I think I’ve talked about one of my travel companions before. Although perhaps not by name. She has sat alongside me in planes, ridden in my lap by rail, strolled hand in hand with me along cobblestone pathways, cooed and aahed into my ear in front of canvases at famous galleries and in the mezzanine at the world’s major theatres. She’s a constant inspiration and flirt. Insatiably curious, wholly unpredictable. Her name? Sara N. Dippity. Although she also has answered to “felicity”, “bonne chance”, “open opportunity” and “unexpected happenstance”. But I just call her “Sara”. Sometimes “Sara N”. As flighty as she is, Sara is anything but dippy.

I tell you about Sara because this trip to New York and Massachusetts, though planned, was pretty much laid at her feet, or, if all went swimmingly, on her wings. And after swallowing the inevitable, unavoidable, New York City hotel fare—261 bucks per night for a room with moldy carpets and a forlorn view of adjacent pollution-encrusted brownstones —we ventured out along route 87 without any particular target in mind, without any confirmed abode in sight. And somewhere short of Albany, we happened into a rest stop which featured Sara at the automatic entryway—in the form of a green advertiser. Yes, Sara is a shape-shifter; and this time she took the form of a book of coupons offering reduced rates in various outlying roadside inns. Once I thumbed through it I could immediately recognize Sara winking at me. But in a good way.

As soon as I creased the guide I could hear Sara whispering: “here is a real coup for anyone traveling on a fixed budget with few grand schemes in mind.”

Sara was saying: “Here is the perfect opportunity for the kind of traveler who depends on the good graces and beneficent offices of Sara N. Dippity.”

Folks needing a coup or two in their life. Folks like me.

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—tjmHolden

We’re in New York now—well, Nyu Yawk as they say over here—but I’m still in the midst of reporting how that happened, so, here’s more o’ dat . . .

JetBlue—how we arrived—is a stripped down affair. No frills. Do everything on line – reservations, seat assignments, baggage check. Even so, we couldn’t get the carrier to pair the four of us into 2 equal groups. The reason (aside from the fact that we reserved too late) was apparently that the kids were deemed by the computer to be kids (!) Try telling that to the son of mine whose response to “you need a haircut” is “do not” and the rejoinder to “Zander, your hair is too long” is “is not”. Now, in the face of a will like that, how can anyone say that that belongs to a kid?

But try explaining that to a machine. And since that machine deemed my kids to be kids, they were not allowed to occupy the 2 seats currently open alongside the exit. As such—and since we wanted two sets of twos—we had to finalize that reservation by phone. This involved more than a simple reservations clerk (wouldn’t you guess); it required the intervention of a manager countermanding the system and instructing the clerk.

So much for stripped down service. Humans still requisite cogs in any bureaucratic machine.

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—tjmHolden

In the midst of an extended Parisian idyll, time for a change. Even with so many things not yet accounted for-- its people, streets, buildings, art – well, that is life. Like that. A number of realities forestalled; any number of entries that may have to wait: entries worth the wait. Because one can always return to Paris. Paris will always be there. Forever beckon. Paris will always pull visitors into its sinewy, supple, sensual embrace. For now, I am back on the road – or in this case the air – onto another continent, across another ocean.

Tonight it’s the red-eye. LA into New York. How I got to the west coast is another story. Happened in a wink. Life like that. Close your eyes and risk missing the next possibility, delight, worry, intervention, solution. Life being best when it is precisely like that.

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—tjmHolden

One of the reasons that I came to Paris this time was to attend professional meetings. These meetings were held at the UNESCO headquarters, within sight of Invalides to the north and the Eiffel Tower to the west.

It is an education being at UNESCO (which makes perfect sense, since it is an educational institution—well, duh!). The first thing one learns is that there is no smoking on its premises—which can be eye-opening, since it turns out that so many people in the world (not to mention, France!) smoke. As a result, there are a lot of doors propped open, leading out to verandas where UNESCO employees and visitors are furtively sneaking cigarettes.

The next thing that is eye-opening at UNESCO is the food. Since every meal we were served there would, by any objective standard, have had to be placed under the heading of hors d’oeuvres, what we really were offered didn’t qualify so much as “food” as it did “whimsy” or “suggestion” or “a hint of culinary expression”.

Without opening one’s eyes really w i d e, one would surely have missed it. Those little fluffs of taste. Mighty delicious - that handful of rarified UNESCO air—just now being spirited away on that empty silver platter.

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—tjmHolden

I was in the Louvre the other day. Perhaps the world’s most famous art museum, it is also one of the world’s largest. According to this on-line source, it has 300,000 pieces of art spread out over 100 acres of real estate. Whatever. After about the first thousand paintings and five acres traversed, the mind kind of numbs.

I don’t know if you are at all like me (who could be?—so perhaps I shouldn’t dwell on the obvious), but when my mind numbs, perspective tends to shift. A lateral slide that mimics liquid mercury rolling along a metal surface, rather than just freezing in place as it might with other folks. Thus was it that when I finally found myself in front of the Mona Lisa (well, La Joconde, to you purists)—which would have been about after 4,357 objects of art and 13 acres of stairs, escalators, marble corridors, domed halls, etc.—I found my camera doing this . . .

and this . . .

and this . . .

Call me strange. Off-kilter. Or simply a bad reporter. Always missing the main point in any story.

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—tjmHolden

For those in America, of a certain generation (or two), a knowing smile, perhaps. For, the words in the title form the catch-phrase associated with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous struggle to define pornography. For most of us, it may be clear what porn is (within a relative range of gradations, accommodating blips of difference here and there), but can we actually define it? Can we articulate the standard by which this one is and that one isn’t?

Like many aspects of our social world, hard and fast rules often elude us over the most consequential of matters.

(For instance?

Nation X is part of the “Axis of Evil”. Hence, we must attack them for possessing weapons of mass destruction. On the other hand, Nation Y is also a part of the “Axis of Evil”. Hence, we must refrain from attacking them for possessing weapons of mass destruction . . .

. . . now, wait a minute, I know I was making a point here . . . )

. . . Ah yes, the relativism of “I know it when I see it” (since “it” might end up being two and the same thing, at once).

That point was driven home the other day when I visited the Pompidou, the site of Paris’s National Museum of Modern Art. Leading to a variation on the Potter Stewart (and, by deficiency of ratiocination, the George W. Bush) test. 

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—tjmHolden