France as a Happening
What made our
latest trip to France, in July, both charming and relaxing was that we
had no real plans at all. The fact that this was our seventh trip in as
many years to France made the Parisian portion seem old-hat. We felt we
knew the city well enough to simply wander and be open to discovery
without obligation or necessity. Let the city take over.
As I tried to understand the experience I came to several conclusions:
- Tempering one's Francophilic exuberance at simply being in France permits calmer assimilation of the whole experience. The first few times I visited Paris I felt culturally engorged and occasionally overwhelmed, a sensation some friends of ours (first time visitors) related when we met them during the second week of our trip. In the case of Paris, familiarity definitely breeds content.
- Travel, particularly repetitive travel, is one way of recalling your life. As we passed by familiar cafes, by happenstance rather than by design, an inevitable sense of déja vu crept upon us. The associations to past trips came insidiously. They were reassuring, amusing, and occasionally distressing.
In keeping with the
ambling style of our trip it seems à propos to comment on it in
distinctly haphazard fashion. Consider it a journey through Serendipity.
On
arrival at Charles de Gaulle Airport I noted an attractive, blond
mother wheeling her child in a stroller while waiting for the baggage.
Her father was outside the claim area window guarding his Peugeot. She
wheeled the child over and held him up for grandpa to see. Minutes
later I saw her with her mother in an open alley smoking a cigarette.
She had been on our plane for eight hours and obviously dealt with
first things first. The baggage could wait. We were definitely in
France.
Every time we visit
Paris we see doubles of people we know from home. This year we saw no
one but two friends of ours who had never been to Paris before claimed
they saw the two of us walking down a street in an outlying suburb. We
were each wearing a Walkman and carrying a French newspaper. All this
en route in from Charles de Gaulle by taxi.
Within
two hours of our arrival in Paris we were eating salade niçoise in a
small Rive Gauche bistrot waiting for out hotel room to be ready. After
lunch we set out to visit les bouquinistes. It was raining lightly and
many of them were closed but as we neared the Pont Neuf we discovered
M. Gayrau, a vendor and pastel artist from whom we have purchased art
every year for the past three for the modest price of $20.
After
our first night in our rented apartment near the Eiffel Tower, the male
maid came in and tidied every thing up. When we came back late in the
afternoon from traipsing around our toiletries, magazines, books and a
few items of misplaced clothing had been neatly piled. I felt as if he
was trying to rearrange our lives, or at least our lifestyle.
A
visit to the gazebo in the Jardin des Plantes on our second day in
Paris was amusing. After navigating what was called a maze (in reality
a curlicue path leading to the gazebo) we encountered a
thirty-something couple making out, being watched (less than four feet
away) by a thirty-something man in Levis and an anorexic looking
twenty-something girl reading with her back turned to everything.
L'Occitane
retail stores are all over the place--which is fine because their
products are fabulous--but did we really have to stop in every one we
passed? My wife's response, "I just like to spray whenever I can."
Actually it’s very utilitarian: a French bath on the run, particularly
during a heat wave.
After an
exhaustingly hot day (we’d left our apartment at 8AM) we collapsed in
the Jardin du Luxembourg around 3PM. We found two comfortable sloping
chairs to sit in, using two upright chairs as footstools. We slept for
forty-five minutes in the shade and awakened amidst other somnolent
park denizens and a handful of paperback readers, all French. In how
many parks in major cities could you do that?
Paris
Plage, Mayor Delanoe's yearly effort to help Parisians beat the summer
heat, is a scene. Actually, it is a place to be seen. Stretching along
the Right Bank from the Pont des Arts to the Quai Henri IV, the Plage
had a variety of offerings for those suffering l'ennui de l'été. There
were areas for Tai Chi, climbing, water games, sandcastle building,
rollerblading, and pétanque, as well as a writing workshop, water
labyrinths, and a childrens' corner. Our favorite was the brumisateur,
a fine spray of water under which strollers could cool off.
Mostly
though, ambling past the sand dunes, palm trees and umbrellas, it was
difficult to discern who the voyeurs were: those on and off the beach
were looking at each other with equal curiosity and amusement.
The
debate over William Carlos Williams' poem The Red Wheelbarrow has
finally been settled. We happened on The Red Wheel Barrow, an
English-speaking bookstore on Rue St. Paul, and bought the British
edition of Harry Potter; my wife (a curious librarian) wanted to see
how the book had been modified for the US edition. Like "lorry" would
really throw American kids for a loop. Curious about the genesis of the
name of the store, I asked the clerk about it.
"When
the owner was trying to get the necessary permits as an American to
open a bookstore, she had to jump through. She was told, 'It all
depends,' over and over again. When one permit would come through, she
would have to deal with the next, and start the whole process all over
again and was told, 'Well, this depends...’ So the store's name is a
metaphor for the process of its existence."
We
experienced no anti-American antagonisms in the two weeks we were in
France. The closest we came was in an apartment building near the Bois
de Vincennes. We had entered an elevator with our French friend, a
quirky and talented father of two boys whom we have known for years. As
the doors were closing, a slightly inebriated neighbor of his entered,
chuckling to himself. I decided to make light of the situation and
began teasing my friend in French about his inability to choose the
correct button for his floor.
The man asked me, "Etes-vous Roumanian?"
"No, Américain," I replied, wondering if I really had a Roumanian-French accent and what that was anyhow.
Without hesitation he replied in perfect English, "Well, none of us are perfect."
My
friend Vincent, the photographer mentioned above has a theory about
Parisian pigeons. Simply put he finds them reflective of their locale.
Thus, Parisian pigeons are dirty, loud, likely sick and unworthy of
human contact. The healthy pigeons in the Bois de Vincennes, on the
other hand, can share your pique-nique.We
went to a Bureau de Poste to get some stamps. A man entered and, waving
a card, said to all of us, "Excusez-moi." His card said "I am a
diabetic" in French, Spanish, German and English. Try as I might I
could not think of a reason why a diabetic should get preferential
treatment in a post office. Maybe it is a reflection of the
thoughtfulness of the French social service system.
Danon
yogurt makes many exotic yogurts not generally available in the United
States: e.g. fig, rhubarb, etc. One we got addicted to was fiber. Most
intriguing was the advertising blurb on its package: cést une
délicieuse alliance entre l'onctuosité de BIO et las finesse de céréale
gourmandaise. Can anyone explain this to me?
The
melon festival in Pernes Les Fontaines is a once-a-year celebration at
the peak of the Cavallion melon season. The lavender fields were
beginning to wane but we drank lavender lemonade and bought a jar of
lavender honey. The real coup, however, was a bottle of Cavallion
liquer, which the purveyor suggested we use "as an aperitif or with un
peu de champagne." As Randy of the Redwoods (of Firesign Theater) used
to say, "Either way's ok with me."
Happenings:
Auberge de Beaucet: a restaurant we happened on in Beaucet (Provence).
We ate a three-course meal there at 1:00PM, knowing we would eat a full
diner in an elegant restaurant eight hours later. Sometimes you just
have to suck it up and go with the flow. After all, food is a sacrament
and good food is heaven.
Yoko
Ono: was on display at the Musée de l'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
Quirky, interactive and a welcomed surprise. Photos with an audiotape
of her coughing in the background lent an edge to the exhibit along
with a film of her having her clothes slowly cut off her seated body.
New words we learned:
Boisson--Jody said she "saw it everywhere." No wonder, the temperatures were close to 90.
Coccinelle--Jody loves ladybugs and was tickled to shop in grocery stores in Provence with that name.
Démangeaison--Jody
had one and I had to look up the proper word to find her the
appropriate lotion, Exomega (cream with Omega 6). It worked wonders.
I
actually saw Lance Armstrong for all of five seconds, maybe less. While
we were in Provence, a friend, his wife and four-month old son decided
to drive an hour and twenty minutes to a sprint point midway in the
eighth étape. We arrived in the tiny town of Raims and walked to the
end of the sprint, an inflated arch over the road. Viewers (including a
fifty-something blonde in a black bikini) were lined up only one deep
along the sides for about a half a mile. It was cloudless and hot. A
hefty French matron sitting under a made-to-order canopy offered my
friend's wife and baby a shaded chair and I took the opportunity to
explain that I was both her friend and pediatrician and that most new
mothers from US never travel without their pediatrician. The breakaway
group of ten cyclists came through nineteen minutes before the peleton
with Lance in the lead. As they sped by I heard a burp from behind me,
followed by forceful vomiting from a five-year-old boy. The French
matron looked at me and asked in a tone that was both question and
command, "Pediatrie!?" I held my finger to my lips and said,
"Shhhhhhhhhh," just as Lance came by. Without a moment's hesitation and
with unerring French intuition she said, "Incognito," and nodded
approbation.
I didn’t realize it
until our six days in Provence were at an end but I never wore my
watch, not once. Time had no relevance. We awoke whenever, napped
whenever, swam whenever, and usually ate late. Dinner began earliest at
nine and lasted two hours at least. And so to bed on a full stomach.
Neither of us slept that well, perhaps because we were too excited to
awaken and do nothing all over again.
A
call to the US Embassy in Paris at the end of our trip to try to find
out the US customs allowance revealed a phone mail system message I had
never heard: "This call may be taped for security reasons."
I
have no room for new posters in my house or office so why did I bring
my strapped plastic poster tube on this trip? Actually, I didn’t
exactly bring it; I left it at Charles de Gaulle Aeroport at the start
of our trip. Jody had told me not to bring it in the first place. "No
more posters," were her exact words. So we grabbed our bags and left
the tube at CDG, only realizing it a day later and deciding not to call
Air France to track it down. Within days of our return a letter arrived
from Air France saying they had a piece of luggage they thought
belonged to us. For kicks I acknowledged that it did, wanting to see
how long it took to reach us. A week later a call from Delta: we could
pick it up in the baggage room any time.
Did
we buy posters? Sure. A fabulous historical poster commemorating the
Centtenaire de Tour de France showing a cyclist being showered by two
bystanders pouring water from wine bottles. A three-euro poster of the
melon festival in Pernes les Fontaines. A poster by Tobia Rava, a
Jewish Venetian artist we discovered two years ago while walking the
Place des Vosges. His work, based on the Kabala, was too expensive for
us so when we saw a poster of one of his pieces for ten euros we jumped
at the opportunity. I have always wondered whether the poster becomes
the experience or merely evokes a little bit of it.
The
day before we left, Pariscope announced that the grounds of Roland
Garros Stadium and the Tennis Museum would be open for free public
visits. Our rental apartment was not far by métro. I considered going
but we had to pack and organize things for our return home. Since we
finished by two o'clock we could have gone, but decided to walk down
rue St. Dominique, a street we had discovered a few days earlier. The
stadium will likely still be there next time and maybe we will even
plan to see the French Open and let the rest of the trip just happen.
Back
to the beginning: On our first night in Paris we ate dinner at Au Vieux
Paris, a restaurant bordering the north side of Notre Dame. The table
on the street was too low for my knees so we opted for a heavily
decorated room upstairs. We felt as if we were eating in someone's
bedroom. Dinner was delicious and when we had finished after two hours,
my wife insisted on speaking French. She loves to ask for the check and
give her compliments to the chef.
"L'addition, s'il vous plait, et mes compliments au chef," she crowed bravely.
The
waiter smiled and beckoned for her to come down to the kitchen. I
offered my credit card and followed them downstairs. "Take a picture,
Lou," Jody exhorted as she moved closer to the mustachioed chef, who
was now beaming. As I took the photo, both of them were--beaming, that
is. When we left the restaurant Jody allowed as how the chef had put
his hand firmly on her butt while I was shooting the photo. For a
moment I thought about Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Boudin, a book I
put down after the first chapter. Lascivious, horny and controlling
chefs. But this was different, I decided; this was a compliment to my
wife.
Mes compliments au chef indeed.
--
Louis Borgenicht is a pediatrician/writer living in SLC, Utah. He's the co-author, with his son Joe, of The Baby Owner's Manual: Operating Instructions, Trouble-Shooting Tips, and Advice on First-Year Maintenance.
Louis Borgenicht is a pediatrician/writer living in SLC, Utah. He's the co-author, with his son Joe, of The Baby Owner's Manual: Operating Instructions, Trouble-Shooting Tips, and Advice on First-Year Maintenance.
