It sometimes seems this whole City is one big combination cliche of every movie or TV scene you've ever seen near the Seine, except each small scene is truly what makes Paris, Paris. (My favorite English teacher just twitched in her grave.)
Today, for instance, I took the bus to one of the well-known shopping areas, rue de Sevres and Babylon ("babby-yone," they say). Coming back, many Euros lighter but laden with ritzy shopping bags (including one sprouting a real rose and a handful of rose petals,) I stopped on the hectic corner of Boulevard St. Germain and Boulevard San Michel to sit in a small park and drink a Perrier purchased from a street vendor. (Okay, okay, it was a Coke.)
Sheltered by abundantly leafy trees and bordered by the Roman ruins of the Cluny Museum, I was serenaded by a street musician playing (on his accordion, of course) "The Anniversary Waltz" and "April In Paris." His dog, with the hungry-puppy stare perfected, guarded the donation cup. Two old men, both smoking, huddled on benches, one reading a newspaper, one eating a baguette. A few steps away, a street market offered fresh fruits, veggies, roasted sausage and chicken, tacky jewelry and the omnipresent bread. In the background, a Parisian ambulance wailed its own theme song.
Cliche? Lord, yes. Pure Paris? Absolutement!
One of the many ghost ladies of Paris ambled into the park, her spine curved like an escargot, her legs as thin as the stems of flowers in her tissue-wrapped bouquet. These intrepid relics, all well over 80, must have endured great nutritional deprivation in their growth years as they are all under five feet tall and crippled by bone disease, yet they attack each painful step with determination and don't hesitate to clear their paths with cane, shopping cart or umbrella. Oh, yes...she was dressed impeccably from hat to high heel, as though the opera were but an hour away.
Earlier, while wandering down rue du Dragon, a twisting, tiny street lined with exquisite shoe shops, I watched an older gentleman, maybe 70, halt abruptly before a store window, instantly mesmerized by a pair of needle-nose Louis Vuitton shoes. He himself wore purple suede slippers that exactly matched his jacket.
On my final lap home I stopped by the vintner's to pick up wine for dinner with my visiting daughter-in-law. "Cabernet," I say, sure of my choice. "That's crap," he says, "buy Bordeaux." So I did. I tried once more for white wine. "Have you chardonnay, monsieur?" He shakes his head. "Buy zees, madame," and hands me a 2008 vin de Bourgogne -- proof that our California wines are ridiculed in Paris.
Struggling back to the apartment with my day's purchases, I heard behind me the confident, swift staccato of heels and stepped aside to let her pass: leather boots, black tights, very short skirt precisely coordinated with tailored top, neck swathed in yards of scarf, flawless makeup, subtle jewelry and stylishly haphazard dark hair, all packaged in a haze of perfume and speaking into a cell phone-- just another one of the thousands of Parisiennes who are a species unto themselves.
Natural selection has worked well in France, and these women bear the same Gallic face seen in 18th century portraits, with charcoal eyes, a nose and cheekbones unafraid to be noticed, and an air of cool assurance. Even the genetically short-changed seem beautiful, those under five feet, two inches tall have legs four feet in length, and all are slim as a shadow. They are born to be to be admired, loved and envied, non?
The equally gorgeous men with their seductive glances and sardonic smirks are all listed on www.IAmAHotFrenchMan.com.
Despite what you may see in the news of rioting French youths, there is a civility, a courtesy, a formality and restraint here in daily contacts that the America I know discarded in the 1950's. I loathe generalizations, but my impression of life in France is that it is lived without excess -- that "just enough" is perfect and anything more is simply crass and unnecessary.
You don't have to fight your way into items' packaging -- thin paper works just as well. One person doesn't require 2500 square feet in which to live -- a small, one bedroom apartment is fine, thank you, and oui, I can walk up the three flights. Baby strollers are just that, a conveyance for a toddler, not a vehicle designed to cushion a moon landing. An automobile? With this transportation system? Ah, it is to laugh! I've seen potholes in the sidewalks with NO orange cones, no barricades and no warning signs, and (presumably) no lurking personal injury attorneys. More often than not, shops list their open hours as just two or three days per week. Work is not an obsession here, but the enjoyment of life may be.
I know -- all generalizations and all cliche -- didn't I already say Paris is a city packed with cliches? Their abundance doesn't make them any less true, however, and I'll remember these 30 days in Paris forever. In fact, I'm changing the instructions for my tombstone: "She worked, had twins and grandchildren, and spent a month in Paris."
These pictures are from an afternoon spent at the Tuileries, a large and beautiful garden next to the Louvre (also in the pictures). To photo critics -- these were taken about noon, which accounts for the flat light -- sorry.)
I think it's interesting to note that most of the people I encounter or overhear speak French, even in museums and well-known tourist attractions, which to me means foreigners are in the minority and the native French love to enjoy their City.
