Work summoned me to Paris. It was a couple hectic days with early morning raise, metro rides, hospital visits, and case summaries. All the work part ended up being super good, thank God! Made all the hardships of the recent months feel rewarding.
Paris was cloudy and rainy and colder even perhaps compared to Odense. But it was busy none the less, particularly many pedestrians despite the cold, which is one feature I admire in big cities.
I learned how my life style in US is unhealthy and against the rhythm of my body. I need to feel the air on my skin, cold or hot, and I need to walk. In my life in California, I need to carve out time for such walks while both in Odense and Paris I had to walk, a lot, and it all felt good and natural even more so on my pregnant body.
I got the opportunity to spend the last evening with friends and relax. It was such a great pleasure.
My last transit via Frankfurt was uneventful. Even though the security guy on US flights seems not to have changed, I was familiar with his borderline rude gestures and interrogations.
The business lounge and priority boarding lines can be quite interesting sometimes, as if when some people gain status they lose common sense of society and rights. For example there was a lady ready to board the plane and was insisting that she was the beginning off the line. But she was not even standing behind the gate but rather further away. Plus her seat is predetermined, there wont be any loss or gain whether or not she is the first on board or the 10th. That was enough for me to pray that she was not my companion in the eleven hour ride. Thankfully, she was not. And even better, my companion ended up being a young and polite gentleman who was also a product manager with technical background. We got to chat about work and societies and politics and movies and foods. It was easy to chat with him. His companionship made the trip feel shorter and more pleasant. Plus I could sleep a few hours in the flight which was what my body needed desperately.
I got to watch Hemingway and Gellhorn (TV 2012) which was a nice coincidence to the leisure book I am reading, The Paris Wife. It was enough to know Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen were staring in it and that it was about Ernest Hemingway, my new passion. I really enjoyed watching it. I got to know how writing was a challenge even for greatest writers like Hemingway in the book I was reading. Then, in this movie also, Martha Gellhorn said once "there is a lot happening [in the war] but when I sit down to write, nothing." I liked it, although not even a emote comparison but I had felt the same thing exactly many times. The other coincidental matter about the movie was the depiction of the Franco era in Spain. Funnily, I got to hear about this part of Spanish history through Dr G.G. in Denmark over the 2nd day lunch. Made me wonder at the world connectivity even at such trivial level. Or is such matters like hearing the story of a fascist via person born and raised in a communist country and then watching it in an american movie really that trivial?
Wars. And all the boys and girls who watched their mothers die in front of their eyes living their tiny little hands stained with their innocent bloods. "little by little I am getting really angry" as Gellhorn sited from a young boy in the war.
It should have been really tough and dark living in 1920-1945 era in the world with all the enmities and famines.
Now the reality of this time is the enmity against particular religions. Such a pity!
On the subject of love Gellhorn said "the greatest enemy of love is boredom" and not jealousy. Made me wonder. Hemingway had written to Gellhorn "love is infinitely more durable than hate"; why is that? To me, hate is not the opposite to love, hate is an excess anger, and hence can be coexisting with love. But the opposite of love? I think it is disappointment.
I took the 280 route back home which was indeed a pleasure. Particularly since it was sunny in California after a week of rain, mist, and clouds in Odense and Paris. The good music I was listening to made everything even more likable.
Now out to a carved out time to walk in the fade sub of this Sunday afternoon.
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