Do You Remember...

These times?

Be Always Welcome Here

The world can be a loving place.

xo

Here Hear

"Q. - What would be the test of corruption?

A. - Becoming really insincere--calling myself "not such a bad fellow," thinking I regretted my lost youth when I only envy the delights of losing it.  Youth is like having a big plate of candy.  Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy.  They don't.  They just want the fun of eating it all over again.  The matron doesn't want to repeat her girlhood--she wants to repeat her honeymoon.  I don't want to repeat my innocence, I want the pleasure of losing it again."

--This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Gérone

Here is a little sign that was on my friend's apartment wall in Girona, Spain:

La vida es bonita 

No la olvide 

Serás felíz.

---------------------------------

Life is beautiful

Do not forget it

You will be happy.

Life is good in Girona.  Here's proof:

xo

That time we rode our bikes down the Rhine and climbed a mountain in the Vosges.

And it was pretty.

We don't get older, we just get riper

Here is a lovely little memory that Janet Flanner, former Paris correspondant for The New Yorker, writes in the introduction to a collection of her segments from the 1920s and '30s.  She tells of one day when she met Picasso after seeing him in the same café nearly every night years before but never having the courage to speak to him.  

"As I walked into the salon, which was as crowded with varied art works as an auction room, Picasso turned to me with his hand outstretched in greeting, and then, with a loud cry of astonishment, shouted, 'You!  Why didn't you ever speak to me in the old days at the Flore?  For years we saw each other and never spoke, until now.  Are you just the same as you were?  you look it!'  By this time he had his arms around me and was thumping me enthusiastically on the shoulders.  'You look fine; not a day older,' and I said, "Nor do you,' and he said, "That's true; that's the way you and I are.  We don't get older, we just get riper.  Do you still love life the way you used to, and love people the way you did?  I watched you and always wanted to know what you were thinking ... Tell me, do you still love the human race, especially your best friends?   Do you still love love?'  'I do,' I said, astonished at the turn the monologue was taking.  'And so do I!' he shouted, laughing.  'Oh, we're great ones for that, you and I.  Isn't love the greatest refreshment in life?'  And he embraced me with his strong arms, in farewell."

A Friendly Hello from the European Union

The sun is shining in Alsace 

and

"Vous êtes jolies, toutes les deux."

(as said to Rodica and me by the slightly batty old French man who meanders along the Quai des Pêcheurs while smiling and nodding from under his European Union baseball cap.)