Rue Rude

Paris Halloween

The  bust of Benjamin Franklin is by French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon, who knew Franklin, but apparently Franklin did not actually sit for the portrait.  This copy of Franklin and one of Washington were my birthday presents a while ago.

Did you know that you can special-order many, many sculptures like this one from the Louvre? They're high-quality and almost unique, if you order from their catalog rather than just buy in the store. The catalog has literally thousands of pieces that can be copied, but in typical French fashion, you have to go into the store at the Louvre to consult it in person. Of course, you can also buy quite a lot on line.

Happy Halloween!

When my children were small, they had to memorize a poem a week in their French school, a practice I wish American schools would bring back. Here's one I ended up memorizing myself, after hearing it so many times at this time of year.

Advice given by a witch

Keep yourself from laughing

early in the morning!

Don't listen to the trees

who are guarding the path!

Don't say your name

to the sleepy earth

until after the stroke of midnight!

To the snow, to the rain,

don't reach out your hand!

Don't open your window

except for the small planets

that you know well!

A secret for a secret:

you who come to seek counsel,

be careful, be careful!
You don't know what could happen! 

--Jean Tardieu (1903-1995)

Conseils donnés par une sorcière   
 Retenez-vous de rire 
dans le petit matin ! 
 
N'écoutez pas les arbres 
qui gardent le chemin ! 
 
Ne dites votre nom 
à la terre endormie 
qu'après minuit sonné ! 
 
A la neige, à la pluie 
ne tendez pas la main ! 
 
N'ouvrez votre fenêtre 
qu'aux petites planètes 
que vous connaissez bien ! 
 
Confidence pour confidence : 
vous qui venez me consulter, 
méfiance, méfiance ! 
On ne sait pas ce qui peut arriver. 

Posts from my first year in Paris: the big children's birthday party

Today I don't have much to write so I dredged up my diary for my first year in Paris. It was a pretty tough year, tempered by having cute little kids in the house. By the time of this entry, I'd been here almost ten months and the children were starting to feel at home in Paris.

L went to a really large birthday party (55 children!) at her friend Margot's house -- incidentally I think that's where she picked up the second lice infestation (took less time to get rid of, anyway). It was a very glamorous event in a Paris apartment that would have caused me to think, "Wow, are they ever rich!" if I'd seen it in New York.... L arrived in a costume that she wore last Halloween [in the States]. I saw none of the other children who were going to the party in anything but ordinary (Paris) party clothes so I felt a little uncomfortable, but L assured me that Margot had said, "On peut se déguiser!" In fact there were 2 or 3 other little girls in costume (long dresses all). M's little brother was sharing the party. When we came in, I could see a group of children sitting in a big circle on the floor around a clown (glimpsed through tall doors to a room on the other side of the entrance hall). L walked in and the young man cried out, "Mais QUI est cette superbe fille!"

Margot's mother had lived for eight years in New York and speaks English very well. When I came to pick L up (in the pouring rain at 6 p.m.), she told me that she doesn't do this kind of party every year. I should hope not! A sofa at the end of the hall was piled high with so many birthday presents it looked like one of those charity donation points at big New York companies at Christmas.

Tonight we were planning L and J's goûter and I asked L which entertainment was the best of all the parties she'd been to. She said that Margot's was-- "There were five clowns!" "Did Margot's mama help?" "Oh no, Mommy! We didn't even see her!"

"Ici c'est Paris!"

Today I took a stroll through the Tuileries for the last day of the FIAC , a big modern art fair at the Grand Palais that includes public art in nearby spaces. It was fun to see the art-- or in some cases the "art."* There were lots and lots of Italians. 

This big HERE faced another sculpture that said WHERE. Where? Paris! That reminded me of the chant of the Paris-Saint-Germain football club supporters: "Ici c'est Paris! Ici c'est Paris!"

Of course, they're a real French football club. So they are going on strike starting Friday.

*blocks of stone scattered randomly about, impressively titled Dove le stelle si avvicinano di una spanna in più mentre l'ago magnetico si orienta [Where the stars come slightly nearer to each other while the magnetic needle finds its way]. 

Perils of Paris life: mimes

The first time I ever saw a mime was in that wonderful movie, Children of Paradise, which a more sophisticated friend introduced me to when I was 19. Baptiste, the mime in the movie, is first seen on stage, saving the heroine, who was in his audience, from disgrace by showing the crowd that the real pickpocket, a mustachioed villain, has escaped.

The character of Baptiste is based on a real star of the French boulevards in the 1840s, Jean-Gaspard Debureau, whom you see above. (He was actually Czech.) He was also the inspiration of Marcel Marceau (real name Marcel Mangel: he was Jewish and survived the Holocaust era by complete integration into France), who introduced mime to the world. 

Mime on a pedestal

  

Mime in Montmartre

 

Mime at Trocadero

 

Another mime at Montmartre

 

That turned out to be a mistake. Why? Because there are mimes wherever you turn now.

There are enough mimes now. You can stop!

Paris: just one of those days

Montmartre statue

Perils of Paris life: manifs (demonstrations)

Pretty much every day in Paris, you run across demonstrations, large and small. On a recent Sunday at Trocadero, above the Eiffel Tower, there were four separate demonstrations. First, above: Russians against fur farms.

Second: a Turk playing piano for freedom and democracy in Turkey

Third: Romanians ("real" Romanians) demonstrating against metal pollution and mining at Roșia Montană mine

Last: A Falun Gong demonstration against the Chinese government.

In America, it's easy to think you live on a separate planet from the rest of the world, which feels so very far away. You certainly can't do that here!

Woody Allen's crime

This is a perfectly nice (if overpriced) bookstore but it is not the original Shakespeare & Co.

Last night at a party I met a Chinese girl who spoke very good English, as well as excellent French. She wanted to practice and we had a chat.

"Why did you decide to study in Paris?" I asked. She's in a master's-degree program.

"Because of Woody Allen," she said.  

This momentarily distracted me from the conversation because I loathe Woody Allen and dislike most of his movies intensely. Maybe I'll save that for another post....

"You just think you're going to move to Paris and find romance because of those movies," she went on.

"So the first year was hard," I said sympathetically. "Paris isn't always like a Woody Allen movie."

"No," she said. "No, I would say it was more of a Social Realism movie."

Perils of Paris life: street-fashion photographers

A told me that while a friend from L.A. was visiting last month, they'd been photographed for a Paris street-fashion feature in a Japanese women's magazine. 

"What were you wearing?" I said, expecting to hear something glamorous or fun.

"Nothing special at all. I was just wearing your old coat and my old boots, and E was all in black!"

 

 

The tea party (not that one) on the Pope

One of my neighbors, whom I'll call Madame LeBlanc, had been very nice to some of my visitors during the summer, when I was away and they locked themselves out. I bought her a box of good chocolates to thank her. When I knocked at her door with the present, she looked slightly embarrassed, hesitated, and then invited me in for tea. Our newest neighbor, a foreigner, was there, along with three or four very proper-looking French women. The new foreigner and I were wearing jeans, but all the others were in knee-length skirts with sensible shoes and cashmere cardigans. They sipped at tea from flowers-and-gilt-decorated porcelain cups as I sat down for a few minutes. 

They were having an ardent discussion about the new Pope, Francis I. I saw the new neighbor, who is a Protestant, look mystified. Why were these women so upset with the Pope?

The French bourgeoisie is very Catholic. To what extent they are truly religious, I can't say, but for example, most of the top private schools in Paris are Catholic, the upper class goes to church (or pretends it does) more than the other urban classes, and every family seems to be related to a priest (by the way, I am, too). France was long called "the eldest daughter of the Church." It's not really true any more, but deep down, most French people still feel strongly about the Church, one way or another.

For the past two years, the French Catholic church has busied itself with loud concern over gay marriage. There have been several huge marches sponsored by the "Manif' pour tous" movement ["demonstration for everyone"]; the marchers say that they are not against gay people, just against gay marriage.  Just yesterday in the Sunday magazine of the Figaro (the most conservative of the main daily newspapers), there was an insert asking people to sign up for the movement. Archbishops of the Church have been active in fighting gay marriage, which is now legal in France. Being anti-mariage gay has become de rigueur, just as being anti-Halloween was a few years ago. 

And now here is Pope Francis saying that the Church is too "obsessed" with gays, abortion and birth control, and needs to concentrate more on kindness and charity.

"The pope is confused," said one of the women. "Journalists trick him, he says things he doesn't mean."

"The media twist his words," said another. "They try to make him sound as if he thinks gay marriage is not a big problem." 

"Quel scandale that we have reached this point in our society!" said a third. Everyone nodded.

"I hope you're right that he is only confused," said another. "After all, he is a Jésuite...." Her sentence trailed off meaningfully.

 

Anomalies of French life: obligatory champagne

Long ago when I arrived in France I met Polly Platt, author of the wonderful French or Foe?, a book I recommend to all expats in France. Polly died a few years ago, but her book lives on. As it is more about the French character than about ephemeral things, French or Foe? is still extremely useful to people coming from a very different mindset (Americans, Brits, northern Europeans, Japanese...). 

One of the surprising things Polly explained was the importance of champagne. Even students or the unemployed will produce champagne for important occasions. In much of Paris, and certainly in my neighborhood, champagne is still de rigueur if you entertain. It is usually served as you arrive at a dinner party or cocktail. The party we went to last Saturday night, for example, was in a top floor walkup not far from Saint-Germain. The host and hostess are in their twenties. Here's their back hall, an hour into the party.

Polly told me that an anxious young American once asked a French friend of hers, "What do you do if you can't, like, afford champagne?"

"You don't invite people over," was the implacable response.