Paris has the reliability of a good time. Good food and people who are easy going to a considerable degree if only to promote consistency with their characteristic and prized national identity. Yes, also the existential heart beats beneath the streets of the city of love. And maybe more so than other cities, there seems this slow, melancholy brooding in the steps of old men and women on the streets, and the Seine that runs through the city, beneath the feet that pass over bridges connecting old and new districts and land marks of little or profound significance. I come to think they must know this place too well, and for so long, that they’ve worn away the lustre and live trudging in the deep.
First night, after passing the day walking around and interacting enough to arrive at these impressions, we met Ashleigh’s friend at the Saint- Michel fountain and walked through streets lined with bars until we happened upon a piano bar where the french signer and pianist sang mostly american classics as the French patrons out for a good time danced and sang along. Everyone seemed good humored, easy, and free for no reason. My being unable to drink, it took a bit of a vicarious perceptive effort to take on the effects of the atmosphere.
And here I wonder if it’s all a delusion- the happiness for no reason. Is it honest felt? Or maybe the French just know the deep sad current of life too well not to get caught in a joyous delirium. I can only imagine I’ll experience more of this moving further south in Europe--that ‘raison d’etre’ that needs no ‘raison d’etre.’
I find refreshing in this that at the end of the day after having walked what felt like miles to get to the top of the eiffel tower, starving, feet hurt, thinking damn there’s no one around here.. if I had to run I don’t know if I could, and then findind a descending staircase with a sign- the word decipherable as “metro” only from as close as a 10 foot distance, gothic lettering that seems to suggest the station’s no longer functioning -then there shurgging that off, walking down, buying a ticket, sitting on a bench claimed by colorful grafitti, seeing one person waiting too and hoping the train you think is coming in 25 minutes is in fact the one you need to take. Then comes the resolution that it doesn’t really matter all that much because there’s nowhere you really need to be so you remedy your discomfort by spliting a hazelnut chocolate bar out of the subway vending machine.. and...just...trust. sigh.
Then there it is and you follow the color-coded map and the lady on the intercom who repeats each stop twice; once as your appraoching in an inquisitive tone as if she’s not sure that’s where you are but she’s supposing “ L’hotel de ville?” Then the stop and the sign, and there it is; yes, she was right, “L’hotel de ville.” And her voice reads that she’s relieved herself to see it’s so. I can’t help but find something so uniquely French in this minute aspect of quotidian life such as transport. The French are naturally curious, dubious, and in pursuit of absolute reality and therefore necessarily abandoning the type of complaceny that would be more characteristic of say the British whose intercom announces and arrives at each tube stop with absolute, unalterable certainty, precision and promptness.
In Paris I had many my share of moments I found were like following a whimsical current aboard a boat as a passenger uncertain of what lie ahead but necessarily adjusting to the changing natures of the waters.
Walking around a foreign city after a delicious cup of French café au lait can incite a disposition of ecstasy, though contained and thoughtful, for the thrill of the known that once lived in the imagination but outside the experience then merges with the realm of the actual. For example, one may always know the eiffel tower exists and imagine in and view pictures, but standing in front of it gives you the pleasure of at least ticking the box that you've been there and discovering what it's really all about. It’s an incredibly triumphant sensation when real life meets or exceeds the expectations of your dreams, and if it doesn’t -it’s better and more beautiful because it’s more truthful, and I welcome a change of mind just as much as I do a confirmation of it- for it in someway propels me forward and I’ve gained a bit more leverage on the wisdom of the worldly.
Then there’s the gradual decent from the high. You see travel in all its novelty is not without its patterns. The rush of sights, the current’s splash up over the bow of the boat that wets your face with a gentle mist of blissful experience, like new acquaintances, energizing conversations, the loom of noble spirits about an architectual time capsule in Père Lachaise cemetery, and the fresh gusts of air that envelop you emerging from the metro to a new street, a new hunt, adventure, and an eventual victorious find---which then turns into cold, meandering want for comfort and warmth you either accept you wont find or settle down in a restaurant to afford youself a few hours of luxury, or at least a cup of coffee and directions to your next target. Everyday lacking consistency and delightfully contradictory in taste, sight, and sound.
One day we: Walk around Monmarte, get crepes ragou at a little hole in the wall where a nice couple sits next to us and they smile, and double take smiling again, because us three girls speaking both French and English are smiling too; laughing about the rain imagining God’s spiting or perhaps challenging us. Today we will sit here and wait for the one woman to make our crepes and coffee along with the rest of the patient customers, and walk up to Sacré Coeur, avoiding the tourist traps under the guise of needy people wanting to make a buck. Or is it the other way around? It’s both but you can’t stop once you have once, because you only remember how bad it made you feel- lest you give into that feeling again. You can see almost the whole city from the top of Sacré Coeur, but it’s cold and the wind’s blowing rough in February, so we walk down and add a little skip in our step to stay quick and fresh and giggle at the reactions of pedestrians to the playful folly of our little group, we at times made exhibition of. Enter boutique, and another boutique and try on clothes we don’t buy but talk about- and we would have pet the shop keeper’s sleeping dog- but, "she bites."
So tonight, let’s go somewhere else. We’ve had enough of buttery croissants and cheese and crepes. So we go to this Spanish tapas bar, get directions online which prove difficult to follow, though we eventually get there. Settle up to some Sangria and aps, and for me a fruity coconut milk with a glow stick so as to not risk the chance of feeling “shocking” as my British doctor put it when he handed me the antibiotic for my wisdom tooth infection. Yes, ouch! But darn..no drinking in Paris? Mais le vin! but the wine!
Though a twist of fate led me to forget my medicine for one night so I thought after considerable deliberation and consultation with my friends who donned their doctors' masks for the seriousness of such a decision, that taking a break from the affect of the drug could afford me a couple drinks- from which I felt shockingly not shocking but delightfully at ease in Paris with one old friend and one new.
The tapas hot spot was owned by a handful of lovely gentlemen who after casually inquiring as to how us ladies were enjoying Paris, and hearing our response unfulfilled by a night on the town, offered to guide us to an authentic Frenchy French bar experience- I was happy to forgo the dreaded club house music-strobe light nightmare flash forward I had from an earlier suggestion. So we get drinks on the house, wait for the boys to close up shop and head out. The bar is packed, but you wouldn’t have known it from the outside because the owners insist on the windows and doors staying shut so as not to disturb the neighbors. (It’s a 5am bar.) There are two floors and it’s like a little corner appartment really with the hanging chandeliers and wall sconces on the sides of both large flower wallpapered rooms, where hung decorations of still lifes done of fruit in bowls. Frenchy french indeed! And smoke everywhere.
Julien, the bartender who accompanied us is a painter, originally from Columbia- though he's lived in Paris 9 years. We talk about art and writers, American and other, and when the bar closes go to his place which happens to be a gorgeous condo in the financial district of Paris of a friend of his and investor in his art who allows him to use the place, under construction as it is, as his private studio. He shows us his work, and I ask questions he answers without reservation and I marvel at the open mind strangers bear to other strangers and potential friends given the right circumstance, talking, scanning for something new and different in one another and resonating on points of similarity or sameness in thought. Julien and I fall into a discussion of dreams, the sleeping kind, and he disappears on one of these notes of registered likeness and returns with a deck of cards, lifts me up from the hand off the carpeted floor we sat Indian style on saying “follow me darling,” in his casual but kind manner. We sit down to a table and I notice, as he tells me, that he’s about to read my fortune with tarrot cards. I can hardly believe my luck-- not because I consider myself very superstitious to have struck an opprtunity to decipher what the stars have in store for me, but rather, that I consider the chain of coincidental events and encounters strangely fortuitous, perhaps from the positive sentiment the people and experiences of the evening inspired and feeling them the destination of directions from a sound instinctual compass. The evening seemed the perfect fusion of rational discernment and creative impulse.
Staring at the tarrot cards, and then staring at Julien - who looked into my eyes repeating the question “ What is one question you want to ask?” And all I’m thinking is no don’t ask that, maybe that but no that’s too revealing for even a stranger, and then settled on a very vague but pointed question. "Will I have success in my life..." I know it's such a vague question, and I chose so by design 1. to protect myself from too exact an answer and 2. to withhold my specific desires from my inquisitor. I don’t think it would be proper to share it here...or the results that seemed a perfect response, and Julien's explication which seemed to betray his true identity as the oracle instead of the artist. Yes his words, and what he said, encouraged me in a way to make a step or a change of thought and action in my life. Though more so, the interest he took in me, to ask me the questions he did, to even attempt at the council which he did without an eye for time and with the patience of a friend brought me to a disposition which found coincidence serrendipitous in retrospect.
You can talk of fear, and the rush of doing what you’re afraid of because it can teach you so much. Something that you probably already knew in your deepest most childish self, but were afraid you would discover the contrary: that you couldn’t, perhaps other than, you could. Don’t worry, I’m not about to launch myself off a cliff into icy waters- but coming back to this realization and having that thought-spark warmed to a fire by another like-mind set my soul ablaze with liberation and more importantly awakening encouragement. Enough vagaries to bore you with the ‘spiritual’ underpinnings of my perspective. But reflection makes me feel as if I can take an experience floating in memory and stamp it to the walls of my mind for good, bringing its outline to the forefront when I return to this and other writings.
We left Julien’s apartment as the sun came up over the hill that we climbed to the metro station. All kissed cheek to cheek in the true French way and parted on possible plans for coffee or just to meet someday again. Making it back to the hostel felt like the final mile of a marathon. The other hostel mates sat at the typical breakfast of baguette and Jam, tea or coffee, we grabbed some and sat down, high-heels and hair-blown and I for one relished in the looks that scanned for confirmation of our being out all night. I’m sure my smug grin said it all, laughing at myself and, well everything, maybe just life- There's always more to say.
