La Rive Droite

It took us less than an hour to get from rail to rue.  In between we taxied from Gare de Lyon to our hotel, the Hotel Raphael (which had been used by Wes Anderson for his short film, "Hotel Chevalier," and which I found out too late had been set dressed with furniture from his own apartment a few blocks away), then into the Metro for a short ride back across the city.  

Our premiere destination was the Place de Vosges, which LYL was quite excited to share with me.  Developed by Henri IV in 1605, it is the oldest planned square in Paris, and was today decorated with Parisians sprawled on the grass, enjoying a cool summer afternoon within its splendidly walled confines.  Moreso than the lawn, we were tempted by the Victor Hugo house tucked beneath the arches in one corner, but a special exhibition had resulted in a queue. We settled instead for crepes and cafe creme at a sidewalk table and watched the bustle of the trendy Marais.  

Thus fueled, we passed the large stele marking the Bastille, then followed the Seine, trying to ignore the race of traffic above.  We reentered the city where the Hotel de Ville rose up, and tried in vain to get inside.  The front plaza too proved popular with those looking for sun, as was the nearby Fontaine de Innocents.   

It was here I began to follow a course laid out in the book, A Walkable Feast, which was a companion volume to the Walks in Gertrude Stein's Paris that I had used on my last visit over a decade ago.  (The current volume was dedicated strictly to Hemingway, and as such it compared more poorly, since the Stein book dealt with all of her circle, making for longer strolls and richer variety.)  With the innards of the Pompidou Center spilling out behind us, we passed through The Halles, seemingly under perpetual construction.  The Louvre and its environs weren't any less busy, as the Jardin des Tuileries was hosting a large fun fair that seemed to harken back to the chaotic days of the Commune, with its wild rides and screaming teens.  

Things were a little calmer in the side street canyons leading to the old Opera House.  LYL made a quick detour to Chanel (picked clean this day by a cluster of Hong Kong tourists), but our intended stop at the Ritz Hotel bar (which Hemingway "liberated" in 1944) had to be tabled due to ongoing construction there.   We did find a surprising bit of solitude in the open Place Vendome, where the tall statue of a Caesaresque Napolean towers above both the room where Chopin died and the now scaffolded Ritz from where Lady Diana began her final ride.   

Along a narrow side street we took a rest at Harry's New York Bar, an idea shared with many foreigners finished with the day's work in the nearby financial district.  Spoken English filled the place, finding parallel with the decor: the crests of the public schools of England hanging above the pennants of America's better known universities.  Above a photo of Hemingway himself I found the pennant of my own alma mater of Arizona, in whose renowned creative writing program I discovered Hemingway and first devoured his Moveable Feast.  It was there I began a flirtation with Paris, or at least with his Paris, so it was there that it began.  And here, in Harry's bar, it came full circle.  A rather elliptical circle at that.  

Our next stop was Hemingway related as well, a pleasant simple meal at Gourmand Prunier, where he would dine if he had done well at the races. We considered this warranted as our own legs had by now carried us much father than his winning horses had.  

But those legs weren't finished just yet.  Up the steps of Église de la Madeleine for photos of the fading sunlight.  From here we carried on toward the lengthening shadow of the Egyptian obelisk in the Place de la Concorde.  Just around the corner, the Champs-Élysées was coming into her nighttime finery.  

Up toward the famous Arch, the Avenue was closed to traffic, in some sort of rehearsal for Bastille Day. Thus unchallenged by traffic, we stepped out into the middle of the grand road and snapped away at the last traces of daylight.   
 

On the turntable:  Buffalo Springfield, "Buffalo Springfield Again"
On the nighttable:  Peter Mayle, "Toujours Provence"

Sunday Papers: Charles de Gaulle

"How can you govern a country that has 246 varieties of cheese?"




On the turntable:  Palace Music, "Arise, Therefore"
On the nighttable:  Marcel Pagnol, "My Father's Glory & My Mother's Castle

Pastis and Petanque

Another of my goals this summer was to sit at the edge of a dusty town square somewhere and sip pastis while watching the locals play boules.  Late Saturday afternoon we chose Cogolin, since it was short drive away.  

Despite the lingering heat of the day we found a number of games in progress, side by side across three makeshift courts.  They stood out in the open sun, the square having been renovated and the stubby plane trees still a few years away from giving shade.  The men playing were younger and had more of the look of bowlers or billiard players, with their T-shirts, sneakers, and disappointing absence of good mustaches.  Worst of all was that my vantage point was blocked by people standing out along the front of a similarly renovated cafe, with glassed-in sides and nary an outdoor table.   

It was all a far cry from what I had envisioned from watching  films based on the novels of Pagnol.  LYL assured me that the old ways do exist, but more so further up in the hills, though it is doubtful anyone wears suspenders and fedora as well as Yves Montand.  So I soothed myself with my first taste of pastis, heavy and thick like licorice.  I'm not a spirits person, and the high alcohol content quickly brought a heat into my body that could rival that of out in the square.  I could see that it was drink only for a dry climate, for the liquor itself is like humidity in a glass.  The thought of sipping it on a sticky August Kyoto afternoon brought a feeling of claustrophobia.  

Glass empty, we needed to run a few quick errands in town, one of which was the pharmacy.  As we stood in the queue, a woman came in leading her dog on a leash, one of those bull terriers with their weird shark-like head.  As we all waited, the dog plonked itself onto the cool tile floor with a great burst of a sign, its belly flattened like a yogi to completely maximize the cooling effect.  The woman took little time with her prescription, and as she left, the dog seemed unwilling to go, ignoring the first couple of tugs on the leash.  Instead the woman dug her heels in, and walking backward, turned the still supine dog completely around and began dragging it toward the door, its legs still splayed behind, and in between,  a pair of its own boules glided steadily across the floor. 


On the turntable:  Blossom Dearie, "For Cafe Apres-Midi" 
On the nighttable:  "Paris Was Ours"  (Various)

(untitled)

Footsteps absorbed by stone.

Searching for

What lies behind silence

On the turntable:  Bay City Rollers,  "Bay City Rollers"

Sunday Papers: Ernest Hemingway

“In Europe then we thought of wine as something as healthy and normal as food and also as a great giver of happiness and well being and delight. Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary, and I would not have thought of eating a meal without drinking either wine or cider or beer.”


On the turntable:  Conor Oberst, "Here's to Special Treatment"

A Meal in the Maures

The silence at Chartreuse de la Verne had emptied all, including even our bellies.  We found respite a dozen twisted kilometers away, in the village of Collobrières.  There had been a settlement here at least since the bridge was laid in the 12th Century.  The town's current layout was like a bell jar, with long narrow streets leading away toward a central point from which they splayed away like the typical medieval town.  The base of this bell was the long Boulevard Lazare Carnol, shaded completely by tall plane trees.  We sat ourselves in front of the Bar Tabac de la Mairie, facing the village square, which was as quiet as the ruined church that had greeted us on our way into town.  The proprietress upon seeing us seemed surprised that we didn't prefer to eat overlooking the river.  The river?

Passing through to the back, we found a wide veranda had been built across the narrow Réal Collobrier, a number of its tables filled with food and conversation.  We settled into a bowl of linguine and a nice piece of beef, along with the obligatory glass of rosé.  This is a dangerous sort of wine, as unlike a fuller-bodied white (or red, though in the summer, forget it), it is barely felt and goes down like water, and before you know it, a half bottle is gone.  Being midday, and needing to drive those sinuous roads home, I chose the smallest volume. 

We had started late, and not long after our plates arrived, so did the staff, tucking into a tall plate of mussels now that the kitchen was closed.  A jolly, full-bellied man stepped out into the doorway, who we presumed was the cook. He called greetings over to a man at an adjoining veranda, one filled with diners looking more buttoned down and touristic.  LYL and I complimented ourselves on choosing the one that was more authentic, where the other guests looked like locals.  When our proprietress came to drop our check we complimented the food, and asked her to pass on these sentiments to the chef.  She looked at us and laughed and said, "But that's me!"  The full-bellied 'cook' smiled at us from behind her, still playing the charade that it was he rather, who was in charge.  

After such a good meal, the level of satisfaction is usually so complete that there is really little point in trying to surpass it.  Aside from the drive home, there was little else to do.  We had a token peek at the Chapelle Notre Dame de Pitié, as bright and colorfully painted as the shutters in the windows of the houses lining the long lanes.  Next door at Confiserie Azuréenne we took as dessert some samples of the chestnuts that gives this village its renown. (Though their ice cream seemed a bigger seller on a day as hot as this.)   Followed up by a cafe au lait on the village square, in a bistro whose platters were as big as the rims on our car. Little moved here, least of all the air, so we initiated a bit of motion ourselves, and walked across the dappling shadows of the plane trees, in the direction of a nap.  


On the turntable: Bill Evans, "Live at the Village Vanguard"
  

Ce qui se Trouve Derrière le Silence

It is a scene encountered a hundred times in Asia, of a woman sitting on her haunches on the floor, feet spayed out sideways to the left, her body contours hidden by flowing cloth.  She is sitting directly before the idols lined up on the other side of the room, sitting in complete stillness, the perfect manifestation of the message written on the sign on the door, a single word: Silence.  
 
The woman looks a part of this room, as if she has grown out of this stone which was laid here 900 years before.  The chairs that flank her were a later addition of course, as was the custom of sitting in them.  And the idol that those chairs face is far from the crowded riot of colors found in the bustling temples of Asia. Rather, it is a single simple figure of Christ on the cross, carved from a single piece of wood and of very subdued colors, a Christ gaunt and be-ribbed.

The angularity of the Christ matches that of the trees of the hills outside.  The woman at prayer would have passed thousands of them on her way here, a journey of some effort, along a road that sinuated its way through the oak and chestnut of the Maures, a road that clung miraculously to the hillsides, a road transformed with the coming of feet, of hoof, of tire.  After that long winding almost metaphoric road, this woman would have had to undertake the final part of her journey alone, on foot, over the dust of sunburned trail.  And finally, the silence would welcome her, as would the cool.     

We leave her be and step outside into the light.  The paths are lined with lavender bushes humming with the throb of bees, and every step brings us deeper into their scent.  More arched doorways await at their end, leading us into another stone chamber, then another, and another.  Chartreuse de la Verne is a labyrinth, with all passages leading eventually to the chapel.  It is the largest chamber of all, bare but for simple wooden pews, a container built for silence. For silence is the real work here, not the baking of bread, nor the grinding of olives for oil, nor the chanting of female voices high sweet.  In the beginning may have been the Word, but words have all but transcended this place.       

Some words do remain of course, as this is an abbey founded on the law of God.  But as I walk around I feel that that law is a mutually agreed upon vision of a shared existence, one based on faith rather than externally-imposed precepts.  Faith can take many forms, and like snowflakes, each is unique and personal.  I lie the idea of that.  And though I am far from the Catholicism of my childhood, I feel that faith resonate within, in the form of silence.  And despite the cliché, silence doesn't fill; it empties.


On the turntable:  (---------)