News from Paris

Quick, since I have to go to bed, here are the two events that have been clashing for space on the front page of French newspapers today:

1. A strike of the main transport unions shut down the métro, RER, and trains all day long.

2. Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Cécilia have filed for a divorce.

For those who don't read French, the New York Times tidily lumps these two stories into one, making them into a sort of personality tale about the head of state (which, I think, is a typically American way to frame things).

I don't really have an opinion about story number two (except: about time!), and haven't fully decided what I think about the first. I think that will depend on if I have to walk six kilometers to St. Lazare again...

PS. The answer, I think, is yes, I will.

PPS. My feet hurt.

an embarrassingly earnest post

It's autumn here and feels like it, too. Like I said last time (so long ago! I'm sorry, Mom!) everything now has the feeling of la vie quotidienne rather than some great Parisian adventure. I go to class, I go to work, I go to cafés. All of these things are great-- though classes could be a little more, um, comprehensible-- but as normal as they can get while happening in Paris. I feel like I barely notice anymore when I take public transportation, for instance. I just get on and don't think about my surroundings until somehow I get off 30 minutes and two changes later. I mean, I'll notice some things, like an obnoxious accordion player waving his collection cup around in my face or a couple embracing each other like the next metro stop means a year long seperation (which, unfortunately, it never does), but even then, my reaction is more "here we go again"-- nothing more passionate than a slightly exasperated sigh or eye-roll.

All of this means that when I see something that really strikes me, it's usually pretty special. I'm at the point where I don't have to catch my breath when I get an unexpected glimpse of the Eiffel Tower or fight the urge to get out my camera on every semi-scenic street. OK, I'm lying a bit. Certain things really amaze me still, even though it makes me feel like a tourist to admit it.

Still, I've started taking being in Paris for granted. Nonetheless, there are a lot of things lately that have made me stop and really appreciate where I am.

The first, and probably most spectacular was the city's Nuit Blanche, which happened this Saturday. A nuit blanche is literally "white night," and it's what the French call any night where you stay out until the morning. In this context, though, Nuit Blanche refers to a very specific sleepless night-- an annual arts festival which started here about six years ago and has since been picked up by cities around the world. On Nuit Blanche, one metro line runs all night (the whole system usually closes at 2 on Saturday nights), which provides access to all of the major museums, which stay open much later than usual. Even after they close, though, small museums and independent galleries stay open, and honestly, I think that smaller exhibits and performances are more what the night is about anyway. As far as I know, the Louvre, Orsay, Pompidou, etc, didn't have anything going on special, besides for a slightly more festive atmosphere-- they were just open late. Of course, this didn't stop people from filling up the Louvre plaza way past midnight (though perhaps this had less to do with art than the rugby game France had just won.)



I was going to meet up with some other Sciences Po students, so as I waited by a very large statue of Louis XIV, I took pictures and tried not to get run over by drunk rugby fans speeding around on vélibs.



After a while, I heard from one of the Sciences Po people that they weren't coming after all-- it had gotten pretty late. I knew it would be a waste just to catch the metro back without having done anything, so I decided to set off on my own. From the Louvre, I walked to the Jardin des Tuileries, which was lit by thousands of small fires. Small urns lined the walkways, laterns hung from trees, chairs were pushed around cylindrical fireplaces, and most spectacularly, large wire balls of small pots of fire were placed every so often in the middle of the path. This last thing is particularly hard to describe in writing, but you can get a better idea from the pictures:





These are the only two pictures I took in the jardin. Though the whole thing was amazingly beautiful, I held back-- there is no way I could capture it in a photo, and I've found that when I take a lot of photos, I tend to forget a good deal about the actual event I'm documenting. I was there for what must have been a long time, moving from fire to fire and savoring the difference between the cold night air and the oil-lit fires. At some point, some sort of French television crew came up and interviewed me, maybe since I was one of the only people there toute seule. After a few minutes of establishing shots that gave me time to piece together a semi-coherent French statement about nuit blanche, I told them that I actually didn't mind it, being there all alone. I think it was better, actually-- I got to look at everything closely, and anyway, it is hard to feel lonely when there are so many people in one place enjoying the same thing. "Je pense que, ici, les Français et les autres vraiment partagent un experience, et c'est très rare ici,"* is what I ungrammatically told the interviewer, and I think it's true. Most of the time in Paris, the French and the tourists inhabit totally different worlds-- the tourists in a totally romantic one that is somewhat inauthentic, and the French in one where many genuinely lovely things are just part of the background, very easily ignored. Tourists often unknowingly end up visiting a false Paris, spending all of their time in places that cater to visitors, so it is quite rare that Parisians and the rest of us end up in the same place, awestruck by the same thing. It sounds really silly to say, but the whole thing had sort of an otherworldly feeling, like I wasn't in the same physical Paris that would be around in the morning. I had the same feeling the rest of the night too, especially when I went to Eglise Ste. Madeline, which was pitch black save for a few spotlights which were focused on black-clad people standing on platforms and holding glowing blue tubes.



It took me a while to figure out what exactly was going on. I hadn't read the artist's statement at the door, so when I came in and saw that all of the ordinarily dressed people on the ground were holding their arms up in the air as in worship, I wondered if they were in on the performance, or just being strange. After watching the blue tubes rise and fall for a while, I realized something-- the people up on the platforms were whispering through the tubes to whoever was lucky enough to get their hands on one. After moving around on my tiptoes, right hand raised, one of the performers finally lowered a tube for me and I put it up to my ear. It was poetry, each stanza first in French, then Italian. I couldn't understand too much, just snippets here and there, but the rhythm was absolutely gorgeous, as were the bits I was able to catch. The idea of people, all sorts of people, entering a holy spot and waiting, arms raised, to hear whispered poetry stuck with me all night, even after I left and went back to the fire gardens, where I talked with French people until it was time to catch the metro home.

I planned to follow this up with other experiences that left me feeling the same way-- not myself and very much myself all at once-- but honestly, there's not much that could follow all that. To get back to my usual level I'll close with my most beautiful, or even profound daily experience. It never fails to move me, really:



Oh baby, oh baby. I don't understand how pain au chocolat has never, ever caught on in the US.



*"I think that, here, the French and the others truly are sharing an experience, and that is very rare in Paris." Profond!