Up in the air, sky high, sky high...

I'm in Paris. Wow. I only have four minutes on this internet kiosk right now, unless I add more money, but I'm stingy. So much has already happened to write about, though.... So I'll probably write an entry and then keep editing it. Or something. :)

I want to write a big huge entry about flying over the pole, because that's one of my favorite things about flying to England/Europe. We flew over England, directly over Oxford, and it was all patchy clouds until we got about halfway between Birmingham and Oxford, and suddenly it was solid white beneath us. There was a big blob right where I'm fairly sure the Oxford city centre is. And then, as soon as we cleared out of the immediate area, it went back to patchy clouds.... so I hope all you Oxford people are enjoying your lack of sun (which I presume includes rain).

France is warm, nice, and I occasionally understand things. On the RER (the train thing) from the airport into Paris some guy got on with a tape player and a sax and started busking on the train.

I'm running out of time... so I'll post this now.

(no subject)

May be finished with an edit later (depending on internet time...)

I decided to try writing this entry by hand, first, so as to save time when it comes to typing it in. This means that I'm currently lying on the grass in a little park a stone's throw from Notre Dame. I can see a sliver of the cathedral between the leaves of the tree above me and the hedge that surrounds the park, when I look up. There are people lying and sitting all around the edge of the grass, most of them fairly young (except for the families, I'd say primarily between 25 and 35). Rsoes, michaelmas daisies, random green things, and two small English boys who are being terribly naughty and completely disregarding their parents. Actually, not naughty, just rambunctious.

When I first left the airport, it really felt as though I were back in England. The trees and hedgerows looked right, and the signs were vaguely the right shape. (Ooh. Really fat pigeons are now waddling along the path,looking remarkably like mourning doves. Or ring-necked doves. Or something.)

So far, nobody's tried talking to me in English unless I specifically start the conversation in English, so I count this as something of a triumph. Not that I've exchanged many words with anyone in the first place.

Right, I wanted to write about the plane journey, I guess. Nice easy check-in in L.A. (which I think I deserved, given the whole ticket hassle), since who flies to S.F. from the United Int'l terminal? OK, a few people, but there was no queue at all; most people weren't getting on the flight down south. Changing planes at SFO was highly amusing, because as soon as I approached the area that claimed to be the international terminal, I and another passenger got ushered aside, our passports and tickets checked, and then led through what was essentially a back entrance out of the airport. You know the type: concrete stairs and all. Turns out there was a tiny little room down there where we and a few others waited for a bus to take us over to the real international terminal.

During the flight I sat next to a woman named Nadine who was French but had been living in Santa Clara for about 12 years. She was going "home" for a few days (to somewhere near Avignon) because her grandmother had died. I watched Pipe Dreams (amusing but nothing high-quality), Evelyn (very well done, made me cry, and now I've got "The Parting Glass" stuck in my head; serves me right for knowing too many folk songs), and Two Weeks Notice (very funny, despite the reviews, plus Sandra Bullock's hot, though less so than she used to be; Hugh Grant is very pretty and does absolutely nothing for me). Don't you like my movie review style, girlwithjournal? Clearly I should write for you next year. :) The rest of the flight I read Anselm's book. It's being fun, per expectations.

(TBC... don't want to overrun lj's entry space.)

Part le deux

Flying over the pole. Hmm. Possibly this part of the entry won't be as long as I had anticipated, because it's a theme that rather precludes variation. Ice. White, turquoise, and black. Snow and rocks, which from the air are powdered tracings of black and brown and vast pools of pure white. Puddles of cream, perhaps, or sugar that spilled into a hole and filled it. (Ooh, hot sun, just escaped from some clouds.) I'll go with the cream analogy, I think, because the white is so pure, solid, and thick. Given the decent amounts of cloud-cover in certain areas, this time, the snow was relegated to the land and the ice to the sea (glaciers, but they look so flat from high up, white crusts floating on a black expanse); but if I had been able to see through the clouds for the entire time, there would have been caves of ice that cast their shadows in color, and frozen rivers meandering their dark paths through otherwise unspotted snow. The first time I saw that, I was in love with someone unobtainable (OK, I can censor myself somewhat, here!), and it inspired fragments of what would probably have been, for the most part, godawful poetry. But since then it's just been an unchanging moment of beauty on which I know I can rely, if the time of day is right. "In Xanadu did Kublai Khan," indeed. My pleasure domes and caves of ice are in Greenland.

Of interest to no one but myself and girlwithjournal, I got a-hold of Anna on the phone and will see her tomorrow or the day after.

This entry now spans nearly three hand-written pages. I think it must be dangerous to put a pen in my hand; gross amounts of verbiage will ensue. By contrast, if I tried limiting myself to French, very little at all would get written, and of that, not much would be worth reading. I just don't have the vocabulary. Or the style or the grammar, for that matter. Time enough for improvements there, I suppose.

I can hear music. Live or issuing from a café, I can't tell. I recognized the Seine when I reached it. That was a very nice feeling.

I just managed to decipher the inscription on the wall of the park (the font's odd, OK?); I'm assuming it's dedicatory:

(Bracketed by 1940 and 1945:)

AUX DEUX CENT MILLE MARTYRS FRANÇAIS
MORTS DANS LES CAMPS DE LA DEPORTATION

Music advisory update: must be live, there was a poorly rendered "happy birthday" a minute or so ago.

Must... stop... writing....