In the mood and in the metro; in the streets and in the parks

When I was sick this past weekend and laying in bed, I wondered why I always get sick when I go on long vacations, i.e. ones longer than a week. A combination of poor diet, little sleep, a toussled routine and general travel stress all came to head at the Louvre on Friday afternoon, of all places. Though I was able to enjoy the armies of great art, I walked around like a zombie and had to sit down about every fifteen minutes to keep from falling over. On the one hand, I didn't take a single flash photograph of any piece of art (unlike many people), I was more than generous in doling out my germs to masterpieces like Rembrandt's St. Matthew and the Angel, Michelangelo's The Dying Slave, the Venus de Milo, a half dozen Delacroix, and countless others. The fact that the Mona Lisa is behind glass and you cannot get within 8 feet of it because of a barrier might have saved this darling muse from catching a 21st century cold. We'll follow the headlines in the coming weeks.
I spent all of Saturday in bed reading Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, which at times for me was tantamount to staring into a mirror even though I've never been to Pamplona or a fiesta or drunk for seven days straight. My gracious host Juliana took care of me with her mother's soup recipe, cough medicine and the French Alka-Seltzer. Prior to waking up on Saturday, I think I spent about 14 hours sleeping.

On Sunday, I was starting to feel better so I went for a walk on the metro two stops down and visited Pere LaChaise cemetery; where Morrison, Wilde and Melies are buried, amongst others. Morrison's grave isn't nearly as rock n roll as Oscar Wilde's, and Melies' is by far the saddest, tucked away in the shadows of a few family crypts with nary a single visitor except myself (And I was there for fifteen or twenty minutes.); he might as well have been selling toys again in the Gare Montparnasse. Sunday was also the auspicious occasion of L'avventura at the Cinematheque Francaise, for which Juliana would have been my guest if she had not been infected by whatever germs had nested in my immune system and spread throughout the tiny Parisian apartment. Something else to feel guilty about...but where better to work off guilt than the city with Notre Dame. Lighting a candle has a suggested donation of 2 euros. I put in a .20 euro piece and took two candles.

I was not in tip-top shape for the mother of all cinema experiences and I had a great deal more trouble with the French subtitles than I imagined, but I've seen it enough times to know the words beneath the words and I just watched the gorgeous black and white, Godzilla-sized faces of Sandro and Claudia waltz around the screen for 137 minutes. Vitti is just perfect. Every move and flutter and step is nuanced like a sonnet. She does not miss a beat. After the rushes, Antonioni must have been biting his fist to not implode with joy at what lay in front of his camera, and later on of course, on his bed. He is Italian and a director, mind you. A nice audience as well - very sizable.

I so enjoyed the moviegoing, I stayed for another film called TAPS, starring George C. Scott and Timothy Hutton, Tom Cruise and Sean Penn. It is an absolutely absurd premise, a mix of Corman and the Simpsons but rendered as the soberest drama. I was quite entertained despite many laughable scenes and George C. Scott has some greatly written speeches he delivers that are reminiscent of Buck Turgidson(sic). It felt a little like being in a porn theater because before the movie began, I looked around and saw nothing but a handful of men, each one alone, various ages, at the movies on a Sunday night. It may be my past, but hopefully not my future. HAHA.

That's all for now. Planning on heading to the coast of France thursday with Juliana and Jean-Michel to Mont. St. Michel and seeing the ocean. Should
be fun.