Looking back...

I never posted anything about the my last two weeks (and probably my FAVORITE two weeks) in Paris when Jessie and Marisa came and stayed with me. Charlotte and Eddie also came so we had quite a full house, but it was definitely the more the merrier, especially because it was my birthday week!

I'm supposed to be working on a paper about the relationship of an artist to his art... the radical empathy of Shakespeare-- are his characters more than he is or are they perhaps negated forms of him?... does an artist/playwright have to annihilate herself to take on and create other poetic identities (Keats-negative capability) ... Nietzsche says the artist "is, after all, only the precondition of his work, the womb, the soil, sometimes the dung and manure on which, out of which, it grows--and therefore in most cases something one must forget if one is to enjoy the work itself" ... are we supposed to remember that Astaire choreographed his routines and that he and Ginger did 100 takes of that last dance in Swingtime or should we stay strictly within the plot of the movie and think of them only as Lucky and Penny?

and I ramble.

Flights lax -> CDG for the week of Thanksgiving are $819 on US Airways.

We climbed the Eiffel Tower on my 21st birthday :) You're only allowed to go to the second level if you are not taking the elevator-- probably a good thing since I'm not sure we would have made it all the way to the top. This is our "after" picture. It's a pretty nice sum up of how much fun we had over those few days in Paris.

Hilarious video of me and Charlotte skyping with my mom when for some reason her voice sounded like a chipmunk :) All in all one of my favorite birthdays.


Addendum:

I forgot how much I love bangles. There's something about accessories that jingle that I think is charming. I used to wear a tiny bell pendant made out of copper that was gifted me when I went to Mexico on a "junior ambassador" program in 8th grade. It made a subtle clinking noise that I thought was cute as a freshman in high school... then a friend pointed out to me that it was something like a cowbell. I haven't worn it much since that comment.