Futility Now

On Monday we started out by heading back to Gare de Lyone to book our tickets back to Paris from Bezier. Despite getting there fairly early, there was an incredibly long line, something that is basically the most consistent aspect of our trip. Luckily things were fairly brisk, and we were able to obtain the things that we needed. On our way out I took this picture of Gare de Lyon’s tower.

After that, we went to the universe-famous Louvre, where the fact that we had bought museum passes payed off in spades, because there were about a bajillion people waiting around in the already-90-plus-degree heat to get in, and we got to waltz down and alternate route and the whole thing took us about 10 minutes rather than the hour and a half or so the line would have demanded.

The only thing that I find genuinely moving in The Louvre is The Raft of the Medusa (with its keen observations about man’s inhumanity to man), but there’s plenty that’s at least worth a look. On our way up the stairs to look at The Winged Victory of Samothrace (a silent, eternal treatise on man’s inhumanity to man) we noticed an area under construction to our right. It was pretty cool.

Here is a hilarious but symbolically-rich (on the topic of Hazel’s anxieties and man’s inhumanity to man) picture of Hazel next to a horse’s head.

Here, as a parting shot from The Louvre, is a baby wrestling a goose. Like all great art, it speaks to man’s inhumanity to man. Once again, the mysteries of the universe are illuminated in timeless marble.

So, we’ve been looking for a house. There is something undeniably foolhardy about looking for a house, given the state of the universe in general, and in our states more particularly, but there it is. We’ve decided to be foolhardy. Or just fools.

It is not, of course, going with 100 percent smoothness. For example, there is a lot of money that has to be directed to a lot of places before one can even consider considering paying money towards the prospect of considering such a purpose, but we’re soldiering on through all that paying and considering with our fingers crossed.

In the immediate term, the main issue our search presents us with is the fact that it is made us pretty sloppy in terms of where we live now. This is, one must admit under the hot-lights of reason, a fairly pointed piece of criticism, especially when one is trying to contend that one’s optimism isn’t some subset of denial. If nothing else, the process is already educational.