July, 1977 Paris, France.

 

Oh how just the very smell of this place excites  me so, it electrifies my very senses. I want to run right out and do all  the touristy things, in the usual touristy way, and rattle about her  streets as though I'd owned her.

 

 

 

She's often wild, and often sad, but each new day  she brings out her finest things for you to see, for you to touch, and  for her to touch you.

 

 

 

There's animals here too, cats, and birds, and dogs,  and horse-drawn carts clipping along her shady tree-lined boulevards.

 

 

 

There's flower-stalls and markets, bistro's, and  lots of wonderful colors which dance and dazzle in sunshine or  rain.

 

 

 

This is Paris, not as I'd remembered her from my  twelve-year old eyes the very first time I saw her.

 

 

I climb her sloping streets and alleyways of  Montparnasse, past the shop signs that say; Gallerie du Monde, Vin du pays,  and Boulangere.

 

I swagger up and down and all about the Rive Gauche,  poking into dusty shops and enjoy a Pernod, cafe au-lait, or espresso,  al fresco.

 

 

There are pretty girls in doorways beckoning me  to pleasure myself here.

 

They respond kindly to both sincere smiles and  polite rejections.

 

 

I stop and listen to a sad refrain from a street  musicians well-worn repertoire, thinking how much more wonderful it all would be, if  only Rushki were here,

 

to share it with me.