big s in the city of lights

i do not labour under the delusion that only i know the 'true me', and that others can only ever understand a sub-total reality of ondrej that is privy to my own perception. how can 'i' exist anyway, if all of my thoughts are just a temporary chemical flux in a bunch of neurones? and how can the thing that is doing the perceiving also be the thing that is to be perceived, particularly if there's no real reference point? in contrast, if i meet someone at a party and talk to them for 5 minutes, how can they then not know me? who, otherwise, have they been talking to?

i think it is difficult, if not impossible, to perceive yourself in any relevant way, and if you then go and isolate yourself on a different continent, well...then your brain just goes and eats itself and you've got no fucking idea.

and so it was my great pleasure that my favourite sister in the whole world came to visit for a fortnight from japan. if anyone out there has any valid conception of who i am, it's her, and now, one week later, i'm fully reaping the benefit of her visit. i've been de-fragmented, re-booted, cleaned out and recharged, and now i'm grounded, motivated, and skimming ever so gently over the quagmire of european living.

what did we get up to? not much really. we ate macarons, we visited some parks and funky parts of paris, we spoke english, we picnicked, we ate macarons, we played petanque, we field-tripped out to the french countryside, we did the obligatory kiss of oscar wilde's tomb in the pere lachaise cemetery, and we ate macarons. in fact we didn't do much at all, but it was good.

iva's coeliac, and with all of its baguettes and pains de chocolat and what-not, paris is not the most friendly place to go gluten free. neither is it great for vegetarians, and when you combine the two, you either eat in a supermarket or not at all. and so it is time for me to confess that during iva's visit, g and i fell from the green tree of vegetarianism into the blood-red river of animal slaughter below...and it was good. g in particular came back with a vengeance, and seeing him lose himself in a juicy steak, i feared that he might start baying at the moon. maybe it was having two saskas in his face all the time that drove him to the edge.

and that's all there really is to say about that. for those of you out there with siblings, i hope they're as cool as mine. (though in our heart of hearts we all know that they're not, and that's just the way things are.)

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