Midnight in Paris.

You either love Woody Allen, or despise Woody Allen…with perhaps a third, option, like Wife: likes Woody Allen, but can’t get past the whole deal with his love affair with his adopted daughter….pretty creepy, if not technically so.
This film, as I’m a Francophile, has me wishing I would have gotten on that boat.
1990, or so, had the opportunity to work in the galley of a freighter, bound for Spain(close enough…it is rumored that they have rail.). I chickened out.
Since HGW had turned me on to “A Movable Feast”, I had been hooked. I’d read all those guys, of course…starting at just a bit older than my oldest son is , now….but I had, somehow, overlooked, “Feast”. Me and P were apart, at the time…and my first foray to Sam had been less than stellar.(GPA=!.7 ! Something of a feat, in itself…)
I had determined, in my extremity, that the Military didn’t want me(recruiter didn’t show for the “meeting”…it was a brush-off. could it have been the hair? Not That long, compared to now.) I was at loose ends…waiting for classes to end, to slink back home, with my Technicolor Motorhome. I expected to be disowned. And there was an ad, in the Houston Post(now defunct…there can be only one…) for a Galley Slave on a Europe-bound container ship.
I was itching to leave Texas…going anywhere…but Europe would do just fine.
All my Heroes spent time there…the Beats, all of Hemingway's Bunch…and on back. I thought of London, and Italy and Greece…perhaps Egypt and the Levant, as well…But Paris was the Place.
The Language has always been foreign to me…even in my later erudition…but the Place Names flew in a jumble in my mind.
Monmartre,Place du la Concorde, Jardin des Tuillieries, Boulevard St. Germaine….(forgive my lack of French Spelling Skills.)
I’d been to Montreal and Quebec(and Toronto)…but I was too young (16, then) to go running off. I certainly wanted to…but I was with my Brother and Grandparents…The architecture, the lights…the whole Feel…Papaw remarked…a lot…about how it reminded him of France.
So I remembered all of this, and plotted and planned.(read: dreamed.)
At the same time, I feared being so far away from help….and wanted(despite appearances) to please my Folks….go back to College, etc.
So I chickened out…and didn't please anybody....and went gallivanting all over Texas and the Deep South…mostly the southern half of Louisiana, instead. P was gone, after an all too brief 2 more years(?unclear.lol)…MIP was long gone…MRL, CH, I had drifted too far off the reservation for them…they had their Lives…
I really had nothing to lose.
Not getting on that boat….
I count it as one of my few…but large, nevertheless…Regrets.



((Picture taken from :( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Caf%C3%A9_de_Flore.jpg)