The Things I Have to See

It's become rather apparent that I have desires to see "odd" things. In all likelihood you won't find these places in guidebooks. But that doesn't change my need to see them and the most recent instances could not be further apart from one another.
Jose Bove was on a hunger strike here in Paris. He is an alter-globalizationist, a fierce critic of genetically modified foods, and a general pest to the establishment. He catapulted himself into the global spotlight back in 1999 by invading and dismantling a McDonalds franchise in Millau. He was on the hunger strike to get the French government to get a one-year ban on the use of genetically modified crops. I'm not sure what piqued my interest. I suppose I just wanted to see the spectacle. Once I've got my mind set on seeing something I become fixated. Sadly the hunger strike started the day we left for Portugal and ended the Friday we got back when the government gave in to his demands.
The other instance is Charles Dickens Square. Before the other day when I noticed it on the map, I didn't know such a place existed. Now that I do I just want to see what it's like. I could try to make the argument that it's because I love his writing so much, that David Copperfield is one of my favorite books. Both of those statements are truthful but what does all that have to do with this square in Paris? Rien du tout as they'd say here. Nothing at all. Something unknown, something embedded in my mind spurred me to the desire to know, and that has been the overarching premise that has determined most of my life, it has determined who I am.
I've been able to control this insatiable desire to know where propriety deems it necessary but it doesn't disappear. It's lurking around the corner, waiting to pounce on the next thing that passes in front of my nose. Predictably the urge struck me again yesterday. I had went out to meet Zoe & Morgane for lunch after their business meeting this morning. Following our lunch at L'as du Falafel, we ventured over to Hotel de Ville and waited outside in the cold for 30 minutes to see the Paris in Colors photo exhibit. The exhibit housed works spanning the Lumiere brothers to Martin Parr. It was interesting to see not what changed but what hasn't. Other than the color tones there wasn't much to distinguish between 1926 and 1996. Naturally there were obvious things like the clothes and cars but the essential elements of Paris, the buildings, were the same today as they were yesterday. And tucked within the photos of this exhibit there was a shot of Passage du Caire just off the Rue d'Alexandrie that caught my eye and it the latest in a succession of "odd" things I want to see. I've resigned myself to the fact that in all likelihood the neighborhood has changed and the "magic" of the photo has been lost but I still have to see it for myself.