kerouac says

for the last few years, my mother has been sending me an email about this time in march that says: where were you one/two/three year(s) ago today?

the first time, i had to admit i didn't know. the answer was: in paris, with my mom. i went with the baron to see amelie on a saturday, realized i was free of most of the things that keep people home and had seven hundred bucks saved, and bought airplane tickets on monday. my mom happened to have had a horrendous and humiliating experience at work that week, and took me up on my offer to come with (the room had two beds, and i thought . . .). at first i was disappointed. i'd gotten used to the idea of being in france alone; i thought the solitude would be romantic.

really, though, it would just have been lonely. i was glad she was there. we ate potato chips in afternoons back at the hotel room, we shoe shopped once. i spent lots of time out by myself photographing cemetaries and eating bread. we went to see an english-language movie one night, and she went back the next night without me to see part of a david lynch retrospective. my mom's usual taste runs more to mary higgins clark and big budget flicks. paris is a magical place.

i was in a relationship when i went, but i ended up fooling around a little with an expatriate. mostly, i think, in order to have kissed someone on the pont neuf. i remember ruminating, and being frightened, about how i couldn't seem to make out with someone with out eventually becoming either bored, disappointed or bereft.

i'm glad that got resolved. i wish the life i had now lent itself to more paris excursions, but the making out is stellar.