Random Observations

Art Deco Entrance

Everywhere I go in Paris, I find something that catches my eye.  For example, this delicious art deco building entrance not far from the American Library (left).   But I also notice, certainly more than I ever did before, how things are done.  For example, the French love a piece of paper with a stamp on it.  I have rarely had an encounter with "official Paris" in which I haven't wound up with a piece of paper with a stamp on it, and sometimes several.  My receipts for medical care, which I have to submit to my insurance, and my official residency documents are perfect examples -- and the paper in my hand is usually the last of several with a stamp on it, most of them retained by the organization with which I'm dealing.

Water Supply for Street Sweeping

Street Sweeper

I've also discovered that the cleaning of streets is a manual exercise in Paris.  Little surprise, I suppose, in an area like my part of the 6th with its skimpy sidewalks and narrow streets, usually with room for parking on only one side or not at all.  How you could get a behemoth street sweeping machine down such a thoroughfare beggars the imagination.  The method is simple.  When it's time to clean the street, water is turned on and issues from something like the opposite of a drain that is in the gutter.  This spate flows along in the gutter carrying with it whatever is light enough to move easily.  Behind the water comes a guy in bright green with a broom made of long green plastic fibers.  He pushes whatever is reluctant to go with the flow toward the corner (or any other break in the line of solidly parked cars) and scoops it into the equivalent of a large dust pan and then dumps that into a garbage bag on wheels that is never far from where he is working.  It works amazingly well.

Which reminds me to pay homage to people who park their cars on the streets of Paris.  They are the most accomplished I have ever seen.  Unlike our relatively well ordered and much newer cities, where parking spaces are carefully marked,  Paris provides no markers and few rules that I can detect other than not blocking a crosswalk.  The result is that Parisians tuck themselves into parking spaces that are so small their cars seem to have been dropped into them by divine intervention.  I wonder if there is a patron saint of parking?

Finally, a recent experience reminded me that getting lost can sometimes be an extraordinary experience.  One evening, I went to hear a talk by Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns.  It was sponsored by the American Library in Paris but took place at the Columbia University Global Center.  I had never been there before -- it is really quite a lovely space -- and so, when I approached the building and saw a line of people, I joined it.  I had arrived in plenty of time and, since I was quite excited about hearing Wilkerson speak, sat close to the front.  Imagine my surprise, then, when three white people walked in, settled themselves in chairs on the dais, and the first stood up and started speaking French!  It was clear that I was in the wrong place, but what to do?  I was too far forward to stand up and walk out.  Lucky me!  Turns out the lady in the middle was none other than Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Teheran, and on her right was a French intellectual named Thierry Grillet.  This was a dialogue sponsored by the Center about her new book, The Republic of Imagination.   Although I caught most of the introduction and Thierry's questions (both in French), I was grateful that Nafisi spoke in English.

What followed was a lengthy conversation about why we read, how literature transmits values, and why it is important to democracy.  Nafisi spoke of the risk of conformity in democracies and the risk to literature in totalitarian systems, of how imagination is the guardian of memory and how one can be an exile in one's own country.  She said what she loves best about America is that it let her bring her past with her (something, I might add, that must be forsaken in the French idea of what it means to be French).  She said we need to know who we were in order to know who we are and named complacency as the biggest threat to democracy.  (Dare I say she named Babbitt and Trump in the same sentence?)  We read and write because we are curious, she argued, and quoted Nabokov who claimed that curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.  She argued that writing is a democratic act because authors have to give voice to every character.  Literature, for her, is not an escape but an alternative way to see the world.  There was more, but it was a thrilling discussion.  So, get lost every once in a while, even at home.

April in Paris

April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom
Holiday tables under the trees
April in Paris, this is a feeling
That no one can ever reprise

Ile de la Cité

Any of you who were induced by Frank Sinatra's rendition of "April in Paris" to pay a visit to the city during this iconic month know what a fickle mistress April can be.  And so it has proved in 2016.  Weeping willows in leaf on the Ile de la Cité, to be sure, and the bulbs out in profusion in the Jardin de Luxembourg but even the chestnuts were too cold to blossom until almost the end of the month.  Yours truly made a nod to spring by abandoning her long underwear, but on many a day not her down coat.

Conversation partner Brigitte
Gallay in the Luxembourg Gardens

Dehillerin

April is the month I celebrate my birthday and this year my birthday present was a whole week with Chris, fresh off managing the European tour of a band called Brothers of the Sonic Cloth.  We made a trip to the Musée d'Orsay with a particular focus on the Van Goghs that he has loved since a teen.  We shopped at markets and toured the cookware shops around Les Halles.  Chris still has the knives I bought in 1973 at Dehillerin (a cross between a shop, a warehouse, and a shrine) .  We cooked together some and warmed many a cafe seat to watch the world go by.  And on my birthday we had a smashing dinner at the Relais Louis XIII on rue des Grands Augustins, a short walk from my apartment.  It was loads of fun.

Bas Relief Just Under the Roof Line

In April, I also took a walking tour of my own arrondissement, the sixth.  It is quite a large area, stretching from the Seine all the way to the far end of the Luxembourg Gardens, but our guide kept us in the oldest part of the district between the Boulevard Saint-Germain and the river -- essentially my neighborhood.  This was a good lesson in paying attention, reading all the historic markers on buildings and looking up.  I discovered that Dora Maar lived a few blocks away and Picasso painted Guernica in a studio at nearby 7, rue des Grands Augustins.  Georges Sand lived at 31 rue de Seine, the street that runs alongside my apartment.  Since then I've been paying closer attention to historic markers and recently passed the building in which Richard Wright lived from 1947 to the mid-fifties.  I just keep being amazed at all there is to learn about this phenomenal city.

Medieval tower
rue Hautfeuille

Secret treasure of the sixth arrondissement

This part of the sixth is also the oldest.  What's left of St-Germain des Prés is, of course, the exemplar of medieval architecture.  But there are still remnants of medieval structures to be seen elsewhere in the area as well as historic advertising for various commercial establishments (see right).

Private Courtyard in Paris

We were very fortunate to be able to talk our way into some private courtyards and passages where there are beautiful examples of domestic architecture out of public view.  For example, below left is a staircase behind one of the giant wooden doors that seem so forbidding as one walks the streets of Paris.
















We were also permitted inside one private courtyard (right) where we found a beautiful residence covered in flowering vines.  These passageways were once open to the public, but have been closed in the interests of privacy now that hoards of tourists flood Paris every year.

I also discovered  a style of architecture I hadn't known about called neo-Renaissance that developed in the 19th century.  I wondered why I would occasionally find buildings in Paris that seemed reminiscent of the style of the Place des Voges (the real Renaissance) -- brick with white stone trim.  The neo-Renaissance was an Italianate style much in vogue during the Second Empire and beyond.  And, of course, we have some here in the sixth at the Place Furstembourg, near the Delacroix Museum.

Place Furstembourg

I was particularly interested when the tour got to my own little street, rue Jacques Callot, which is named after an early 17th century engraver.  There was once a theater on this street that was used for a time by the Comédie Française.  But most of all, I loved discovering the benches in the darling little park at the end of my street right behind the Institut de France, a beautiful building on the river with a gilded dome that houses, among other cultural organizations, the Académie Française.  The little benches are shaped like open books resting on the spines of closed ones.  How had I missed this before?

Bookish park bench

April is also the month when visitors begin to return to Paris in significant numbers.  My friend Susan Barasch Williams (Horizon House resident and also a reader of Trollope) and her husband came to town as did Meg Ludlum's sister Susan.  It was a treat to visit with them.  My friend Marcie returned to Paris for nine months; I first met her here last October.  Another new friend, Barbara Stickler, took me to a tasting of wines from the Saint-Emilion region of Bordeaux.   And Jean Ameluxen and her friend Cindy took me on a whirlwind trip to have lunch in Lyon one day -- just so Cindy could experience the TGV.  All great fun!

How, you may wonder, can I be running around like this and learning French?  Stay tuned for the answer.

The Last Leg to Santiago de Compostela

Our last stop before returning to Porto was the hill town of Lamego, home to a famous shrine, the Sanctuary of our Lady of Remedies (Santuario de Nossa Senhora dos Remedios, which I think sounds a lot better).  This is a stunning shrine set atop a 686-step staircase decorated in elaborate Portuguese Baroque that commemorates the miraculous cure of a local infant.  It has since been dedicated to mothers and children and to anyone who is in ill health.

Our Lady of Remedies Church

Immediately at the foot of the last set of stairs before one reaches the chapel is a beautiful fountain with a delft blue depiction in Portugese tiles on the wall behind it and statues of the kings of Israel on plinths around it.  Lamego is on the Portuguese road to Santiago de Compostela and is a pilgrimage site in its own right.  The interior is richly decorated in gold.

Altar, Our Lady of Remedies

View of Shrine from Lamego City Center

At the foot of the staircase leading up to the shrine is a lovely town.  The cathedral has a handsome sanctuary, again richly adorned in gold, and beautifully designed wooden doors.

The museum is one of the best in northern Portugal and focuses on religious art, including a rare pregnant Madonna.  Many of you will have seen the painting of the Madonna del Parto by Piero della Francesca in Italy.  This one is a small statue that I found very touching.  

Portugese Tiled Panel

Pregnant Madonna

The museum also houses an impressive collection of tapestries as well as silver work, vestments and chapel altars that are so richly ornamented one wonders how they could have survived in this corner of Portugal.  There are also more examples of Portugal's exquisite tile work.

While we were in town, our chef gave us a tour of the local market, showing us examples of the products that have gone into our fabulous meals – from the bountiful fresh fish to fruits and vegetables from the south of the country.  I’ve never seen green and red peppers so big (at least twice the size of the ones we have in Seattle).

This has been a really enjoyable introduction to Portugal, its large cities, rich agricultural traditions, and cultural heritage.

Santiago de Compostela

But Judy and I were soon on the road again -- to Santiago de Compostela with a lunch stop in the lovely town of Braga.  Arriving by motor coach made me feel like a complete fraud to begin with, but it was fascinating to visit the end of this fabled pilgrimage route.   

The End of the Pilgrim's Way

St. James Above the Altart

Santiago is a beautiful city in its own right and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  I was surprised that the Cathedral remains in need of repair, but its interior offers many beautiful examples of religious art and a huge St. James triumphant on his white horse above the alter.  

In the Middle Ages, pilgrims to Santiago arrived with virtually nothing -- as most do today, only they have credit cards -- and so lived and cooked in the cathedral until they could find a livelihood in the city.  Most had come so far that returning to their homes was impractical.  You can imagine that having all those unwashed people in the place caused a considerable odor and so a giant incense burner or censer (botafumeiro in Spanish) was built.  It stands about 3 feet high and is suspended from the nave of the cathedral, right in front of the altar.  

Botafumeiro

Judy and I attended the 7:30 Friday night service at which the censer is lit and swung to either side to spread the smell of the incense.  The heavy rope suspending the botafumeiro from the ceiling is managed by eight men dressed in red.  They lower it first, the priests fill it with incense and light it.   They give it a blessing and a little shove.  As the eight burly guys start lifting it above the altar, it swings higher and higher until it almost touches  the ceiling -- very high up.  And this was also the first time I've ever seen a European cathedral filled to overflowing at a religious service.  There must have been more than 1,000 people present.

Walking District, Santiago

Santiago also has a lovely historical center, which is pedestrianized.  I enjoyed walking there a lot and wish there had been more time.  But, I suppose that always leaves a good reason to return.

Flying back to Paris because that is 'home' was a novel experience, but it was a delight to return to my apartment, especially as Judy, my traveling companion, came for a short visit before returning to Seattle.