I would have, and that knowledge does not leave me.