Personal Power: My Last Day In Paris, Part Two

or Not My Last Day In Paris, Part Two

A photograph of a woman from the shoulders up whose face is blurred from turning her head during the exposure. She is wearing a green coat with a white scarf around her neck, knotted loosely just below her neck.

After parting with Sumei, a light rain began to fall in the city as I made my way to Le Dock. Based on the photos I took, I rode the métro to a stop near the Louvre, probably Concorde, then walked from there. Amongst my favourite things to do in Paris (or, really, anywhere, I guess) is to photograph the reflections in the wet pavement. And so it was that I noticed the reflections of the red illuminated awnings of the entrances at the Ritz Paris in Place Vendôme.

A photograph taken at Place Vendome in Paris during a light drizzle of rain. The wet pavement takes up most of the photograph and it reflects the arched entrances of the Ritz Paris hotel.

Everything so far had gone swimmingly, and I took to heart the first three letters of the name of a shoe store, I think, or maybe one that sold clothes in general. La joie. Joy.

A photograph taken in the early evening of part of a business's window sign. I can't recall what the name of the business was, but it started with these three letters: JOY at the far right of the image. The rest of the image is of the translucent glass of the window. The letters are the negative space formed by a black rectangular field, in other words, translucent on black.

I must have gotten something to eat at around this time as I didn't take another photograph for well over an hour, and didn't get to Le Dock for another hour after that. While I recall so much about the day and the trip, I'm at a loss as to the space of time between Place Vendôme and Le Dock.

A casual portrait of a friend in a bar. He is at the right side of the frame, sitting at the bar. His body is facing towards the camera, but he is facing to the left of the frame, his chin resting in his right hand.

Ten or twelve of my friends made it out that night, a Tuesday, as well as a couple I think I'd never met before, and borrowing a mobile, I called one more—Phil—to encourage him to show up. It turned out that it was a good thing he did.

A photograph four people cramming into a selfie, which we didn't call selfies at the time. I am in the center and take up most of the frame. There is a woman's head popping into the lower right corner, a man leaning into the picture above her and slightly behind me, and another woman looking in from the laft of the frame, almost with her head on my shoulder.

A native of Switzerland, Phil had been living in Paris for some time. He's a musician and founded/runs a music school. When my original lodging plans hit a snag, he let me stay at his place for two or three nights. This is important to note because Phil's ex-girlfriend from Sweden, Linn, was also staying with him for a spell as she was in Paris for a medical appointment. She and I had talked at some point and we discovered that we were scheduled to fly out on the same day.

With only a couple of exceptions, I probably knew Phil best of all my Flickr friends, so I was hoping to see him before I left. At around 11:30 PM he made it. Almost immediately, he said, "I wasn't going to come because you were supposed to leave today." I said, "No, I leave tomorrow." He said, "No, you were supposed to leave today, because I took Linn to the airport this morning, and you were supposed to leave on the same day she did." Of course, he was right, but as I had my backpack with me which held my itinerary, I got it out to check it.

A photograph of my intinerary which shows that I was scheduled to leave Paris on 15 November 2005.

With that revelation, of course, there was really nothing I could do except carry on with the fun. Figuring out what to do to get home would have to wait until morning. Which, of course, it did.

A three-frame panorama taken at a bar. The bar itself is at the right and recedes to the back of the building. The bartender is nehind it. He wears a t-shirt which says, FREE BREAST EXAMS. There is a group of people gathered to the left of the bar. There are stairs at the far left whic lead up to another smal gathering space. There is no one upstairs. There are three lamps which hang down from the ceiling. They are designed to look like aluminum trash cans. Liquor lines the brick wall behind the bar. There is a bicycle helmet on the nearest end of the bar.

But all of a sudden, it occurred to me that had I made my 1:55 PM flight, I would be landing in Detroit at 5:05 PM, which pretty much was what time it was in Detroit at that very moment. My friend Melissa had offered to pick me up at Detroit Metro, which meant that she might very well be sitting in her car wondering where the hell I was. I borrowed Phil's phone and called her. As I think of this now, I was incredibly lucky that in November of 2005 both she and Phil had mobile phones, because I wouldn't get one for another five years. Anyway, she was just about to arrive at the terminal when I reached her, and being the kind, sweet human being that she is shrugged it off as no problem. (I think. I hope.) While it was a pretty big inconvenience to have wasted four hours of her time (in rush-hour traffic, no less), it could have been SO much worse had I not remembered this. The rest of the evening is a bit of a blur to me now, and not because I was drunk (I wasn't). I went back to my hosts' apartment not knowing what I was going to do. I hoped, of course, that Northwest Airlines would work with me to get me on another flight, but I would soon learn a lesson about airlines and missed flights.

The following morning, my host, Catherine, with some assistance from her brother Julien helped me to book a flight home. At the time, it was considerably cheaper to book round-trip—versus one-way—tickets, so that's what we did, but in order to keep the price down, we went with a departure date that would mean nine more days in Paris.

Part One

Personal Power

Sunday, November 17, 2024

My Last Day In Paris, Part Two

or Not My Last Day In Paris, Part Two

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