Oh la la, 21 Days in Paris!

T’es pas du quartier, toi? 

Every time I reflect on Paris it's like falling in love with the idea of love. It's like kissing someone you are falling in love with, and just when you are on the verge of breaking up, your love is renewed. You can never grow tired of Paris. She will haunt your dreams, and the dreams will be light and airy, impossibly delicious, dark and sullen. Because Paris, like all big cities, and all big love affairs, can make you morose.

Paris is a wine with a complicated aftertaste. Slightly oaky and bitter, but then it warms and does a 360 in your mouth and delivers warm notes like birds in the trees of the Champs-Élysées, titilating to the tongue and palpitating your coeur. Oh la la, your giddiness begins as the gray of Paris skies give up the last of their rain, the sun kisses your cheeks, the love affair is renewed, and the sadness is washed into the Seine. Each day is a love affair in Paris.

Alors, am I speaking of my time in the 19th Arrondissement? Mais oui. Am I so stuck in time that I have no realistic view of Paris? Bien sûr! What did I do with my brief and magical love affair? Why, I did what any aspiring author does: I wrote a screenplay and a novel about it. You see, I went to Paris to visit my daughter, and her husband, Grégoire. He is an assistant film director, and has worked on some big projects, such as Midnight in Paris, Lucy, Valerian and the City of Ten Thousand Planets, and many French TV and feature film projects. My plan was to spend two weeks in Paris and then travel to Menton, on the Côte d'Azur. But as I've mentioned here, Paris is like an addiction. Like all love affairs, in the beginning you fall under its spell. I felt powerless to leave Paris. So I stayed for twenty-one days.

Naturally, this became the title of my screenplay and novel, 21 Days in Paris. Here, watch a promo I created to get a feel for what they story is about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dsjHFUvpO8

Here is a summary of the story. 

Ryan Hollister, a professor of art in Seattle, has fallen off the roof of his house. While in a coma, he dreams he is  in Paris, where he meets and falls in love with a French woman named Aurélie. Landscapes regularly morph into Impressionist paintings, and he has conversations with Degas at the Musée d’Orsay, and elsewhere in Paris, and with Mimi, a mysterious, magical, older woman who seeks to help him in his quest. On the eve of his asking Aurélie to marry him, while in a pedicab after seeing the Louvre, a bomb goes off. Ryan wakes in a hospital in Seattle, and discovers his magical experiences in Paris were a dream while in a coma for twenty-one days. He decides he must go to Paris to see if Aurélie is real or a fantasy. 

I suppose it's human nature for you to want me to tell you the ending of 21 Days in Paris. Sorry, I can't do that. Grégoire, my French son-in-law, said the ending of the screenplay was "sweet and satisfying." When the novel is published, and I see you at a bookstore signing, I will be happy to sign your copy of 21 Days in Paris. And if it becomes a movie after that time, and you recognize me in the snack bar, I'll buy you a bag of popcorn. I may be wearing a disguise, and be dressed like Degas.

The story in the screenplay and novel is partly based on my experience. You see, I fell off the roof of my house and broke my back. I was in and out of consciousness. After I recovered I needed a break from my job in Orange County, California so I went to Paris. It was the last stop on a vacation that included most of England and Denmark. 

Most of the story happens in Paris. So naturally the protagonist, Ryan, visits the tourist destinations in the city, but one I didn't go to was The I Love You Wall, which is off the steep street that leads to Montmartre. It's located at Square Jehan Rictus, Place des Abbesses. At the top of the hill is Sacré-Cœur, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. In the 19th Century, and earlier, the hillsides of this hill were covered with vineyards, and there were many windmills. Now there are only a couple of windmills, and the Montmartre Vineyard, by Renoir's former house, which is the Musée de Montmartre. My favorite place in Paris is difficult to say. Of the major museums I most enjoyed and visited the Musée d'Orsay. It's where some of the magical parts of story happens. I did a video of the museums of Paris. Watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybOxdHK6P0A

You won't go hungry in Paris. If you have a sweet tooth, Paris will certainly satisfy you. They are big consumers of meat, and their pastries are to die for. There was a study done a few years ago to determine why French people have such a low incidence of cancer because they are prodigious smokers, and ravenous meat eaters. It was determined the reason for their robust health is the resveratrol in the wine they have at nearly every meal. It's their fountain of youth. So rush right out and buy some in your local health food store and you might live a little longer. You would have to drink a bottle of red wine a day to see any effects, so buy a bottle of resveratrol. You can find it in Paris, so don't worry. But if you go all the way to Paris, and other places in France, you would be much happier to go on a wine tour and forget about taking pills. Order wine with every meal, like most everyone in France.

Bonne journée!

When in doubt, chill out.

This is Avila Beach, near Pismo Beach, north of Santa Barbara. It’s a great place to chill out and think things through. And God knows I need to chill out. There is a row of shops by the beach, and I’ve gotten into the habit of ordering a fish sandwich and a cup of chowder from Mr. Rick’s. Yesterday I had a Corona with my usual order. Now I get those iconic ads for Corona.

My life the last few months can be summed up by the lyric from a Grateful Dead song, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.” 

The craziness began when I left the Seattle area last summer and went to Utah to sell my eighty acres of land. I went with the expectation that the sale would be quick, but when two buyers backed out, I had to fire my real estate agent. Months later, after camping out on my property in a big tent, buyers were found near the end of September. Unfortunately, I believed I might be able to buy a house on the West Coast, so I began driving around coastal California, Oregon, and Washington. I had a lot of misadventures, but my bids were outbid and my eyes were opened to the fact that the world had gone crazy not only via the Covid virus, but also in the real estate market. But I suppose I've got my feet wet if I ever decided to take up travel writing as a way to make a living.

 

After some looking around I discovered northwest Florida had affordable houses, so off I went to the panhandle of Florida. Was I worried about the Covid pandemic? Nope. I was apparently immune to it. I wore my mask, but saw a lot of people who didn’t. 

 

For anyone who hasn’t driven across the United States, it takes a lot of time and tanks of gasoline to cross Texas because it’s bigger than a lot of European countries. I arrived in Pensacola and honestly thought, "This is it!" Oh how wrong I was. 

White beach sand, gentle waves, pretty girls. What is there not to like? Yeah, Gulf Breeze, just south of Pensacola, is where I went to unwind. It's easy to be seduced by good weather, and wonderful beaches. Mea culpa. I used to hang out at the Artel Gallery, playing music with local musicians. It was an okay way to spend my time. I thought I was buying a house. I thought my life made sense. I even hit a few golf balls at Bubby Watkins driving range. Pensacola seemed like a cool place to hang out. I had blinders on.

I immediately put bids on many houses. Again I was outbid. I was also beginning to be educated about why the houses are so cheap in Florida. Hurricane Ivan and Hurricane Sally, who arrived in the panhandle of Florida sixteen years apart to the day, September 16, 2004, and September 16, 2020, had caused damage to the majority of the houses. I was two weeks away from closing on a house when the inspection showed leaks, wood rot, and the need to replace the roof. On the last house, a week from closing, the Veteran’s Administration said the repairs would have to be done by the owner, or I would have to show I had the excess funds to do the repairs. So that was the end of that. I could have opted to stay in Pensacola, there are nice beaches in nearby Gulf Breeze, and the weather is pretty nice. But I was burned out, and had spent a fair amount of money already, so I decided to head back to the West Coast. 

 

Siri, which had provided a mix of correct and incorrect directions in recent months, directed me on a rainy night into Mississippi from Mobile, Alabama. This time it was wrong. That’s when a young woman ran a red light and I got in an accident. It was everything the movies portray of the South. The cops were more interested in gathering together to shoot the breeze and not inclined to find out what caused the accident. The doctor at the hospital ignored and never examined me. My Nissan Pathfinder was totaled and I was stuck in a hotel room for two weeks. My insurance company, USAA, said I was on my own because I only had liability. The other driver’s insurance, State Farm, was equally unhelpful. Thus, I hired a legal firm in Hattiesburg, Mississippi to recoup my losses, and I paid the towing company to help get my Pathfinder running again. Miraculously, they resurrected it by pulling out the front end, replacing the radiator, and two new lights. I was in pain, and fed up with everything, so I got in my ruined truck and drove to Saint George, Utah to load a U-Haul with my things, and my truck on a trailer. And off I went to California. I was in no condition to drive due to having aggravated my sciatic nerve damage from when I’d broken my back in 2014, but I kept going. That is how I arrived in Santa Barbara County for the second time in six months, and decided I had no reason to go back to the Pacific Northwest. 

As of this writing I am still in Santa Barbara County, awaiting a financial settlement from the accident. There's not much chance of my buying a house in this area unless a miracle happens. I’ve used this time to finish writing my seventh novel, 21 Days in Paris. I’ve submitted it to a handful of publishers, literary shops, and producers. This story is based on a true story (mine). While in a coma after falling off the roof of his house, an art professor dreams he's in Paris, where he falls in love with a French woman. A bomb goes off on the eve of his asking her to marry him and he wakes in a hospital in Seattle where he learns he's been in a coma for twenty-one days. He goes to Paris to see if the woman he loves exists in the real world. Here's a promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oveaQGVrSsY  

Summer will soon be here. I’m not sure where I will end up yet, but sometimes it's best to simply stop and think things over. Chill out, kick back, and let God decide the best thing to do. The weather is nice, I'm eating beach food, wearing sunglasses and flip-flops. Life is good. Still feeling phantom pain in my lower back from my damaged sciatic nerve and lumbar vertebrae. Somehow, I don't know how, everything's gonna be all right.