R2E Excerpt #43: The Good Ship Nincompoop Sails for England*

Or, there was an old lady from Texas who swallowed my train. WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY PETER MOORE

WHAT REMAINS of my two months in Paris? 

Fifty pages of crabbed, tiny handwriting in my journals, most of it notes and outlines for a novel I never wrote (no plot, one character), and ideas for short stories that seemed profound or funny to a twentysomething. 

Which means I am now missing so much of...Paris. I had a choice between writing about living, and writing about intending to write, and I mostly chose the latter. 

A nincompoop does that.

But I felt, and honored, the need to record each day, each emotional breeze that tousled my hair or stirred my loins. I was learning how to write about this world, and more importantly, why I should write about it. That was one lesson of the dropped coin, which began this account: Riches and temptations roll from one generation to the next, whether the elders drop them in the gutter, or pass them in their last will and testament. 

My adult life began when a Parisian swell dropped a ten franc piece on t…