Context for Paris travels

It’s an onslaught of the senses and a constant bearing-down of my historical knowledge to be surrounded by so much art and history. Places I’ve read about for decades and never seen or experienced in real life. It seems like a minor epiphany, and it is, but it was a strange sensation to see the Notre-Dame in the context of its surroundings; laid out between two forks of the Seine. I experienced a version of this over and over, seeing places I was familiar with on some level in terms of their historical context, but had no context for in terms of their geographic relationships to each other, or the ways in which they are simply casually there. They had to be walked on and looked at and absorbed. It’s a different experience than traveling to somewhere like New York City, which is wonderful and mesmerizing in its own right, but in terms of world history, has less than three centuries of existence, versus a city such as Paris, whose impact on the world’s stage goes far, far back.

It’s amazing to have a geographic context of these places in relationship to one another.

Jet Lag Jøs.

I woke up at 1.30am and couldn’t sleep, so I started reading The Book of Eels and such until 5.30, until finally going back to sleep for what I thought was an hour-ish.

Look at clock. 11.23.

No way.
Way.

Apartment.

Lanessa left once to fetch a few items at market. She left a note with the time on it, returned, and I was still sleeping. So she changed the time and left again for a walk, and then returned, and as detailed above, I finally roused myself. She placed a carefully curated assortment of fresh raspberries, crisp granola, and one magnificent croissant. Also, I had a three-ounce dwarf mug of espresso, which, unknown to me, was to be my only coffee for the day.

Croissant, yogurt, raspberries, granola, and espresso for breakfast. Thank you, Lanessa.

Departure.

She suggested I take a sweatshirt, which I inwardly thought was ridiculous, but did, and reality prevailed over my judgment, thank goodness.

We raced out the door and a half mile to the station in order to make the fast train. We got into a huge argument over whether to take that one or take the slow train. The difference between the two apparently has to do with speed.

I take a decisive course of action and choose to take the RER (the slow train) versus the TER (fast train). I make this decision mostly because it feels right, and only partially because we can’t find where to get on the fast one.

So we took the normal train, which means somewhere between 12 and 16 stops and an hour plus, rather than 30 minutes. Who cares. Not me, not today.

Paris Austerlitz stop (13th arronidssement)

We stepped off and it felt like France.

Gare is “station,” in French, as in “train station”

Also, sortie is “exit,” so if you someday find yourself kidnapped and in a foreign city, and you shake off your abductors and rip the mask off your head and you dash into a gare to escape them, and then you’re trying to find your way back out but are getting confused with all the signage and such and keep doing revolving loops around the various platforms and turnstiles, then it might help to know that “sortie” means “exit.” Hopefully it’ll help someday when you’re in that situation. Good luck.

Just one

We take a selfie at Gare d’Etampes. Probably the last one we’ll take this trip.

Lanessa looking for freshwater dolphins in the river Seine

Water into wine, or something of the sort

A miracle happened on the Sabbath, and that is that we found free toilets. Les toilettes. Sometimes amazing things don’t become amazing until they’re a memory, and then you realize later on what a gift and what a miracle they were.

Like finding free public toilets when you need them.

My inclination is to reframe this in a tiny way so that Lanessa and I sneaked into construction worker-only toilettes, separately, like Bathroom Ninjas, and over time, I may re-write this section to reflect that revised memory.

A river

The problem with traveling with me in any capacity is that I get caught up in little things. Little things like looking at rivers for a long time and not being able to leave. The river I’m referring to this time is the Seine, and I’ve read about for decades in many, many books, ten percent of which were literary fiction of some worth, and ninety-plus percent of which were Cold War-era spy novels, which prompted a lifelong interest in Europe and the various locales in which spies and secret agents congregate surreptitiously.

So yes, I was excited to see the Seine.

At a certain point Lanessa pulled a Joseph, which made me happy. This is what she did:

There’s different places to walk along the Seine. There’s docks all along that you can walk or bike along, such as the Quai d’Austerlitz. Then there’s tiny little cobblestone footpaths closer to the water that you can walk along, sort of. Lanessa led us far along one, only to discover that it was a…cul de sac. Of the four directions to go there was A) a wall ahead, B) river to the left, C) slanted wall to the right, or D) turn around.

I loved it, as we carefully goat-footed our way perilously back on the narrow ledge. Paris is dangerous, man.

l’Oranges (what is a bucket list, except a bullet point accounting of your future priority list?)

I think it’s a good idea to have some items on your bucket list, and I think it’s a good idea to leave some blank spots for things you don’t know you need,

Like spending a Shabbat afternoon sitting with your sister on the banks of the Seine with your legs dangling over the edge eating oranges.

You don’t know you need to experience some things until you’ve done them.

I couldn’t stop watching the water move.

Le giraffe, Le bleu whale

Certain things just are. Things like aspect ratios. We get used to our phone screen being a certain orientation. We get used to watching theatrical movies with a widescreen ratio. It’s interesting to think of the ways in which this might have come into existence, but it makes sense: when we’re watching people talk for example, they’ll typically be on an x-axis, talking horizontally, so that’s the visual information we’ll care most about, as opposed to seeing more of the sky and ground in a vertical format.

We even call these two aspect ratios “portrait” (vertical) and “landscape” (horizontal). Generally when we think of wide format photography dealing with beautiful depictions of mountains or cities or nature, we think of seeing it in widescreen. Landscape, horizontal orientation.

But I’ve found myself repeatedly, especially by the Seine, visually gobbling up scenes in portrait mode. I’m speaking of looking and observing, not necessarily taking pictures, though I’ve done some of that as well. There is something so beautiful about the way in which things are layered:

river, embankment, quai, cobblestones, bicycle, person on bench, another pathway, a wood door on another embankment, autumn leaves drifting off branches, boulevard, row of houses starting to close out the scene, and finally a bit of blue or gray or black sky at the top to segue out the vertical cinerama.

Beautiful.

Something I like, something I don’t.

Boats of all sorts on the river. / Paris police sirens.

Outskirts

We walked on the edges of Marais, the artistic conclave arrondissement on the Right Bank.

The Seine splits Paris down roughly the middle. So one side is the Right Bank. The other is the Left Bank.

Famous places on the Right Bank include Avenue des Champs Elysées, Avenue Montaigne, the Louvre, Sacre Coeur Basilica, Montmartre and both of the city's Opera Houses. The Right Bank is generally considered more traditional as you move away from the Seine.

Famous places on the Left Bank include the Eiffel Tower, the Pantheon, Musee d’Orsay, Luxembourg Gardens, and Montparnasse Tower. The Left Bank has many of the city’s artistic districts, though Marais, on the other bank, is probably the most well-known and hopping. From what I understand.

Pont des Arts

Pont is bridge. Des is the plural version of “the.” Arts is…see if you can figure it out.

It was a pretty bridge too. With a pretty, giant-domed government building on the other side. Institut de France.

We continued walking parallel with the river on the Left Bank.

Pont Alexandre III

We took a selfie by the bridge that many consider one of the most beautiful pedestrian walkways in the world, Pont Alexandre III. It will probably be the last selfie we’ll take this week.

Eiffel

We walked around, admired it from afar and tried to keep a little distance between that the squiggling morass of tourists waggling and selfie-ing their way around the construction.

We took one more selfie, just for good measure.

Lanessa taking a picture of me while I take a picture of her shooting me shooting the Eiffel Tower

Palais du Tokyo / Musee d’Art Moderne de Paris

Teens skateboarding in the courtyard. Loved.

Another look at the Eiffel, this time from a distance, from across the river, as the sun set. I enjoyed both views. Up close, and far away. Made me think of Charlie Chaplin’s famous line about how life is a comedy in long shot, and a tragedy in close up, and I thought about ways in which I agree with that and ways I don’t.

Maybe that’s part of my lifelong love of movies, as opposed to more live performance driven narrative, such as theater and stand up. Don’t get me wrong, I respect the talent and mindset and creativity it takes; perhaps what I should have said is the ways that I personally am drawn, as a creator, to movies more than theater.

Like the respected film editor Walter Murch said, in movies you get closeups and cutaways. In other words, the creator grants the audience the ability to change both point of view and abrupt shifts in chronology and time. In theater and live performance, the relationship is immediate between audience and performer: the point of view is static and the story unfolds and reveals in linear time. They both have their beauties, but I think most creators in either of these realms might be more inherently drawn to one more than the other.

So closeups and long shots. The different perspectives we get on anything in life. Being here, being in Paris is wonderful in many ways, but in many ways some of the most wonderful ways are the little ways more than the big, the little ways in which people do little things…differently than I’m used to; differently than we are used to on the other side of the pond.

The only thing more beautiful than watching the Eiffel Tower at sunset was watching Lanessa watch the Eiffel Tower at sunset.

We continued along the Left Bank, Lanessa with her backpack packed not to her back, as we swaggered past outdoor diners on the quai purchasing 58-euro entrees, and I got hungry for French fries. Or frites.

She led us unerringly to a bustling night spot down several alleyways, where we ended at a spot with kebaps. “Maoz: Vegan Fast Food” We took it a emporter (take away, to go) and headed to a quiet spot on the stone embankments of the Seine close to Pont Saint-Michel. To say it was a convergence of the senses does not do those moments justice.

I felt like we were spies taking a quick break from duty to grab a bite before returning to serve country on the back ways and cobblestoned hideaways of Eastern Europe. Though of course, um, we’re in Paris. Hey, it’s my first time in France. Sensory overload. Czech Republic, coming at you soon.

Our supper spot for the night with Maoz vegan kebaps

Gare du Saint-Michel

We wait. And wait. Spending a night on the Paris streets is something Lanessa has done. Why? Because she, along with friends, missed a train.

That is the sort of thing that is super cool as a story or memory. I, on the other hand, in the present, was excited to not miss the last train, and therefore felt no regret at successfully getting on board and enjoying a quiet hour-traverse back to Etampes.

Home

Finally, we step through the threshold. Spies at the safe house. Safe…for now…

2304 Bedtime

I should probably try going to bed. Or read Red Rising #3.

——

Paris highlights and notes.

- [ ] The Seine is sort of like the Willamette River of France.

- [ ] Eating oranges on the Seine with your sister is never a bad thing to do on a Sabbath morning.

- [ ] I lack the counting skills to keep track of how many times I imagined my children being over here too, along with their mother, and Lanessa and I laughed at the different things they would enjoy, such as the adorable little play structures and climbing setups along the River and adjacent walls.

- [ ] There were these teens and 20’ers skating along the river. This one girl was doing this board dance choreography, which of course made me think of Xavier Rudd’s Stoney Creek, which of course made me think of Becca, which of course made me wish she was here.

- [ ] Starbucks are difficult to find. We were looking for one, and apparently passed one that I didn’t see. The reason we were looking for one is so we could take our coffee as we walked along the river. But it was not to be.

- [ ] But fortunately I had Trader Joe’s jelly bellies, which is the only time in the history of the universe that those could be considered an acceptable substitute for coffee.

- [ ] The Eiffel Tower was there. With scaffolding and three million street vendors selling hats and baby towers.

- [ ] Notre Dame Cathedral was wondrous to behold. The delicate and detailed beauty of the Gothic architecture. The mix of symmetric forms and off-weight balance that somehow is majestic in both secular and spiritual ways. One thing I hadn’t previously processed is how it’s located between two forks of the Seine. That’s one of the biggest problems or challenges of learning things from books or academics or from afar: it’s hard to see the context of something. Seeing its regal position between the river was a small but surprisingly beautiful surprise.

- [ ] Wedding on a boat under looking the Eiffel. Wondering if I was on Instagram, how long it would take me to find out who it was.

- [ ] So much smoking! I’ve at least spent enough time in small towns and big cities to be around a significant amount of smoking over the years, but at least my initial observation is that I’ve never been in a city, at least in the last couple decades, where smoking is so prolific and ubiquitous.

- [ ] That being said, I am quite impressed overall by the cleanliness. Even the unhoused possess a certain indefinable dignity in the way their encampments are set up - a couple gentlemen had a spread along the Seine. Couple small tents, a little decorative garden, food; one read a newspaper while the other smoked and watched people pass by. And the garbage cans: they’re small! Given the amount of smoking, I would think there to be a much greater amount of butts lying around then there are. Strange.

- [ ] Supper in the 5th Arrondissement along the river steps at night. Kabobs/falafels and frites. Heavenly.

- [ ] Then an hour train ride home to Étampes on RER C, broken up by introducing Lanessa to Xavier Rudd’s Stoney Creek music video.

- [ ] Texting pictures home. Sounds like the kids made a great time yesterday with my Mom - a creek, salamanders, a Stinky goat, reading, neighbor’s horses.