October 11, 2006

Shakespeare & Co., Paris

I would like to share a post I receive from Taty (a BookCrosser) received this morning.

OMG, I am soooooo missing France right now. Watched Richard Linklater's
Before Sunrise and Before Sunset back-to-back yesterday (loooovvveee the
dialogues! Best discussions about life & relationships in filmdom ever!)
and realised one of the things I miss most about Paris is Shakespeare &
Co. You may want to visit it here http://shakespeareco.org/index.htm or take a web-tour here http://www.sav.org/shco/ Sigh ...

How I wished I knew about this when we were in Paris back in 1997. But I have made a pact to go back hopefully with Dad.

Here are some Taty's favourite dialogues from the movies Before Sunrise and Before Sunset by Richard Linklater starring Ethan Hawke & Julie Delphy:
Jesse: Do you believe in reincarnation? Celine: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting.
Jesse: Yeah, right. Well, most people, you know, a lot of people talk about past
lives and things like that, you know? And even if they don't believe it in some
specific way, you know, people have some kind of notion of an eternal soul,
right? Celine: Yeah. Jesse: OK, well this was my thought: 50,000 years ago,
there are not even a million people on the planet. 10,000 years ago, there's,
like, two million people on the planet. Now there's between five and six billion
people on the planet, right? Now, if we all have our own, like, individual,
unique soul, right, where do they all come from? You know, are modern souls only
a fraction of the original souls? 'Cause if they are, that represents a 5,000 to
1 split of each soul in the last 50,000 years, which is, like, a blip in the
Earth's time. You know, so at best we're like these tiny fractions of people,
you know, walking... I mean, is that why we're so scattered? You know, is that
why we're all so specialized? Celine: I don't know. Wait a minute, I'm not
sure... I don't... Jesse: Yeah, hang on, hang on. It's a, it's a totally
scattered thought. It... which is kind of why it makes sense. And my favourite
lines from Before SunsetCeline: The past is the past. It was meant to be that
way. Jesse: What, you really believe that? That everything's fated? Celine:
Well, you know, the world might be less free than we think. Jesse: Yeah? Celine:
Yeah, when given these exact circumstances, that's what will happen every time:
two part hydrogen, one part oxygen, you get water every time. Jesse: No, no, I -
I - I mean what if your grandmother had lived a week longer, or, you know, or
passed away a week earlier, days even. You know things might have been
different. I believe that. Celine: You can't think like that, it's... Jesse: No,
I mean, I know you shouldn't on most things, but - It's just, on this one it
seemed like something was off, you know? Jesse: Oh, God, why didn't we exchange
phone numbers and stuff? Why didn't we do that? Celine: Because we were young
and stupid. Jesse: Do you think we still are? Celine: I guess when you're young,
you just believe there'll be many people with whom you'll connect with. Later in
life, you realize it only happens a few times. Jesse: And you can screw it up,
you know, misconnect.

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