Hemingway Got Plastered in This Cafe

Following our class Wednesday morning, where we discussed Ionesco 'the man' and his urge to create through writing, the students were sent off on a tour of the more famous literary sites on Paris' Left Bank. With only a Xerox as our guide we walked uphill both ways on this literaray pilgrimage. The beginning of the tour was fairly interesting as we saw the third floor rooms where Hemingway lived and then the third floor room where Hemingway wrote. We saw the house occupied by James Joyce as he wrote Ulysses. Taylor Roy did his James Joyce dance and the girls got distracted by shopping (don't worry fathers and purse string holders very little was actually purchased). We saw the street which spawned the now famous title 'Down and Out in Paris and London'. We then moved into more 'touristy' areas. These areas feature a lot of designer stores and commercial americana. We sped our ways through these areas in search of less known and less occupied spaces. We found them on a side street where we took in the studio of Pablo Picasso where he painted 'guernica'. We also saw the Pantheon which is just too large and grand to describe. It was quite simply, in one word or less, 'ginormous'. Our tour ended on a street corner where on one side you have the Deux Magots Cafe ( don't know what a magot is but i'm fairly certain it is not a maggot). This is the cafe where Hemingway used to get snoggered with his buddies and with people he thought were his buddies because he was snoggered. It was very nice but by no means a rare find as it was quite crowded with the varying nationalities of the world. The real highlight of the daylight hours was across the street. Across the street stood the 11th century church of Saint-Germain. Among its more famous residents is Descarte. It is a beautiful church that was basically empty. It features an array of 15th or 16th century paintings as well as plenty of fodder for DaVinci Code fans. The stainglass window on the right side of the transept featured a pyramid/triangle (According to Dan Brown this is a symbol for the masculine) with hebrew writing inside. Directly across on the opposing window in the same relative location is an upside down pyramid/triangle (Dan Brown calls this the female symbol). Also there was a fresco of Jesus with a Templar flag and many templar crosses were painted on the columns inside the nave. What do these triangles & crosses mean? I have no idea.
At 9:00 pm we headed to the METRO and traveled to the most famous landmark in all of France, the Eiffel Tower. You cannot possibly understand the scale of this iron monstrosity without being near it. It is massive. It is so much larger than you expect. The entire GCSU campus would probably fit beneath it quite comfortably. It is breathtakingly beautiful. We arrived as the sun was going down, yes it goes down at like 10:20 here. We proceeded quickly from the tower to the Seine river right behind it and took a boat tour of night time Paris. Paris is called the city of lights, that is because no one ever turns their lights off. There must be several million government installed lights in this city. Seemingly everything is illuminated by some aesthetic lighting design. It is so beautiful at night on the river. It reallys gives you a glimpse of the inspiration Paris' colors provided to the impressionist and others over the centuries. We finished the boat tour and returned home by the Eiffel tower and through the throngs of knick knack hawkers. They all seem to be of North African heritage and it was a small glimpse into the current issues of France as a country. We all remember the all too recent riots. But never the less the tower, like manyu of the other landmarks is far more beautiful and captivating than any cultural image or respective debris we have lodged in our head. There is no scale of size or aesthetic value to quantify it.
The weather here has been beautiful it feels like the low 70s to upper 60s in the morning, copious sun, and warm afternoons. Tina Howe has been an amazing find for all of us and we enjoy her musings at every turn. She tells us of her friend David (David Ives writer of 'All in the Timing'), her old pal Bill (William S. Burroughs 'Naked Lunch' etc.) her dear comrade Bill (William H. Macy the actor from 'The Cooler' 'Boogie Nights' 'Fargo' 'Plesantville' etc.). She seems to have been friends with everyone and she delights us with stories of being a Tony voter. Today we have no idea what we are doing other than being in Paris......mahalo
The Plastic People of the Universe