tripping

and not on mushrooms. bad one, i know. don't reproach me, i've lost my witty edge, only a cheese rind left.

vanity: the seam of my white cotton romantic-stroll-on-the-beach dress touching the smoky taupe of my freshly bronzed skin...

i am back in my beloved Paris, sitting in the cosy dim living room of the new apartment at Ecole Militaire, with Jerry Springer buzzing noisily in the background. Sigh of happiness to be back in the arms of my Paris.

After the brief flings with Milan, Venice, Rome and Barcelona, I am more sure than ever of my committment and adoration of the city of light. Is there even any comparison?

Milan, my darlings, is a desolate wasteland dotted with spurts of luxury stores. Perhaps it was because we visited when the locals dashed off to the seaside. But nevertheless, brazen graffiti graced almost every building of this so-called capital of fashion, and the streets were strewn with floating ripped newspapers and greasy men. As an aside, Italian men remind me of sea polyps, their tentacles grasping, reaching for the exotic creatures that are Felicia and I. How many "ni haos" and worse "konichi wa" and undressing stares were we heaped with? No subtlety, literal undressing of our bodies by men of december and may ages.

Venice, but much like a dated society belle, lovely at first, lovely from afar, faded up close, ...added with the slight kitschiness, the nasal, loud and ubiquitous American tourists who outnumbered Venitians, we felt lifted into a hollywood set--too stereotypically surreally touristic to be charming. And the "flying rats" that outnumbered humans in San Marco Square did not add to my affection for the city of Casanova, Veronica Franco, and Renaissance humanism. Apparently, I should have jaunted around the outlying islands, less infested by tourism.

Rome was a mostly tasteful assortment of crumbling ruins and borderline cartoonish neoclassical architecture (Trevi Fountain). I wish we had had one extra day and that we had remembered to bring our alarm clock. Tragically, we were never able to make it to the Sistine chapel, though I did meander in St. Peter's Basilica for two hours, curiously peering at embalmed popes' bodies, the dolorously graceful "La Pieta", and lavish statuary. A nebulous understanding of why the Protestant Reform evolved circled my head. Such material glory to glorify a God who cares naught for these gilded trappings.

Barcelona, relaxed, open, friendly...antithetical to Paris in its accessible warmth. Topless bathing on the beach surprised me at first, but after all, bodies on a beach. Reminds me of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot mystery, "Evil Under the Sun". All tanners on a beach are facsimile slabs of flesh, mile after mile...you lose your identity and absorb into the tanned anonymity of sprawled bodies. Old ladies, large ladies, little girls bared their "lumps" frankly and nonchalantly, many with tiny pieces of spandex stretched over their generous "humps". Quite impressive, I must say.

But after all, nothing, nothing, even approaches beloved Paris. I remember remarking laughingly yet seriously to Felicia: "I'm going back to my love, my boyfriend."

It's true. I've never fallen in love with a person, but I have fallen in love with Paris.

How I love thee.