A Moveable Feast, Hemingway
One perfect spring day erases all memories of bone-chilling January. We've had enough for a year of Januarys over the past week or two.
There's a reason people write songs about Paris in the spring time. It is the air that captures me. Spring air is exhilarating everywhere, but it is perfect here. Perfect humidity that feels like velvet on your skin. A temperature so welcoming that windows seem to open by themselves. And the scent is heavenly- every flower seems to burst in to bloom at once, and I've felt like I've lived in a perfume bottle the past week or two.
It got to the point where I was overwhelmed with feelings of guilt when I walked to the bakery after class last week. I couldn't believe I got to experience that afternoon, that perfect weather and perfect bread, without doing anything to earn it. I'll probably have to pay for it in July with a strike on the Metro on a 95 degree day. But it will be worth it.
Hemingway wrote about that spring in Paris from old age, looking back on a halcyon portion of youth. Living in it now, I know that spring, even in Paris, doesn't eliminate the trials of life. But he was still right. Spring is joyful for its own reasons, and it is easy to be happy in spring in Paris.
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| St. Sulpice, perfect place for a late evening picnic |
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| Spring in Tuileries |
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| Happy in front of Notre Dame |
Nothing is so beautiful as spring --
ReplyDeleteWhen weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. -- Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
I just read about St. Sulpice in Les Miserables!!!
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