a photo of Susan and me wearing felt hats, on a Paris street
Taken decades ago...but when I see this photo, I remember walking around Paris with Susan and John. Our friendship was in flower then, but of course, who can resist maintaining a friendship with someone who lives on a boat on the Seine, your personal free hotel whenever you can get over to le grand raisin? They'd come over at least once a year, and we'd flaner around Paris, eating and drinking, taking a few train excursions here and there. I remember one up the Seine into Normadie, marvelling high on a cliff how different the meandering Seine looked in that countryside from its stone embankments in Paris.
On one trip in winter, I remember John was so cold that we'd walk, stop in a bar for a cognac, walk a little more, have another cognac, spending the whole day like this, never really blotto, but never really warm, either. Maybe because we didn't have north woods clothing for the unusually cold temperatures.
Susan and John happened to be in Paris to help me move from my first peniche, the Connexus, to my second one, the Alphonse. Those were the days--moving was a matter of walking from one boat to the next, directly in front, making only "several" trips, not endless, with only as many possessions as I had at that time--which, when I moved from Paris to New York five years later, fit into two duffel bags. Imagine. After we got me moved, we had a picnic on the floor of my new "salon," the downstairs central space of my timonerie, about 8x12 feet. We have a photo of that, too--it may have been the same trip as the hats photo--though I can't now remember why we had to sit on the floor. Oh, maybe this--the "furnishings" included a beautiful mahogany table, its trim and the cut of its legs matching the decorative elements of the solid mahogany-panelled interior, but no chairs. Later, I bought two wood and canvas captain's chairs, one of their main advantages being that they folded-- space-saving always essential to living on a boat.
So surely, even though our friendship seems past its most abundant flowering, it is a friendship for which one would drive a mere eight hours in holiday traffic.
