This is how the new year has begun for me.
One of these days, I caught the morning sun and took the ticket from Paris to the zone 5 of Île-de-France. It was a freezing morning and silence poured serenity around me and over the fields on the top of a hill where Jambville village seemed to be on the top of the world.
It is the top of the world, because I can’t stop returning over there again and again, when I am longing for silence, for beauty, for space and for peace
in my soul.
Everybody knows, or should know, that silence is essential for our recreation, our creativity, our health, physical as well as mental and psychic. Letting oneself into a non-stop routine of the noisy cities means to ruin oneself, to create numerous risks for, among other disorders, dementia and depression.
I propose you (once again) to make a stop. To listen to silence. I’ve elaborated many safe and picturesque itineraries in the countryside across beautiful authentic villages of Île-de-France, just one hour from Paris by train. Our day-long journeys would depend, of course, on your walking habits, so distance may vary from 10 to 30 km.
Participation fees according to your possibilities. Join me one of the sunny days once you’re in Paris.
So make a stop and have a really regenerating walk. No crowds, no urban noise.
31 May 2019, my contract as a touristic agent at the château de Versailles came to its end. What happened after? 3 months of research on Hippocrates and of pure happiness of a free, liberated human being.
16 September, one week ago, I started to work again for one library (Gernet-Glotz / GG) dedicated to the sciences of Antiquity. The contract is for two months, just 15 hours per day and only 500 net euros per month, but these days I couldn’t believe I was back to the library. The difference between two jobs – tourstic agent and librarian – is huge, they’re like earth and heaven, so last week I was at heaven. It is not only quiet and you don’t need to communicate with thousands of angry, arrogant, barbarous, asking too many questions people all day long, but also it gives you some time to continue your work on your post-doc thesis.
The librarians have their lunch at the INHA restaurant. Not just them of course, but all the staff of all the research units and institutions in and around. So once upon a time (last Thursday) I came there, looked back and saw one of my ex-colleagues from Versailles! What a surprise! Such a small world! This guy from Columbia was one of the most amiable in our team, he always seemed to me to be the most fragile and most suffering from Versailles. Now he is here. And me, I’m here too.
– S., what are you doing here?
– And you?
– I’m a proud librarian!
– So am I!
I aksed my colleagues sitting at another table to excuse me, I’d rather have a lunch with my old friend S.
So we ate and talked, talked and ate…
I was so excited by this funny coincidence 🙂
How to survive in Paris 