To me, Rome is your voice reciting the Lamentations of Goethe; For you, an evening in Venice listening to music in St. Mark's basilica will tell you how I feel. Paris reminds you of being a stubborn child locked up in a hotel eating chocolate while reading Hugo. You knew Paris by Hugo. To me, Paris is the triumph of Samothrace stirring like tears on the steps of the Louvre, the statue by which my father taught me what beauty is, the harmony embodied, the impossible achieved by keeping the slight sea breeze forever frozen in the floating folds of a train; The desert is the battle of Undurman, Lawrence and the mystery of silence, know that night near the pyramids you gave me a word the empire "changed the desert" you told me the moon was my mirror.
