Goodbye Vancouver…
Today we board a plane, and after hours and hours of that ridiculous (and impossible!) feat of hurtling through space and time in a large tin can, we will arrive to Springtime in Paris.
It’s hard to begin to imagine what that alternate reality will look like. Even though we’ve been to Paris before, we’ve never been there on these exact dates and at this point in our lives.
We will spend five nights in Paris before we take the train south to our new home in Beauvoisin.
I had contemplated buying a new e-Reader before I left on this trip, but Shakespeare and Company is one of the reasons I didn’t.
There is something profoundly satisfying about standing in the same bookstore as Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. (Seeing that bookstore in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris was just one more reason I loved that movie).
I love all bookstores and libraries, but Shakespeare & Company feels like a pilgrimage; the Holy Grail of bookstores.
I also remember visiting a great bookstore in Aix-en-Provence and will happily go there to spend an afternoon rifling through rows of possibilities.
It is the weight of the concrete reality of paper books that draws me. Picking up a book and cracking the cover to inhale the ink and clean smell of inspired text. Imagine! Purchasing a livre in a new country.
I see my future self in a cafe, a coffee, a newly-purchased book, the shimmering leaves on the plane trees…oh my.
I look forward to creating a vignette in my French home, stacking newly-acquired books on a table or maybe on the fireplace mantle. Books lend a solidity to the place. They are my way of making our new place feel grounded. My home.
I’m thrilled and ready to trade my life here for my French life there. I think travel is kind of like throwing on brand new clothes, something that a good friend suggests you try on, something different than your usual default picks…maybe something you would never choose for yourself.
By tossing on those new clothes, you discover a different, and heretofore undiscovered aspect of yourself.
Ah oui!
Travel is like that, and perhaps France, even more so, while the books lend texture and credence to the experience, adding one more storied layer to all that we are about to find.
France is my chance to discover who I am in that different context.
Bonjour, baby. Bonjour. How do you like my new outfit?
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- My Future Personal Libraries (sedenman.wordpress.com)
You have expressed perfectly why I have not yet purchased an e-reader. Ah, books, real books! No Luddite I, still I deplore reading from a screen. I don’t regularly follow many blogs, but after Sharry pointed me to yours I may have to change my mind! Love your writing style–after all, it was your article in Adventure Cyclist about riding with your girlfriends from Vancouver through Victoria and up Vancouver Island that led us to contact you before she and I cycled there a few years ago! Enjoy France, a place I simply did not get to when in Europe 39 years ago–despite my two years of the language in high school! Have a ball, and keep up the good work.
Well hey there Mandy! Thanks for coming by and so nice to ‘see’ you again. I am going to get all wishy-washy on you now as I’m not sure what to do with the ever-growing pile of books in our living room here in France. By now I’ve spent the equivalent of an e-reader plus some…I might have to compromise and do a little of both. Bring an e-reader as a ‘do-in-a-pinch’ reading outlet and then buy selected books that I can’t find at home. Yeh, yeh, maybe that’s it.
As for your European trip 39 years ago? It is time to get out here again Mandy. Most assuredly.
I’m going to be blogging about great (and oh-so-Mennonite-frugal) ways to do that. Hope that keeps you reading 🙂
Oh believe me, it will keep me reading! Good to “see” you again too! My adventures in this country have kept me and my husband too busy to get back to Europe, and since he has retired, and the Euro has been so strong previous to this year, we just have not chosen to afford that trip. We did start a cycle trip down the length of the Mississippi River last Sept. 1 however, planning on biking the entire route, camping, with the occasional hotel room. We had a series of misadventures that terminated the trip until another time at 839 miles (Dubuque Iowa). However, we had a wonderful time nonetheless, and the silver linings overpowered the clouds for sure. If you’re interested you can read about it, and about what’s shaking in my life now, at letsleavetonight.wordpress.com. Gore bless the internet–it brings out the latent author in so many of us!
Sounds like you’ve been busy enough! I am going to read about your Mississippi adventure asap. That’s on my absolutely-must-do lists…has been forever, so it will be good to check it out.
Amen to the Internet. What a crazy connect-the-dot world it’s become. I shake my head several times a day and absolutely LOVE it. You’re right about the Euro timing and this is definitely a good time to be here. Love the baguettes for one Euro and the wine for under 5 🙂
Fantastic, have a wonderful time!!
Thanks Laurie. Just had a cafe au lait at the corner bar and now we’ve escaped the deluge of rain and thunder. Fabulous light and dark skies shadowing the ancient buildings.
Ah Colleen, how I envy you – Paris and Shakespeare & Company.
As it says at the end of The Guardian Books article: “…the redemptive power of literature, but also something less tangible: the balm of environment.”
Bon chance. mon ami.
Oh Stephen, that is exactly it, ‘the balm of environment’. It is that intangible ‘extra’ that comes from a cocoon of the right environment.
We’re in Paris now, but today is just the day to get up to speed. No bookstores. No museums. Just working at staying awake long enough to go to bed. A demain!