April in Paris: Wednesday

Wednesday, April 6th

The Joys of Traveling Solo

• Katherine, Amy and I went in different directions on Wednesday, each with a specific goal in mind. Katherine donned a black skirt and Mary Jane's (and mourned her lack of a straw hat) as she set off to recreate nostalgic scenes from Linnea in Monet's Garden in the gardens and house in Giverney where the famous artist had lived and painted. Amy took off for Versailles to get sunburned amid the twisting and spiraling hedges and flower-beds after having absorbed all she could of the interior of the palace, while I set out to wander Paris at my leisure. I took the metro over to the Isle de la Cité, and wished that the line for the San Sulpice chapel was not so long (curse you Dan Brown and your sensationalization of pretty, historical churches!) but kept wandering instead, pretty much blown away by the sight of the riverwalls, washed white in the sunlight, slanting away from the water. 
• Notre Dame. It was amazing. Once again, words cannot do it justice, unless you are Victor Hugo and prepared to write a several-hundred page novel that is really just an excuse for rhapsodizing about gothic architecture; I am not, alas (hah). But I do need to say that yes, the gargoyles are just as individual and interesting and ugly-cute as Disney would have it, and yes the soaring flying buttresses are more graceful in their function than one imagines possible, and yes the ribbed ceilings on the inside makes one think of Roman tombs and ancient rites and long-dead architects, and yes the stained glass windows are breathtaking in the their dual beauty - they are gorgeous to look at, and the rainbow light washing over the pews and sculptures is equally lovely... Oh my. I just sort of gaped and walked and breathed in dust and cool air and tried to be as present as possible. I lit a candle in one of the side niches, not thinking twice about the 2 euro charge, and watched the tiny flame flickering in the gloom, feeling awe-filled and peaceful. 
• I left Notre Dame, regretfully I admit, and wandered around the whole structure, craning my neck to get a better look at the gaping gargoyles, then stared surreptitiously at the young gendarmes wandering around who would have been cute were it not for their MASSIVE machine guns and camo outfits and utterly silly hats. British family nearby~ Mother: "Do you see the soldiers, Danny? Look at the soldiers." Danny, (age 5 ish, literally hanging from her hand and staring at the sky, the ground, and everywhere but in front of him): "I caaaaaan't, I caaaaaan't seeeee theeeemmmmm! Where aaaaare theeeeeyyy?!?" Mother (exasperated): "Right in front of you, honey; right in front you! See the big guns?" Danny (still flailing, falling and dancing): "Nooo! Where aaaaare theeeyy?!" Mother: "Big guns! See the big guns! Right there!" Danny (sees them, stands stalk still, eyes like saucers, and begins to walk normally, a bit scared): "Oh... REALLY big guns." The gendarmes were unimpressed. 
• Across the river from Notre Dame, half-hidden behind clouds of pink blossoms covering the trees that line the street, is the most amazing bookstore I have ever been in. Shakespeare and Co. was begun by Sylvia Beach, a US expatriate, in the early 20th century, and it was this bookshop that originally published Ulysses when it was banned in the US and the UK. ...!!! Yeah. Also, Hemmingway, Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and other incredibly talented artists spent rather a lot of time in and around the little book store. In case that wasn't enough, it is also perfectly quaint and cute and oh my, a book lover's dream. There were books stacked from the floor to the bare beams of the ceiling, teetering in piles and leaning against shelves and paint-peeling walls, covers shining and new or frayed and trailing little threads of ancient cotton binding. The rooms were tiny and cozy, and the titles that jumped out at me are the ones that fill my Really Glad I Read That and Really Need to Read That lists, respectively (far too many of the latter, alas. I need to get reading.) and seeing eight different copies of Jane Eyre displayed on one shelf and The Illustrated Guide to Shakespeare on the next made my heart happy. They have new stuff too, of course - not everything in this shop reeks of dust and age and antiquated language. Freedom (written, I think, by a Mac grad) and The Pale King are two titles recently recommended to me by some of my modern-lit inclined compatriots, and both were visible among the bilingual poetry collections and personal essays (handbound). The way through the shop is as convoluted and twisted as the plot of a good murder mystery, and the nooks and crannies that abound are chalk full of more books, in seeming disarray. The stairwell, decorated with the likenesses of the authors who visited Shakespeare and Co in its heyday, led to a second story that boasted not only faded velvet armchairs, a moth-eaten couch, a reading... closet (?) filled with notes from readers past, and a study room, but also a piano and a window with a petal-filled view of the Seine and Notre Dame. Oh my.  When I eventually dragged Katherine and Amy back there, later that evening, the piano was singing Chopin's sonatas softly from beneath its blanket of books, the couch was cluttered with University students studying diligently, a bilingual creative writing workshop was proceeding in English and French in the study room, and the multicolored party-lights in front swayed over the heads of the coffee-drinking, wine-sipping, pastry-nibbling, page-turning patrons perched on the delicate chairs that littered the walkway. But I am getting ahead of myself. While there I decided to indulge and get myself a tote bag, the better to tote about my tourist necessities - lunch, camera, sketchbook, paints, water bottle, wallet, phone (though it was dead), passport and ipod (since there were no lockers in the rooms, alas) and the invaluable map. The cool, artsy bag was all sold out at the moment though, leaving the too-colorful, not-quite-childish (though still quite wonderful) alternative. I didn't complain.
• Lunch in the Luxembourg Gardens, all hot sun and park benches, unsittable grass and thick shade under blooming chestnut trees. I sketched and munched my lunch, seated on the marble steps burning my left side slowly, and watched a family's snail-speed progress down the stairs. A little girl, 5 or so, hopped carefully from one step to the next, counting "Un, deux, trois, quatre..." while behind her her curly-haired brother, no more than three, danced anxiously on the edge of the step, shifting from one foot to the other, wailing high and incoherently. At last he stepped down, nearly toppled, righted himself, and began to prance and shuffle in misery and anxiety on the edge of THAT step, repeating this process twice more until his mother set down her bags and came to gather him up. A single strip of grass invisible beneath the carpet of bodies, bocce ball under sycamore leaves, a cat on a leash, flowers on the trees.
• The Rodin Museum was a bit of a walk from the Luxembourg Gardens, but a beautiful one - what part of central Paris isn't beautiful though. The museum was amazing. The gardens around the old chateau were full of beach trees and silent statues, and at the far end a fountain splashed quietly between the lilac bushes and writhing metal figures. I sat and sketched a little more, not because I thought I could capture any of the sculptures (I could not) but because I needed to just sit and be present. It was so incredibly peaceful. Inside the museum was beautiful too, with the wood floors, picture-windows and crystal chandeliers of the original chateau still intact; it was the perfect place for these sculptures not to be displayed but for them to live. Graceful hands, fingers barely brushing each other, and the smooth erotic Kiss that makes one's heart ache for love like that, and widespread wings stretching in an ecstasy and exultation of bronze, marble, iron. Lovely.
• A mosey, a wander, a meander, a saunter later, past the place where Napoleon is buried and over the bridge that separates it from the Tuleries, then through the gardens and past the long paths that stretched under the dun-colored sycamore leaves (tiny and thick with fuzz)... Eventually, I arrived again at Le Louvre. Oh my. I sat for a while in front of it, perched on the edge of the fountains, and peered through the segmented glass of the (in)famous pyramid to see how the light refracted images of ancient stone upon the brilliant surface. I won't try to write about the inside, merely that like the Musée d'Orsay the Louvre lets EU students in for free!!!, and that the paintings were more amazing than I had imagined possible, and that the Mona Lisa was small and perfect and crowded, and that twilight falling through the lovely windows cast shadows upon Greco-Roman sculptures that had seen the light of a thousand thousand days. So much beauty in one place, so many of the images that I have studied and copied and imagined for years... I discovered on this trip that Paris is a beautiful city, and one that I could learn to love, full of history and culture and elegance. But, even were the rest of Paris to be blasted from existence, leaving nothing but a radio-active ruin in its wake, if it were to fall off the face of the earth or be swallowed by storms or sands, or if the Louvre were plucked up and set down on a desert island surrounded by Shrieking Eels and Vermicious Knids, it would be worth braving the radioactive wastland/desert/lake/Eels/Knids/etc just to spend a few hours gasping at the marble hallelujah that is Wingéd Victory, or the sensual slouch of the Venus de Milo, or the war-cry of Liberty Leading the People. I was in awe.
• Back along the Seine to Notre Dame, golden in the evening light, and then back to Shakespeare and Co with Amy and Katherine (because, you know, why not) and then boeuf bourguignon at a little cafe in the Latin Quarter, under a striped awning and a brilliant crescent moon.
• Wine at a Montmartre cafe later, watching as the water streaming down the gutters lifted a crust of cigarettes and cherry-blossom petals and sent it crumbling about the tires of mopeds and vespas parked by the sidewalks. The moon swung up over Sacre Coeur, and the night was warm and perfect as we wandered back to the hostel. Paris, je t'aime.