Scenes from Paris

Sorry for the light blogging folks. I've been finalizing my application to the American Graduate School of International Relations and Diplomacy, located in the sixth arrondissement. To placate PNCT and all you other virtual vagabonds hungry for la vie quotidienne, I've decided to post some pictures I took a few days ago while I sell my soul to admissions committees.

La Conciergerie and former prison (death row) of Marie Antoinette, along with plenty of other notables who fell victim to the Revolution. It's towering presence on the Ïle de la Cité between the Pont Neuf and the Pont au Change is still eerily imposing.



Paris' Finest: Serving, protecting, and dutifully observing red lights on the Quai de la Tournelle.



Springtime at the Place du Châtelet, a favorite reading spot of mine and former site of another famous prison bearing the same name. It was torn down as a symbol of royalism (like the Bastille) following the Revolution.

Bad samaritans

After spending a quiet afternoon reading at the Place du Châtelet, I entered the Châtelet metro in order to catch the line 7 in time for dinner back in Villejuif. Upon descending the three-or-so staircases leading to a great walkway which boasts the busiest correspondence in the city, I noticed a crowd forming at the threshold of an escalator.

The focal point of the scene was two hulking men of African descent manhandling a smallish, white photographer, who more or less resembled Harry Potter aged thirty years, complete with a pasty complexion, shaggy brown hair, and thick-rimmed glasses. The photographer was shaking from head to toe as the men tried to pry a camera from his hands. I gathered from the photographer's stuttering French and the accented, deep-throated exhortations of the two men that the photographer had unwittingly snapped a shot of the two men and his buddies, who apparently didn't agree with it. In one instance, the huskier of the two men violently shook the little photographer, who was now even more visibly convulsing from fear and on the edge of tears. But he was an artist...

Perhaps louder than the one-way, verbal jousting of the two men was the ubiquitous silence and complacency assumed by the growing crowd, who like many French people were keen on witnessing a free spectacle, especially in times of economic crisis. (My girlfriend tells me this is a common French characteristic.) Myself included. For a passing moment I thought of intervening, but then I remembered what you're supposed to do in France. So I quickly reached for my own camera in the hope of taking my own prize-winning snapshot of deep Paris-suburb social tension, and at the risk of a black eye and swift deportation (my titre de séjour is still processing). But to my own benefit the battery was dead. Also like a good Parisian I checked the time and it was nearing 19h, so I shrugged and left for dinner. I was supposed to pick up fresh apples.

I don't know what became of the unfortunate little photographer with thick-rimmed glasses. Nor do I want to.

Seeing isn't believing

Not a week goes by that I don't see one or more blind people in Paris navigating the subways and streets with exceptional thrift. This might be because I live next to an institute for the blind, situated on the busy avenue that runs south through the Place D'Italie and the Gobelins crossroads straight into the heart of Paris. Nevertheless, the irony of blindness in such a beautiful city is very profound. I don't know if any writer attempts to resolve it better than Baudelaire. The following poem was taken from a compendium given to me for Christmas, and below I've provided my own interpretive adaptation to English.

Les Aveugles

Contemple-les, mon âme ; ils sont vraiment affreux !

Pareils aux mannequins ; vaguement ridicules ;

Terribles, singuliers comme les somnambules ;

Dardant on ne sait où leurs globes ténébreux.

Leurs yeux, d’où la divine étincelle est partie,

Comme s’ils regardaient au loin, restent levés

Au ciel ; on ne les voit jamais vers les pavés

Pencher rêveusement leur tête appesantie.

Ils traversent ainsi le noir illimité,

Ce frère du silence éternel. O cité !

Pendant qu’autour de nous tu chantes, ris et beugles,

Eprise du plaisir jusqu’à l’atrocité,

Vois ! je me traîne aussi ! mais, plus qu’eux hébété,

Je dis : Que cherchent-ils au Ciel, tous ces aveugles ?

-Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

The Blind

Look at them, my soul; they are truly hideous!

Similar to dummies; vaguely ridiculous;

Terrible, queer as sleepwalkers;

Shadowy orbs darting to where we don’t know.

Their eyes, from where the divine spark left,

As if they were watching from afar, stood open

Towards the sky; we never see them towards the gravel

Dreamily tilting their laden heads.

They thus cross the limitless dark,

This brother of eternal silence. Oh city!

While around us you sing, laugh, and bellow,

In love with pleasure to the point of cruelty,

Look! I’m dragging along too! But, more dazed than them,

I say: What do they seek from the Heavens, all these blind people?

La Rue Mouffetard

Since the days of the Enlightenment, or maybe the French Revolution, we've been ascribing sacral importance to places and things borne out of mankind's achievements. We find spiritual enrichment not only in ecclesiastical phenomena but also in concentrations of happenstance, spontaneity, blood, sweat, and tears, as living vestiges of our collective and all-too-human struggle through the ages. Pardon the cheap balladry, but this is something of the way I feel when I wander along one such concentration, the Rue Mouffetard, a lively and celebrated street by locals and tourists alike which also lends its name to my blog.

I can't proceed further without paying due tribute to Ernest Hemingway, my favorite "travel" writer. Perhaps the most iconic American ever to have walked the famous street, or to have lived in Paris for that matter, Hemingway embraced this thin and ancient market street in his memoir from Paris, A Moveable Feast, and in doing so probably contributed more to its present-day fame than any American. For the best reference on this street and the Left Bank in particular, this is a must-read.

I don't plan on challenging Hem's authority, so I'll spare much descriptive prose in his honor. But take a moment to put yourself in my shoes. Very often I play the archetypical Parisian flâneur, wandering aimlessly through Paris' latticework of Middle Age and modern streets, chancing on a new discovery. When I come across the Mouffe', south of the Panthéon in the heart of the fifth arrondissement, I know I'm not discovering anything new, but I'm nonetheless always moved by the architecture, commerce, and aloofness of locals to these spectacular surroundings. After a surface-level review of the street's history, the aloofness of the local population should come as no surprise. The street at first stood at the banks of the now-extinct Bièvre river which fed into the Seine, propping up a cottage industry of leather tanneries and market spaces, supporting a large trading class, and linking Paris to Lyon and Rome since the city's earliest days. So it was always commercial, and thus always forgettable.

But to the modern eye of an outsider, nothing speaks Paris more than this windy patchwork of limestone, plaster, and whitewash, complete with the charming red and gray tuiles which adorn most Parisian homes. Peculiar to the Mouffe' also is its uncanny structural and social preservation, escaping the 19th century urban renewal projects of Haussmann as well as the ever-encroaching spectre of gentrification. Surely this rather accidental beauty of fifteen hundred years saw many events, student protests, proletariat uprisings, landgrabs, and commune infighting. That there are no more tanneries and relatively few outdoor markets left makes no difference. The street's been changing since its inception, and it will continue to record its passage through time with incomparable grace.

Raison d'être

I recognize that's quite a lofty term for the purpose of a blog, but because it's French, universally applied by English-speakers, and because Voltaire is dead, I thought I could get away with it. It's nevertheless an appropriate term. It conveys the vagueness of my purpose for writing while also lending it some credibility.

I moved to Paris in November after receiving a TEFL (Teaching English) Certification to begin my professional life in Paris and also be with my girlfriend, whose family and I live in the southern banlieu (suburb) town of Villejuif, just a stone's throw from the thirteenth arrondissement. Though not officially Paris, Villejuif occupies what used to be the sun-drenched vineyards supplying Paris proper and its rulers with wine since those passable days of Gallo-Roman antiquity. It's the Forest Hills to Manhattan, if you will, a sprawling and diverse community with limited cultural and bureaucratic autonomy given its centrality within the greater Île-de-France and its enviable proximity to the "City of Lights."

So as I've been giving private English lessons and translating French web sites, more than one close friend has suggested that I write it down so as to not forget my experiences. I was also encouraged by a dear friend's political blog (visit) and the fun we have exchanging our opinions. But although bantering and journaling are reasons enough to start a blog, I'd like to insert my own defense. I don't believe any one needs a predetermined reason to write, so long as its honest. Without being cliché, a firsthand and forthright account of any experience or culture abroad is valuable, if not just for the richness and diversity human experience and thought can provide. So without reservation, I'll imprint on this blog my own personal beliefs, conjectures, reactions, photos, and interests with respect to Paris, its institutions, and its people.

That should be raison enough, in my opinion. Enjoy!