Yesterday, on my way back to the Rue Des Ecoles, the street on which Sorbonne is located, from that cathartic visit to Le Louvre Museum. I made a stop into two Librairie, that is the French term, its equivalent in English would be Publishing Houses: One is called Presence Africaine, it specializes in Authors from the Francophone Speaking African or Afro-Caribbean World, it has been around since the 1920s if I'm not mistaken. This publishing house was the first to publish works by Aime Cesaire, Senghor, and Diop. The second publishing house in which I made a visit is called L'Harmattan, this one specializes in philosophical works of all great philosophers from Europe, Old and New; from Socrates, Plato, Rousseau, Voltaire, all the way to Kant. I find myself retracing the lives of all the men I have always looked up to, as a reference to the way a human being ought to live and conduct oneself. One just need to read a book or a philosophical treatise by one of the Titans cited above to understand what I'm alluding to. All this happened yesterday on my walk through this Pantheon of a neighborhood! I've always wanted to live in few places till now; San Francisco, CA; Fria, Guinea; Sarasota, FL; Stockholm, Sweden; Seoul, Korea; Beijing, China; Martinique, French Antilles. Their are others I have not cited, or are absent from my memory due to the emotional and historical weight of this place. Now, I can unequivocally state that I would want to live in the Latin Quarter of Paris, on the Left Bank. I feel my father's presence all around me! my uncle Malick's presence everywhere! I feel Africa everywhere, and see Africa everywhere
Yesterday evening, one of my young room-mate inserted the key to our apartment into the wrong key hole, a door next to ours. What followed next was nothing less than an adventure into the psycho-social behaviors, which is part of living life on earth. In the course of twenty four hours I experienced life itself! It's infancy or innocence; it's adolescence or middle and rebellious part; it's maturity or what I would call, a state in which a saintly figure from India once remarked, "To whom I should speak or preach? I see beauty in every living things"! Their exist goodness, understanding, honor, compassion, virtue, kindness, and all the virtuous acts in the world as emphasized by enlightened beings the world over. However, their also exist evil, sloth, deception, vanity, dishonesty, corruption, and general ugliness of all kinds. May be? Just may be? These two juxtaposed and diametrically opposed positions are what we call either: Beautiful! Ugly! Or, Mean! Interchangeable at times, sometimes expressed as good and at other times as bad! What is the difference between either extreme? I believe Good exists, but has to be managed! I also believe that evil exists, and it also has to be managed! The difference, then, becomes? Are there? Human beings endowed with a sense of justice, honor and courage, to manage either extreme in a calm, unconditional way with a dose of empathy for both the perpetrator and the victim of the latter!
Enjoy These Picture From Paris!
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
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