So where was I…
Coming up on 40 hours without sleep and hoofing it from the 11 arrondissement to the 5th. I'm on my way to the legendary Un Regard Moderne when I spot this little gem:
What if Dan Clowes was born French? We would all be referring to Ghost World as Shake Hair. By the way, Dan tells me Doofus (as played by Jack Black) makes a bicycle-seat-sniffin' cameo in Ghost World II: The Bob Skeetes Story!)
Moving right along…
Rounding the corner I loaf down the typical, rain washed, beautiful, Parisian alley/street and there IT is, out of nowhere, a parting of clouds a ray of pure light…
… the bookstore of my dreams: Un Regard Moderne!
The following photos are of just the storefront.
I keep trying to figure out how Jacques the owner gets these books into the front windows? There are stacks and STACKS of books in the way, and there's no way he's moving all those books just to rearrange the front window display! right? wrong! I went to Un Regard Moderne two days in a row and the window display had changed over night! The only thing I can figure is that Jacques is crawling up on top of the stacks and STACKS of books and using a claw to grab books out and to place books into the display…? Very mysterious.
Here's what you see when you walk inside and look immediately to the left:
I spent a lot of time in this heaven of books. It felt so good.
Housewives at Play: French Connection, you wish.
In the foreground here there's an island of books stacked up to my nose (I'm 6 foot 6). The owner usually stands on a foot or two of old, stacked newspapers in the far corner by the Gary Panter and Ninja. While I was trying to navigate this island I knocked over a tall stack of books. Books everywhere. The aisle was so narrow and cramped I couldn't even bend over to pick them all up and some of these books were damaged. I felt so bad. I took that as a sign to leave. I paid for my selections and started back to my hostel picking up a French sandwich on the way.
Owner: Jacques Noël
As you leave Un Regard Moderne this is what you see when you look up. Books stacked from floor to ceiling. Beautiful.
Later at my hostel I layed on my tiny bed in a daze. I was so tired and so excited from visiting Un Regard Moderne… it felt like I'd visited the physical and ideal representation of how I'd like to think my brain looks.
Later that night I woke up with a striking pain in my right shoulder. The same shoulder I knocked over that stack of books with. I was convinced my karma or whatever was fucked. It felt like someone was squatting on my chest and stabbing me with a large knife! I sat up and went through my purchases from Un Regard Moderne and discovered I'd short payed. The next day I went back to Un Regard Moderne and settled up and the exact moment I left the store was the first relief my shoulder felt since the night before! Let that be a lesson to you.
More later.