It’s raining, but it’s inviting.
It is wet, but barely.
It is cloudy, but I can see outside my hotel room: the tram, the bikes, the cars, the pedestrians and especially the buildings.
I love Parisian buildings. Well-fed. Showing character. Having a past and definitely a future. Some of them are more beautiful in a more central neighborhood, but as a family of buildings they exist almost everywhere in Paris. To welcome me. To make me happy. Deeply happy. Eternally joyous that I exist.
In my deepest sadness and anxiety and depression and blue moment, I know that if I can get a whiff of Paris I’m fixed, put together, and ready to go. I cannot do it through the Internet. I have to be inside Paris. I cannot do it with a Madeleine. I’m no Proust.
I had this clarifying moment after I did some aimless walking, flâner, in Paris, and said “Bonjour!” to a few street vendors, bought a croissant, and stopped by a cafe to have a café crème and read an article from Marianne.
I do love being in Paris.
Paris fills me up to the brim like jazz does. Charlie Parker’s.
I do not know why. I will never understand but I am grateful I have the key to my happiness.
The Amalfi Coast makes me happy, too. Its mysterious nature. The Lattari mountains falling into the Tyranian sea. More like jumping into the sea. Or daring the sea for the deepest impact. Here we are, the Lattari seem to scream: majestuous, hollow, but imposing, bringing our fertility to you, the sea! Deal with us. If you can.
Of course, champagne is another personal bliss. But I have to stick to the known brands because champagne is really tricky. It can taste pretty bad if you do not know its brand, or your exact mood when you taste it. And I could never have champagne when I’m depressed. Never. Champagne has always added to happiness.
It’s really wet. I cannot see outside that well.
It’s raining. In earnest. I can see the wind in the angle of the falling rain. Approximating the speed of the wind from the angle of the rain. A quantifying approximation: from some wind, to wind, and to better stay inside.
Habits of a childhood well-spent. Staring at nature.
Quietly.
Always alone.
I’m eating an apple. Devouring it. Until all it remains is the stem.
I have never learned to eat up apples nicely, or until I reach the cork:
“You eat apples like a horse,” I heard someone judging my eating not that long ago.
Perhaps.
I love apples a lot.
As much as a horse loves them?
I swallow my last bite.
It’s Bastille Day! But Paris is celebrating 100 years since its greatest win over Germany: Alsace and Lorraine.
Germany won the FIFA trophy this year though. Almost as valuable as the two provinces it lost so many years ago.
The rain is gone. Let’s go outside!
***
HAPPINESS