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February 26, 2001
Gallery
Graphic evidence of dysfunction. A slide show of my life.
Digital Art
Proof that I'll never be a professional digital artist no matter what tools you give me.
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August 14, 2000, Paris, France—It was here on the 56th floor café that I dreamed my dream of a life-long partner. From my June 28, 2000 News Archives entry:
- I was in Paris 10 years ago, the summer before Erin and I met, doing some continental travel after the conclusion of the University of Portland's variable quality London Program. I traipsed my way across Western Europe to see what I could see. As I've said elsewhere, my life wasn't exactly going the direction I wanted prior to the trip, and this solo adventure allowed me the opportunity to sort out various issues unencumbered by external influences, at least psychologically.
- One thing that happened on this trip was that my money ran out. I had the type of VISA card banks issue to college students, which is to say one with a $400 credit limit. Although my parents wired cash to the appropriate bank, the financial institution took something like 10 days to post it. All the while I was walking into banks, trying to pull money off the VISA, getting rejected, and enduring the stares of European bank personnel whose demeanor switched rapidly from friendly to contemptuous.
- I didn't do a lot of hotel/motel living in those weeks. My normal mode of operation was to use my prepaid EuroRail pass to hop a long-distance train and to sleep on the way to wherever. On one of those trips I found myself again in Paris.
- The Montparnesse, a skyscraper not too far from the Eiffel Tower, looks out on the nighttime lights of Paris. It was in the cafe just below the rooftop observation deck where I stared out at the these lights and thought about how my life would change in the next 10 years: I would graduate college, probably meet someone and marry, and we would begin building a life together. So at a table by a window some 56 floors up, I sat, looked out at the City of Lights, and drank a toast to my future wife wherever she might be. I know now—though I didn't know it then—that my hopes and wishes didn't have to travel far. Erin was also in Paris, and though we didn't meet at that time, our paths crossed less than three months later in Oregon, and we started dating less than two months after that.
- For the record, the drink I ordered that night was a 3 franc cup of café olé, the cheapest thing on the menu and the only thing I could afford.
- One thing that happened on this trip was that my money ran out. I had the type of VISA card banks issue to college students, which is to say one with a $400 credit limit. Although my parents wired cash to the appropriate bank, the financial institution took something like 10 days to post it. All the while I was walking into banks, trying to pull money off the VISA, getting rejected, and enduring the stares of European bank personnel whose demeanor switched rapidly from friendly to contemptuous.