Paris, enriched

This is my last day in Paris, and my train to Madrid doesn't take off until 7pm. That's an aweful lot of time to kill with a massive backpack the size of another human being strapped to your back. And I only get thirty minutes of computer access.

Paris has really been amazing. If anything, the language barrier enhanced the whole experience. I could sit at a cafe and just let the sound of speech wash over me, without any interrupting, distracting desire to comprehend what's being said.

Notre Dame was beatiful, but touristy. The Louvre would have been fantastic... were it not for all the people. The Eiffel Tower is a big damn tower; imagine that.

The real prize of my time here was the Pantheon. Burial basilica of King Clovis, then of Saint Genevieve (patron saint of France), then the site of her monastic order, then re-appropriated as a resting place for all of France's honored dead. Grand and open architecture (even in the crypts below), awe-inspiring sculptures that make you actually believe in abstract concepts like Memory and Glory and Justice, and in the crypts I could really feel that I was in the presence of great men: Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Braille, and numerous others entombed there. The whole building is the perfect mix of holy place, mausoleum, and national monument.

And largely due to the Pantheon and my time sitting outside Notre Dame, I've had some pretty compelling revelations. Unfortunately, none of them have really been accompanied by a lightning-bolt that left me irreversibly changed from that time on. Either it's unrealistic for me to expect to see The Moment when it comes, or it just hasn't happened yet. Still, I've done a lot of thinking and a lot of writing. I'm getting a clearer picture of who I want to be... even if that person isn't near as interesting or world-changing as I had originally imagined.

A lot of this has been enlightening in a humbling way. Unless something hardcore and drastic happens, it has occurred to me that I'm not yet ready for the cosmic gifts I set out to find. They'd be more of a hindrance than a blessing. And I think it's best I just accept that and try to find my place in the world rather than undergo a massive overhaul of my personality, my mind, and my heart. Frankly, I like who I am. And this may just be youth talking, but I'm not yet ready to give that up.

But I still have a lot of growing to do, even if none of it involves the magic I so badly wanted a taste of. I seriously think nothing but bad would happen if I tried to sieze that power when I'm not ready for it.

The irony of it all? My first big hurdle between me and epic, mythic power?

Morality.

And of course, morality can't simply be thought and understood, like a set of rules as dead and anachronistic as the Ten Commandments. Morality must be internalized if it's to be any good.

So I probably won't come back with a train of angels at my heels, on a chariot coursed by the wheels of Knowledge and Mystery, pulled by my will alone, a cloak of stars dragging behind me in an ethereal breeze. But I should have a better understanding of the man I want to be.

(Between you all and me, I'm hoping for more drastic revelations, for the epic quest to truly play itself out. But, then, I've always been a sucker for a good story.)

I love you all.