A Sundry Assortment of Thoughts

One of the pleasures of just walking about Paris is musing on the names of the streets. Paris has the very oddest names for its boulevards and streets. Often they are history lessons. Generals, Presidents, dignitaries, scientists, writers, and thinkers of all nations are here – there is Avenue de President Wilson, much bigger and grander than the Boulevard Auguste Blanqui, who was President of the Third Republic. There is my street – Rue Abel Hovelacque, named after an anthropologist. There is the Avenue José Maria de Heredia, an obscure poet. Someday, if not already, Serge Gainsbourg will have his own street. I am sure of it. And then there are dates – the insidious Juin 1940, when Paris fell to the Germans. Aout 1944, when it was liberated. And there are the much more mysterious references – Rue de la Reine Blanche. Avenue des Gobelins. Who or what was the White Queen? What are Gobelins? The answer is obscured, and we stroll on ignorant of their significance, but intrigued nonetheless. Then there are the humorously mundane: Rue de la Boulangerie. Bakery Street. Rue des Moulins de Pres: Street of the Windmills in the Fields? There are no numbered avenues here – the implicit order of the grid required for such nomenclature is lost in the chaos of medieval cow paths and who knows what else the crucible of history has produced to create Paris.

No, I think we Anglo-Saxons could care less about what our streets are named. Fifth Avenue – how bland in sound, yet how grand in actuality! The French knew that a street was going to be grand, so they called it Les Champs Elysées: The Elysian Fields, the closest the ancient Greeks ever got to Heaven. We Anglo-Saxons usually get lazy, and leave the names from whatever the Native Americans had called the area – this does lead to some fantastically strange highways in the South in particular (drive through Alabama, Louisiana and Western Tennessee if you simply must see for yourself), but they mean nothing to us besides an occasional stumble in pronunciation. We do have streets named after famous people, but they are usually generals and conquerors with a nice tint of American nostalgia: Washington Avenue, Columbus Avenue, Lafayette Street. But! God forbid we honor those pesky intellectuals and artists, save the ones that are really, really famous. Walt Whitman has no street in Washington DC, nor does Henry Thoreau, nor does Ambrose Bierce. It’s not wrong or bad that things are this way, just different. We esteem our thinkers in different ways: impoverishing them, not teaching our children about them, putting their works on the discount rack in Barnes and Noble.

If I ever have any sort of power of suggestion in Washington (which means never), I’m giving Kurt Vonnegut, Henry Rollins, and Nathanael Parker Willis their own grand streets right away. And while I’m at it, I’ll throw in an April 1865 and a White Queen, just for fun.

Last night I watched Jean Luc Godard's film "Breathless" (A Bout de Souffle) at a little independent cinema in the Latin Quarter. The film was part of a repertory series called "Smoke Screens" (Les Ecrans de Fumee) - a focus on the role of smoking in cinema and in watching cinema. Imagine how well this series would go in America! The link between classic film and smoking is undeniable, but in the States we just seem to say "Oh, they didn't know back then..." Apparently they still don't know in France, though the cigarette packages all have SMOKING KILLS written on them in huge letters. As for Breathless, I don't think I've ever seen two people smoke more in a movie.

Before seeing the movie, I visited the Ile St. Louis. Notre Dame de Paris is on the Ile de la Cité, and the Ile St. Louis is the slightly less visited island right to it on the Seine. There were still a lot of tourists, but it was somehow quieter, calmer. The five or six streets on the island are all not much wider than alleyways, and ice cream shops, cafés, and art galleries - each of a distinct look - line the ground level from one end of the island to the other. The quays of the island are much less crowded than those along the Right or Left banks, though equally tranquil. And now, the highlight of my story: I bought my first piece of art there! Actually, I bought two pieces of art. Passing by a gallery, I saw the name "Tim Sale" written on the poster on the window. Tim Sale is a comic book artist, known for working on Batman: The Long Halloween, Spiderman Blue, Daredevil: Yellow, and doing the artwork for the show Heroes. Intrigued, I went inside and was privileged to see original panels from the above comics. Then I chanced across a series of 90 prints that Sale had done and signed himself. Each was numbered and everything. Knowing my good friend John is a much bigger fan of the artist than I was, I decided to buy one for him. And then I thought more, and decided it would be neat to have one for myself as well. I think it was meant to be: there were only 2 left. "Vous avez de la chance." the girl working the exhibition told me. Indeed.

I felt like I had really accomplished something as I left the gallery and carried my precious cargo home. I am the owner of a piece of art! By a semi-famous artist! Somehow I feel more complete, more like I have tasted a sublime aspect of life heretofore unattained, all the more because I bought it in Paris.

A quick note about AUP students: I expected, on coming to France, that I would meet a lot of open-minded Americans who wouldn't have the sense of entitlement that I have seen in an upsetting number of NU students. Well, I was wrong. Not 100% wrong, as I have met a few interesting and open-minded individuals, but nonetheless, I have been let down on several occasions. I don't know what causes this - AUP is pretty expensive, so maybe the students who come here are generally born with several spoons in their mouths? Or they like to pretend that they were? Then again, many AUP students are visiting, like myself, and come from less pretentious schools (with the exception of the bundle of NYU students here). And they too can give off this grating sense of entitlement. Since when did professors have to bend to your whims or give you good grades because you are paying money to go here? College is sink or swim, folks, or so I'd always believed.

A few days ago, I was by the Seine and a man rode by me on his bicycle with his child in one of those backpack carriers. As he passed, the child looked at me and said "Connard!" (Asshole!), very sweetly. The man pedalled away and didn't say a word. I stood, awestruck. French people, even children, can be very randomly mean.

Last night I was eating dinner next to an American couple who were arguing, in English of course, over what to name their child. They were drawing names from all over the place, including Shakespeare and classic Hollywood and Greek myth. I'm pretty sure no one else in the restaurant knew what they were talking about. I felt as if I should have reached out to them - "Claire is a pretty name. Or how about Desdemona?" But that would have been ridiculous. And I am relatively sure that, eventually, they knew I was at least English speaking, because I was sitting there reading Henry James' The American. And yet, for a solid hour we went on unacknowledging, both speaking to the waitress in French. It was a singularly bizarre experience; I felt as if I should talk to these people because I could, and yet, I should not have because they were just trying to have a nice dinner together - in a foreign country. I'm not even sure if I can describe how strange that was for me. If the same couple were having a conversation like that in Boston, I would not have thought twice.

I never really wanted to quote Gertrude Stein

Last weekend I visited Pere Lachaise Cemetery - most famous, I believe, for being the resting place of Jim Morrison. But, there are many more people buried there who were more than just burnt out rock stars: Moliere, the famous playwright of Louis XIV's court, for instance. Or Heloise and Abelard, the real life starcrossed lovers of medieval times. Marcel Proust, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Honore de Balzac, one of the greatest writers of the 19th century. Gertrude Stein - the woman I say the woman who was at the center of the Lost Generation. The cemetery's second most famous resident is probably Oscar Wilde, whose grave had a heartbreaking poem on the back. It wasn't far from what is called the Mur des Federes, the wall where many of the insurgents of the Paris Commune of 1871 were lined up and executed by the State. I stood there for a long time, trying to find the pock marks of bullets and thinking about the situation that Paris found itself in during that calamitous period of its history. The Franco-Prussian War had just ended with the months long Seige of Paris, wherein the city's residents were forced to eat the animals in the zoo to stay alive. Directly after the Germans marched through Paris (for the first time) as a ceremonial end to the peace proceedings, the humiliated working class revolted and for a brief time were in control of the city. What followed is known as La Semaine Sanglante - The Bloody Week - wherein the government systemically hunted down and executed about 30,000 people involved in this insurgence. The last stand of the Communards, as they were called, was in and about Pere Lachaise. I can't help but think of how dramatic this story is, and how nowadays people picnic next to this wall and in the Luxembourg Gardens where the rest of the Communards were shot. I can't help but feel, especially in Paris, how gleefully unaware we are of the blood and toil buried beneath all of us. It is not just in cemeteries that we have left our ancestors; it is below our streets, in our floorboards, basements, and cellars; it is in our manicured lawns and perfectly arranged parks. Tread carefully, for you tread on history.

I find it very interesting that The Mur des Federes is juxtaposed with several monuments to the Holocaust and the Resistance. I am constantly comparing the histories of France and America in my head, and this made me think how America had no Resistance, and the Jews living in our country that were victim to the Nazi concentration camps only came to America after World War II, already displaced from their original homes. This is not to say that our history lacks drama and tragedy, for that cannot be said of any nation, but I think in the specific case of America, it lacks the "fear of war" as Gertrude Stein said. We know the fear of war-time, but it has been generations since anyone in America has had to worry about foreign invasion. And despite the rasing of Washington DC in the War of 1812, our country has never known foreign occupation - the fear of that, is the fear of war. Gertrude Stein said this could be why we still think the world is flat - metaphorically speaking, that is.

Harmony

Rilke tried to describe it, in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge: the peculiar feeling one gets when loafing about Paris on a beautiful day. It's as if the whole city is some sort of painting, some sort of cohesive whole that harmonizes with itself brilliantly. Of course, the visiter to Paris is not a part of this marvel - he is just relegated to watching and observing. It's beautiful to do so, but it's more beautiful, I imagine, to be part of it all. I've had this feeling many times, especially on Sunday, when this sense is most obvious and acute.

Take, for instance, today: I wandered into the Place des Vosges and had my breath stolen from me by the vibrantly yellow trees surrounding the whole park. Families, teenagers, lovers relaxing on benches and in sunny patches of grass. Fountains gushing. Hardly a cloud in the big blue sky. I crossed through the park, underneath the little arbor in the center, and music came to my ears. Classical music. A 10 or 12 person symphony was performing in the gallery around the plaza. They chose popular, recognizable tunes, all of which seemed to coordinate perfectly with the vision of the park. When I left the plaza into the quaint streets of the Marais, I could only wonder how it was possible for a place to be so inclusively beautiful.

Marvels of Marseille

For one of my classes I am studying the unique city of Marseille, in the South of France. As part of the class, of course, we had to spend a few days there. Here is a little summary of some things I did and saw:

This is one of the first things I saw on the morning of the first day: The Church St. Victor, home of France's oldest abbey (dating back to the 3rd century BC). The structure and the relics inside were easily the oldest man-made creations I have seen. What I found most fascinating were the cabinet of relics, which included the front of a saint's skull, and this sarcophagus of another saint, which had a human skull built into the stone work!










Next we trekked up to Notre Dame de la Garde, Marseille's most famous church. The view from the top was incredible - all brilliant blues and jagged landscape.



















Later that day, we visited a little-known part of Marseille, guided by a specialist from a nearby university. Apparently in the 17 and 1800s it was the fashion to have what was called a "bastide" - a manor surrounded by a garden, not unlike the plantation we have in the States. However, due to the dry climate of Marseille, irrigation channels and a canal had to be built in order to create the lush landscapes that I attempted to capture in my photos:














These areas were right inside the city. We wandered in the forest and countryside for a good few hours, and the entire time it felt like I was in some sort of fantasy land. I felt very privileged to see a side of the city that even the residents themselves know very little about.

Exhausted after all of the walking, most of the group returned to the hotel or went out to dinner. The next day would prove to be even more interesting...
This is the Friche de la Belle de Mai. It was a cigarette factory, but now it is an artist hive that until very recently was funded by the state. All kinds of art are produced here: painting, graffiti, theatre, poetry, metalwork, radio transmissions...Many of the artists live on the site, and use the materials from the old factory to make their work. There are rooms for theatre rehearsal, welding, radio, and even a cafe in which all the furniture and installations were made by the artists on site. Being here I thought of all the factories one sees closed down along the East Coast and in the Midwest in America, and how a program like this could greatly benefit those areas. And to imagine, the state funded this program! The community supports it, and all of the productions become open to the public at the Friche. What's more, apparently these sites are all over Europe. Perhaps this is one of the many benefits of a culture that esteems art and intellectualism...

After the Friche, we walked along the Docks, where many of the old warehouses had been converted into business offices. The architecture was interesting here, but the area seemed sadly under-utilized. There were no restaurants, cafes, or apartments - just dull, depressing offices. It's important to see this part of Marseille to know its not all some Mediterranean melange of art and partying, but I was happy to move into the Pannier (the Basket), the oldest neighborhood of the city.

This is the area of Marseille that was founded by the Phoenicians, meaning the city actually pre-dates ancient Greece! It was all narrow, winding streets on inclines. Much as I imagine streets in Greece to be. It was an interesting change from the grand boulevards of Paris.

Saturday night, my professor took us all out to a concert of a Marseilleais folk legend. The atmosphere was very un-pretentious and laid back. Some people danced, some people just watched. There was no sense of judgment; merely enjoyment. How many concerts have I had ruined by the opposite atmosphere?

Moreover, I never imagined I'd go to a concert with my one of my college professors! She was dancing and drinking wine with the rest of us. I guess I just need to have a bigger imagination - France keeps stretching mine out of shape!

Sunday we all dragged ourselves out of bed to go on a boat tour of the calanques. Calanques are a geographic structure essentially unique to Marseille. They are very similar to fjords, though smaller. One can find them all around Marseille, each with a little port at the back. Leaving the Vieux Port of Marseille, I saw up close the Chateau d'If, made famous by being the place where Edmund Dantes is imprisoned in the Count of Monte Cristo:

And here is a typical calanque:

Hard to believe that people actually etch out a living amongst these rocks and shrubs; though maybe they come into Marseille and wonder the same thing about the city-folk. As for the city folk of Marseille, I have to say they reminded me a lot of Bostonians. That's to say, they have a very gruff, prickly exterior - but often they are nicer than they seem.

This wasn't always the case, though. My friend Sylvie was insulted at a restaurant because she asked for ketchup for her French fries. I believe the words of the waiter were "Oh you are an American! Bang bang John Wayne! Cowboy! Hot dog!" Luckily, Sylvie had the dignity and the cool to inform the man that he was being rude and to leave the restaurant without saying another word. Apparently the rest of the restaurant's patrons took her side, as well. Still, it's unfortunate that these things happen, and it's a reminder that while abroad, I represent something much more than just my own personal history - I represent an entire culture, nation, and, unfortunately, government. This is the downside of democracy - when the rest of the country votes against your preference, you have to foot the bill for their choice, because it was the choice of the majority...and the rest of the world knows that.

In any case, the last stop of our trip was La Cité Radieuse, a sort of urban utopia designed by the famous architect Le Corbusier. This skyscraper at the edge of Marseille was built to be a self-inclusive habitation with affordable and comfortable housing. There used to be stores, coiffures, restaurants, even a school and daycare inside. In the picture above, you can see what used to be the school on the right. Unfortunately, the space became chic and trendy, the bourgeois took over, and it was no longer so affordable. The shops disappeared, the school closed, and a hotel claimed part of the building. The community was gone, but the structure remained. It was absolutely fascinating to go inside and up to the roof, seeing this husk of a utopia amidst the decidedly avant-garde design of Le Corbusier. The roof was almost a concrete park, with plenty of places to sit or lay. And the view of Marseille was unparalleled. Unfortunately, my camera's battery was dying by this point in the trip, so my photographs are far too few.

After that, we returned to Paris, exhausted and happy to be going back. It was odd to long for a place that wasn't technically my home, to call it "home" only because it was slightly more comfortable and less foreign than where I had been. Last night I hung out on the Pont des Arts with a friend to watch the lights dance on the Seine because I missed them; it was an odd experience, really. I've missed Boston or even Atlanta before, but never in that way. I missed them because they were familiar, not because they were beautiful or intoxicating. Paris is rated an Alpha World City for this reason - you don't have to speak the language to be embraced by its charm and splendor.

Wonderings and Wanderings pt. 2

This past weekend I visited the region of Champagne via bus. The French countryside is stunning. It was a beautiful sunny day, and the fields just rolled out on either side of us, dotted by clusters of trees. The vineyards covered the gentle hills, and every so often a village would appear. All of the little towns were centered around the church, exactly as I had heard. I saw no strip malls, gas stations, billboards, or greasy diners as I would have in America. One didn't get the sense of going from town to town. It was more akin to passing by a town as one drove through the country.

Our first stop was at Pommeray, one of the oldest and most prestigious Champagne producers. We descended this staircase into the cellars:



There we were taken through a series of chalk cellars where the champagne was stored. The guide spoke moderately flawed English and was not terribly informative. What I found more interesting was that the Pommeray family has traditionally been a patron of the arts, and the whole compound was littered with contemporary art installations. In the dim light of the cellars, some of them were a little frightening, such as a room in which there were shadows for nonexistent objects atop pedestals.

There was another room in which there were vintage guitar amps and guitars set up horizontally on stands. Live birds flew about the room and made music when they landed. Another room had a life size inflatable tank. It was surreal, to say the least, but very enjoyable. The French seem to have no qualms juxtaposing the ancient and the modern. In fact, they seem to embrace it - for better or worse.

The second stop of the trip was Le Chevalier Blanc, an inn of sorts where we ate a three course lunch. It came with Champagne, red wine, and coffee. I think it was the best meal I've had since coming to Paris. And that says a lot, as one would imagine.


After lunch we visited Notre Dame de Reims, famous for being the site of Joan of Arc's consecration and the coronation of many French kings. Being a sucker for Gothic structures of any kind, I found it to be simply magnificent. After seeing this and Chartres, I have to admit that I think the best cathedrals in France are outside of Paris. Notre Dame de Paris is an incredible and historic icon, but I have my reservations which I will blog about later. Reims, like much of France, fairly reverberates with significance and history. I saw Joan of Arc's chapel, and stood in front of the altar where kings were crowned. Just seeing that in writing makes my soul quiver. The presence of history is all-pervading here, and it seems to lend another quality to life that is lacking in America. Somehow, and maybe this is just my own invention, life seems to mean more here. With relics of Western civilization everywhere, the struggles to achieve the comfortable lives we all lead today are more prominent. In France, one can feel the pain of history. America's history is different. Someone pointed out to me that in America, we are all technically strangers to our own land. The Native Americans were here first, but we seized the land, made it our own, and buried their history beneath shopping malls and skyscrapers. The pain of our history is there only sometimes, and even then it does not include the Black Plague, or the 100 Years War, or the Wars of Religion, or The Terror.

After Reims, we went to another champagne cellar, G.H. Mumm. Hemingway drinks this brand (which he calls Mumms) in The Sun Also Rises. This cellar was more corporate and far less atmospheric, but the tour was more informative. We got to see how they extract the dead yeast residue from the bottles over a period of months, and we got to look at a museum of old champagne machinery. One could really get the sense of the phrase "wine culture" and know the patience and hard work that goes into producing champagne. And, of course, we got to taste the champagne. I preferred the drier flavor as opposed to the sweet "demi-sec"; the sugar content was 8 grams to 40 grams per liter, respectively. I learned that apparently in the 18th century they liked their champagne extra sweet at 100 grams.

After Mumm, we headed back to Paris. I think everyone on the bus was asleep within twenty minutes of the departure.

Anarchy, Consumerism, and Flash Photography in the Louvre

Ah, the Louvre.

Let me preface this post by noting that I don’t take photographs of paintings. It seems pointless and slightly disrespectful to me. We go to museums to see and feel art – if you want to experience a painting, then there is no reason not to go to it rather than staring at someone’s soulless picture of it. On top of that, when you use a flash to take a picture of a painting, you are damaging it.

That being said, here is one thing I have found odd here: though the signs with long lists of prohibitions (standard to all French famous spots) are clear about flash photography being forbidden, there are shockingly few guards around to enforce this rule…anywhere.

I was horrified, then, when I visited the Louvre on the first Sunday of September when admission was free. The Mona Lisa looked like a red carpet celebrity, half-grinning to a crowd of maybe fifty flash bulbs inside a loud and busy Louvre. No wonder she’s falling apart! While that case was certainly the worst, there were countless other paintings that received similar treatment. And I didn’t see one guard to stop it. Maybe they had been overwhelmed. The place was like a mall at Christmas, except people were scrambling and fighting over photo-opps instead of Nintendos.

Speaking of malls, there is one inside the Louvre. Sort of. Beneath the front grounds of the palace is a vast, vaulted cave full of stores, metro entrances, and escalators. And lines. Lines of people waiting to get inside. If you come to France, be prepared to stand in line, no matter what you do. The good news is that there’s a food court. And the food court has beer.

There is a glass pyramid similar to the one out front which extends symmetrically from the ceiling into the center of this chaos, creating a mirror reflection of the structure above. It is the hub of this odd mirror world of tourists flitting and shopping to-and-fro beneath the lawn where kings once strode and battles were fought. This odd injection of what I think is degrading consumerism in the midst of sacred national monuments is completely and utterly common in France. It’s one of those paradoxes that I know I will be writing a lot about.

PS. There’s a Starbucks right by one of the entrances, if you are ever jonesing while you are in Paris.

PPS Don’t tell me if you decide to go, as I may hurt you. It’s a Starbucks. Inside the freaking Louvre! What a world…

Sunday in Paris, or How Paul Verlaine Saved My Life

It's actually quite difficult to eat in Paris, believe it or not. At least, dinner seems to be quite a problem for me as of late. Just the other day, a friend and I went out to get food around 5:15. Unbeknown to us, most restaurants stop serving food between 5:00 and 7:00. Many even shut down entirely. Our first stop was Chez Gladines, a raucous pub-style restaurant that we had been to before. On the previous occasion, we had been rather sassed by the management for various reasons that remain unclear. This time, in true American fashion I think, we returned determined to be liked. We stepped in announcing our decree: We will eat here, now! The management informed us that it was not serving food until 7:45. Defeat.

We wandered on for the next 45 minutes. My favorite creperie, closed. The interesting-looking Chez Nathalie, closed. Our hunger increased all the while. Eventually we went back to my apartment to snack on bread before going into the Latin Quarter to eat, where the rest of our plans for the evening were to take place. By then it was 8pm, and the only obstacle to our hunger was making a decision between so many different places to eat.

But there's another side to this story - while restaurants reopen at 8, many of the stores selling basic necessities close then. I have quickly discovered that if you need any staple item after 8 at night, you will either have to pay dearly for it or wait until the next morning. Every pharmacy in the city closes at 8, as do many of the “tabac” stores that sell various convenience items. The same goes for virtually any retail store, supermarket, or boulangerie (bakery). What remains open, then? Restaurants, cafés, bistrots, brasseries, bars, creperies – all different names for the same beast. Scattered here and there are Alimentation Générale stores specializing in questionable looking fruit, expired packages of cookies and crackers, and of course - wine. There are a few places that remain open late that do not adhere to this rule – Shakespeare & Co. and La Musée d’Erotisme come to mind.

My point here is that if you need food after 8pm, you have to go out to eat, most likely. If you’re cooking after that point and you realize you’re short on vinegar, you’d better ask your neighbor for some because any store selling it will probably be closed. If you are a generally healthy-eating, organic food-loving, tree-hugging American-bred hippie such as myself, either you or your principles are screwed after 8pm.

This rule is even worse on Sundays. I thought Boston was quiet on Sundays, almost eerily so. But about 60-70% of Paris closes up for the entire day every week, and presumably, spends the day outside. The city is very much awake and bustling, but not its commerce section. I was shocked when I stepped into a nearby shopping mall (in search of a wireless network) and found that the entire thing was closed. What doesn’t close for the whole day closes earlier than usual, at least.

Towards the end of the day one Sunday, I realized that I had absolutely no food to eat in my apartment. Panic gripped me. No, no, it would be okay, I reassured myself. There’s an organic grocery store down the street. They will be open.

They weren’t. My favorite creperie was closed. My bakery was closed. I was going to starve! I had only 5 Euro and my debit card in my pocket. All of the little stores I passed selling falafel or pizza à emporter (to go) would not take plastic, and had nothing on the menu that cost less than 6 Euro. I cursed the one Euro I had given to the man playing fiddle on the metro.

On I wandered, stomach groaning. I would have to find an ATM and settle for a café – but I had so much homework to do (and yet I neglect it still by writing this). I made a turn down a random street crushed between two high rise apartment buildings, trying to suppress my stomach’s complaint at the prospect of waiting until breakfast to eat.

At the end of the street, I found myself at the Place de Verlaine –a square dedicated to one of the 19th century’s finest poets. And what do you know – there was a boulangerie open, and a queue was forming outside the door. I was saved! Thank you Paul Verlaine, for writing well enough to merit a Place (pronounced ploss by the way) in Paris – a Place where this bakery had moved in and remained open late on Sundays. I had a baguette (only ,87 euro!) – a freshly baked, fluffy, buttery baguette that was still warm in my hands. It was half eaten by the time I returned home.