16th
sheawmon, mercedes, phil, dashel, gavin, brittany, scott, phillipe, etc etc
I woke Sam and Clarance up early (10 AM) to go to the louvre, Sawmon joined us. We left at 1:00, we got there at around 1:30, and then we were hungry. I lined up for asian food, and they all went somewhere else, we planned to meet somewhere at 2:00. I didn’t expect them to show up. It was actually more of a hope than an expectation. Had they been with me in the louvre I’d enjoy the pleasure having every hot girl pointed out and compared to every other hot girl.
I waited until 2:30 and still they did not show up, so I wrote some kind of note that they did not find, then I entered the Louvre and spent just over three and a half hours inside the place.
Theres really too much shit in the Louvre. I enter the place and feel dominated and weak. I do a couple of 360 degree turns, overwhelmed and unsure of where to start, I keep turning until I get dizzy and realize that the only way to do this is one piece at a time. I start with a random sculpture of Eros, which is nowhere close to the entrance, because I’ve been wandering mindlessly for about half an hour. I try to look at every painting sincerly, analyze and appreciate it, but it’s difficult when there are hundreds of similar ones around it. I don’t like the feeling of trying to obtain an objective mindset, being given so much visual precedence.
My opinion is that museums of this sort are counter-intuitive. They don’t help me appreciate the art, and they don’t aid me in my understanding of it either. The fact that everything is grouped together takes away from the specialness of each individual painting. Your judgement becomes impared and you don’t look at each painting separately, you start looking at them in groups, you start thinking collective thoughts about them.
This happened for about an hour until I saw something I recognized, a painting by Botticelli, and I felt grounded. I knew this painting, I knew what it was and how it was and I didn’t have to figure it out amidst distraction. Then Madonna of the Rocks, then all the other famous ones that I actually knew. The Mona Lisa is pretty sick I must say.
I really just wanted to write about the Louvre, I can’t extrapolate much on the majority of our social exploits in Paris. I can say we met a lot of people, I can tell you stories about them. However, having received knowledge of my mother being one of the readers of this blog, I will be practicing heavy discretion.
We meet new friends and it feels as though we’ve known them our entire lives.
We met a sweet aussi girl named Mercedes who can assemble a skateboard in less than five minutes. She was older and at times was the only girl around, but would participate in our juvenile masculine humour. She didn’t place herself above or below us (figuratively). Much respect.
We met a burly, hairy, and rowdy persian guy from Orange County who is drunk at all the right times. He threw Parker in a garbage can. On one night in Paris he had nowhere to sleep, so he sat down in a park and felt comfortable. He felt like he could fall asleep until he realized he was surrounded by hobos. He then went to the store, bought a dozen packs of cigarettes and a dozen beers, and befriended the hobos through the exchange of goods. When he woke up there were no hobos, there was no beer left, there were no cigarettes left, but all his belongings remained untouched. I miss Sawmon.
We met two californians named Phil and Dashel, both of them look like they came out of the OC. They live in Laguna Beach. Fun Fact: Phil’s brother, who we met later, was actually in the TV show Laguna Beach. Phil was an expert at impersonating a gay german accent, and was the rowdier of the two. Dashel was more laid back, and for a large part of his life was training to be a professional surfer. We’ll miss the two of them.
We met more people, all of whom had stories to tell. Yesterday Clarance and I left Paris for Bruges, but Parker got left behind because of a train fuckup. We should meet up with him in Amsterdam.
Bruges is pretty awesome. Last night was much crazier than we expected it to be. We snuck onto the roof of our hostel and saw the view, we drank with australians who taught us how to molest a mako shark. We played pool and with Norwegian NATO military police. More that I will not mention was done. Hopefully Parker will be here soon, for now, good bye.
