The Paris Working, Part 2

I'm going...

where???

My god...don't I have to pack? Isn't that really far away? Isn't it going to cost a whole humongous buttload of money???

And I'm leaving...Monday?????????

The frontiers of typographic anxiety...how else can I format this text? If I do get a chance to post a dispatch or two from Paris, it'll be on a French keyboard and it'll probably lòök lìké thîs...

and apparently you're only supposed to hold the fork in your left hand...there's faux pas number 1...'cause I'm not going to, 'cause if I did I might drop my bite of cuisse de grenouille and dishonor America. But...I'll have the fork in my right hand, which is probably bad enough. And Sophia made some joke about my eating at Taillevent that was so funny that, though I have striven to suppress it for the nonce, I am going to remember it as I sit there with six waiters standing at attention around the table, and I am going to start laughing and wine is going to come out my nose and...serai l'americain laid.

You don't diss their wine. Especially not by nasally divesting yourself of it. And you don't act all friendly, either. Which will be another downfall, as I habitually greet even strangers with a little smile or nod, which is an American thing and in particular a southern American thing but you don't do it over there because it's weird and people could even think you are coming on to them, which is so totally totally totally not going to be the case but...el americano feo, otra vez...wrong language. And I'll probably speak Spanish by mistake once or twice and since France probably had a war with Spain 800 years ago that everyone is still bitter about, the espanol will be the final nail in my touristic coffin.

So I may as well go all the way and start when I get off the plane, greeting the City of Light by pumping my fist in the air and chanting "Bush, Bush, USA, kick ass!!!"...

And they've already had riots over the election that is going down right in the middle of my visit, on my birthday in fact, and so I can see myself living to "rue" that "to the barricades" remark in the previous post and being forced to camp out in the Arènes de Lutèce for two weeks or, if I'm lucky, the airport...at least I'm prepared for that eventuality with my iPod and my secret weapon...

And... I asked my Guardian Angel what my task was, what Grail I was supposed to seek in Paris...what awful dark rite I was supposed to enact (the day I get there is a dark-moon Tuesday, probably the most sacred day in the Shakta calendar)...

and do you know what this Angel, this praeterhuman intelligence, this holy dove of divine wisdom...

said?????????

"I want you to be there."

Hm.

"Well, I can be here. And save a whole lot of money."

"You're going to be homesick, but I want you to be homesick while still being true to yourself."

"So--I can't sit around and cry in Notre-Dame?"

"Just don't make it a habit."

"Be there." [snort]

"Are you making fun of me?"