"My Paris!"
A guest post in response to last week's "Paris! City of High Spirits and Old Ghosts"
After Deda’s lovely armchair getaway to Paris last week, I was inspired to send her my appreciation for evoking memories of the city that was my home for almost twenty-five years, where I raised my children, and where my heart often drifts in dreams.
How to reconcile Deda’s dreamy, vintage thoughts and images with the news from France this week of strikes, transport disruption, and social mayhem?
First, the bigger picture… France is an “Old European” country, steeped in its complex history of aristocracy and revolution, of globally cherished art masterpieces and world-class technology, of luxury and, for some, agonizing poverty.
France boasts a state educational system that rivals the best in the world. And its socialized medical scheme delivers the greatest longevity and healthiest lives of any developed country. On both fronts, France shames the U. S. in preparing kids for life in the 21st century, and then delivering the social support to ensure their health and well-being when they become adults.
The current debate in France is about more than just the age of retirement. In typical French fashion, political disagreement spills out of the Elysée, out of the Senat, out of the media and into the café and onto the streets. You’d be hard pressed to find a country with a more politically engaged citizenry. The French at every social level believe their democracy and social rights are for them to defend, and they do so with gusto.
Today’s debate is really about the nature of capitalism, and whether the new sacrifices demanded of workers are fair, compared to the benefits allowed to the capitalist ruling class and corporations.
Having lived through weeks of transportation strikes in 1995, before Sarkozy’s 2007 “minimum transport service law”, I still pity those who have to commute across Paris these days.
So, given today’s headlines, what’s still to love about Paris? Here’s just a snippet of a visit to one corner of the city…
Imagine it’s a warm Sunday morning. You’re strolling down pedestrian-only, cobblestoned Rue Mouffetard (supposedly the oldest street in Paris) in the fifth arrondissement near the Latin Quarter.
The shops are picture-perfect. A gypsy jazz trio is playing for tips under a portico. The smells of real food waft from bakeries making honest bread (GMO modified flour is illegal in Europe), from open-fronted cheese shops (some smell better than others to the undeveloped American nose), from a falafel stand, from the tables at the local “Arab” piled high with a variety of olives and dried fruit.
At the bottom of the hill, a fountain bubbles at the Place Georges Moustaki, named for a Jewish French-Egyptian singer-songwriter.
Stop into the Cave de Bourgogne for an espresso or a glass of rouge, or head east a block or two to La Grande Mosquée for tea and pastries.
The bells of the 16th-century church of Saint-Medard on the corner are ringing to announce mass, as they did in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. You are no longer in any time frame you recognize, and it feels amazing.
Just up the street, a small panel guides you through an old entryway, originally built to allow carriages into a courtyard behind a residence. Emerging from the shadow, you find yourself in a small arena build by the Romans, L’Arènes de Lutèce, where kids with a soccer ball raise dust once stirred by gladiators. You stop to watch, parking your jeans on granite steps where togas were once de rigueur.
Under your feet, Roman slaves long ago dug construction plaster out of limestone deposits, creating huge underground quarries that occasionally gave way and swallowed up entire Medieval city blocks. In the 18th century those quarries were filled in with construction debris and the bones of thousands of the city’s residents, disinterred from their original shallow graves which were recognized as a health hazard.
The rebuilders left a maze of passageways, the Catacombs. Today they are only accessible to those willing to wait in line for the small part open to tourists, or who are lucky enough to connect up with one of the few clandestine guides to explore the vast forbidden tunnels.
Freemasons held meetings there. Debussy played a concert in one of these old galleries, others are painted with graffiti, ancient and more modern. These are all inhabited on the weekends by a sub-culture of hundreds of fascinating outcasts, ravers, drug-addled dropouts and renegade historians. One of the latter, having guided a small group of us during a night-long illegal adventure, became one of my dearest friends.
I miss him, my other friends, and the city itself.
Every corner of Paris has interesting stories and people. And sharing them with others has become a passion of mine. Paris!
Jeb Buffinton lives in Penrose and consults with clients preparing their visits to France, helping plan interesting itineraries, to cross cultural barriers, and offering simplified, practical language instruction. He can be reached at jebuffinton@gmail.com
All my thanks, Jeb, for sharing with us these wonderful memories and observations of Paris, and your photos. You have convinced me that there is only one Paris! - Deda
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Both Deda and Jeff write beautifully. How fortunate we are to have such intelligent scribes in our midst! Thank you for such fine post of Paris.
Superbe hommage...