I was tagged by my friend Amber to post the fourth photo in the fourth folder of my collection.  This is not actually in the fourth folder, but the sixth, because the other fourths were photos I had already posted on the blog, and redundancy is such a drag, you know?  You know?  Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

Anyway, this is me outside the Centre Pompidou in Paris about a year and a half ago.  Something about the lighting makes my head look like a giant melon, don’t you think?  That’s not the only funny bit to this photo, well not to the photo, but to the general story of the day.

This is our first day in Paris, having arrived only a few hours earlier.  We were doing our best to stay awake.  At this point we’d been up for about twenty-eight hours, and as we are neither in college, nor rock stars, this does not come easily.  However, I felt like, this time, I was going to be able to make the whole day without napping.  This time, I shall beat jet lag!

Then we entered the museum, and with the hush of the people and all of the marvelous works of art, the cadence changed.  Rather than experiencing the energetic buzz of the city, people moving, cars honking, scooters swerving, we felt the profound quiet of great art and architecture.  We became part of the ebb and flow of the museum, yet found ourselves set wholly apart from it.  The onset of fatigue was so potent that it set off a crazy chain of events.  First, we swayed like drunkards, no matter how carefully we tried to walk – left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot.  Colleen laughs as quietly as she can, Gregory laughs quietly at Colleen laughing, museum-goers give sideways glances at the crazy Americans who should have respect for work that is neither silly or funny.  More laughter from Colleen, then Gregory…and well, you know the rest.

Finally, after we had seen everything we had wanted to see, interspersed with lots of breaks on benches to compose ourselves, we waved our white flags in utter defeat.  Jet lag won again.  We slowly walked back to our apartment, climbed the stairs, and collapsed on the bed, sleeping for four hours.