Sue Chenette: Wednesday in the park

Late Wednesday afternoon, when I went out to mail a letter and buy a baguette, it seemed the whole quartier was in the park next to the mairie (town hall) of the third arrondissement.

Actually, my prof at Alliance française might find fault with that sentence: the French classify their espaces verts, all those public places with grass and trees and flowers, in descending order of size: forêt, parc, jardin, square. Our neighbourhood  “park” only qualifies as a square, and is in fact called Square du Temple.

But whatever their size, the parks in Paris are lived in. People come to read, to gossip, to play—especially the primary school students, on Wednesdays, when they have no classes—or simply to sit in the company of others, taking in the warm afternoon, watching the mallards that waddle over the grass.

My Minnesota grandfather had a phrase—“going out among-em.” He meant rubbing shoulders with the world, in the stands at a football game, on a walk along the river, or eating Sunday dinner out. You knew from the way he said it that he saw this as a natural part of life, and a good part. If I had asked him, I think he would have said that being together in public places is essential to democracy; to a sense of being a citizenry with common needs and purposes. He would have loved the Square du Temple.

Sue Chenette: Thinking about pictures

I’ve been thinking about the pictures that get taken, and those that don’t even though my camera is in full-time residence in my purse.

At last night’s recital in the American Cathedral, a picture of the vault into which the trumpet sounds lifted. But not of the white-haired couple several pews in front of us, her hand on the back of his brown suit jacket, massaging when his head drooped forward, the gentlest wake-up touch.

And afterwards, on the Champs Elysées, the young man filming a rap group—song and dance, short skirts, music from a speaker. But not three Japanese girls smiling for a friend’s camera in front of the Yves Saint Laurent display window, their heads tilted toward the famous logo lettered in gilt on the glass. Nor the man seated next to them on the sidewalk with a small brown dog on his lap, a begging bowl and a cardboard sign.

In Paris, with a ready camera, a quick eye, chutzpah and enough time, you could capture a gesture, a stance, a facial expression, for every point on the scale of being.

Just down the Champs Elysées from the Arc de Triomphe, a young man stood near his glowing Eiffel towers, not getting any business. And going home on the métro, another slept through the jostle and laughter as we made our way across the city.

Sue Chenette: Les Journées du Patrimoine

Last Saturday and Sunday tout le monde queued up for a glimpse into rooms with tall windows and gilt mirrors, coffered ceilings and intricately panelled doors; rooms lined with paintings and statues, lighted with chandeliers.

It was the weekend of Les Journées du Patrimoine, or Heritage Days, when doors normally closed are opened to the public.

Behind them, beauty, and history. The Hôtel de Lauzun, a luxurious private mansion built on Île St Louis in the 17th century, languished after the revolution. It had become a neglected rental property by the mid-nineteenth century, when it was purchased by an art collector who began restorations.

The rooms in the Hôtel de Ville (city hall) were burnt rubble in 1871, during the violent days of the Commune and the Franco-Prussian war. The lavish décor dates from the1880s, when the building was reconstructed.

Beauty and history. But in the rooms we walked through, the history had subsided. It was as if somewhere along the way, after the revolution and the restoration and the empires and the barricades and the commune, the French had said to each other, “Let’s keep the beauty.”

On the weekend, that was what they waited in those hours-long lines to see.

A footnote to the Hôtel de Lauzun:  one of the 19th century renters  was Charles Baudelaire, who wrote the first poems  of Les Fleurs du mal in an attic apartment.

Actors from one of the many small theatres in Paris entertained us with scenes from his writings as we waited in the queue.

Sue Chenette: Our petit déjeuner

On the days that we go to Alliance française, we take our petit déjeuner at a corner café near the school.

We sit by the window.

Outside, everyone is on their way somewhere: on scooters, on bicycles, on foot, coming out of the métro, waiting for a bus.

The street cleaners in their lime-coloured vests are busy with their green-bristled brooms.

Energies up and running.

 

 

We’re not quite there yet, lingering over café crème and chocolat chaud, the world framed in the window pane a painting, a film, a story ... we’ll step into it soon.

Sue Chenette: A trip to Bastille market

Beginning this week, our friend, Toronto poet Sue Chenette, will be the guest diarist of Almost A Week In Paris. Today’s post from Sue:

Here’s a collage of this morning’s trip to the Bastille market. Steve and I almost didn’t go. It was raining. And most of the morning had already slipped away. True, we said, we needed apples and cheese and bread and flowers, but we could always stop by Monoprix tomorrow. Finally, we did rouse ourselves, gathered umbrellas and shopping bags. And if we hadn't gone—I would have missed the man with the black umbrella, carrying a paper-wrapped bouquet of purple gladiolas!

Sue Chenette is the author of three chapbooks: The Time Between Us, A Transport of Grief, and Solitude in Cloud and Sun.

Slender Human Weight (Guernica Editions, 2009) is her first full-length collection; it was a Long-List Finalist for the ReLit Awards in 2010.