Month: December 2015

Juxtapose

/ Benn Bell / 2 Comments

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In this photograph we see a young Parisian couple dining at a sidewalk cafe in the Latin Quarter of Paris. The  Flagrant Delice specializes in French Cuisine. The photograph illustrates perfectly a classic example of the juxtaposition of old and new and east meets west. Notice the male figure in the picture is probably one generation older than the female. He is Caucasian and she is Asian. Finally, he is reading a book, old technology, and she is reading her cell phone, new technology. Yes, Paris is indeed a movable feast.

Top Ten Reasons to Go to Paris this Fall 

/ Benn Bell / 3 Comments
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Ernest Hemingway.  “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

 

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Albert Camus. “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”

 

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Simone de Beauvoir. “I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself.”

 

Jean Pail Sartre

Jean Paul Sartre. “If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.”

 

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Patrick Modiano. ” It was in the days when theater companies toured not just France, Switzerland, and Belgium, but also North Africa. I was ten years old. My mother had gone on the road for a play, and my brother and I were living with friends of hers, just outside of Paris.”

 

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Edith Piaf. “La Vie en rose.”

 

Jacques Brel

Jacques Brel is alive and well and living in Paris. “If Only We Have Love.”

 

Beckett

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Samuel Beckett lived in Paris and wrote in French. Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Happy Days. “We are all born mad. Some remain so.”

 

Portrait of Author Henry Miller

Portrait of American novelist Henry Miller (1891 – 1980), 1950s. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Henry Miller. Tropic of Cancer. “I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.”

 

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities. “It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.”

She Came to Stay

/ Benn Bell / Leave a comment

She Came to Stay

I usually read 6-8 books at a time. I have been doing this for years and it is my modus operandi. But, every once in a while I will run across a book that is so extraordinary, so compelling, that I will stick with that one book to the exclusion of all the others.

I have found the to be the case with, She Came to Stay, by Simone de Beauvoir. This is the book I chose to take to Paris with me and I am so glad I did. I have found some delightful and delicious parallels with my own life and I am sure that is part of the allure.

It is a novel set in Paris near the beginning of WWII and is based on some true life events in the lives of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre and the affair with a young girl that came between them. It is by turns philosophical and hilarious. It is Simone’s first novel and I love it!

Last Day Worked

/ Benn Bell / 2 Comments

20150317_164516.jpgSo this happened…

During the last hour of the last day of work at my last job ever, I got a call from a customer who wanted to come by and take a look at a Chrysler Town and Country van.

“What time do you close?” she asked .

“6:00, ” I said. But if you get here before six I will be happy to show it to you.”

“OK. We are on our way.”

It had been a slow day and Gidget, the sales manager, was sitting on the other side of the partition with two other sales people shooting the breeze. A little time passed and I thought I better tell Gidget I had a customer coming.

“No you don’t!” She protested.

“Yes I do!” I insisted.

A little more time passed and no customer. The phone rings.

“Hi! This is Sasha. Sorry, we got tied up but we are on our way now!”

“OK, good. See you when you get here!”

Gidget yells from behind the partition. “Is that your customer?”

“Yep!”

“Well she better get here quick, I’m not staying here all night!”

“She’s on here way.”

A little more time passes and no customer.

“Ben, I’m going to kick your ass!”

About this time the front windows of the showroom light up with the headlights of a car.

“There she is now,” I said, as I started towards the front door.

“You better sell that car in 20 minutes,” Rod, one of the other sales people says. “Cause were going home at six!”

“I’ve done it before,” I said with confidence.

So, I go out the front door and meet and greet the customer and show her the car.

“Yep, this is the car I want!” She says. How long will it take to tell me what you will give me for my trade?”

“Well, let’s go in, and see if we can put a deal together.”

So we went in and sat at my desk and Gidget looked at her car and we put some numbers together and agreed on price. We had a deal! The only thing was we had to do was secure financing. So I took a credit application and told the customer we would work it out on Monday for them. She was happy and left. We all got out of there by 6:00 pm but I had to come back on Monday evening to deliver the car!

Ha! That’s what I love about the car business! Just when I thought I was getting out, they pulled me back in again! It’s all good. The customer got the car she wanted and I made another sale before I left and I left on a good note and an up beat!

Now I am gone and happy as a lark!