Part le deux

[darcydodo]

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....