J'aime Paris! J'aime Dionysus et Saint-Denis!

One day I will walk in this plaza, and speak French like a Parisian.

I believe the universe wants me to visit France again. It has been several decades since I've been there. But now that my daughter lives in a suburb of Paris, I expect that the time is growing near for a reunion.

My daughter is in love with a French filmmaker. In France, unlike America, the government is generous with those in the arts, and thus a filmmaker can actually make a living. They are young and in love and I can think of no better place to be than Paris.

Oh thank Heaven for little girls.

It should come as no surprise to those who believe that the universe does drop clues as to what we should or should not do, that my first name is also the name of the patron saint of France. I will have to go to the basilique de Saint-Denis, because I may have been him in another lifetime.

Not that I wanted to be a martyr, but it is nice to know my name has a deep spiritual connection to France. As I understand the story of Saint-Denis, he was so head strong that after he was beheaded, he picked up his head and gave a sermon as he walked along.

I think I saw this in a Monty Python film.

Here is what I found on Wikipedia about the patron saint of France:

Saint Denis (also called Dionysus, Dennis, or Denys) is a Christian martyr and saint. In the third century, he was Bishop of Paris. He was martyred in connection with the Decian persecution of Christians, shortly after A.D. 250. After his head was chopped off, Denis was said to have picked it up and walked ten kilometres (six miles), preaching a sermon the entire way, making him one of many cephalophores in hagiology. He is venerated in the Roman Catholic Church as patron of Paris, France and as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. The medieval and modern French name "Denis" derives from the ancient name Dionysus.


And like any good wordsmith, I had to proceed further into the past to learn about Dionysus. I knew it had to do with being the god of wine, but Wikipedia provided yet more gems about my fabled first name.


Dionysus ( Greek: Διόνυσος, Dionysos) was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC byMycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek. In some cults, he arrives from the east, as an Asiatic foreigner; and in others, from Ethiopia in the South. He is a god of epiphany, "the god that comes", and his "foreignness" as an arriving outsider-god may be inherent and essential to his cults. He is a major, popular figure of Greek mythology and religion, and is included in some lists of the twelve Olympians. His festivals were the driving force behind the development of Greek theater.


The earliest cult images of Dionysus show a mature male, bearded and robed. He holds a fennel staff, tipped with a pine-cone and known as a thyrsus. Later images show him as a beardless, sensuous, naked or half-naked youth: the literature describes him as womanly or "man-womanish". In its fully developed form, his central cult imagery shows his triumphant, disorderly arrival or return, as if from some place beyond the borders of the known and civilized. His procession (thiasus) is made up of wild female followers (maenads) and ithyphallic, bearded satyrs. Some are armed with the thyrsus, some dance or play music. The god himself is drawn in a chariot, usually by exotic beasts such as lions or tigers, and is sometimes attended by a bearded, drunken Silenus. This procession is presumed to be the cult model for the human followers of his Dionysian Mysteries. In his Thracian mysteries, he wears the bassaris or fox-skin, symbolizing a new life. Dionysus is represented by city religions as the protector of those who do not belong to conventional society and thus symbolizes everything which is chaotic, dangerous and unexpected, everything which escapes human reason and which can only be attributed to the unforeseeable action of the gods.

I had read another description that related that Dionysus was not only the Greek god of wine but also that his name meant "One whose heart is made glad with wine."

I was once told in a lecture hall at a university that I looked like a Greek. I also was told that by a Greek woman from Melbourne, Australia. So somewhere way back in the past I had a Greek connection. I can honestly tell you that it doesn't take more than two or three glasses of good red wine to put a smile on my face. At a certain point I lose my head altogether and  I carry my head around with me and it tells people the history of Paris.

But for the life of me I couldn't tell you the history of Paris without imbibing the wine and losing my head. Maybe it was the wine and the famous French cheeses that sustained Saint-Denis after his head was lopped off. I have been schooled in the fact that cheese should be eaten before drinking wine to slow the absorption of alcohol.


Yes, I am sure it was the cheese that enabled him to walk around after he lost his head. This is why I alway carry a cheese in the pockets of my Pink Panther rain jacket. 


Saint-Denis a indiqué pendant qu'il tenait sa propre tête : " Je suis désolé, je semble avoir perdu ma tête au-dessus d'un femme. L'amour transforme un homme en saint." 


And what is Paris without a love story?