Parislog 31
July 24, 2006

I was walking down the street on my way to Montmartre for some fabric when I noticed two kids in front of me. Normally, my thoughts don’t pause more than a second on anyone but these two made me stop totally. They were playing with a pair of silver revolvers. I have become so unaccustomed to seeing this that I was shocked. I felt my brain kind of stutter. I wanted to say something, take them away or who knows what. It happened another time at a picnic where there was a kid with a pile of guns for toys.

We, like everyone else, have been having heat wave upon heat wave and being in a new place, I have to figure out the system to handle it. The windows are huge, doors really, and can be a curse or a blessing. When we have hot days but cool nights I can open everything wide all night and then shut it all in the AM and it will stay pretty cool. The walls are miles thick. When the sun hits the windows, I shut the shutters. I had to go buy a fan though because what was happening was that it wasn’t cooling down at night. I could open everything and wake up in the morning sweating. The cross ventilation is not super because on the opposite side of the space is only one tiny little window in the kitchen. It only really works when there is a really stiff wind. There have been storms at night that cool the air down but none of it would move into the building. It was so frustrating. I wanted that air. Happily for me, yesterday the weather broke a little and it was tolerable. So far today is nice but the weather report was saying that it would be back to the mid 90’s again today.

We have a lot of storms here during this hot humid weather and they are quite impressive. Often you cannot see the lightening bolt itself but rather something that we called sheet lightening where I grew up. Because the lightening is happening inside of a thick blanket of clouds, it lights up the whole thing. It is like the whole skylights up for a second. It is really rather impressive. Some of the thunder has been so loud that it actually shakes the building and that is hard to do with these thick walls. The lightening and thunder come every few seconds. It is a magnificent show.

The streets here are beyond narrow. In fact, the street in front of me is actually a heavily used street but it is only one lane with occasional parking pullouts. Well, the other night I happen to look down and notice a bus had come up to the corner hotel for a drop off but had used one of the even smaller side streets that intersect with mine. I had no idea how he was going to get out of the bottleneck that he had created for himself other than backing out the way he had come. There was absolutely no way he could turn onto the street in the direction it moved. I watched, utterly fascinated. It took him multiple times back and forth to get the bus facing the wrong way but on the main street. Then he drove backwards down the street in the right direction until he found a bigger intersection. Don’t they make maps for these guys to know which streets they will fit on?

I have been doing a lot of thinking in regards to what tack to take with a career. One of the challenges is that it is so important here to have a degree or certificate in anything that you want to do. Without the right piece of paper you wont get the job. The importance placed on degrees is beyond anything in the States. My degree is in Theatre Arts and so I am thinking of combining that with the interior design experience and seeing what I can scrounge up in the world of set decorating. To that end, I went and found a little book of theatre terminology in French so that I can learn the words needed to communicate my experience.

I went to a different library than usual to find the theatre book that I wanted. You cannot reserve a book and have it come to your local branch here like you can in Los Angeles. The library that had the book I wanted was over in the Latin Quarter, which is where a lot of the universities are. It was a bit like walking into a ghost town. With all of the students gone for the summer, the streets were empty except for the occasional passer-by.

I went to a singles event that was held on the banks of the Seine River. For the last two or three years the mayor has created a beach by the Seine for the pleasure of those who stay in the city for the summer. They haul in truckloads of sand and potted palm trees and create a tropical paradise. It is called Paris Plage (plage is beach).

I have run into a number of stores with these signs in the window, “ Closed for yearly vacation” with dates that range between one to one and a half months. I guess they don’t fear that their business will fall apart if they take a vacation. The owners often work in their stores and this, I imagine, is the only way that they can take a vacation. Apparently the business doesn’t fall apart by closing for a month. A great deal of the citizens of the city leave for a month or more in the summer to the provinces and family homes. I think that there are more tourists in the streets right now than Parisians.

I tried to go to an open-air cinema only to find when I had returned home that I had the date wrong. It was in a really seedy part of town. Porte de Clichy, for those of you that know the city. I went down into the metro to go back and there were a few minutes until the next train so I sat down. A few seconds later, my eye is caught by some movement. I look. There are cockroaches of every conceivable size running across the platform that the seat is bolted to. They don’t seem the slightest bothered by the lighting or the people in proximity. My skin crawled the whole train ride. I went to the Champs-Elysees where the air is perfumed, to get rid of the feel of the roaches.

Saturday, A* and I went out to see the “Les Grandes Eaux Nocturnes de Versailles”. That is a night show of all the fountains working at Versailles followed by fireworks. First we went to the domain of Marie-Antoinette. We had no idea the immensity of the estate and lost a half an hour walking to this area. We only managed to see the Petit Trianon and some of the gardens, which included the little farming village the she had created for relaxation. It was a very relaxing place to be, I must admit. We sat on the grass near the village and ate a light dinner that we had brought with us and watched a swan lazily floating on the miniature lake. The fish were jumping out of the water catching bugs and ducks were swimming around the swan. Soon a man came by to say the park was closing and we needed to leave so we went for a walk around the “hameau” (little village) instead of leaving right away.

Another thunderstorm started while we were walking. Fortunately, it didn’t produce any rain although for a minute we thought it began to dump down and we were ducking and I was trying to cover my camera. We were scanning the area for cover. A* wanted to get out from under the nearby tree, too hazardous so we ran ahead a little. And it stopped. We looked back to see a sprinkler in the farmyard we had just passed.

We just made it out of the park before we were locked in for the night and headed off to gardens of Versailles to go to the show. We got to the gate and the guard wouldn’t let us in. He said we had to go around the outside of the property and re-enter at the chateau. Well, our feet were already sore from hours of walking and this would easily triple the distance. I wanted to scream. Fortunately there was a little city bus that went from nearby up to the chateau. I was so pissed at the guard for not telling us that. We thought we were going to have to walk the whole way.

When we arrived at the front of the chateau there was a little parade of musketeers and Swiss guardsmen heading towards the chateau beating drums. We followed beside them all the way into the gardens. We were so lucky to have walked with them right up near the front because unbeknownst to us, they were the front guard to starting the festivities. We managed to be right at the front of the line to get in with thousands of people behind us. When we were on the steps of the garden, they stopped and held us there until the show was ready to begin. Finally, the fountains came on starting the show. There were little concerts all throughout the park and 20 or more different fountains running. We tried to see the shows but there were so many people that you just couldn’t get in there. So instead we wandered around looking at the fountains, had fresh squeezed orange juice, and a calisson, which is an almond cookie from Provence. With a half an hour until the show, we decided to go get a spot to see the fireworks. That was not soon enough. All the good spots were taken. We managed to get to see it from an okay place in the end though. It was a spectacular evening.