A Long Perspective

Author: Francine Walls

  • Souvenir de Paris

    Paris 2010 633In this café off Rue Severin,

    we will meet someday again

    in this smoke-filled room of laughter,

    and toast,

    Salute!

    as the cameras flash their language of truth and lies

    and the secrets we keep from each other

    and from ourselves.

     

    In this café

    where the woman in the portrait

    moves away from us toward Algeria

    in her black dress,

    her lips parted slightly, mysteriously.

     

    We gather in this café,

    in from the lights of the Seine

    and eat lamb and coucous with our wine,

    forgetting the flea markets and mannequins,

    the flower and bird markets,

    the Moulin Rouge, the Oberkampt,

    Le Marais, Montmartre, Montparnasse,

    forgetting everything we have metered and measured,

    counting out the seconds of our lives,

    brief or eternal.

     

    We have gathered in

    from the Renaissance facades and interiors,

    from the haunts of Hemingway, Pascal, Picasso, Monet,

    the cobbled streets of the great and the humble.

     

    We have gathered in

    from the priests blessing the wafers,

    the protesters with their banners and masks,

    the police in uniform or not,

    and the parade of white-headed veterans

    marching erectly to L’Arc de Triomphe.

     

    Here in war-wounded Paris,

    the plaques, the red, white, blue carnations

    next to a man’s name and a date,

    mark a place of sudden death,

     

    and beyond, at Pere Lechaise

    where its canopy of chestnut trees in pink bloom

    covers the chapels of bone and ash,

    and the stones of remembrance

    enrich the monuments to the deported.

     

    We remember that “those who love

    will be reunited,”

    perhaps, here, in Paris

    where lovers embrace without fear

    and kiss the brow of their lover

    as the Metro races through the underground caverns

     

    toward the gardens of light and Luxembourg

    where a girl leans out from her wooden horse on the carousel

    to catch a ring with her stick,

    and little boys push sailing boats

    in the winds of the sea on the pond,

    and every statue comes to life

    in the blur of the sun, quickly, as the blink of a camera’s eye.

     

    We have gathered here in this café

    with the portrait of the Algerian woman,

    who will never glimpse the Notre Dame, the Louvre

    or the Seine.

    Perhaps for her, we remember.

    Perhaps, for ourselves.

    “On oublie jamais,”

    We do not forget.

     

    FEWalls

    May 18, 2001

  • Francine in Paris – Day 14

    Can 3.73 million people be wrong?  That’s how many folks visited the Centre Georges Pompidou in 2013.  The art is great!  The building is UGLY.  This gigantic building made of a steel superstructure with reinforced concrete in a “post modern, high-tech” style was erected in beautiful, historic Paris after destroying markets and buildings valuable to Parisians.  The escalators to the floors are on the outside of the building; all the pipes are exposed.  Opened first in 1977, it has not aged well:  stained vinyl, cracked concrete, paint peeling.  Now that I have ranted a bit, I will say that the light in the galleries is good and the art is well-displayed.  Of course, there is almost no place to sit down and look at the art.  Not human-friendly.

    The floor I visited at the Pompidou was full of early 20th century art, mostly paintings but a few of Matisse’s bronze sculptures and a sprinkling of photographs.  (Man Ray liked to photograph Gertrude Stein!). Some artists I knew a little about such as Picasso, Kandinsky, Paul Klee and George Braque.  Others were new to me such as Seraphine de Senlis (she went mad, but her canvases are full of vigor and color), Anne-Marie Uhde, Fernand Leger and Sonia Delauncey.  My new personal fav is Frantisek Kupka who painted Gigolette in rouge which I will try to post in Facebook.  (Tech issues have been challenging here.)

    After the Pompidou,  I visited Opera Garnier which could not be more different.  Here the iron structure of floors, vaults and roof is concealed by masonry, marble, paintings, statuary and the plush red seats in the auditorium.  The ceiling of the auditorium is by Marc Chagall and honors composers such as Wagner and others.  The style is Second Empire/Beaux Arts.  The name of the opera house recognizes the architect, Charles Garnier, who worked on it from 1861-1875.  Its fame is not only from its lavish beauty, but also the 1910 book by Gaston Leroux, Phantom of the Opera, and the 1986 musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber.  With the opening of the Opera Bastille, Opera

    Garnier is used primarily for ballet.

    Well, Deanna and I are headed home tomorrow.  Thanks for sharing the journey with me.  Merci beaucoup!

     

     

  • Francine in Paris – Day 13

    “You can tell it’s Mattel, it’s swell!

    Sound familiar? Yes, that is the motto of the world’s largest toy company.  Musee des Arts Decoratifs is hosting a retrospective of Barbie who made her debut in March, 1959.  My younger sister played with both Barbie and Chatty Cathy, the doll who talked!  I do remember playing with the Jack in the Box and the toy ukulele which were toys envisioned by Elliott Handler, the husband of Ruth Handler.  Ruth Handler came up with the idea for Barbie at least in part from watching her daughter, Barbara, play with paper dolls that showed fashionable women.  Ruth developed the idea for a three- dimensional doll.  She had to overcome a lot of discouragement including from her husband.  The doll was an instant hit with girls.  (I saw some teenagers playing with Barbies in a doll house in a play area in the exhibition, so she is still a draw.)

    The exhibition displayed dozens of Barbies.  She now comes in four body shapes and various eye colors and shades of skin.  She has had 155 professions of which I saw Barbie dressed as running for President (you go, girl), pilot, medic, McDonald’s associate, Olympic gold medalist, elementary school teacher, soccer star, baseball star, cheerleader, runner, stewardess, photographer, socialite, astronaut (she landed on the moon before Apollo 11), doctor, magician, health club nut (in pink tights), chef, Coca Cola saleswoman and pianist.  To my surprise, there was one doll dressed in sexy black negligee looking like a dominatrix.  What?  Well, in the interview  with Ruth and Elliott in English, Ruth said she wanted to encourage girls to be anything they wanted!!

    The Musee des Arts Decoratifs is a part of the Louvre converted into a museum in 1905.  The collections are arranged chronologically from the Middle Ages to the present day in terms of the decorative arts which range from furniture to silverware to China to fabrics to wall paper and on and on!  I LOVED the 300 examples of wallpaper.  The wallpaper subjects included flowers, serious Greco-Roman scenes, abstractions, but my favorite was a scene in which a Roman soldier had piled his armor under a tree and was caught mid-air jumping nude into a pond with Wild Abandon and Great Glee.  OK, I have to admit that the two almost X-rated wallpapers were fun, too.  One was of a voluptuous, scantily clad woman who looked like she wanted to do some interesting things with the mini-hula-hoop she held.  🙂

    On the way to the museum today, we rode the Bateau Mouches, the long, sight-seeing boats that ply the Seine in the historical Paris section.  We could see all the decorations on the bridges that one cannot see when crossing them.  You could also see homeless folks sleeping in their tents or sleeping bags under the bridges.  The Seine is home to many boats often tied up triple-deep along the quais.  David Downie in one of his essays on Paris describes the hard life of the boat people who live and work on the tugboats and cargo-hauling boats.  This way of life has been threatened, but since hauling on the river is more “green” than other options, they might be making a come-back.

    We came home late today to the news of the bombing in Brussels that occurred at 11 AM, our time.  On the street, we often see gendarmes walking around with automatic rifles.   This is a difficult time for Europeans.  My friends here say that they don’t want the terrorists to destroy their way of life.  So, they continue on as usual.

     

     

  • Francine in Paris – Day 12+

    “There couldn’t be a more splendid world, and here I am existing in it.”

    —      Mary Oliver from her poem, “I’m feeling fabulous, possibly too much so but I love it.”

    Today in the Latin Quarter, we visited the Musee National du Moyen  Age with about 600 little children.  Ok, maybe not that many and maybe they were well-behaved, maybe.  This museum has an amazing collection of medieval art housed in a 15th century building.  The collection is composed of ceramics, statuary, tapestries, religious artifacts etc.  The tradition of carving elephant ivory was underway by 400 BC.  Yikes.  Is there any hope for elephants?

    For me, the most stunning artifacts were the gigantic-wall-size woven tapestries featuring a unicorn and golden-haired maiden set on a millefleure background.  The subject of each of five tapestries was one of the senses: hearing, seeing, touching smelling, tasting.  The sixth one is an unravelled mystery.  Why is the beautiful maiden accepting the box of jewels?

    Deanna and I wandered toward the Jardin de Luxembourg, home of the Senate and the extensive garden.  When it’s warm, the garden is packed with sun worshippers and children sailing toy boats on the large, circular pond.  We found a cafe called Polidor which opened in 1845 and looked it.  However, this was clearly a place for those the late, great anthropologist Jim Spradly would call the “real regulars.”  A long table ran down the center of the room.  Other tables ran perpendicular to it.   Everyone sat together divided only by red/white checked paper place mats.  We joined a gray haired man (bald on top) with a heavy beard who was shuffling bills and making business calls on his iPhone whike he drank red wine and finished his lunch.  We noticed that a lot of men wore real chapeau and hung them on the coat rack.  We were the only estrangers.  I had the beef and mashed potatoes for 12 euros. Delicious.  Busy, crowded.  Pit toilet.  Yep.

     

  • Francine in Paris – Day 12

    Reflection of St. Julien le Pauvre
    Notre Dame
    Street art

    “I never travel without my diary.  One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”  Oscar Wilde   (On the bags from Shakespeare and Company)

    Shakespeare and Co.

    Deanna and I went to this legendary English-language bookstore on a mission.  We wanted to buy the book of exceptional essays by David Downie called “Paris, Paris” for Deanna’s friend, Michael, for all his terrific tips on negotiating Paris.  Oops!  Sold out, they have it on order.  So we rummaged around looking for another gift in this amazing place opened in 1951 by George Whitman in an old monestery  across the Seine from Notre Dame.

    The Beat Generation poets like Ginsberg and Ferlingetti hung out here.  Well, as happens in time, George now tends the great bookstore in the sky leaving the brick and mortar to his daughter, Sylvia Beach Whitman.  She was named for the owner of the first Shakespeare and Company, Sylvia Beach, who allowed the Lost Generaton – Joyce and Hemingway  etc. to hang out there.  That bookstore was closed by the Nazi’s in 1940 and never reopened, but she bequeathed the name to George who allowed broke writers to sleep in his bookstore.  (He once guessed that 40,000 had slept under his roof. ) Still happens!  Well, we found a completely fabulous book for Michael which I will not divulge as it’s a SURPRISE!

    Shakespeare and Co. has added a little cafe since I was here last. So we sipped hot cocoa in the sun while gazing at Notre a Dame and passers-by.  Almost next door is the church St. Julien le Pauvre which is Greek Orthodox with a history back to the 5th century.  During the Revolution it was used to store animal feed.  It opens for a few services as well as concerts, but it was closed when we walked by on the way to Eglise St. Severin.

    Severin was a hermit from the 5th century.  A Romanesque church was built over his tomb.  Then St Severin church, dedicated to Mary, began in the 13th century but had a number of setbacks like  fire during the 100 years war.  Built in the flamboyant gothic style, it has a cluster of  twisted pillars which they call the palm trees.  The side chapel and stained glass windows are worth a look.  When we were there all the chairs were piled to one side and the nave completely empty save for a man on his hands and knees scrubbing the stone floor.  Outside, the wrought-iron railings  were decorated with Palm branches from Palm Sunday yesterday.

    “I wish

    I could show you

    when you are

    lonely or

    in darkness

    the astonishing

    light

    of your own

    being.”

    (Written on the risers of the steps leading to the second floor of Shakespeare and company.