Aterrisage

Thursday, May 28, 2015

     "Yes, travelling internationally is not for sissies!!!!" my sister Jazmin wrote in an e-mail in reply to the news I arrived safely in Paris yesterday after a challenging flight.

      I am swearing off overnight flights after this last one, which notwithstanding an "Ambien" pill, was a "white" night, as the French say.  REM sleep was tantalizingly close, but the combination of my dog wanting to sleep in my lap and my chatty seat mate, kept me both narcotized and edgy.  (Fantasies of traveling with Beau on board the QE2 have been popping up in my head, although I know all kennel spaces on all cruises for 2016 are already reserved.)

     I forced myself --and Beau-- to walk all the way from the hotel (by the Musee d'Orsay), to Les Halles, on the opposite side of the Seine a good ways away in the direction of Paris' City Hall.  There is a restaurant specializing in good butcher's cuts, Au Vieux Comptoir, I always visit, the owners, Cyril and Anne, always glad to welcome us.

     After a salad, tuna with ratatouille, country bread and tapenade, chased with a pichet of red from the Languedoc, I was rejuvenated by when the strawberries with creme chantilly arrived.

     On the way out I met two Swedes, Christian and Lars, in Paris for the first time.  They are heating, air-conditioning and ventilation specialists, graduates of a prestigious technical school in Stockholm and possessed of a wicked sense or humor.  Although whenever the conversation turned to anything Swedish, Christian would invariably say,

     It's shit!

     Although he also said that about Paris, the French, the Swiss and a few other things, by the time we were done with each other's company.  One thing Christian wanted to make sure I understood well about Sweden was the importance of June 28, the date the midsummer break begins.  Whenever you meet a Swede, in his view, this is fundamental information.

     As I'd heard Sweden has the highest rate of second-home ownership in the world, I mentioned the fact, only to move Christian again to his byword,

     It's shit!  (In case you hadn't guessed.)

     Lars was the detail guy, the brooder in the pair.  --Although they had both been drinking through lunch and chasing the meal with beers, so that's a relative term.  At a certain point exhaustion overtook me, so we exchanged e-mail addresses and Beau and I departed.  Last night I got the following e-mail from Christian :

Tack för en trevlig eftermiddag. I hope you have a bon soare! Cheers Christian
Du borde komma till Sthlm till midsommar

Skickat från min iPhone

      Swedish is a very difficult language to learn, it seems to me, based on the above, although maybe it's all shit, as Christian would say.

      Once at the hotel, Beau and I collapsed on the bed.  I had hoped to sleep through the night, but I awoke at 11 p.m.,  Of course I'd have to take Beau out for a last walk, so that was a good thing.  We started across the Passarelle Leopold Senghor, which takes you over the Seine to the entrance to the Tuileries: there was a lot going on for a Wednesday night.  Below us there was a barge where young people were dancing and generally enjoying themselves by the banks of the Seine.  On the bridge there were a few lovers, perhaps among those who force padlocks in between the grills of the bridge --to the consternation of Parisians.  Walking to the Place de la Concorde, there were cyclists and pedestrians making their way home.  We walked as far as the statue of Joan of Arc at Place des Pyramides, then over the nearest bridge back to the Left Bank and along the Quai d'Orsay over to rue Solferino, which intersects with the street that connects directly to our hotel, rue de Lille.  (I always feel particularly safe walking in the vicinity of the hotel because down the street is the headquarters of the Parti Socialiste, where there is always at least one policeman with a machine gun.)

       It was 1:30 a.m. by the time I organized myself for today and morning came quickly, about 7:00 a.m.  The wine of the day before was giving me a devil of a headache, but a hot shower helped.  I walked Beau, then fed him, then walked him again.  I would have to get him a ticket for the train to Toulouse next Monday (I can't buy it online, as I can my own), and I needed to get cash from an ATM  from my bank, Credit Agricole.  And I needed a coffee badly.

     So I walked down to the Cafe des Deux Musees, which stands between the Musee de la Legion d'Honneur and the Musee d'Orsay.  They made me a coffee with milk to go, and I walked Beau across the passarelle once more.  By that time, Eric, the owner of Doggies & Company, a service providing in-home boarding for dogs, was waiting.  A business school graduate, he has used all he learned to create a small business that cares for between 400 and 500 dogs every year, including traveling with them to a destination where their owners meet them when they cannot travel with them themselves.  Doggies' clientele includes corporate executives on the road, as well as people with their own reasons for not wanting to have their dogs shipped in cargo --although the company will also make sure a dog gets in cargo on a plane, if that is what the client wants.  Eric and I had a coffee together to exchange notes about Beau's care and after, I handed a trusting Beau over at the hotel door.   Amazingly, he seems to be unaffected by jet-lag, although I hope his days with Eric are restful ones: Monday we travel by taxi to the Gare d'Austerlitz to take a train to Toulouse, then a taxi to the airport to pick up a leased car, then drive to my house in Caunes-Minervois.

     Still tired from the flight and the short night's sleep, I still had to buy Beau a train ticket.  Fortunately, the SNCF, the French railroad, has a station by the Orsay, so it was short work to buy the ticket first thing in the morning.  However, Mr. Llm, the Chinese Frenchman who sold me the ticket pointed out that because Beau is not a tiny dog, the tickets says I have to muzzle him.  That meant a trip back to where I had lunch yesterday, as the Parisian equivalent of "Macy's" --"BHV" is located there.  I bought a muzzle in their dog boutique, "La Niche", although I'm sure keeping it on Beau will be a challenge.

     That task accomplished, it was getting near lunchtime.  I had made a reservation at Le Violin d'Ingres, near the Eiffel Tower.  That involved another long walk to the opposite side of town.  However, it was worth every step.  The restaurant, which is favored by Paris' haut mode, is discreet, the food delicious, the service ready when you are.  The prix fixe at 39 Euros left me feeling very pampered and wanting nothing else.  (I had neither wine, nor bottled water nor coffee.)

     Walking back, I saw graffiti on a signpost: Mourir d'amour, and thought it such a Parisian idea.  Because looking at all there is to see and see and see as I walk the streets in the heart of Paris, its beauty never fades.  One of my knees may be arthritic now, and I am the worse for wear, but I could die for love of the delicate skyline, the river with its wide, paved banks for strolling, and the luminousness of the skyline at night, a nocturne, if not a hymn to the idea that life could be beautiful, all our hopes met, and all of us better than we are.

      In Paris, I want to write, the words tumble from my fingers and my possibilities seem endless.  A curious phenomenon, that.  Those who come to New York to become writers in their youth say something similar about it, but I have never felt liberated by New York the way I do Paris.  I'd like to think the aesthetic of Paris, a drive towards the exquisite, is not just the obverse of New York's gritty energy and ambition.

     During my lunch at Le Violin d'Ingres I am perfectly positioned to observe a birthday party, a celebration of a young man by a group of over-the-hill Parisians with money and sophistication.  Everyone --including the young man-- looks slightly embalmed, with their injected faces and epicene brows.  A woman in the party has a particularly raucous laugh which erupts regularly, as if she has been paid to keep the party going.  They are all regulars at the restaurant and the staff caters to them particularly, opening the waiting champagne bottle as soon as the first to arrive --a woman with a crew cut, and a man with platinum hair in a bouffant-- are seated.  The overall impression I have is of jadedness.

     However, in the midst of all this, a messenger arrives with a bouquet of flowers for the guest of honor.  The delivery man is a fat, sweaty Levantine who nervously waits for the maitre d' to take the beautifully wrapped bouquet from him and present it to the birthday boy with the compliments of the absent well-wisher.  There are oohs! and aahs! all around at the extravagance of the gesture, but it has a refinement that is memorable.

     It's all part of la douceur de vivre-- "the joy of living".  Which in France is an art.