Kathy's Blog

Friday, October 30, 2009

Friday

Roger has just started a new blog, and I'm here at work while he finishes up his first post.

Have just a few minutes, but wanted to just mention that very special feeling that Friday evening still seems to have. For those of us with nine-to-fives, work is done for the week, the weekend looms ahead...if not glittering with possibilities, at least as long in its potential span as it will ever get.

I always used to say that my favorite part of the week was that elevator ride down to the parking lot on Friday nights. Even though I'm old, and even though that feeling of endless summer is but a sad and aching distant memory, there's still a whiff of it in the air on these Friday evenings after work. Even if there's nothing planned. Even if there's nothing but a bunch of housework in store for me. Even if it's just another coupla days off... still, it's something. It's something.

Anyway. To all the rest of you working stiffs stuck with a 40 hour work week, enjoy. This is the place where it's good to be us, and not so good to be a free lancer, or a student, or someone who has to live by their wits, which translates to working around the clock in high anxiety 24/7. Nope, this is the point, the one point, where we can say OK, it's done for this week. And walk away.

Have a good weekend. And enjoy Roger's new blog.

# posted by Katherine Shirek Doughtie @ 6:01 PM 0 comments

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Sullivan's Farm

True, it was Gilbert and Sullivan rather than Jimi and Janis. And, true, we only had 5000 as opposed to 500,000. But we had emergency vehicles. And we were a gathering. And you could feel the energy.

I was trying to picture what 470,000 looked like. It would be slightly less than 100 times more than the audience we had at the Redlands Bowl tonight. 100 times bigger than this WPA-era amphitheater and all its surrounding grassy hillsides was holding. That's... big. But it was also sort of kind of conceivable as well.

I watched and ran the show from the lighting and sound area in the midst of the audience. Doubt there were many geriatrics moving up the aisles on their walkers at Woodstock, but there were plenty of kids at the Bowl tonight... conked out on their parent's chests, or against each other like floppy, deeply peaceful bookends.

Some time during Act II we saw a pair of red flashing lights coming slowly up the side street. I realized that a gathering even 1% as large as Woodstock was still big enough to host its own medical emergencies, create its own microcosm of community.

So I got a little thrill. When I mentioned that we were a little Woodstock over the headsets (not really hoping anyone would actually get it, but just saying it out loud because I was so tickled with the notion), one of the crew members (all of whom were born after our current set was built) (no lie) asked if I had been there. I snorted in huge derision and mock affrontery. Hellooo. I was, like, TWELVE at the time. What did they take me for, anyway?

And then I realized... wow. I really am kind of old. Most of my commentary this show has started with comments like "you know, I was there when they built the 210 freeway." "You know, I've been with this company from before they had computerized lighting boards." "You know, when I started Word Processing we used 7 inch floppies. Nope, not 5 1/4. Nope, not 3 1/2. Nope you wouldn't have seen these computers in your parent's living room when you were a toddler because this was before there were even PCs!"

That's been how it's been the past few days. Then there's this Woodstock moment with the flashing lights. And I saw that I had been graced with a little tiny postcard from the universe. See, it said on the back in a messy scrawl. Here you go. It's the best we could do on short notice, but here's a little message -- the balmy summer night, the crowd of humanity sharing the same music and food and weather -- the moments of hope are not yet over. For you, or for the world. There will be other grace notes of intersection, both big and small, when people come together and have an experience laced together by community and music. It happens far more frequently than you'd imagine, and it's magic when it does.

So take heart, fair days will shine... take heart, we are still stardust and we are still golden. We are closer these days than we have been for awhile, but we are still very far away from that idyllic garden we all were so eager to find. We'll get ourselves back to it someday. And in the meantime we'll find ourselves a song and a celebration and set our souls free free free.

# posted by Katherine Shirek Doughtie @ 1:11 AM 1 comments

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Cheating

Let's talk about cheating. The weakness of telling lies because telling the truth is too difficult. The trail of destruction the cheater's actions leave behind, and how it poisons all primary, secondary and tertiary relationships for years to come.

I'm not going to sugarcoat it. The more I know about cheating, the more disgusting a crime I believe it to be. I once theorized that sleeping with other people could be acceptable in an open, authentic relationship. But I don't think anymore that people can actually be open and honest enough to make that possible. And doing it in a covert way is one of the most emotionally destructive activities we can do to ourselves and the other people in our lives.

In the early days after my divorce, I had two affairs with married men. I am not proud of this and I grow increasingly ashamed of my actions as time goes by. I did not know their wives, and I rationalized my actions by telling myself that their marital problems had nothing to do with me.

Bullshit. I was wholeheartedly and enthusiastically helping the husband be less of a person, avoid his responsibilities, and develop his ability to be deceptive and sneaky -- all in the name of someday being together ourselves. What was I thinking? I was helping someone become someone I would despise. I was honing his skills of deception and reinforcing his ability to compartmentalize and rationalize. And somehow I kept losing sight of the fact that if we were ever to get fully together he'd now be fully capable of using those skills on me.

I have also been cheated on. Profoundly and profusely. I have discovered more than one boyfriend either in the act or after the fact. I have been lied to by jedi masters of deception. I won't go into it here because it does get to be a litany of the same kinds of words: betrayal, rage, despair at ever finding a safe haven of trust and kindness.

So I know how it feels, both ways. It is an ugly, gutless, selfish act. Take the easy way out and damn the consequences to the hearts closest to you.

That's the emotional side of cheating.

But yesterday I came across an article in last year's Psychology Today (Love's Plan B, August 2008) that has me thinking about other aspects as well, in this case the psychological side of cheating. The article talks about "Plan B" relationships -- relationships, or even fantasies of relationships -- that we carry around with us in case our primary relationship fails. Here's how the article describes "love insurance":

Although we may love our exclusive partner, we can still think about other romantic possibilities -- people we keep in a mental box that might as well be labeled "Open in case of current relationship's demise." No matter how content we are, we still seek a sense of security by creating a web of potential future romantic alliances. That's why people are hardly shocked to hear that a sizable percentage of men trawling online dating sites are married.

The theory is that we all have to keep gauging our viability in the marketplace in case the current relationship fails. And one of our security blankets of love is keeping a little something on the side, just in case. This little something something is more than just a casual fling or flirtation, but at the same time it's less than the primary relationship. It is nothing more, or less, than a backup plan.

This sheds some new light on the concept of cheating. Maybe we keep those options open because of some ancient genetic imperative to make sure that we, as women have a mate to take care of the offspring if our main squeeze gets in trouble with a boa constrictor. We all know about the "need to seed" that we attribute to men, but it probably works on the emotional level as well. It's like having a backup pint of Ben and Jerry's just in case you need some comfort food asap.

Which makes it sound pretty rational. But there is a catch: once you get labeled as a No. 2, you are rarely going to ever make it up the ladder to the No. 1 spot. Backup plans stay backup plans, even if the primary relationship goes sour.

Whether you're a man or a woman, the problem with being a backup is that once your inamorata labels you second tier, your chances of becoming the primary love interest diminish. Labels, once created, tend to stick. Plus, once you accept the role of runner-up, you risk seeing yourself as a perennial backup in many walks of life. You can find someone for whom you are Plan A -- but not if you're inertly functioning as someone else's Plan B.

Which brings us back to the fundamental assertion: it's just wrong. It's wrong morally, it's wrong socially, it's wrong emotionally, and it's also wrong psychologically. It's wrong in the same way that suicide is wrong, or anything else that negates our higher sense of self and dignity. It decimates the self worth of every one involved. It churns up innocent people in the wake of its selfishness... and usually those people are our children.

It's disrespectful - both to your No. 1 partner and to your No. 2. It's wrong when you're the cheater, and it's wrong when you're the one on the side, and it's especially wrong when you are both.

The Plan B relationship is not a relationship. It's a strategy. At best it's a safety net that no one actually ever wants or plans to use. It almost never turns into a Plan A and when it does, it's fraught with memories of the deception that brought it into the world.

I used to think that a lying, covert, secret love was all I deserved. That is simply incorrect, for all of us. Somehow we need to realize that doing things fully, in their right time, without deceiving other people in the process... is worth the fear, is worth the wait, and is worth the value of our sweet little souls.

It is terrifying to be someone's Plan A. It is vulnerable and precarious to put all your eggs in one basket. As someone newly married, I feel these things acutely. Roger and I have both been involved in situations with Plan B people (and, actually, Plan C and maybe Plan D people), and we both knew, even at the time, what shabby facades those structures were. How much less than authentic. How hard it is to be fully present, and how -- in the final analysis -- it's the only way to be.

We are tender little seedlings, precious beings trying to hold ourselves together in the midst of a turbulent planet. We have better things to do than to be each other's Plan B's. We have a higher purpose than to degrade ourselves in the name of some pale variation of love.

# posted by Katherine Shirek Doughtie @ 7:54 AM 4 comments

Monday, July 27, 2009

The Dharma of Travel

As we settle in to being back in "real" life, I'm noticing something kind of sad and possibly important. Time goes by in a blur when one is doing the habitual thing. Days blend into each other. It's like frames of film going by without stopping for a 24th of a second for the eye to register. Life becomes a kind of swooshy blur, rather than a narrative to become engrossed in.

When we were traveling I kept a journal and was amazed at how long ago yesterday felt. There was so much packed in to each moment that the days felt long and rich and chock full of goodness. My days now are also good, but I've noticed they don't have that clear definition, that sense of constant wonder, the feeling that this is my LIFE and I'm really LIVING it to the fullest.

I think that one of the reasons for that difference is that we notice so much more when we're in a foreign country. Every sense is on full power, listening intently to the announcements on the Metro, feeling the change in humidity in the evening air, tasting the nuances of difference between a Parisian croissant and one from the local Winchell's. For two weeks I was inhabiting my body fully (and not altogether blissfully, due to the accumulation of wedding fatigue, jet lag, and the lugging of luggage). I was tuned in to every sense, in rapid succession, at every moment -- like five radios playing all at once. Not much opportunity to get cerebral and start worrying about what a loser I am for letting my yoga practice lapse. No time for maudlin grousing. There was too much of the world, inner and outer, to experience.

And by the time we were ready to pack up and come home, I was ready to stop all that wonderment for awhile. Living that fully attenuated to your senses and the world around is kind of overwhelming. There was a part of me that wanted to just stop and go back to a life where I wasn't constantly marveling at the way the street signs were constructed, the differences in journalistic style, the configuration of the toilet. Travel opens up all the sensory floodgates and everything comes washing in.

It struck me, of course, how travel is the ultimate meditation. In meditation we strive to train our minds to stay in the present moment by finding a sensory object to focus upon. In vipassana meditation, that object is usually the breath. It is always with us (hopefully) and always gives us a touchstone to anchor ourselves with. We pay attention to the breath and then notice our our minds always want to veer away into ruminations about the past, or anxieties about the future, causing us stress and fatigue and that sense of numbness that comes when life is passing you by without seeing each individual frame.

The trick to recovering that sense of wonder is not to travel more (don't ever tell anyone I said that) -- but to learn how to incorporate that noticing more into our daily lives. As Sherlock Holmes says, I am training myself to notice what I see. Travel gives us the opportunity to notice the entire world constantly. Instead of the film frames going by at 24 per second, travel bombards us with 1000 images per second. It's incredible, and mind blowing, and cannot be sustained. After changing countries several times, I started noticing how different the third day felt from the first. Our tendency is to make things normal. Even in a foreign country, after a few days the mind becomes acclimated and able to file experiences away in safe little files. We can't live with that kind of density of experience.

On the other hand, we can't live -- truly live -- without it. Maybe not at 1000 frames per second, but the sweet spot is somewhere between that and a deadened blur. We need to train our mind to notice what we see. Take in the small pleasures of little everyday things. Not letting habits become lost in the gray fuzz of the habitual. Not letting days go by in a daze.

There's a lovely graceful place to be, when we live in our "regular" world. It's a place where we are not deadened or numb, but are comfortable and attuned. Where we stop, frequently, and pay attention, on purpose, to our lives. Eating a bowl of cornflakes out of a new tangerine-colored bowl with a summer peach on top, is not that different from marveling at a French billboard. The joy is in the noticing and the appreciating, not in the content itself. The noticing slows life down so we can live it as it's happening.

# posted by Katherine Shirek Doughtie @ 8:16 AM 0 comments

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Arriving where we started

So we're home. Have been home for a week and, to all outward appearances, we have resumed life where we left off.

Our dreams are littered with scraps of Europe: a fruit market on the corner of Rue St. Honore, the cold lofty beauty of the Rose Window of Chartres, the discordant haunt of a bagpipe melody in Scotland. Roger says that something about Paris has infected him. He cannot get it out of his mind.

When we first got to Paris, Roger asked why we were doing this, why do we care about Paris. (I forgave him for this and we are, in case you are wondering, still married.) It had been a long ride in from the airport, past graffiti and trash and through a massive urban traffic jam that seemed, for all the world, like a plain old garden variety gridlock that we could get here in LA. The taxi driver was archly condescending, the streets narrow, and the sirens incessant. So Roger made a good point: Why? Why Paris? What's the fuss about?

Today, after he awakened and said that he was again dreaming of the city, I asked him if he's figured it out yet. And he said that, simply put, Paris embodies everything there is to know and love about life. The streets, the air, the architecture, all contain such a passion for living, such a consummate gusto for the art of the palate, the symphonies of space, the music of the streets, the rhythms of love and life force and passion... it's all just there. Fully and unapologetically.

It's like a rare rich wine, greater than the sum of its parts. It's a city that is hectic and moving; the locals walk along the sidewalks with tightness around their eyes and a clip to their step. Sirens blare and the pulsations reach deep into hidden alleyways, sheltered passages, narrow jazz clubs, secret doors. It's built in upon itself for many centuries, so much so that the mysteries have mysteries, each city block could seemingly yield its secrets begrudgingly for dozens of years and still have plenty to hide.

So we've touched these places, walked through Scottish graveyards, sung in pubs, strolled long paths by ancient streams. Two weeks is obviously not enough to do anything but sample a quick hint of foreign flavors, and then return to the known and comfortable... but it was enough to change us. We're back, but there's a difference.

Every day I am grateful that summer waited for us to get back. I am reveling in the heat, that searing anvil of sharp bright warmth that Pasadena does so well. I drive by the low slung ranch houses and remember how it felt to go inside them when I was young and visiting my better-off friends. Walking through the dark, oak-shaded yards and entering these air conditioned homes was a reprieve, and I felt like I'd entered a world of quiet muted efficiency, a life of grace where the temperature was modulated and the harsh sounds of the outside world were muffled and remote.

We'd drink Nestea instant iced tea in the spacious living rooms and play card games while we holed up from the weight and press of the air outside. Going out again, the air would feel encompassing and bold against our chilled skin. That was the feeling of being a teenager in the summers of love, with the Vietnam war accompanying our Swanson TV dinners, and KRLA and KHJ tuned on our handheld transistor radios, playing Light My Fire and Up, Up and Away.

I feel summer these days when I drop the kids off at camp, a ritual that I've been doing for more years than I can count. But right now, after returning from other places, I start feeling a whiff of euphoria just smelling the sunscreen on the tanned bodies, listening to the happy din of kids playing on the grass, knowing that there are silly songs to be sung and lanyards to be woven. It hits me in the solar plexus in a way that it's never done before.

I love summer down here. I love the feeling of salt water and sun and long daylight hours and the taste of a Dodger dog washed down by a cold cold beer. I love the soaring ecstasy of a good wave caught with a boogie board. I love the feeling afterward of having a body in tune with the powerful rhythms of the sea.

I know this place where I live. I've spent many summers here, but despite how many summers I have enjoyed, it is still all happening for the first time. Somehow, I've been graced with even more of that understanding than ever.

We've just undergone a series of life-changing rituals: a marriage, a reunion of family and friends, seeing people who represent every part of our lives for as long as we can remember, and a honeymoon. We've been on a hero's journey, one with obstacles and quests and treasures to recover. We have discovered that we have the tools to survive, both emotionally and in the world. It's not the world that's changed, it's us. And with that change we have come back, with newly-refined senses, to see our lives with brand new eyes, and inhabit the world with a fresh awareness.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot

# posted by Katherine Shirek Doughtie @ 10:54 PM 1 comments

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Dis-oriented

As I write it is 4:10 pm in Paris, the day after Bastille Day. The festivities for Bastille Day last from midday on the 13th... and I suspect they'll still be felt for a few days to come.

Yesterday we woke up at 6 am in Paris, took the Eurostar to London, flew from London to Toronto, and thence to LA. When we landed, it was about 11 pm here on the Pacific Coast, giving us the rare privilege of a 33 hour Bastille Day. From start to finish, our travels took 29 hours, across 9 time zones and encompassed two taxi rides, two train rides, two sets of customs, and two air flights.

The human body is not built for this.

In maybe 10 million years, or even 10,000, if we keep doing this to ourselves, maybe it will be easier. Maybe we will evolve a switch that just lets us adapt to time zone changes effortlessly, or with a minimum impact at worse. We are not there yet. I woke this morning musing on the word "disoriented" -- without the east, without direction, without bearings. It's an appropriate word for today.

We talked a lot about Time during this trip. When flying over Greenland (on the way out) we realized that clock time has no bearing when you're in an air plane. Roger would ask me what time it was, and the answer became increasingly complicated. Yesterday, in Toronto, we tried to figure out how we should be feeling based on the clock: in Paris it was 5 hours later, in LA it was 3 hours earlier. Where were we in all of this? What does this clock thing mean?

And we realized: clock time only means something if two things are happening. First, you have to be on the ground. Clock time is only calculable if you have your feet in one place and the sun is positioned somewhere relative to those feet. The more those feet move east, the later the clock time because you are moving away from the setting sun. Move the feet west, chasing that sunset, and you have an earlier clock time. Simple. Sort of.

But the other thing is that clock time only means something between people. It's an agreement. It is useful for, say, meeting people at Starbucks. Or having conference calls with people all over the world. Clock time: good.

But if you take away the people and our need to agree on certain schedules, there's really no need for it. We don't need it to tell us we're hungry. We don't need it to tell us when the sun is setting. We don't need it to differentiate the changes between the seasons... and in some ways it makes some of those things more difficult rather than easier. We eat when it's noon whether our bellies are still full from breakfast or not. We keep working regardless of whether the days are short of sun or last until midnight. Without clocks, we could not have our technical, busy society. Clocks obviously enable all this. But when it comes to figuring out where you are, what you're doing, or how you're feeling... they are not fully up to the task.

The first thing Roger did upon landing in Munich was buy a watch. The watch got him, literally, grounded. And we used that watch constantly... to give us information about where we thought we should be in our day. We had a surreal breakfast last night around 1:30 am at Carrows. Right now, at 7:26 am, my stomach is growling and I could use a steak, a beer and a good night's sleep.

Dis-oriented. But awfully glad to be home. More on that soon...

# posted by Katherine Shirek Doughtie @ 7:09 AM 0 comments

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Cafe Society and the Heart Chakra

Roger is hearing the music of Paris for the first time. And in our conversations, we have been trying to figure out exactly how and why France seems to be so entirely different from the US. Not only France, but the little snapshots of Europe we've been lucky enough to see this time around.

I've used this metaphor a lot over the years, that the US is a young country and got very powerful very quickly. With good reason, we have become a very strong, affluent and intimidating country. But we've grown up very quickly relative to the rest of western civilization, and the uneven growth spurt has had some unintended consequences.

In many ways, we're like the big adolescent on the playground, who likes to throw his weight around and make sure all the other kids know who's boss. It's getting better now that we're approaching diplomatic relations with a bit more humility and grace than we have in recent memory, and of course the image is gross and crude and does not take into account a lot of mitigating details. Still, every time I travel abroad, I get the same image. Bullies on the playground; adolescents; a country still so young that it has not yet gracefully learned to understand some of the bigger picture.

And this time around, I've realized something else. Countries like France are not even ON the playground. They're sitting at a cafe somewhere, sipping wine and conversing about history and politics and art and love. They understand the importance of fewer hours in the work week, gatherings of friends, the need to take care of the sick in a compassionate way, the sanity of taking time off to spend time decompressing. This is something that we haven't woven into our culture and don't even understand the need for. We are too busy being on the playground, defending our position in the world.

Roger phrased it perfectly: the societies we've been visiting live in a whole different chakra than we do in the States. We are very "third chakra" -- the yellow solar plexus chakra, seat of will and action. Driven, motivated, pushing -- all attributes of the third chakra. And the French are more "fourth chakra" at this stage of their history -- the heart chakra, seat of emotion, compassion, refinement. They have certainly had their time of living in their solar plexus. We walked through halls in Versailles dedicated to the battles of Napoleon III, the conquering of other nations, the power of the state. And they've had their moments of humility as well, with their revolutions and occupations. They've done the third chakra, and -- at this moment at least -- seem to be living more in the heart, concentrating on activities that embrace the family, the social structure, the things that provide joy.

It's an interesting concept: that civilizations can move up the chakras as they evolve. One could argue that the further east you travel, and the older the cultures are, the higher up in the chakra ladder the people ascend. But then there are places where the cultures collide, and you have the technology revolution in India, and the commercialism in China, and it all gets very interesting and the center of power changes yet again.

All the aspects that we move through have power. There is no better or worse aspect. Every chakra, every aspect of an evolution, has a unique and powerful meaning and purpose. Individually we move through our phases, and our personal change is mirrored in the cultures we create around us. As we age and mature and learn, so do our civilizations. The tides of history evolve the underlying structures of a society much like the ocean creates new shorelines.

# posted by Katherine Shirek Doughtie @ 2:17 PM 1 comments

La Musique

After nearly a week in Paris, I'm starting to be able to verbalize what the magic is about this city. I think it's musicality of it: the rhythms of the people moving through the day; the accent notes of detail and decoration that adorn the buildings, the bridges, the clothing of the women; the music itself that seems to seep out of every nook and cranny, revealing itself in an Irish fiddle player in the courtyard archway of the Louvre, a brass band partying on the quai of the Seine, a clarinetist outside the Musee D'Orsey. There is music everywhere, and to be in Paris is to be caught up in a song of such complexity and beauty it nearly takes your breath away.

We were in harmony with the rhythms of the city last night as we discovered a lovely bistro near Les Halles and had a late supper of l'entrecote, frites, and red wine. Watching the people stroll by we saw lovers and tourists and friends in an endless river, moving at different paces but all seeming to follow a certain inner beat. After we ate, we stumbled into a store that was filled with open bags of spices, rice, and dried fruit, and a ceiling hung with hundreds of clay pots, an antler head on the wall, and a back room filled with painted ceramics and other wonders from the east. On a fez hanging over the cash register was a Barack Obama pin... an instant testament to the intertwining melodies of all our worlds.

Afterwards, we walked in search of a jazz club we passed on our first night in town. Finding it, we decided to risk 36 Euros to go upstairs and hear what was on the ticket. What we got was beyond our wildest hopes - a quartet led by a guy named Khalil Chahine, with an exotic, eastern, fabulous sound. They are from Egypt, but the sound was like Pat Metheny, until they added this violin in the second set that turned the thing into a journey to distant lands. We sat enthralled until they were done, then walked back to our apartment in a sweet light rain around 1 am.

Today we went to my personal mecca, Shakespeare & Company, and pushed through the piles of books and people that symbolize for me a kind of wailing wall of writing, a place where I once stayed 30 years ago this summer, with a soaring heart and certainty of my eventual place in a venerated constellation of great writers. Today we found my book nestled in the stacks, left by me with Sylvia Whitman a few years ago on my last visit. Roger found it and took some pictures of me pulling it out of the wall, and then -- much to my delight -- a young woman started talking to us and ended up buying the copy.

We sat upstairs in a room that George Whitman, the owner of the store, once inhabited and that I once helped clean as part of my obligation for staying there. Looking through the window at the Seine and the towers of Notre Dame, I realized this was as much my holy ground as Chartres was for the pilgrims seeking a glimpse of a holy relic. It seems I have lost my faith in books and my work as a writer; coming back home to S&Co today acted as a re-statement of that faith, and a humbling gratitude for the gifts that I have been given.

So, for me, the music of Paris ultimately is about the words that have been written here. The rich literary tradition, the veneration accorded to writers, all can be felt in its bookstores, its cafes, the naming of its streets. When I am here, I write. And musicians play. And artists put incredible paint on canvases, or create pieces of sculpture that move you to tears.

This is a city where the tempo of the city life moves to a rhythm that is nearly impossible to resist. It pulls you into the streets on long summer nights, draws you into conversations, creates philosophies, and weaves romance around lovers. It puts a soundtrack to the streams of people walking past the sidewalk cafes, syncopates the nightlife in the pubs and clubs, and serenades the revelers on the boats floating down the Seine. Once you've been here once, Paris haunts your dreams and you wake up humming its tune.

# posted by Katherine Shirek Doughtie @ 1:42 PM 2 comments

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