Paris by night

"One night we hit the town....At eleven-thirty, we drove up to the Place du Tertre, where we struggled past the barkers and milling tourists in the narrow streets. At the Lapin Agile we paid two thousand francs and squeezed our way to some stools in back. The air was foggy with tobacco smoke, and a chap played boogie-woogie on an upright piano. We ordered brandied cherries, but they never arrived. Finally, a man with a good baritone voice sang four traditional French folk songs, and then we crammed our way outside again and breathed deeply in the cool night air. We strolled along the terrace in front of Sacre-Cour to stare down at the city. Paris was serene and quiet in the moonlight, and seemed to stretch away to infinity.
      "...We headed off to the Left Bank, where we found a jolly nightclub called Le Club Saint-Yves....The audience was made up of simple folk, all French, who were obviously having fun. What the singers lacked in voice, they made up for in personality and verve. After the club closed, at 3:00 a.m., we went on to Les Halles and walked around....It was cold and dark, but the vast marketplace was beautiful under splotches of yellow electric light. As dawn lightened the edges of the sky, we found ourselves at Au Pied de Cochon for a traditional bowl of onion soup, glasses of red wine, and cups of coffee. At five-fifteen, we straggled home."

~ Julia Child, My Life in France

nothing

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any power, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
(Romans 8:28-29)


Sometimes things like this will suddenly pop into my head and bowl me over. NOTHING can separate us from the love of God. 
Wow.
 Happy Easter, friends. 

guilty pleasure

Don't judge me for loving this song. Give it a shot. It had to grow on me, too. But now? Now it gets stuck in my head on a bouncy, everlasting loop and it's all I can do not to start singing out loud in the grocery store and dancing my converse across the parking lot.

:)

Skin & Bones - Romance on a Rocketship

first day of spring.

It's the first day of Spring, and I'm feeling it and believing it. The trees are blooming all down my street, white and purple and pink. The forsythia are flaming yellow like the daffodils. I've lived a lot of places, but sometimes I think that this Virginian valley is the most beautiful (although it's taken me a while to see it as such). 


Last winter, I was riding in the passenger seat of a woman older and wiser than myself. The mountains hemmed us in on both sides as we sailed North. "I've always thought they look like God sort of kneaded them together," she said. "You know how the Rockies are all craggy, like they were chiseled or something? I think He molded these with his bare hands." I think she's right.

Baby, don't worry about a thing,

'Cause every little thing

Gonna be all right. 

poem for a climax

There comes the strangest moment in your life,
when everything you thought before breaks free--
what you relied upon, as ground-rule and as rite
looks upside down from how it used to be.

Skin's gone pale, your brain is shedding cells;
you question every tenet you set down;
obedient thoughts have turned to infidels
and every verb desires to be a noun.


I want--my want. I love--my love. I'll stay
with you. I thought transitions were the best,
but I want what's here to never go away.
I'll make my peace, my bed, and kiss this breast...

Your heart's in retrograde. You simply have no choice.
Things people told you turn out to be true.
You have to hold that body, hear that voice.
You'd have sworn no one knew you more than you.

How many people thought you'd never change?
But here you have. It's beautiful. It's strange.

~ "There Comes the Strangest Moment" by Kate Light

Paris

Darling, let's go to Paris.
Not just for the week. Let's go to Paris for a long time, a year maybe, long enough to rent a tiny flat and run out of money. Long enough to see its different moods, to watch it change with the seasons. We'll get to know the landlady well enough to find out that she's a little bit crazy. But then, so are we.


I'll fall in love with the way you buy a French newspaper every Sunday and puzzle over it with your coffee, sitting across from me in the cafe. You'll fall in love with the  way I buy a bunch of flowers every Friday from the same woman, and try to talk to her in broken French. I'll fall in love with the way you take my hand as we walk along the Seine. You'll fall in love with the way I smile up at you when we stop.


I'll finish writing my novel. You'll sell your art to a gallery. We'll get by. There may not be much money, but it's Paris, sweetheart. We're the lovers and dreamers it's famed for. Together in the City of Light, how could we be unhappy?

photo from here