views

i'm sat in paris, our apartment overlooks pere lachaise cemetery. a little over to the left (say, between 10 and 11 o'clock) is montmartre and sacre coeur; further to the left is la defence and if you poke your head out the window you can see la tour eiffel. quite a view.
the sky is grey, not a menacing take-your-umbrella-out grey, but more like a (clouds:) "we can't be bothered to go to england so we'll just stay here" type grey; sun squeezing through every half hour or so just to fool the tourists who think they're having a summer holiday in paris. the view changes with the light. obviously the big things stay in the same place, but depending on the angle and brightness of the sun, and how deep or menacing the clouds are, the horizon can change drastically. for example, the other day, just before a huge and scary storm, la defence (paris' central business district) looked like a huddle of evil giants plotting to take over the city and sacre coeur, bathed in white light, was going to be our saviour. 10 minutes later with a quick cloud reshuffle sacre coeur started to look a little less sacred and la defence stood round looking a bit puzzled, wondering what they were doing there....
i like this little corner of paris. the cemetery is filled with large trees, (nourished by all those dead people i guess) and is rather soothing to the eye. it's on the edge of a rather large jewish/arab district (kid you not, i'm sure if you put the mayor of paris in charge of the gaza strip it'd all be fine) which means i can buy humous at every supermarket. it's not far from bastille and being as it's nearly bastille day that's not bad.
the horizon is an early geometry lesson: rectangular box apartments, triangular church spires, cranes and aerials.