Lovers are frequently secretly fond of each other

[desperance]

So it's a sleepy sunny Paris afternoon, and Karen is napping on the couch, and when she wakes we're going to wander down to Shakespeare and Company, just because we can. Unless we decide to do something else instead, or nothing at all: because we can do that too. Like this morning we had planned to go see the mediaeval galleries in the Louvre, but neither of us slept that well, and once again we barely made it to the breakfast cafe before they were relaying the tables for lunch, and Madame clearly doesn't care but even so; so in the end we just strolled over the bridge to check out the other sides of Notre-Dame, and then the other other side, which is in. Conclusion: she does indeed have four sides outside (we'd only seen two of them hitherto), and I adore them all, but I really don't like the inside much. Grand architecture can be uplifting; this I just found suppressive. Not sure if it's a contrast with the Anglican cathedrals that I'm used to, but Notre-Dame was all shadowy and stultifying. And all its art is Grand Art, rather than the finger-paintings from the Sunday school and the banners of the Women's Institute. I dunno, I just ... wasn't seized. So we went out and took more photos of flying buttresses, just because. I love those flying buttresses.

We are being totally tourist, in a kind of drowsy unhurrying way. Yesterday we went to the zoo to see giant tortoises and big cats; then we sat on the Batobus (we have a five-day pass; it shall be our water-taxi) for its entire run, from the Jardin des Plantes to the Eiffel Tower and back. Which is the closest we shall come to that particular pinnacle (we're not being that touristy), but I'm quite glad Karen got to see it, from as close as the river brings you, which I'd forgotten how close that is. You come all this way, you might as well do some sightseeing, even if you'd really be just as happy mooching around the Quarter doing that whole Joni Mitchell thing.

K bought me a cute little gunmetal pocketwatch this morning, in a fleamarket: a half-hunter with a pierced decorated case, I love it.

I wonder how you decide for someone else when they have napped enough, when if they don't wake now they'll never get to sleep tonight...?

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[lamentables]

I was just reading about the Glitch Fiction exhibition and regretting not being in Paris, when I remembered that you are in Paris. You may be interested...