Rue de Rome

 I don't want to sleep (which is a good thing because I'm not sleeping much).  This huge European city at the end of August of 2008 looking much as it did many generations ago when it feels like I was here walking some of these streets. They're so familiar.  It's probably just my imagination.  This place sparks my imagination.  These buildings, these huge edifices stand before time the way mountains do.  I think about the Germans running through these beautiful and elegant streets, wild with power and entitlement during World War 2.  Or whole blocks being blown up.  Today I saw a memorial plaque to the deportation demarcating a square where the people were gathered up.  Someone always wants power over someone else, and there's always a justifiable reason.  At the very least it's human nature.  I disagree.  I've had so many clues, so much shown to me.  I've been given happiness.  Ah, Paris.

Rue de Rome--lined with luthiers' shops.  It felt different up there (I think of it as up because that's where it is on my map...up and over.).  There were few tourists.  I saw three people carrying instruments into the shops for repairs, two violins and a cello.  One woman had a cello on her back in a backpack case.  Hey, I thought, I get this place really well.  Some of the windows had artful displays, some were just shop windows.  There were musicians walking around in black. I had lunch on a corner of Rue de Rome and read my writing book, starting over at the beginning.  I had a salad with tuna and vinegrette and some diced potatoes.  

I rested this afternoon, wrote, played my violin.  I'm back at Cafe Conti.  I like it here better than MacDonald's.  Go figure.