Scenes From The 6th

After the storm

"And with this?"

"Et avec ceci?"

In France that's how they indicate the same idea Americans do when asking "Anything else with that?" or "Will that be everything?"

Literally, it means "And with this?" which has always sounded a bit on the presumptuous side to me if not a little insulting: 


Now that you mention it, yes I had wanted an extra four croissants and a pink macaron to go with my  baguette! I just forgot to mention it the first time around. Now that you have verbally enabled me, I am empowered to order everything I actually wanted! Gratitude overflows from the source springs of my soul. See, look. It's emanating from my eyeballs. 

Right.

So supposing I had forgotten to order everything I wanted...it's entirely possible, human memory being the surprisingly porous thing that it is...supposing I had forgotten something, would this phrase help bring it to mind?

"Et avec ceci?"

"And with this?"

"Beer" is the first thing that comes to mind when I hear a question like that. A nice pint of Leffe would go down well with a baguette, it would go well with a sandwich, it would go well with one of those gooey almond croissants. Yes, I want a beer "with this", with them.

Except they don't serve beer in bakeries.

A day on the beach in Hawaii. A winning lottery ticket. A massage. There are always other things I would like with my order. But none of them are actually on sale by the person asking me what more I want "with this". And so in the end it just serves as a reminder for all of my unfulfilled longings unattainable in a bakery. I am left with nothing more than a wistful smile and the baguette I ordered in the first place.

Today, after I ordered my sandwich, she asked me "Et avec ceci?" 


I politely responded, "Juste quelques serviettes, s'il vous plaît." 


"Just a few napkins please." 


They're free, and they might actually come in handy. 

Sandwich Sharing

I ran out to get a sandwich, or rather two, once my brain made the connection between my wandering mind and my empty stomach. It was almost 3.

On my way back, a woman with ratty clothing and indecipherable speech approached me. All I gleaned was that she wanted money to eat.

My first sandwich had not survived the two block walk back to the office; it was lying in my hand in plain view of the hungry beggar. So I broke it in half. Or rather I broke off a piece, because it wasn't exactly half. In fact, it was a good deal less than half. With flashbacks to childhood arguments over portion size, guilt crept over me. Was I being fair?

I extended my arm towards her with the less-than-half sandwich. She took it, continuing to mumble. This time I caught what she was saying, "Money for..."

I said "no" and continued my return trip, the guilt wiped clean.  

Spring in Paris

The rain came down hard in the days leading up to the election. And then they voted.

"I'm happy that Francois Hollande came out with the most votes, but I'm disappointed with my country. Marine Le Pen managed 20%!"

Or "I can't believe Jean-Luc Melenchon didn't make the second round! It's politics as usual. Nothing ever changes."

Or "Sarkozy is almost gone!"

And the rain continued. We have had only glimpses of the sun in the past three weeks. Parisian parks were crowded to overflowing four weeks ago in a celebration of sunny spring, but the joy was short-lived.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy finds himself facing an uphill battle to be re-elected. No one much likes him. Business knows he'll be kinder than the Socialists. We can assume his children still like him. German Chancellor Angela Merkel thought he would be better for Europe, but her interventions on his behalf didn't work out so well. So they came to a halt almost as soon as they began. Apparently the French don't want to be like the Germans. Who would've thought?

The former Trotskyist Melenchon spoke intelligently and honestly, and the French, educated in revolution and class upheaval, rallied to his message. Those who disliked the internationalist turn of recent French history, whether Brussells' power or immigrants' presence, turned out for Marine Le Pen. Francois Bayrou, a three-time Presidential candidate lost somewhere in the middle of a polarized France, fell well short of his 2007 score. The French weren't charmed by his discourse of "telling the truth" and "avoiding extremes". So now, as the second round approaches, it comes down to Hollande and Sarkozy, a replay of the 2007 election for Hollande's children, except this time the four are working to elect their father instead of their mother.

The sun came out for an hour or so today. Not too long. There was a downpour for about 10 minutes, but that stopped too. Mainly it's just overcast. Melancholy and overcast.

The spring marches on...

The Paris Marathon 2012

A few years ago when I was a graduate student in need of release I ran the Philadelphia Marathon.

I vividly remember scrambling down the Ben Franklin Parkway towards City Hall trying to stop shivering that freezing November morning. Those tens of thousands of adrenaline-charged bodies all felt a common purpose: not to die of hypothermia.

By the time we reached the National Constitution Center, Liberty Hall, and that long strange building of a hallway the Liberty Bell calls home, the shared bodily need in question had shifted from creating heat to something more...well, different. As an exercise in historical fiction, I tried to imagine what Thomas Jefferson would have thought had he seen those men (and women!) dropping their pants and emptying their bladders near, on, and by national landmarks.

This last Sunday I had the privilege of observing such universal human needs expressed in a different setting. This time around it was not Liberty Hall, but the Louvre. Imagining what Louis XIV might have done to those marathon runners brought a smile to my face. Aren't we all glad the divine right of kings is a thing of the past?

Truth be told, I had never intended to run the Paris Marathon. I had even been out at a party until 2 that morning.

And yet there I was near the Arc de Triomphe, shivering, waiting for all those other bag-covered sardine-packed runners to just get a move on it already.

The registration closed last year right as I was starting a new job, moving into a new apartment and decidedly not thinking about training to run 26.2 miles. My friend Daniel had tried to convince me and many others to run with him. No one else wanted to. Over the months that followed, I trained with him off and on. And by "trained" I mean "I ran parts of the routes he ran four or five times with him".

Then on Sunday, I found myself shivering on the Champs d'Elysees on the other side of a 10 foot high fence from him and all the other marathon runners who had paid. Daniel had suggested I run part of the marathon with him after the first mile or two, where I could easily join him. I was undeterred. I wanted to start from the beginning. So I crawled under the fence and wandered around aimlessly looking for one familiar face in a sea of strangers.

Among those strangers was a very large contingent who were somehow convinced that by finishing the marathon they would save Tibet. White, brown, black faces...no, actually in truth, they were like 99% white...bravely facing the elements with Tibet paraphernalia in hand. You could almost feel the Chinese Politburo quaking in fear from Beijing.

I eventually found Daniel and we eventually began the race. Before long we encountered the first of many bands playing music. They were interspersed among friends and relatives and running enthusiasts who cheered us the entire length of the race.

Now the problem with not training for a marathon is that you're not prepared to run a marathon. It's a difficult conundrum, and there's no easy way around it. After considering it at length, I believed that I had come up with a brilliant solution.

The path of the marathon led from The Champs d'Elysees to the Rue de Rivoli and the Louvre to the Bastille and then a lap around the Bois de Vincennes, passing within one block of my apartment, before returning all the way back to the other side of Paris.

When I saw the 11-mile marker of the marathon just in front of the street leading to my apartment, I ran onto the sidewalk and turned to Daniel. I surveyed the wonder of shared masochism, the band music, the cheering crowds. I drew in a deep breath of air, and I shouted, "Je rentre chez moi. Bonne continuation, tout le monde!" (I'm going home. Best wishes and enjoy the rest of the marathon!)

I slowed to a jog and then a walk. I stretched some, took a shower and then a nap. Later that day I returned to the other end of Paris to see the finish line, meet some other friends and greet Daniel as he finished the whole thing.

Elections and Conspiracy Theories

There it was.

Written on the walls of the Saint Michel metro stop in the heart of Paris:

Toulouse Complot

Toulouse Plot

In two words of graffiti scrawled across an ancient cement wall, the belief of many skeptics was succinctly summarized. Believers include a large number of immigrants, often of North African origin, but also some on the French left. They just can't believe that French security could have allowed last week's shootings in Montauban and Toulouse, that a Muslim born in France would do something so horrific.

Always fans of conspiracy theories, Arabs resent the portrayal of Al-qaeda in the Western media. They point out that radical Islamicists were once in the pay of the U.S. government. They served as a useful bulwark against the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War, and those ties didn't just die once the Berlin Wall fell. Thus when they hear that suspected killer Mohammed Merah was associated with al-Qaeda, they can't help but think of the possible (but unverifiable) connections he might have had with Western governments.

Mr. Sarkozy is struggling in his battle to be reelected. A law-and-order politician, he made his reputation during a school siege back when he was mayor of the rich Parisian suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine. He would look stronger in a national emergency and turn the campaign back to a subject he feels comfortable with.

It's impossible not to speculate. He had the power. It is easy to blame the Arab Muslim--Westerners believe they are behind all bombings and shootings. It would have benefited him...surely he did it.

Westerners, non-Muslims, in their ignorance and hate of Muslims, they just don't understand. Maybe a cry in the dark will shock them into seeing the truth.

Maybe a few words left in the center of tourist Paris will shock them into seeing the truth.

David Sedaris Agrees With Me

Comedian David Sedaris is now jumping on the bandwagon. After my musings a few months ago about my first doctor's appointment in Paris, Mr. Sedaris felt compelled to chime in with his two cents.

Writing for some publication called The New Yorker, he says:

One thing that puzzled me during the American health-care debate was all the talk about socialized medicine and how ineffective it’s supposed to be. The Canadian plan was likened to genocide, but even worse were the ones in Europe, where patients languished on filthy cots, waiting for aspirin to be invented. I don’t know where these people get their ideas, but my experiences in France, where I’ve lived off and on for the past thirteen years, have all been good.

While Mr. Sedaris' reputation for exaggeration might cause one to question his description of French medicine, I can assure my readers of the impossibility that exaggeration and hyperbole might cross the pages of my blog.

Cost burden and sustainability aside, one thing is sure whoever you trust and however you look at it: there's no way escaping that French health care really isn't all that bad.

Women Came to Paris Too

The postwar odyssey of American men in Paris, from Hemingway to Wright, is as familiar as a ride on a bateau mouche. For the women of the same generation, no matter what their ultimate destinies, the traces of their experience are harder to convey.

More on those women from Alice Kaplan’s Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis.

Doing My Civic Duty

Yesterday I walked into the Center of Public Finances and, with a bold look of resolve, I said to the man, "I want to pay my taxes."

He replied, "Oh, you can't do that here. You have to talk to my colleague." He pointed out the window. "Cross the street, go through the mall, veer to the left, and there you will find the other Center of Public Finances."

And so I went out the door, crossed the street, went through the mall, veered to the left, entered the other Center of Public Finances, and, with a bold look of resolve, said "I want to pay my taxes."

The woman replied, "Oh, you can't do that yet."

And I said, "Oh."

"It will be at least May before we send out the paperwork for taxes." She pulled out a form. "This is the 2010 form. You fill out your marriage status, income, and housing situation. Then you send it back to us and we send you another piece of paper that tells you how much taxes you owe."

In a profound voice I replied, "Ok."

"You need to hold on to your "Declaration of Revenue" form that your company gave you. You will need it in May. Now, that's the income tax. Then in October we will send you a form telling you how much you owe for the Housing Tax."

"Ok, merci," I replied this time in an only slightly less profound voice.

Then I went to work.

What European Blogosphere?

A year ago, Cecilia Atrios started a blog. Since she was the ex-wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy newly transplanted to New York City, I figured it would be interesting. So I started following her.

Two weeks later I gave up.

Her posts were like political press releases, full of blather and lacking in any serious content. Also, for no apparent reason she put large parts of her posts in bold, sometimes repeatedly in the same sentence. Given the total lack of hyperlinks, I was convinced she had just not yet mastered the sina qua non of blogs, the 'insert link' button.

But no...as it turns out, Cecilia's blog is little different from the rest of the European blogosphere:

As Ronny Patz noted in a recent post (hat tip to the European blogs aggregator bloggingportal), European blogs are still very much “unconnected”. That is, they use hyperlinks far less than their American counterparts or do it and in a way that doesn’t create two-way debate. In brief, Europe has bloggers, but no blogosphere: it lacks a living ecosystem to exchange and debate. Of most leading European blogs, only 1 in 5 were linked to other online content. This is a pretty striking number but one that is somewhat consistent with the use that Europeans make of blogs (ie. just another media but not an interactive one).

It's a sad statement about European democracy. The blogosphere is about one of the only places where Europeans of all nationalities could realistically get together and debate the troubled but worthwhile European project.

Us vs. Them

It's become so normal for me now.

On Friday night I had dinner with an American, a Tunisian, a Venezuelan, and a Dominican. On Saturday night I went out with the Tunisian again. I work with a Moroccan, a French man from Martinique, a French woman born in Paris, an American, and an Englishman. During the one block walk from the metro to work, I pass by shops run or staffed by Kabyles, Tunisian Arabs, Romanians, and Syrians. When we go out to eat for lunch the ethnic foods available within walking distance include Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Laos, Italian, French, Turk, and American (that is to say Subway and McDonald's, if that counts).

Like New York and London, Paris is a world city. You can find someone here from almost every corner of the world. Very few people are actually from here, and those that are keep to themselves. Most French people in Paris were not born in Paris, so even if they share the French culture, they share the feeling 'I'm not from here'. Most places in the world, the locals outnumber the non-locals. Everyone remembers a time when they were the locals and also when they left home and became the non-locals. In Paris, though, that sense of 'us vs. them' is virtually nonexistent. Because, when it comes down to it, we are all them.

Women Are Heroes

Today it felt like spring

Today it felt like spring.

What that is exactly and how wonderful it feels...I can't really explain. But I do know that opening my shades to a shining sun is a bizarre and yet utterly pleasing abnormality. The winter is not cruel in Paris, but, much like its inhabitants, it is not exactly welcoming.

Perhaps after two Moroccan winters I have developed irregular seasonal expectations. Paris is not Siberia, after all. It dropped below freezing for only a couple of weeks.

After breakfast I headed to work. With a smile on my face and a skip in my step, I left the apartment courtyard into the great urban outdoors.

I immediately had to hunch my head into my jacket, for I had no scarf. I might have even shivered. And then I looked up at the misleading sky.

We're getting there, but we haven't arrived yet.

Coffee and a Newspaper

I'm not quite sure why, but reading Le Monde over a shot of expresso in a cornerside café is a Parisian ideal I cherish.

As with many ideals, though, in my daily life I am far from attaining perfection .

Today, however, was an exception. :)

Puritanism and Sex-Shops

Unlike the enlightened French, Americans are prudes, hung-up about sex and unduly influenced by religious ideology. Religious groups interfere in the public square, getting in the way of open, rational talk about sex. This is what I am told incessantly in the French media and by my French friends.

And rightly so. Yesterday, for example, a sex shop was fined by a court and will be soon closed. A petition had been started by a Catholic group that was concerned that the sex-shop was too close to a school. The court agreed, citing a 2007 law in protection of the family.

Oh, wait...that didn't happen in the U.S.

That happened in Paris yesterday.

What I Don't Miss

People often ask me what I miss most from the United States. While there are some intangibles such as optimism, volunteerism, and friendliness that are harder to find in countries like France, the truth is that the things I don't miss are more tangible and more visible.

I think one of the reasons I have ended up living in Europe is that it's easier to find good food and decent public transportation here than it is back home. Yesterday I returned from a week and a half vacation in my homeland, where I was struck by the absence of both yet once again.

Here in France there is a bakery on almost every corner; fresh bread is cheap and plentiful, even if it's not as whole grain as in Germany. Fast food has a growing market share, but even people in a hurry are likely to grab a sandwich made with all fresh ingredients from the local bakery as McDonald's. Meals are a programmed part of life, a time to savor something in good company, not a necessary time constraint to have energy to keep functioning. The word "foodie" doesn't exist in French; only in American culture do we need a word to describe someone who actually appreciates cooking and eating.

Also, I can get almost everywhere without a car. If there's no metro, there's a bus or a bicycle. It's a pleasurable experience to walk from point A to point B. One night during my vacation, I tried to walk to Walmart to pick up a few things for the next day. I ran straight into an interstate with no footbridges or other means of crossing and had to return to the hotel. In the morning my friend took us the short distance in his car.

I used to resist when foreigners mocked Americans for being fat. I said, "Look at me. I'm anything but fat. My whole family is like this. Most of my friends too." But as I look at the photos of high school friends on Facebook and as I observe my fellow Americans on trips back home, I can't help but agree with the critics: maybe America is undergoing an obesity epidemic. Based on the American culture of food and transportation, it makes perfect sense.

I love the American emphasis on practicality and convenience in so many domains of life. But when it comes to food and transport, if nothing else, I much prefer Europe.

French Anti-Americanism

If you aren't already following The Browser's "Five Books" series you should. They ask an expert about his or her subject by way of five books, and the expert explains how each book sheds light on the subject.

Today's post is an interview with historian Richard Kuisel about one of my favorite subjects: French anti-Americanism. Describing Philippe Roger's "The American Enemy", he states:

If you go back to the 18th century there is an expression of cultural superiority. French intellectuals saw America as a rude country of immigrants lacking any cultural eminence. So there is a Gallic condescension operating here. Even to this day there is a belief that the French are the guardians of culture and we [Americans] are the purveyors of some kind of cultural pap. Roger is trying to ridicule this discourse which he finds biased, hypocritical and uninformed. He is trying to remove a toxin from French intellectual life.

I will never forget my oral exam on the French foreign language exam I took after my year of studying abroad here in France. (Both the oral and written exams were fascinating examples of French chauvinism and anti-Americanism.)

The subject was cultural preservation in a changing world, and the professor basically told me that Americans don't have a real culture. We are just a mix of many different cultures.

The French, of course, have a real culture.

No need for me to rail on about the subject. Check out the interview and maybe even read the books. Lots of good stuff there.

William Carlos Williams and Paris

Many moons ago, William Carlos Williams, H.D., and Ezra Pound were students together at the University of Pennsylvania. Like me, Pound never finished his Ph.D. in Romance Languages at Penn. Williams became a doctor. His self-portrait still hangs in the rare book room of the Penn library. Later they all went on to become recognized masters of the poetic craft.

Williams' life, however, diverged from the others. He remained in the United States while the others chose to live in Europe. His poetic choices paralleled that decision. And his relationships were affected as a result. As I read these anecdotes from a recent New York Review of Books article, I couldn't help but think of that dynamic:

The most painful experience of insecurity, Leibowitz shows, came in 1924, when Williams and his wife left Rutherford, New Jersey, for a trip to Paris, then the world capital of modernism. The whole time, Williams was certain he was being scorned by people like Ezra Pound and H.D., his old acquaintances from the University of Pennsylvania, and he reacted with preemptive anger. “I ground my teeth out of resentment,” he wrote, “though I acknowledge their privilege to step on my face if they could.” Invited to a premiere, Williams deliberately wore a ratty tuxedo: “It was intended as a gesture of contempt and received just that.” Told that the writer Valéry Larbaud wanted to meet him, he responded self-abasingly, “Who is this man Larbaud who has so little pride that he wishes to talk with me?”

But the major focus of Williams’s resentment and insecurity was undoubtedly Eliot. A chapter of Williams’s Autobiography is titled “The Waste Land,” but it contains only one paragraph about Eliot’s poem: “Our work staggered to a halt for a moment under the blast of Eliot’s genius which gave the poem back to the academics. We did not know how to answer him.” Williams, who went directly from high school to medical school, was put at a disadvantage by Eliot’s show of erudition. With American avant-garde writers generally, Williams claims, “literary allusions…were unknown to us. Few had the necessary reading.” Late in life, he confessed in an interview that he was “insanely jealous” of Eliot, “who was much more cultured than I was.” (Rather movingly, Leibowitz writes that Williams, invited to share a stage with Eliot’s admirer Allen Tate, “armed himself against possible attack by reading George Saintsbury’s A History of English Prosody, vowing not to be humiliated or viewed as an ignoramus.”)

Scenes From The 13th: The Perils of Being a Vélib