18 April
Shouts fading into the distance.
Senses heightened.
A strange feeling of elation swelling inside you, oblivious to the
swirl of humanity that streams around you.
This is travelling alone in Paris. Each train hums the sorrowful
liturgy of the melancholy city. Each person is a vivid flash among the darkness
of the rattling sewers and shadowed crypts. They surge back and forth among the
Metro, each a discreet part of the cohesive unit. They relish the silence,
periodically broken by smatterings of rapid French. I stand among them, unseen
and indistinguishable. I am no longer marked by the English nattering that can
fill a carriage like a drop of red dye in the water. Alone, you are just
another good-looking young man watching the faces around you. We sway with the
movement of the train and then, with a flurry of explosive ruffling, surface as
one.
Paris is a city where the buildings drip gold. Each street is a work
of marble and gilt, flowing from the pavement like a wave of opulence. Behind
and below this shining exterior is the sweet scent of decay, the permeation of
melancholy that inspired the great mind of Ernst Hemmingway.
“Hemingway’s air drips of ash, ice, and the sweet sadness, the
pained beauty that filled his terse prose.”
To fully experience the power of Paris, one must be silent. And to
be truly silent is to strip oneself of everything. To fully experience Paris,
one must be alone.
I started my journey with the rest of the group. Then they were
gone, whisked away on train to somewhere else. I just stood at the station and
appreciated the language flowing around me. Smiling, I noted the absence of
English. I moved at my own pace to the next station, then to the next. The
freedom was exhilarating. There is something magical about walking through a
foreign underground completely alone and with pretty pathetic French. It is a
crowded isolation, a compelling contradiction. But anyone is French until they
start to speak.
I first left the underground at the Luxemburg Gardens and Palace.
The sun-drenched air was coated in the romance and majesty that typifies all
Parisian gardens. The sky was slashed with long, thin clouds, each the colour
of the palest mountain ice, almost tinged with blue. The rows of trees were
dappled with sunlight. All around me teemed Parisian life, the families and the
couples glorying in their togetherness. And I sat there, on the edge of the
fountain, writing in a little purple book. If one wants to feel like a
Parisian, one should go to Luxemburg Garden. Not only are the people enjoying
the fair weather, but the backdrop is one of the most spectacular in France.
Rearing above us, clothed in reams of pink flowers and pale stone, sits
Luxemburg Palace. Though perhaps not as elaborate or grand as some of the other
French buildings, Luxemburg is nevertheless magnificent.
I began the great trudge after my brief tan beneath the Palace.
Aiming roughly for the University of Paris, I strolled along the wide Parisian
boulevards, watching the people go by. Parisians are fascinating. Paris happens
to be full of them. Many of the girls march through the city as though they are
sole rulers of the entire nation. They glower imperiously at the gangly
tourists bouncing obliviously along the pavement. Should one ask for directions
and dare to blink vaguely at the rapid (yet magnificent) French that pours from
those painted lips, one should be prepared for the sharpest glares of
Continental Europe. Haughty beauty and impatience go hand in hand. On the other
hand, beautiful girls with paint-splattered jeans litter the artistic districts
and train stations of Paris. But those doe eyes and dreamy smiles are far to
distracting to ask for the way. One must be content to exchange mischievous
glances, forgotten in the rush of the stations. The French boys seem to wander
the city, well dressed and darkly handsome. Though I must say, the girls of New
Zealand seemed to prefer the much less well-dressed males of Abercrombie and
Fitch. Then again, it requires clothing to be considered well dressed.
I ate a quick lunch of pâté and ham on a sandwich in the shadow the
Pantheon. A campus of the University and the old, gloomy Pantheon sit next to
each other, starkly similar in beige stone and monolithic grandeur. Yet they
represent such different things. One is a shining light for the future, leading
new generations forward into a changing world. One is a somber reminder of
France’s past. But both are beautiful. The French stonework has mastered the
duality of solidity and elegance. It is lovely to behold.
Marching swiftly, I passed through Paris. The Notre Dame loomed and
faded as I emerged onto the river. The Seine is brown and murky, but flanked by
the most gorgeous architecture in the world. Every moment walking along the
banks of the Seine is a blessing and I stretched the time out, savoring the
taste of the dust flicked up by the wind. Parisian dust is just as cloying as
the dust of any of the other great cities of the world, but knowing I was
breathing in parts of the magnificent architecture and ancient statues that
litter the streets seemed to make it more bearable.
Arriving at the Musée D’Orsy was a relief. I had been walking for
over an hour and my feet were beginning to ache. As I sat once again in the
Valley of Statues, watching the great golden clock tick far above me, I was
free to write and ponder one of the great obsessions of French Art: La forme de
la femme. It is hard to pass a French painting, be it impressionist or
religious, without observing at least one bared bosom. The sensual energy of
French art is omnipresent, especially in museums such as the Musée D’Orsy. The
French appreciation of the female body is evident everywhere, from the great
domes and curving arches of their architecture to the very statures that adorn
these monuments. Paris is a celebration of art, and, in Paris, art is a
celebration of humanity.
I had crossed the Seine and lie on the grass of the Champs
D’Elyésée. The wind was warm and sings past the hedges and statues of the
Garden. I dozed gracefully, oblivious to the giggling and cuddling of the
lovers all around me. Champs D’Elyésée attracts them like flies. Paris is the
world’s best place to be in love. The very language whispers of romance and
passion. In Paris you can love without hesitation. You can clip your heart to a
bridge and toss away the key. You can give yourself over to absolute
sensuality. The nooks and crannies of Paris, with their one hundred gardens and
cute cafes, offer many sanctuaries for the lovers to snatch a moment lost in
each other’s presence. It is beautiful to see, yet poignantly lonely. But
lovers don’t see Paris. Lovers do not appreciate Paris. The Seine in
particular, that epitome of romance, is lost to them. When they sit on the
banks of the river, fingers intertwined, they see not the beauty of the water,
but the beauty of each other. But I want to see Paris, thank you very much. I
am travelling alone (at this point).
It was almost directly north of the Champs D’Elyésée. The respite
offered by the soft grass of the garden was shed in favour of the concrete
pavement, the unforgiving “trottoir”. I strolled up the Rue du Prix with barely
a glance at the most expensive stores in Paris. A brief, but awkward, conversation
with a young chauffeur ensued. Lessons learned include:
1) The French must have a different acronym or word for ATM.
2) L’arbre means tree, not money (L’argent, bloody easy mistake to
make >_< ).
3) Asking for a machine from which to receive trees is only helpful
to those wishing to confuse a French chauffeur.
After assuaging his environmental concerns, I fled the square.
Eventually, I felt safe and my self-confidence began its slow trudge back to
egomaniacal. I turned the corner and was suddenly struck by one of the most
inspiring sights known to man. Place de L’Opera.
Place de L’Opera is explosively magnificent. There is really no
other way to describe it. I entered at the base of the round about, opposite
the National Academy of Music. A gorgeous trilingual student stood on the
steps, playing to a crowd of about one hundred. He croons into his microphone,
soaring with the notes he plucks on a second hand guitar. The National Academy
of Music is attached to the National Opera of France. I have never entered a
building more sumptuous, or where the average age of the tour group was over
quadruple my own. There was literally a room made of gold. Being ushered into
the dimly lit auditorium to see the Theatre Gods dance on stage was the closest
thing to feeling religious awe that I will ever experience.
Re-submerging myself in the bowels of the Parisian Metro, I glided
to Nation. Nation is one of the largest of Parisian Metro stations. It is a
little dip in the landscape where Paris gathers like condensation. Parisians
seem to drip from the walls. It is almost a market. Hundreds of stalls were set
up in the narrow corridors, littered with a multi-colored swath of humanity. It
is a fascinating place, made all the more bizarre by the fact I had been aiming
for Bastille. No matter.
Finally surfacing at the right stop, I trotted up the steps into
Bastille. A great green pillar thrusts into the sky, tipped by a golden figure
frozen in motion. The shape of the monument is somewhat familiar. I must have
seen it mirrored in other notable pieces of French architecture... French
artists may be obsessed with woman, but I think the architects have something
else on their minds. I seemed to be in artistic luck that day. Looming next to
the monument, fragile yet formidable in glass and steel, is the Bastille Opera.
The polar opposite of the National Opera, it glistens in the weak sunlight. The
National Opera had an old and opulent arrogance that seeps from the walls, but
Bastille had a chic edge and dynamism that shows the future of Opera and
performance. Its modernity sets the perfect atmosphere for the young and
passionate artists that wait inside, eager to feel alive. If I were ever to
pursue a career in music, I would go to one of these great establishments.
Another short Metro trip went by and I found myself feeling
absolutely dwarfed. The Eiffel Tower hadn’t made me feel that way. The Arc du
Triomph hadn’t made me feel that way. Nothing has really made me feel as small
as Le Bibliotheque National, the National Library of France. As if the four 50
story towers of glass rising from the corners of a one thousand square meter
platform of wood hadn’t already been making me feel like a insignificant little
speck of existence, I had to move to the center of that platform and look down.
There was a one hundred meter drop, showing a cut away section of the platform
that I had been unable see from my limited vantage point. And in that hole was
a forest. A literal forest. With actual trees. Like, huge trees. I was already
about 12 massive stories high. This was the most mammoth building I had ever
encountered in France. There were probably over a million books. Thousands upon
thousands of shelves. And everything covered with words.
I felt immersed in literature, swamped in a blanket of words.
French, German, English, and Latin, every conceivable language was represented
on these shelves. I sat in one of the reading rooms and wrote in my book.
People hummed around me, mostly university students or wise, aged gentlemen and
ladies. They chattered in their quiet, elegant French, dropping soft eloquences
into the still, silent air. French spread like the red stain of the sunset
glancing through the massive windows of the reading rooms. Languages don’t grow
naturally in stilted classrooms or musty textbooks. Language is organic,
planted in the mind and nourished by use and exposure. Upon my return to the
hotel, I feel once again into the harsh clanging and abrupt clashes of Mother
English. But I cannot ever forget those eight hours. The eight hours when the
only language to pass my lips was French. The eight hours when I was French.
Those eight, glorious hours.
