~aventures du louchette flâneurse: 48ème~

January 1st, 2010

Woke before dawn and watched the sun come up on a new decade, from a window I will soon sadly relinquish. Made coffee for my honey, who bravely accompanied me to Passy, a wealthy area of south-west Paris that was once a commune, as I begin to wrap up the research that brought me here. We walked our usual miles in the snow-spiting air, and rewarded ourselves later with hot chocolate at (that nutty tourist-trap) Café de Flore. My frozen ears complained fiercely as they thawed.

The bakeries are preparing for Epiphany (from the Greek epiphaneia), the holiday that brings the New Years festivities here to a close on January 6th. A Galette des Rois is eaten, in which a little ceramic figure or such has been hidden. Whomever gets the piece with the prize is said to have luck that year. At both Epiphany gatherings I’ve been to over the years, the prize was in my piece of cake. Think I can pull off a third time?

Beyond the religious usage (ye old Adoration of the Magi), an epiphany is also of course that illuminating philosophical a-ha moment we all loiter around hoping for. A trinket in your gateau is lovely but pales in comparison to a sudden revelation of the essential nature of all things. Or something like that.

Don’t the faces on the facades here look like spirits coming through the ether, many themselves having epiphanies?