i'm at Rs, back after a marathon month in Madagascar and DRC. I had two long layovers in Paris and I took the train into the city and wanderered around for 10 hours. On the way in, i walked through a sunday market, dazzled by all the people out shopping in the rain with their bags and baskets. The flowers, the piles of vegetables, the cheese, the seafood. I haggled over a leather wallet with a portuguese man with one eye. A teenager made me the best egg and cheese crepe i've ever had in my life. I went to a bistro R's aunt recommended, asked the waitress to bring me something she liked on the menu, and ended up with a glass of wine and a bowl of duck hearts with pickled peppers. I texted my mom and she asked the real question: why. But they were suprisingly good. I guess those little ducks don't get a lot of exercise before we eat them and their hearts were so tender. : /

On the way out, I went back to the same place and sat at the bar and drank white wine and ordered ravioles du Royan with "jus boudin", which i imagined as a kind of innocuous pasta dish and ended up to be tiny raviolis in a thick sauce of liquified boudin - essentially blood soup. Man...the French.

I walked up to Montmartre and sat on the steps and thought about sitting up there at 25 on my own, wearing a hemp jacket and smoking Benson and Hedges golds, starry eyed at being a BACKPACKER. in EUROPE. And then again at 35, with BT, starry eyed and in love. And now, at 42... starry eyed? Maybe. Happy, anyway. Happy to be out in the world, at the unimaginable privilege of 12 hours in Paris.

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trying not to think about the apocalypse turkucken we find ourselves in. Fuck it, we do not deserve this earth.

7:07 a.m. - 2022-03-07