All along the Seine, as in All along the Watchtower, pops into my mind when I see this image. It just feels like a scene from the middle ages, and not the middle ages that I guess we had in the Americas. For me, the middle-ages still has iron rings jutting out from the stone walls to tie up boats; and roughly-hewn cobble stones that have been worn down by the river; and there probably was a time, when the winds died down, and small ships were pulled along the water by mules on the walkway; and in the distance, at least during the middle ages in the so-called cities, there would be church steeples; and, watch-towers and there was certain to be a princess that kept the view from the watchtower.

Which is one of the great things about traveling to a different culture. If you lived in Paris, this is a scene you might have walked by a thousand times. But for me, watching the ducks crawl up on the cobblestones by the Seine, and these kids on their way to school trying (and I say trying) to catch them… all very exotic to me.

Then their mother came running towards them – scaring off the ducks (or are they geese, or is their a difference) and speaking so fast I only caught a few words – but she was very clear about one thing: they were late for school and they were too old for this sort of nonsense.

Time to put Paris down for a few days, and get back to some work I need to finish for a client.  I did a tremendous amount of scanning, but don’t have time to work on the images now; besides, it feels like a good time to take a break from the glorious city.

It would be nice if I had the foggiest idea where this was taken, but I don’t. I’m sure one of my Francophiles will know. I figure it’s a major metro hub, but it could also be inside a museum. Anyway – I like it a lot and I would like to put it in the store with a name. On the other hand – a rose by any other name will still smell, uhm, as sweet.

It was severely scratched, which was why it was never posted before. It was a major restoration project that took close to four hours to remove the scratches. And in all that 100% and 200% views – I didn’t actually see any clues or signs to give it away.

The Jardin du Luxembourg features two noteworthy fountains. The most famous one is the Fontaine de Medicis, a romantic baroque fountain designed in 1624. It is located at the end of a small pond at the Fontaine de Medicis, Jardins du Luxembourg, Paris Fontaine de Medicis northeast side of the park. A central sculpture group shows the Greek mythological figure of Polyphemus who watches the lovers Acis and Galatea. It is flanked by allegorical figures depicting the rivers Seine and Rhône.

(Hard to believe, but I found out the name of this one on my own, which means it could be wrong).

The appropriateness of the words didn’t quite strike me while I was there.  I was thinking about camera angles, and how to get the words and the grave in the same shot.  And it was only twenty years later that it “hit me.” It is, after all, a cemetery.  And then of course, I took one more step and it became a more universal truth.  “I was born here and I’ll die here, against my will…” Dylan

To be or not to be – not much of a question for most of us.  The question is “how to be” while we’re still around.  “What to be.”  But not whether to be or not.  That is for the Danish prince.

This was the grocery store, around the corner from where I stayed on my first trip. Shopping for food in Paris was very different from typical shopping in the states. At least back then it was. In the afternoon, you saw people walking around with fresh baguettes under their arms. Both men and women with cloth bags they used to pick up food at various small stores. In other words, the idea of walking into Walmarts or some super-market hadn’t hit Paris. Maybe it has now, I don’t know. McDonalds was there already, though it there were protests.  But food shopping was a daily activity, where you went from baker, to butcher to cheese store. In the morning, after the streets were cleaned, there was the smell of fresh butter and bread wafted along the streets.

The cafes were filled, even on work days, with people having their coffee and of course their cigarettes. Being a New Yorker, I walked around wondering how in the world anything ever got done. I couldn’t understand how the outdoor cafes could be filled at nine in the morning.

New York has it’s night life, where bars and restaurants are filled. But the idea of sitting down with a fresh piece of crusty bread and butter, and some very good coffee, and sitting at an outdoor cafe before going to work – it was wonderful – and extremely foreign. It took me all of two days to get used to it.  I remember arriving back in New York, and from the moment I stepped from the plane, it seemed as if everything was running in fast motion.

To this day, every once in a while, when I’m out around dawn, and the air is clean and sweet, I get this sense of being back in Paris.

Definitely don’t know where this one was, but on one of the other negs. there’s a name of the church in the b.g. which I can’t quite make out yet.

As I was removing dust from this shot for about half an hour, I began to wonder what it must be like to work on this sort of thing for months or years. And whether the sculptor believed in what he was doing or was just working on commission. Which lead me to wonder about the devout Christians around the world that still do believe in what to me are ghastly fables. (Of course, never a good idea to write about my own feelings regarding religion, since my own agnostic take on it brings out: a) resentment b) a desire to help me find the true path, or c) pure hatred.

And frankly, although the world is in conflict, with innocents being killed in the name of religion, I have a fairly dim view of humanity to begin with, and believe that if it weren’t religion, we’d just invent something else to fight over (uhm – countries?). Or, as in the satire by Swift – which end of a hard-boiled egg to break, the fat end or the skinny end. I haven’t seen fist-fights break out over Apple v. PCs yet – but it isn’t that far-fetched. In short, without something to believe in that makes some sort of sense of our brief stay here, we really would have to invent it. Don’t remember who said it, but my thoughts are along the lines that if God didn’t create us, we would create him. (Sorry for all the currently politically incorrect gender language, but it’s pretty much part of the whole religious deal).

At the same time – I’m also not purely scientific – i.e. I believe what I can see and touch. No, I have had many spiritual experiences – and believe there are things beyond what we dream – or at least that some of our dreams can touch another realm. But I don’t have a name for this, though I would trust a shaman or maybe a Zen master before someone from an organized religion.

And after all, I don’t know what the exact numbers are, but my ideas are surely in the minority, especially in the U.S. or France, or Belgium. But then again, we do have this free speech thing so what the hell.

This and some other shots to be posted later, are part of the exterior, sort of a small garden outside the church which my friend Dirk brought me to; and I’ll get to the wide shot and interiors next.

Something was going on behind me – but I have no idea what. It may have been a car accident. Whatever it was – the reaction on the bus was French kids going nuts.

You search the cemetery for his grave like the other tourists and there it is. Underwhelming. Just a stone with a plaque.   I stood there for a long time, trying to figure out some sort of dramatic way to photograph the grave, but nothing came to me.  There was graffiti in chalk on a nearby grave which has room to write stuff, but it’s not Morrison’s grave.

In Greek: “according to his own daimōn” or interpreted as “true to his own spirit”

Back to NYC for a minute…