Some Days Defy Easy Description

There's a black widow spray-painted on the wall on my walk to the Metro, and a coiled ammonite shell in white done on the church steeple across the way. I saw people scalping opera tickets and others drinking boxed wine at an art gallery opening near Chatelet. Asking random passersby the way to Place de Carrousel while I was standing in it, and getting different directions from each. Dinner at the Louvre with a charming and gracious new friend, and 45 mintues in the cold watching light-up spinning toys shoot up into the air and drift back down to the ground outside the pyramid that guards the Louvre. Work accomplished, work piling up. Lunch with a friend from the main office; we swapped stories of hotel horrors from Santa Monica in the heart of Paris, and he talked about wanting to vacation in Arizona.

And then life back home intrudes in a way that can't be discussed or ignored, and all the little pieces remind you they're just that. Little pieces. Moments. Worth savoring, worth recording, but only as part of the greater whole.

Which goes back to last night, and walking around a glass pyramid at the cold, looking at strangers' faces.