Faith

She spoke with her hands making pictures of her prayers begging the virgin Mary for a humanly need something only a divine power could cure. As I walked a long the pews and statues people stood humbly before the relics awaiting judgement or asking for an answer. The Sacre Couer is up at the top of hill over looking all of Paris, a relic itself secretly judging from its high place. The amount of faith the pilgrims who worshiped here had, made me feel like an outsider on my own faith, secretly watching their private prayers.
Faith it is one of the hardest virtues, if it is in fact a virtue. Faith is difficult, not just in religion; but in your self, in the government, and as I discovered this weekend in the transit system. The train failed miserably creating an intresting story. When leaving Paris for London we got on the wrong subway which took us out to a shady section of Paris instead of garde norde. When we finally got to garde norde after much panicking the security told us we were too late to check in. After some alarm and emotional outbursts... he gave us a ticket for the next train free of charge. When we arrived in London the subway we were suppose to take was closed forcing us to take a convoluted system. At Paddington station they annoucned the Oxford train would be leaving from platform ten, but after sitting on the train at platform ten for half hour they announced that this was a mistake and then we had to take the elven o'clock train. Faith in the trainsit...I'm losing it.

This brings me to another point of faith- faith in people. The people in Paris are notoriously rude; however I have trouble believing that about anyone before meeting them. I put a lot faith in asking direction and meeting new people. However before I left numerous people had told me if they were rude i should remind them "we saved their butts in world war 2", this was of corse last resort...and I never once had to use it. In fact the people were all very warm..if you attempted to speak the language, which I did horribly but eagerly. One of my friends had a pen pale in France and he met up with us, which gave me the chance to talk to a local. He was very nice and spoke english well...my french on the other hand... But I had a lot of friends with me to interpret.

The city is gorgeous, when you walk along the Siene there are all these little stands set up selling art and trinkets. The area I stayed in was called Momarte it was where all the artist use to paint, and many still do, we walked through a section of all painters working on different pieces. I must confess that my favorite was along the Siene though, that is where Hemingway writes about. I was able to into the bookshop where he bought all his books, although in those days it was more like a book swap library. The topic of Heminways brings me to my last point on faith. Faith in ones self. I think this may be the hardest kind. Yesterday I got an email from a professor who read an excerpt of my book. It was pretty brutal she said I wrote too old fashion and it was distant. And that I wrote like Hemingway, but she didn't care for Hemingway. I love Hemingway's writing this I know and will not be swayed, I admire his style though never before has my work been compared to it. And when I was walking up to Shakespeare and co. I felt as though I was walking up as a writer, a new writer, yes, but I did not feel like I was an imposter. I felt like I was where I was suppose to be, and discovering new place where people of my kind had been coming for a very long time.