My Man David

Sedaris, Mimi and everyone else are right. Going to the cinema in Paris is the thing to do. The city of light in the dark. Before I left, Mimi told me they were movie mad. And it’s true. Who else would bother to put decorate deep down basements with comic grand gold chandeliers flowering from blue velvet walls surrounding red plush seats? Would screen films for four people? And it is and it isn’t for people. Get the sense that maybe it’s not for human beings but for the films. Like someone who takes a great dress out of closet to sport around the house because it deserves to be worn, the projectionist takes the film from its canister and run the reels whether or not there is an audience. Part of the homage to movies in each street in the petits theaters. Roman Holiday shows at the same time Saved! An afternoon, you choose between Jules et Jim and Coffee and Cigarettes, the Godfather and My Man Godfrey. I saw Mon Homme Godfrey Friday. Got such a kick out of going to the comfortable classic, incongruous somehow in Paris. Yesterday I found Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind hidden in a hole in the wall theater on la rue Mouffetard. In my aimless life where besides a few hours of class and dinners with host family I have nothing need to do, where I can sit for hours reading by the Seine, where I endlessly promenade picking my path street by street from the way light looks or by the buildings and balconies, trying to get lost like this sentence in order to find myself and mysteries of the city (discovered the real Chinatown the other day in the 10th edging the 19th arrondissement – it was bigger than two blocks and I bet les brioches au porc are better), I like a little of the purpose movies lend my life. I flip through the guide, plan my program and set out for the theater. Searching for Eternal Sunshine I delved into streets of le quartier latin I had no other reason to be on. Stumbled into a sign branding a bar that read, “Poetry is an extreme sport.” Tumbled into a cute café for lunch loud from the large sum of Parisians not from one American couple. Then, the feature was fantastic. Great discussion of memory and owning ones past and I liked Jim Carrey for first time. Involved in the film, I am at once removed from France and completely abroad. I laugh twice as much as the other two people in the theater, at the jokes and for the French subtitles’ terse translations. I attempt to regard, listen, read, translate, juxtapose what saw with what heard. And after the scheduled darkness, the disruption of my meandering, I step out into the sunlight, and, this might be my favorite part of the process, there is Paris, still.

Blague

I love this language, but I’m not myself in it. Not only cause of the foreign fluidity of vowels and consonants spilling into each other, but it’s really hard to do my favorite thing, play with language. The French just think the American has made another error. On the other side, I don’t always get jokes. (Perhaps why I like those casse-pieds, casse-dents carambar candies. I’m so pleased to get blagues tordants aimed at kids.) Last night my host family took me to the theater. We went to the opening of this little comedy where afterwards they served blue champagne and I studied female French fashion. The piece was well played, funny, but parts were pretty incomprehensible. The play concerned the uselessness of words, breakdowns in communication highlighted by word games, les jeux des mots. Sometimes they spoke only in idioms, sometimes only in monologues, and sometimes substituted one word for another creating droll nonsense. Context could not help me comprendre. Strange to be swimming daily through this language when I only know one stroke, the dog paddle. But I get by, je me debrouille.

Le W.C.

You’ll think it’s just me, but really, French bathrooms are funny. First there’s the whole separation of church and state business thing. Then there are the pay toilettes on the street which I don’t use (dirty and what if you don’t get your euro’s worth.) My favorite toilettes in the middle of the city are on the fifth floor of Samaritain. It follows from the favoring of Henri Bendel’s or the patronage of Bergdorf’s merely for their bathrooms. Samaritain is better though because where else could you get a view of the backside of a famous gothic church each time you go. Also, all over, the signs. Some have a figure of a boy, arm raised, waving his hand in the air to indicate the urgency. The best one is of a girl who seems to have her legs pressed together and one hand over her crotch. Laughed for a long time at that one. And yesterday, standing at the sink, the door opened and in the mirror I saw Rebecca for the first time since new year’s. I guess the bathroom’s the place to meet up in Paris.

Jacques Pervert

This weekend I stepped into an old poem Madame Cabrera, my seventh grade, mole-moving prof de français forced down our throats. “Je suis allée aux marché aux oiseaux.” It was accidental and better than in “Pour Toi, Mon Amour.” Wandering across l’ile de la cité Sunday, I found the weekworkday empty lots filled. Exotic flowers crowded stalls and strange, funny looking birds stared at stranger, funnier looking French and tourists alike. At the market I explored Saturday there were few tourists. Le marché aux puces, flea market, north end of the 4 line, was a riot. They sold everything from head to toe, from sunglasses and shoes to housewares and hookahs. Made conversation and bargained more to see if we could do it in French than anything else. The highlight was when one vender guessed I was Spanish or Italian. J’ai acheté des trucs mais pas pour toi, mon amour.