Thursday, March 27, 2008

Paris, Texas.

March 17, Honey Grove.

Paris, the only address worth having in Texas.
Paris, Texas, the French cult of Wim Wenders' movie and a heart full of memories, circa 1983. Paris, Texas, maybe because it was my father's favorite movie and because I miss him; maybe because my friends are in Paris, France; or just because you never got to see Paris, Texas, after all, in the movie. Paris, Texas, seeing it for the first time, barely eighteen, and not getting it at all; seeing it again two years later, stepping out of the theater and into the daytime street bustle of Paris, France, oh so far away from Los Angeles, and bursting into tears, overwhelmed by an emotion I still cannot understand some twenty years later but felt then raw and primal.
My mother and I stayed at the Holiday Inn in Paris, Texas, when I was pregnant with Dylan and relocating to Savannah, Georgia. I've never had the opportunity to take a good picture of the place, one that imagine would be banal and would remind me forever of that buried sorrow.

1 comment:

Janice Krinsky said...

By the way, I went to high school with John Lurie. He was ahead of me by 2 years, I think. I was watching "Paris, Texas" when it was released in a fine arts theater in Rochester, New York. I didn't know John was in the movie. I had only just recently heard that he had formed the Lounge Lizards in NYC and had released a record. I saw him on the screen and told my friends he looked like someone I knew from Worcester. It was the eeriest feeling. Sure enough, he was in the credits. It's cool to meet someone else who's a fan of that movie!