Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

This post started in a Making Light thread:

From 63, on French and Spanish:

When I was in Paris, nine years ago, I took a sidetrip to the Museum of French Prehistory (which runs from the Paleolithic to early CE). It's in a suburb, and I carefully looked up the price and worked out the French for "one round-trip ticket to St. Germain en Laye" before walking up to the ticket counter. [I speak little French now, and had less then.] From the rail station, it's a short walk to an old castle (complete with moat, though grassy rather than watery).

I was one of only a few people visiting the museum that day: it's not a big deal tourist destination, and this was on a weekday morning in late November. There isn't a word of English in the place, but plenty of stone points and such, and significant overlap between French and English archeological terminology. When I was basically done and went back to the cloakroom, another visitor was trying to communicate with the staff. When I came along, she looked at me and hopefully asked "Habla usted español?" and, accurately and without thinking, I said "oui."

She understood that much French, or maybe my tone, and I was able to help her a little with my high school Spanish.

[That's as much as I posted on ML.]

I think that was when I realized that I have a spot in my head that is tagged either "non-English" or "Romance language." It defaults to Spanish, but a few days in Paris or Montreal sets it to French, and it stays there for a bit after I'm back in New York.

That museum trip was serendipitous in another way: the town was holding a Christmas market between the museum and the railroad station, and I wandered around, bought I think a handmade blank book and some Swiss chocolates (indifferent, I'm afraid) and then went looking for lunch. I walked into a sandwich shop, and ordered a turkey sandwich on a baguette. By default, it came with lettuce, tomato, and mayonaise. Until that day, I had thought I didn't like mayonaise, because no ordinary American sandwich shop makes it up fresh shortly before serving. It's one thing to be told that there's a difference, another to taste it. I still avoid mayo in most places, because I don't like the jarred version (except on BLT sandwiches, where it seems appropriate).

Sometimes, even knowing exactly what you want doesn't help.

We got a sampler of cheese and other products from a dairy upstate. One of the items is chocolate butter.

So I need bread. Thin breadsticks won't do it--I need bread suitable for sweet butter, an afternoon snack sort of bread-and-butter.

I was thinking idly about getting sourdough at a bakery near my office, then decided a good white bread would be better. A moment later, I knew exactly what I wanted: a baguette. Specifically, I was remembering, and wishing for, a baguette I bought over a year ago, still warm from the oven, and how good it tasted as I ate the first bite walking down the street to the Metro station.

That's the problem. The Metro station. The bakery in question is in Paris.

There may be someplace in New York that does really good baguettes, but when you look for a French bakery around here, what you'll find is pastry. There's nothing wrong with pastry, but what I want is a baguette, fresh out of the oven, to go with my wonderful sweet clementines and the chocolate butter heart and a pot of good, strong Ceylon tea.

There are worse things than pleasant memories of good food, and there are good bakeries in walking distance of where I'm typing this, and a cup of tea on my desk, and one last square of dark chocolate Susan gave me as a holiday gift.