celebrity

you’d think all people from Paris were Charlize Theron the way Americans prepare you for their supposed rudeness and heir of superiority. But the notion that the French are turds is completely false. whether it’s because we have a euro sign on our forehead, or because they’re genuinely nice, who cares. at least, in the spectrum of this subject, it seems pretty irrelevant what their motive is. the fact is that the people of Paris are patient and smiley, and that is very pleasant.

*

I failed to mention the purpose of the asterisk in one of my recent entries. A statement was made by Samantha (my girlfriend) that I apparently was too stingy to send her a text that cost a mere dollar and fifty cents. What she didn’t know at the time is that I’d in fact lost my cell phone. So there you have it.

Memories of the Louvre

The first impression I had of the Louvre was the rainbows on the floor.  The museum’s famous glass pyramid combines with the sunlight from outside to make a sort of prism.  As a result, the cold, white marble floor by the ticket counter becomes periodically covered in an enormous crisscross pattern of brightly dancing rainbows.  This effect was simultaneously simple and spectacular.  The rainbows’ playful and whimsical beauty seemed like the natural world’s way of getting a small say in the gigantic, man-made spectacle known as the Louvre.  However—possibly to nature’s dismay—this rainbow light show has probably never been pictured or discussed in the countless books and websites dedicated to the most famous museum in the world.  In fact, this small wonder was just the first of many aspects of the Louvre that I could never have gained from a book, but will always distinctly remember.

 

Despite my lack of art knowledge, I felt thrilled at the prospect of seeing some of the wonders the Louvre had to offer.  As our group separated for the day, I found myself with my friend Laura, ready to begin my journey through this incredible museum.  Like all good tourists should, we began our visit by making a beeline to the painting that is almost synonymous with the Louvre—the Mona Lisa.  Along the way, we sped through enormous rooms whose walls were covered in rows upon rows of paintings and others whose floors seemed like thick forests of sculptures.  I began to wonder what I had never had opportunity to wonder before—who has the responsibility of hanging the pictures and arranging the sculptures in world famous museums; and how on earth do they do it?  I struggled to come up with answers to these burning questions and to enjoy these multitudes of priceless pieces of art I quickly passed, while I tried to keep my focus on getting to the Mona Lisa.

 

After rushing through several more of these magnificent rooms, we finally reached our destination.  There she was.  The woman.  The myth.  The legend.  She looked just like she did in all the books and prints where she had been reproduced. But in the countless times I had looked at reproductions of DaVinci’s masterpiece, I had never before had the opportunity to see the extent of its popularity.  This popularity was embodied in the thick throng of tourists from every nation, tribe, and tongue who surrounded the painting, and the noisy, collective clicking of their cameras.  Laura and I decided that we cared more about seeing the rest of the Louvre than fighting the Mona Lisa crowd, so on we went.

 

The plethora of artwork that I witnessed that day has become a blur in my memory.  I remember searching for Vermeer, Venus de Milo, and Michelangelo.  I also remember wandering through the African art section on the way and being fascinated by its exotic and exaggerated qualities.  But aside from these and several other distinct fragments, I remember the art I saw that day as one continuous stream of figures, frames, portraits, and landscapes.    Although I enjoy art, like I mentioned before, I do not have the least bit of knowledge of art history or technique.  All I could do was steal brief glances at the paintings that struck my fancy, and take flashless pictures of the ones I most wanted to remember.  Maybe someday I’ll show those pictures to my artist friends and have them explain the paintings’ significance.  But for the time being, all I had to enjoy the paintings were my imagination and my untrained eye for beauty.  Despite my lack of knowledge, I still felt a child-like wonder and excitement as I saw some of the best art this world has to offer.

 

But art is not all the Louvre had to offer, nor is art all I will remember it by.  In addition to the art, the little events and oddities of my day at the Louvre made my visit memorable.  I continued my endless march through the rooms upon rooms of paintings, struggling to decide which ones to notice. Suddenly, I spotted something to which I, without a doubt, had to give my full attention.  Stationed in front of one of the paintings, sat a petite elderly woman at an easel painting a copy of one of the paintings hanging on the wall.  The woman had almost finished her work, so I could admire her skill in creating an almost identical copy of the painting she had been trying to imitate.  Again, I thought about what I had never thought about before—how amazing it would be to be an artist and sit in front of an original painting and copy it.  What a way to learn your craft!

 

After a full morning of roaming around the Louvre, Laura and I both began to feel hungry.  So, we headed towards one of the Louvre’s adorable and overpriced cafes.  Glad for the break from walking, we both sat down and ordered focaccia sandwiches.  The sandwiches turned out to be melt-in-your-mouth delicious.  In all of my years of dreaming about visiting the Louvre, it never once entered my mind that a museum could make such yummy food—which is a good thing, considering the number of Euros we paid for it.  As we enjoyed our lunch, Laura and I pored over the museum map, strategizing what we would try to see in the time we had left.  Pictures of famous paintings and sculptures peppered the map, indicating where these pieces were located amidst the vastness of the Louvre.  It felt like a Where’s Waldo of museums.  After trying to make sense of the map, we came up with some semblance of a plan.

 

The second leg of our journey through the Louvre went smoothly until we reached the Dutch paintings.  Suddenly, an alarm started blaring from the ceilings.  A monotone voice began giving instructions in numerous different languages.  Neither Laura nor I could understand the voice’s instructions, but we saw people pouring down the stairs as if to evacuate.  But a museum employee assured us everything would be fine and that these alarms went off all the time.  Yet, the alarm went on like a song on repeat.  When the alarm finally stopped, the same museum employee eagerly pointed us to a window.  This particular window had the perfect view to all things Paris—mainly the Eiffel Tower and the Arch de Triomphe.  Not only did this man’s gesture dispel the myth that all Parisians are rude and provide a great photo opportunity, it also stands out as the highlight of my day at the Louvre.

 

After a few more hours of wandering, we finally had to return to the lobby and meet up with the rest of our group.  But finding a way out of the Louvre proved to be an adventure unto itself.  We spent at least half an hour walking up and down marble staircases, moving in circles through Italian sculptures and Egyptian artifacts, and puzzling over the museum map, before we finally found the lobby.  Our adventure in the Louvre was almost over—but not quite.  While we waited for the rest of our group, we witnessed a high profile security procedure, centered on a suspicious backpack that had been left on the floor.  Fortunately, the backpack proved to be the harmless possession of a school kid and everything at the Louvre returned to normal.

 

After I returned to America, I pulled my Treasures of the Louvre book off my shelf.  It had been given to me by a friend’s mom when I was in middle school.  I read the note she wrote me, and my eyes fell upon the line “I hope that some day you will actually get to visit it.”  I felt a feeling both gratified and eerie that her wish for me had come true.  I had indeed experienced the magnificence of the Louvre.  Now the museum no longer exists merely as a fact, it also lives as a memory—a memory that includes rainbows, a focaccia sandwich, and a kind museum employee, in addition to the Mona Lisa I expected.

Language Limbo

I feel like a zombie as I stand in the security line at the Miami airport. My ears remain full of whatever it is ears get full of on airplanes, air? Mucus? Anxiety? Zombie death?

Everyone around me looks like they have also been reanimated. People groan. Pick up their bags. Set their bags down. We all move forward on carpet that looks like clown vomit.

My ears refuse to pop. Why? I’m not sure. I take phenomenal care of my ears. Q-Tipping them never more than just enough but also never less. At the FIAP, Eric and I even sought out Q-Tips. Harassing our better-prepared travelmates until Laura buckled to our whining.

My ears have no reason to protest. Yet they persist. Holding up their little picket signs shaped like incredible pain.

This picket renders my left ear virtually useless. It became so obstinate on the flight over the Atlantic, I can no longer hear out of it. Or, I can hear a little, but people’s words sound like they have been covered in bubble wrap. Not the fun kind of bubble wrap that pops, the bubble with the bubbles that are too hard to pop. These ready-to-be-shipped words bounce around in my head before landing in comprehension.

My right ear tunes in on some lady in front of me who keeps saying, to no one in particular, “Oh, I hope I haven’t missed my flight” with a Spanish accent thicker than the Nutella I coated my croissant in before we left Paris. She enunciates each word, especially emphasizing the Ts. She’s someone’s abuelita, with a big puff of dark brown hair.

“Dios mio, dios mio,” she mumbles while shuffling through the metal detector in her practical ankle high socks. Smiling up at the security guards who tower over her. I want to pat her on the head and carry her to her gate.

I place my belongings on the X-Ray conveyor belt thing. Attempt to follow Abuelita through the metal detector. However, I’m interrupted by the security dude.

“Ma’am, could you please put your shoes in a separate bin.”  I stare blankly up at him. He closes his eyes for a second, the way  my mom used to do when she would come home and see the cat dressed in my doll’s clothes. 

He raises his voice. He slows his speech. “Ma’am, your shoes,” he points to my feet, “in the bin,” he points to the stack of containers next to me. I nod. I comply. I walk through the metal detector.

I hear the security guard heave a heavy sigh as he once more yells in slowed speech at someone behind me. He repeats, “Your shoes in the bin.” Again, “Shoes, bin.” I glance over my shoulder to see him physically bending over to point at this man’s shoes.

Before I left for Paris, my friend Alex said, “It’s weird. You don’t speak their language at all. And they don’t really speak yours. Eventually all you hear is theirs so you can barely speak yours. You get lost in some sort of language limbo.” My unpopable ears preserve me in this limbo. My ears are amber, my English a beetle.

Though I see the words through their coating, accessing them becomes impossible.

Everyone speaks languages that may or may not be ones I understand as I amble through the Miami airport towards an Orlando bound plane. Words float around me like a mobile above a baby. They circle around me and around me and around me and around me. I would reach up, I would grasp for them, I would hold whatever bits of them I could in my fists. But I don’t.

I don’t because I love language limbo. Language limbo sounds like it would resemble the area between a washing machine and the wall. That tiny space where dust, socks and gross things live. Really, language limbo is more like the area under beds where everything good and necessary ends up when it gets lost.

Like sharpie markers, left shoes and favorite DVDs.

 *

Upon first arriving in Paris, I felt like an asshole. A huge American asshole dropped into the linty washer crevice. I wanted to make a shirt that said, in French, “I’m sorry, I’m an American. I’m probably as stupid as you think I am.”

Seriously, I can say a grand total of five things in French. “Hello”, “Goodbye”, “How do you say”, “Coffee with milk” and “Thank you”. Oh, and “I’m sorry, I don’t speak French”. So six things. Six very unimpressive things.

Contrary to what everyone told me before I left, speaking these few phrases to a French person does not act as a magical skeleton key that will unlock their knowledge of English. I learned this lesson rather quickly as I attempted to buy cigarettes up the street from the FIAP.

Leila and I decided coffee and cigarettes would be the best—nay, classiest—way to celebrate our first day in France. We wandered away from the Jean Claude Monet FIAP. Walking up the sidewalks. Soaking in France. Letting our eyes adjust to the strange greenness of the city. Breathing in the French air, which smelt of fire and history.

We passed café after café after café. Each one was a person. One was a well-dressed businesswoman with its navy blue awning, with its newness. Another was a roguish teen boy who has probably almost been arrested, but charmed his way out of it with the mysterious charm of his wicker tables. More were men. Burly with their epic beer selections.

Leila spotted a Tabac. We walked in. Four people stood in front of the counter without any specific order to them. I wondered what kind of cigarettes I should get. The selection behind the clerk looks like the cereal aisle at Publix. Too many colors. Too many names. Too many.

“Get the Galouises.” Leila pointed to a row of black and red boxes. I nodded. Preparing to step forward.

An older woman laughed with the clerk as she paid for her red box of cigarettes. I thought maybe it was my turn.

“Bonjour.” I said. Already feeling stupid.

“Bonjour FrenchWordsFrenchWordsFrenchWords.” The clerk leaned forward, clearly anticipating an answer.

I pointed, mouth open, toward the red and black box. The clerk pointed to a row of blue boxes while saying FrenchWords. I said “No” while continuing to point. My voice ran down my esophagus into my stomach. It hid. Too embarrassed to come out again.

The clerk pointed to the red and black boxes. I nodded. She said something about how much I owed her for the cigarettes. I stared at her the way people stare at movie screens, enthralled but distant. She held up a hand, all five fingers extended. I gave her five euros. Which was like a billion American dollars.

“Merci.” My voice peeked up out of its hiding space.

We left. For a second I want to vomit. However the urge to run back to the FIAP, go online and spend the next four months learning French, quickly usurped the urge to vomit.

 *

The feeling persisted when Jessie, Eric, Frank and I got lost a couple miles away from the FIAP.

Down at one of those roguish teen boy cafes we drank some café au laits, watched people walk down the sidewalk, saw a tree branch fall on top of someone. After we paid, we started back toward the FIAP. Eric informed us we needed to be back to the FIAP in thirty minutes. Doable. Or so we thought.

We chattered back and forth about things I can’t remember now, but know I enjoyed talking about. We passed the giant lion statue, a familiar marker. It sat in the middle of traffic not caring about the noise or the danger of being surrounded by so many cars. Typical cat.

Walking, walking, walking. We passed flower shops with displays so high they looked like flower walls. We passed shops with displays of fruit so high they looked like fruit walls. The fruit walls were less sturdy than the flower walls, but that’s to be expected. Since so many fruits are round and can roll, that is.

There was a sea of concrete at our feet, but above that concrete skyline there was so much color, like some sky god was holding a prism shining rainbows all over the face of France.

“Guys, I think we’re going to wrong way.” Eric stopped first. We all looked around. Nothing looked familiar. Except it did. But it didn’t.

Frank didn’t stop. He kept walking.

Jessie found a map. I went over to it. We stared at it. There were blues and greens and pinks and yellows. Maps in English don’t make sense to me. Maps in French made me feel like I was suffocating. Their streets and rivers and metro lines wrapped around my throat until I wanted to scream.

“I’m going to go ask someone where we are.” I announced through the French map chokehold, mostly to myself since Jessie was bent over the map, fingers extended, face contorted in concentration.

I took an inventory of my options. There were shops everywhere. A movie theater was to my right. Clothing stores to my left. A shoe store directly in front of me.

I chose the shoe store solely because it was directly in front of me. Frustration bubbled in my veins, warm like a Jacuzzi but not at all soothing. It distracted me from logical thinking. I forgot that teenagers work at movie theaters, that French teenagers most likely learn English at school.

I walked into the shoe store. The walls looked like a shoeflower garden. Neat rows of glass shelves sprouted shoes. Red shoes, blue shoes, pink shoes, white shoes, shiny shoes, dull shoes. Worry tugged on my wrist, pulling me towards Shoplady before I could pluck a pair out of their glass soil.

 Shoplady sat, perched atop a backless stool. Every part of her body fully engaged in the phone conversation she was having. Her arms gestured around like that man with the orange glow sticks who guides in the plane. Her eyes darted around the room, playing bumper cars with the walls. Her lips moved over her teeth like a zipper. Zipping, unzipping, zipping, unzipping.

She hung up the phone. Smiled. Asked me something in French.

“Parlez-vous Ingles?” I replied using the Spanish word for English.

She looked at me confused, leaning closer toward me, placing her elbows on the counter. “Anglais?”

I nodded. She nodded. The feeling of suffocation began to subside.

“Do you know how I can get back to the Jean Claude Monet FIAP?” My heart beat hard, the way it used to in high school when we got report cards.

She made a face, the way I used to in high school when I had to do math. “FIAP? What is this FIAP?”

“It’s a hotel. It’s somewhere around here. We got turned around.” I started moving my hands around like I was playing charades, except I didn’t know what I was acting out.

“Hotel? The FIAP? I do not know.” She shook her head on the universally recognized tilt of pity.

“Oh. Okay. Merci.” We waved to each other. I left. As soon as I stepped outside I no longer felt welcome by France. I felt like I was falling into the linty abyss of the washing-machine-wall-limbo.

Somehow Jessie managed to deduct steer us back toward the FIAP. I marinated in my loathing of language limbo all the way back. It was a marinade of things that would make me want to brush my teeth immediately after consumption, like garlic and onions and mud.

 *

However, I was unable to rid myself of such aftertastes until we journeyed to the flea market. That was the first moment language limbo began to taste delicious, like those cupcakes bursts of confetti-ish color inside of them.

When I saw the flea market from across the street, it looked out of place. To my left buildings rose up from concrete sidewalks, tall trees of walls and windows, for as far as the eye could see. To my right sat a squat tent town. Tents that looked like dirty dish rags, in all the colors dirty dish rags normally are—red, white, brown, blue, green. It looked like there were ten, maybe twenty tents, until I crossed the streets.

More and more and more and more tents sprang into view, like weeds— if weeds were full of scarves and cheesy Parisian souvenirs. All of them sat precarious, relying on a floor of dirtsand to support them. The dirtsand looked like it may swallow the tents whole because it had never wanted anything to do with flea markets, rather its childhood wish was to become a baseball field.

The block of flea market in front of me resembled American flea markets so closely that they were probably twins, separated at birth, one sent to Mother America and the other to Father France.

Inside each tent, everything no one really ever wanted lay strewn across card tables someone’s nana probably played Bridge on. Clone necklaces in a phalanx. Eiffel Towers printed on plates, trapped in snow globes, silhouetted on shirts. Rasta flags bearing Bob Marely’s head. 

My eyes darted across each table, looking for something, but not really. I have never had the patience to sift through piles and piles of nonsense, hoping to find one little fleck of gold .  Nothing interested me enough to warrant pausing. As similar as this was to an American flea market, something was still different. 

My eyes stopped darting as a man behind the card table in front of me leaned over, holding a necklace out toward me. He shook it around in my face.

He smiled, “Un joli collier pour la jolie dame ? Il n’a pas coûté beaucoup. Pour la plupart des personnes, dix. Pour vous, huit.”

Suddenly, I realized how quiet this market seemed. I guess that may be the wrong way to say it. The market certainly was not quiet. It jingled and jangled with Euro exchange. It whirred and whizzed with the spinning of cotton candy machines. It tittered and twerped with bargain banter.

“Un joli collier mademoiselle.” The man pushed the necklace further into my face.

I smiled.

It was all in French. It was all beautiful noise like the sound of wine being poured, and meant about as much. He couldn’t hassle me to buy anything. He wouldn’t have even caught my attention if he weren’t waving a necklace in my face.

I felt like an escaped Thanksgiving float. Little Ouis and Mercis held my strings, anchoring me to the awful reality of my ignorance. Suddenly, while the fleamarketman poured his wine words into my ears, the Ouis and Mercis let go. I floated away into a sky of possibility where my ignorance was less ignorance and more deafness. English was my sign language, but everyone spoke French.

I nodded politely at the man and continued on my way. I walked past people pedaling keychains, earrings, cowboy boots, trucker hats, statuettes. All gestured wildly. All shouted. All sounded like wine hitting a glass.

While I felt freed, I was still not won over by Language Limbo. Language Limbo was like a friend of a friend that I had only heard bad things about. Now we were finally getting to know each other, but I couldn’t disregard everything everyone else had ever said about him. Not just yet.

That moment, the moment Language Limbo finally won me over, was in Londres.

 *

I woke up from another bus nap, cranky and in dire need of back realignment. In my life I have discovered two things I cannot resist.  One being raw cookie dough of any sort. I could be for some bizarre vegetable based cookie, but if I see that dough, I will put it in my mouth. I guess it’s a reflex. Just like falling asleep in a moving vehicle. As soon as I sit in a car or a plane or a train or a bus or a helicopter I immediately nod off. I cannot resist sleep in a moving vehicle. Impossible.

So after uncontorting my body from a position I saw in a drawing at the Picasso Museum, I get off the bus.

Water coats the concrete creating a slicker surface than most of my classmates anticipated. Jessie Lane skidded across the sidewalk narrowly avoiding ass/ground collision. Gary pulled a similar move.

Droplets of rain trickled out of the sky, light enough to not need an umbrella, but annoying enough to justify opening one. Unfortunately, I left mine at the FIAP. So in addition to being cranky from naptime, I was soggy. And starving since I misplaced my bag lunch, perhaps on purpose subconsciously.

Then a serendipitous accident occurred. Fountainbleu, the chateau we came to see, was closed. In lieu of Fontainbleu, Jessie Lane, Eric, Frank and I seated ourselves at a café not too far from the bus. Café France.

We bustled under the green awning, running from the rain which became more steady than a drizzle. I plopped down in a moist wicker chair. The other three did the same, but I hoped their chairs were less wet than mine. The water soaked through my pants.

I made a face as if bird crap had just landed directly between my eyes. Two girls at a table catty-corner to us giggled. I assumed it was at my face. Or that perhaps I actually did have bird crap somewhere on my person.

I glanced over at them. They couldn’t have been older than fifteen. Both had that glow of innocent mischief floating around them. The kind of glow girls have before they get old enough to care about responsibility and goals. But, I mean, that was American glow. These girls were French. I most likely read them entirely wrong.

Both were dressed in business attire; button up collared shirts, blazers, slacks. Both looked like they raided mother’s makeup drawer then applied the first lipstick they found which ended up being two shades too dark for their skin tone. Both wore their hair down, straight, no style, no product, no worries.

One of them, the blonde one, lit a cigarette. The other, the redhead, grabbed Blonde’s pack and took one. They were smoking Lucky Strikes. Lucky Strikes, cigarettes sixty-year-old football-leather-skinned deer-shooting-rednecks who smoke four packs a day don’t smoke. I once inhaled one tiny puff of a Lucky Strike and could immediately feel my lungs pounding inside my chest, trying to break free of my body so they would never have to endure that type of pain again.

They ordered emerald green drinks. Smoked and smoked until four more girls showed up. They pulled out a pack of cards, dealt, played.

I couldn’t understand a word those girls were saying. They spoke with the speed of an auctioneer. Talking behind hands of cards, between drags of cigarettes, after sips of green emerald drink. They talked and laughed. And smiled and talked. And laughed.

They looked happier than any other group of people I have ever seen. They could have been the mean girls in school who do nothing but put down the sadder fatter girls. They could have been discussing the murder of a political figure. They could have been telling Helen Keller jokes. They could have been making fun of Jessie Lane and Eric and Frank and me.

But I couldn’t understand them.

I saw their excitement to do nothing more than be together. It showed me something I see everyday entirely differently. The feeling of rediscovering people’s joy to be together is something I will never forget.

I owe that memory to Language Limbo. My new favorite friend.

Experiencing the Eiffel Tower

Before I arrived in France, I eagerly anticipated seeing its various attractions.  Locations such as the Louvre and Giverny had long been the stuff of my dreams.  Yet, in all of my excitement about what France had to offer, I did not give the Eiffel Tower much of a thought.  Despite its iconic status, and the fact that it practically defines Paris, I felt no strong desire to climb the famous tower.

 

But somehow the Eiffel Tower’s enchantment got the better of me as I approached the famous structure.  I experienced a mixture of pleasure and awe as I came into the presence of Paris’s largest and most romanticized monument.  As I stood under the tower in total amazement (nothing could have prepared me for its massive size), I heard someone say that going to the top of the Eiffel Tower was one of those things people should try to do before they died.  From this moment forward, I was sold.  I determined to make my way to the top.  I would not let my trip in Paris pass without taking part in one of its most sought after experiences.

 

 

Until now, I had no idea just how sought after the summit of the Eiffel Tower was.  I found myself in a line of epic proportions.  I wondered at the multitude of eager tourists in front of me, as another multitude quickly lined up behind me.  All the while, the line inched forward slowly like a mile-long centipede made of human beings.  I stood in that line for what seemed like almost the same amount of time it had taken me to get to Paris from Florida.  All the while, I anticipated the magical feeling I would experience when I finally stood at the top of this world-famous structure.  Although I had no specific ideas of what the top would be like, I knew that being there would be unforgettable.

 

 

But much to my dismay, when I finally arrived at the ticket counter, I found out the third floor had been temporarily closed.  I felt dismayed—I did not come all the way to Paris and the Eiffel Tower to go only half way.  However, the second floor and the magnificent view it promised still held some appeal.  So I bought my ticket and found myself in yet another line to get into one of the tower’s bright yellow lifts.  When I entered the lift, I panicked because I could not reach any of the handles or bars to keep my balance.  But I did not panic for long because the lift soon filled up to its maximum capacity, and I became packed in as tightly as one of the items in the full suitcase I had brought to Paris.  Surrounded by strangers standing so close that we touched, I was in no danger of falling or losing my balance.

 

 

Along with a mass of people, I stepped out of the lift only to be surrounded by another mass of people who had already arrived at the second floor observation deck.  The view—to use the cliché—took my breath away.  All of Paris sprawled out around the tower in miniature form.  The only problem was finding a space to enjoy this unique view of Paris in its entirety.  People were literally everywhere.  They crowded the edge of the observation deck like a bunch of eager fans crowding the stage at a rock concert.  Being short in stature, I struggled to see over the swarms of people.  Fortunately, I eventually got a few pictures, admired the view, and prepared to make my way back down to earth.

 

 

However, to my delighted surprise, I found out that the third floor had opened up again.  Despite the daunting lines I would face and the extra money I would pay for another ticket, I made the decision to continue to the top, determined to live my newfound dream of scaling the Eiffel Tower.

 

 

The journey to the top was a blur of lines, lines, and more lines.  Likewise, being at the top was a blur of people, people, and more people.  Again, the view was magnificent.  But this time, finding a space to admire this most coveted view proved to be even more difficult, due to the third floor’s limited amount of space.  I tried to bask in the thrill of this most anticipated moment, but some of the Eiffel Tower’s magic had already begun to fade.  For some reason, pushing through a crowd of tourists and struggling to enjoy a nice view for a few seconds don’t fit my definition of a magical experience.  After a few pictures and much bumping and jostling amidst the boundless crowd, I headed for the lift to make my way back down.

 

 

Unfortunately, getting down from the Eiffel Tower proved to be a challenge equal in magnitude to the challenge of getting up.  I stood in yet another line for the lift, surrounded by people from at least a dozen different countries.  As I waited and listened to conversations going on in a plethora of different languages and accents, I mourned the fact that so many people had all decided to come to the Eiffel Tower on the same day.  The top probably would have been more enjoyable without so many people.  However, I soon realized that I contributed just as much to this problem as anyone—just another nameless, faceless tourist in this vast mob.

 

 

These thoughts soon gave way to the one thought that dominated my mind—escape.  My hopes of ever seeing the lift began to wane.  All the while, the tower’s thick criss-cross bars began to seem less like a dream and more like a prison.  I finally stood on the famous monument’s floor and breathed its air—and all I wanted was out.  When I finally arrived at the ground floor and exited, I felt an overwhelming sense of freedom.  I ran out of the tower, rejoicing like a little kid who has just been let out of school.

 

 

Despite my newfound disillusion with the monument, I still went to see it on my last night in Paris.  The Eiffel Tower becomes quite a spectacle when fully lit.  I slowly made my way to the overlook to admire the famous Parisian light show.  The gold cast of the tower set against the black night sky and punctuated by bright flashing lights slowly enraptured me.  All of the tower’s inexplicable enchantment began to return, as I witnessed the Paris of my dreams.  My experience had finally come full circle.  I had observed the Eiffel Tower from all angles and perspectives. I had seen its good, bad, and ugly sides. In short, I had come a few steps closer to understanding the allure of the monument that is Paris. 

While I was away…

Me: I miss Samantha. I Miss her. I miss Samantha and she makes me feel important. She makes me feel talented. Attractive, intelligent, and wanted.

Samantha: I hate Paris. I hate you in it. I hate that you haven’t talked to me in four days. Scratch that, you haven’t tried to communicate with me in four days. I hate that you’re so scared of spending extra money you cant even text me, even though it costs like a dollar fifty at most. for one lousy text.* I dont know, maybe you dropped your phone off the Eiffel Tower. Maybe you accidentally left it at a patisserie, or some baker threw it in the dough for his baguettes. And then when you passed a pay phone you tripped over a leftover criossante and what with all the wine you’d been drinking couldn’t quite remember my number anyways, was it six sept huit, or huit neuf sept? Who knows those French numbers are so confusing anyway. You of course resigned to knowing that our undying love would allow me to telepathically know that you were alive and well and missing me. How generous of you.

C’mon C’mon C’mon C’mon

Here we are (me and Frank)

at Jim Morrison’s Grave

Frank wanted to read here.

Whatever.

Doesn’t really hold much significance to me,

I’ve heard a handful of the Doors’ songs.

Catchy, dated.

Some kid has his headphones on,

he’s looking rather reverent,

I wonder what he’s listening to.

Frank’s striking up a conversation

and the girls are loving it.

Frank says Morrison is a poet in his own right.

Break on through to the other side.

When I was in highschool

a freshman showed me a photo of Jim Morrison

with an erection.

His name was Corey

and one time my friends and I convinced him

to eat dog ice-cream,

Fucker never saw it coming.

Religion or the Circus?

As we made our way up what seemed like approximately four thousand three hundred and fifty two and one-third set of steps and the Sacre Coeur materialized, the only emotion I could feel was religious. The entire building, a building of grandeur in size, style, and overall atmosphere, was a blinding ivory white. I’m not one to associate colors with emotions or that sort of green is envy sort of hoopla, but I could think of nothing but purity as my eyes scanned and scanned this massive piece of architecture. Moving forward, nearing the entrance, a woman dressed in purple and gold religious garb reminiscent of something Mother Theresa wore at one point in time sat Indian-Style, eyes closed, hands folded deep in some intense prayer for the good of humanity.

 

Finally entering the sacred heart of a church, we passed a man whose sole job was to ensure that, as the people walked into this place of holy worship, silence was maintained. Best of all, everyone entering listened. There was that deafening hush that sounds like the pitch black of a winter night looks. No one’s cameras were out. As I walked through the church, I could see people legitimately enjoying the service for its religious purpose. The church had obviously refused to compromise its religious values in the face of tourism. The gift shop was kept as a separate entity from the church itself. The only object which was for sale was candles. Still, these candles were bought as donations to the church. Even further, these candles were used to light up the church by natural means, so not to be lit by the electric lights of modernity.

Most of all, the people walking through this church seemed to understand a little something about respecting what is so obviously sacred. I’ve never been an ultra-religious type of person, never fanatical about making services on every Sunday, but that did not matter much walking through this cathedral. I was still moved, a certain haunting presence was with me; not haunting in a bad way, just haunting in the sense that there was something more than beautiful white architecture within and among these walls. I do not make too much out of these feelings, but what I do gather is that this is largely in part because Sacre Coeur simply is conducive to feelings such as the ones within me at that moment. If a person was to feel obliged to get down on their knees and pray, it was by all means possible. For there was room in the pews, there was a mood that allowed that kind of reflective thought, there was a concerted effort to stick to the roots of what upon which the massive cathedral was built—a little prayer here and there and some wholesome, genuine religion..

 

 

However, Paris proved not to be built upon churches which have remained purely untainted. Our next Roman Catholic cathedral of interest was the storied Notre Dame. Thinking I was due for another religious experience, I excitedly entered this building, a building of even more epic proportion than the Sacre Coeur. The archaic sculptures of apostles and Jesus and even the devil created a real sense of authenticity. Unfortunately, walking into this building, there was no woman praying, there was no man “SHHHHHH-ing” the oncoming traffic, there was no restriction on photography. Instead, we were greeted by the people at the gift shop located conveniently in front of the largest piece of stain glass I had ever seen. We were then shoved in front of what looked more like an exhibit at Le Louvre than one of the most historical churches in the world. What better sign that this church is as much as business as anything is there than the fact that in order to see certain parts of the church, it required money!? A line was crossed in which religion, a personal, self-motivated, spiritual aspect of life turned into a profit. In the back of my mind, I was reminded of paying off grievances with money to make it into heaven in the Old Catholic church. All in all, models, roped off areas, and other gimmicky set-ups for tourists, not religious members, pleasures dominated the walk way. The best way to sum up how much of a farce this place had become, I offer an anecdote. In trying to catch a glimpse of the altar, at least five tourists leaped in front of me with their Canon Digital Camera PowerShot 4000s, flash fully loaded, and started snapping away. Needless to say, I could not find my way to the front of the line to actually absorb the effect of what promised to be an amazing religious building.

So, no, I did not feel anything. No shivers were sent down my spine. No desire to pray to God entered my body. I tried to imagine a service happening here. I tried to envision altar boys, the communion, a zealous minister and his sermon. But I was just numb. I understand how people make such comments as “Art is my religion.” For, walking through Le Louvre, seeing the passion of the dozens upon dozens of painters moved by Jesus Christ’s martyrdom, seeing non-religious paintings like “The Young Girl” that so obviously moved the painters and millions whose eyes have set on it since, I was far more moved that at any point in Notre Dame. It’s no wonder why apathy was the only emotion running through my veins from beginning to end of my trip through this Notre Dame either because circuses usually do not affiliate closely with the Lord Jesus anyway.

A Painting and a Little Luck Can Change a Life

Certain moments possess an amount of incomprehensible serendipity. For a night like this to have come when it did for me, on the very last night of my first trip into the land of “Par-EE,” is especially ironic. For, as a trip is coming to a close, people have a remarkable ability to do everything they can to try to force the Hollywood ending out of its waning moments. Naturally, as is true for any issue being pursued too zealously, this leads more often than not to an awkward, phony, and uptight finale that more closely resembles a camping trip from an episode of Leave it to Beaver. Nonetheless, as I sat there in the Jean Monet FIAP, (don’t ask me what FIAP stands for, I still don’t know) the night before I was destined for twenty-two hours of travelling, I unknowingly was preparing myself for a night of eerie coincidence that would all pull together to create a night that any number of months of itinerary-planning could not have come close to matching in its pristine beauty.

 

Like any night in which serendipity plays its part, a whole lot of lead-ins had to collaborate, falling together entirely at the right moments. Without any single one of a handful of visits just days to hours before, my final night in Paris would not have had the same alluring ambiance. Four days prior, we made our visit to the first museum of the trip, a place in which I had no idea what to expect, the Musée D’Orsay. It was in this art haven that I got my crash course education of the art period I came to know as Impressionism. From Degas to Cezanne to Pissarro to the king, Monet, I saw hundreds of the best works of Impressionism. The only shame was we only had ninety minutes in this wondrous place. The most amazing part of the entire experience is that for twenty years up until this point, I cared very little about art. I thought it was neat, certainly, but I would not have been able to tell you the difference between Rafael and Manet. As my friend who majors in art said, that is a fairly awful notion. Yet, as I walked out the doors of ‘D’Orsay,’ I felt more enthusiastic, involved, and interested in the fine arts, especially paintings, especially paintings by the Impressionists, especially paintings by the impressionist Claude Monet, especially paintings by the impressionist Claude Monet of his gardens. The most striking aspect of these paintings was how, instead of using long, traditional strokes to form a coherent picture, Monet made up his paintings of entirely short, brisk, quick strokes, yet the pictures were more coherent to me than anything I had seen before.

 

Thankfully, that was not the last encounter I would have with my newest inspiration, Claude Monet. The afternoon before my fateful last night, we were going on what would be another fascinating trip to Giverny, the town in which Monet painted. Such were the only details I had, but I was excited ‘out of my brains’ nonetheless. My first surprise of this trip was the fact that we had a tour guide for the bus ride and our trip through Giverny. This came as a surprise, of course, because I was told that due to an utterly obnoxious and indolent travel agency, we did not have the tour guides to any of our stops. So, to our surprise, an English speaking French woman hopped on the bus with us.

 

Little did I know that my crash course in Impressionism was not over. Part II commenced on this bus ride as this woman, a graduate of Art History from Le Louvre’s education system, spewed out tidbit after tidbit of Monet, the period of Impressionism in general, art at large, and everything in between. She taught me about Monet’s gardens. How he was in love with Japanese art so he modeled his first after a Japanese garden. How he had Normand influences so his other was a Normandy garden. How, at the time, the Impressionists were rejected and had to hold their own art shows. How Monet was a poor man and spent nearly all his money, admirably, on his gardens. How, here being what I would later find to be the most important detail, that Monet concentrated on sun light. He was interested in the way sunlight affected the landscape, more specifically, how the sunlight changed the way the landscape reflected on the water, even more specifically, how his garden reflected off his Japanese Lily Pond during the different periods of the day. Without all of these small, intricate details, my night later in that day would never have made the perfect sense it wound up making.

 

After an hour and a half of this encyclopedia disguised as a woman’s lectures throughout the bus ride, we arrived at Giverny to finally see the real thing. Just like seeing an authentic painting is an experience no print can match, seeing the actual place at Monet painted could not have been matched by even his very own work. Smelling his flowers, seeing the ebb and flow of his pond, feeling the air that he felt brushing against my skin, looking out at the incomparable green, rolling hills out somewhere in the nature of his village– these details can only be understood when truly lived. Seeing the sunset on the lilies the way Monet did only made the beauty of his paintings richer than at any other moment before. What I had seen at D’Orsay a few days earlier, what I had heard just a few moments earlier, what I had pondered in between and shortly thereafter, all worked together. Without one part, the next could never have been nearly as blissful. I could not have known this yet, but what I was experiencing walking through Monet’s pride and glory was only a tiny foreshadowing of what later that night would be that same feeling of luck being on my side, infinitely multiplied. Still, I left Giverny, back on the bus, with a feeling that somehow, someway, a Beaver Cleaver was not going to intrude on my last night in Paris.

 

Finally, back to the awkward last night of goodbyes, a few of us decided seeing Paris at night was the only option upon which we should embark as our last hurrah, seemingly an obvious choice at the time. It’s also ironic that only a few of us were going, for during the first 6 night of the trip, it was an impossible task at best not to be surrounded by a dozen familiar faces. Again, this moment would not have been possible if not for the stroke of luck of being there only with the right people in which this experience could be shared. So, as we hopped on the metro toward our final destination, Trocodero, we could see the Eiffel Tower from the windows. I could see it was lit up for sure but it was just a dim cast of archaic gold, perhaps the gilded tone that dominated each and every room of Versailles. Whatever the color, it was not that beautiful, shiny, illuminated mass the pictures let me to believe. Still, the metro chugged on and we proceeded toward what was acclaimed to be the absolute best view of the fabled Tower.

 

 

We finally arrived at Trocodero and headed toward the platform upon which we would be looking out on the city. Slowly we made our way toward where all of the people were gathered to see the ‘light show.’ I wasn’t quite sure what the light show was, seeing how the only thing I had seen a few minutes before was reminiscent of fading florescent lights. Yet, just as the Eiffel Tower finally came into our horizon of perspective, something happened. I heard a click and out of nowhere, the entire Tower lit up. What seemed like one thousand individual fourth of July sparkles being ignited at the same time lit up the moment we stopped to settle in for our outlook on Paris. We did not arrive a second too soon nor a second too late. If we had taken a moment longer, the effect would never have been the same. So, as everybody was enjoying their moment, I proceeded to the edge of the platform. I noticed a fountain stretching out underneath the tower. From this fountain, I could see each individual light of the Eiffel Tower reflecting off of the water in this fountain. Each individual light provided the effect of a short, brisk, and quick stroke. The only thought that was going through my mind is that Monet would have had a field day sitting on the edge of Trocodero looking out in this view that embodied everything he strove to encapsulate in his paintings.

 

Five minutes later the lights turned off. Had we taken one metro later, we would never have seen the light show. Had anything, anything at all gone differently in the past four days, my final night would have been as forced, regimented, and unfulfilled as so many before me. Alas, I did live what I lived and the night was coming to a close. With one final goodbye, the few of us that witnessed this beauteous occasion sat there in La Closerie Des Lilas. I heard one friend with another quoting Casablanca– “We’ll always have Paris,” she said. In my mind I quietly knew she was right and thus was the close of the last chapter of my first trip abroad.

La Vie De Tout

After just under twenty hours of flying, driving, waiting in airport terminals, and bus hoping through French traffic, it’s safe to say most people would be disoriented. Moreover, when all of this travelling has landed a person in a foreign country, the first foreign country he has ever been to nonetheless, this disorientation process is all the much greater. Furthermore, when seeing any brand new place for the very first time in one’s life, enormous disorientation is inevitable. Ultimately, when all of these blurs of what amounted to two days of confusion leads you on some random street in Paris, France, somewhere you know nothing about nor where to go, and most significantly, nor what to do, its needless to say a person may feel far more disoriented than at any other point in his life.

On May 22^nd at one o’clock such was my disposition just a few hours after landing at my dream destination of this aforementioned Paris. The cliché goes ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ In many ways, this is all too true. (As I was to find out just a few days later, a Claude Monet painting provoked more emotion out of me than, probably, the past three girlfriends that fell by the romantic wayside.) In many other ways, however, these thousand words are simply not enough. No picture, no painting, no book by Gertrude Stein, rather, nothing would have been sufficient to paint the picture of what Paris, or any place to which I have never physically experienced, is truly like. Those thousands words are not enough to prepare a person for the shock of what is sincerely foreign to him. Thus, the scenes, memories, and images that were unfolding me in the waking moments of my first trip abroad can be described in many ways; at first, overwhelmingly disorienting is the one way in which these experiences can be encapsulated.

So, with a few hours to spare before meeting for dinner, a meal which I needed desperately by me after a fit of self-proclaimed starvation, I embarked upon my adventure to try figure out make something, however so little, out of my surroundings. First destination? Well, my guess was as good as the next person’s; meaning, ‘let’s head down the street and see where we end up’ was the most logical, perhaps only, move to make. One fact in my mind was certain as we headed what was probably North towards what I later learned is called a Brasserie—what Ms. Stein, what Google, what travel books on this fabled city showed and told me about Paris was certainly not was what was unfolding before my very eyes. In no way were my expectations being met. At the time, this certainly seemed like a bad notion. The thought process being somewhere along the lines of ‘well I spent somewhere around $2,000 to make it here. All $2,000 being in the form of a loan which will invariably be paid back for with some ludicrously high interest rate, putting it at more like $2,500. In either case, $2,000 or $200, I’m not quite sure what I’m looking at but I can be fairly certain it is a couple of apartments and a few decent…at best… looking restaurants that are called..what was it? Brassieres…?’ Trumped up pictures to not warn you ‘Gary. When you arrive in Paris, you are going to be stationed in a NEIGHBORHOOD. You will not walk off of the plane and be looking at the beautiful river with some perfect view of the enormously elegant Eiffel Tower. No, travelling to a country in which you are realizing at torrent speeds you know very little about is not that cut, dry, simple, and, well, beautiful.

Still, we moved on. We went forward, attempting to make sense of the giant cloud of confusion we soon understood travelling to be. Yet, like a newborn child who is foreign to, let’s be frank, living in general and is trying her mightiest to walk, we fatefully stumbled with each baby step we made toward a sensibility of the country to which we quite obviously did not belong for more than a few moments. Stumbling into what looked like a nice place for the smokers of the crew to buy their cigarettes, we figured we were in for a simple nice, quick and easy trip to the store. Low and behold, we were wrong. Mistake number one—the clerk did not speak English. The client did not speak French. Mistake number two—the American credit card was not accepted at this location. Mistake number three—where is all of our Euro!? Mistake number four—being totally unprepared to handle any of these series of minor calamities in our tragic world of tourism. Still, cooler heads prevailed, and we marched on to our next destination, fully loaded with cigarette and lighter.

Indeed, it is perhaps in all of these Oddysean experiences early in the afternoon that provided the perfect set-up in what would soon unfold as one of the most pristine, serene, heart-warning, and, in the truest sense of the word, unforgettable moments of my short life. As our procession through the random Parisian neighborhood continued and we were still praying for some amazing, wonderful, cliché, picture-esque place to appear, it never happened. Instead, we were in store for an experience far better. We were about to bear witness to a place in no travel guide, in no great literature, in no painting stashed away in the Hogwarts disguised as an art museum called Le Louvre. We were about to bear witness, instead, to a place of infinite more power, majesty, and wonder.

Appearing seemingly out of no where, a park no bigger than a Manhattan Upper-East Side apartment materialized, as they say, out of the wood work. Naturally, with no clue what else to do, a few of us embarked into this park of absolute intangible and tangible wondrous beauty. In a time of war and epic gas prices, in a time of social unrest and the AIDS epidemic, in the time of an unsung Rwandan genocide and international terrorism, we found a place inexplicably so close in distance but so immeasurably far in emotion from all of these disheartening pressures. What we saw was dozens and dozens of French boys and girls. These boys and girls were not just any boys and girls. These boys and girls were a different breed. There was a sense of community that, in twenty years of living with adults and college students and college graduates and parents and grandparents and war veterans, I have never come this close to seeing. This, it must be repeated, was a group of children, mere children only five, six years old. These children were not eating McDonald’s hamburgers which have a mind-blowingly high rate of being tainted with E. Coli. These children were eaten fruits, natural fruits of the natural world. It’s no wonder these childrens’ dispositions, demeanor, and love for each other came so naturally. It’s no wonder why as a pigeon indefinitely named Wally landed right next to me and I looked at him, he did not fly away. There must have been a time, a place where birds were not scared of us human beings. Indeed, that time and that place are but a distant memory, but on this day, on this park known by far too few, that time and place was for once here and now. Thus, it is also no wonder why the roses in this park were a pinker, bigger, and healthier than any rose that has been in the nicest of flower shops. Those roses were natural. They grew out of love, the same love the children grew out of, the same love that brought all the pigeons named Wally to share this moment of unmatched bliss. There was no other choice for us to sit there and bask. Bask in the knowledge that we found what we were looking for.

A lesson learned indeed. There is a right way and a wrong way to be a tourist. Of course the Arc De Triumphe is beautiful. It is certainly worth seeing. Yet, the opening of one’s mind, the drive to go out and find amazing parks where chubby little French boys come up to you and say “LA VIE DE TOUT,” is a far more enriching aspect of being in a foreign place. My entire disorientation was a matter of realizing I was looking in all the wrong places, looking for the wrong sort of satisfaction, and that all along, everything I could have ever hoped to see was right around the corner. For not a second more did I doubt the notion that, for the next week, I was going to get every single cent out of the $2,000 I thankfully spent to end up in more parks just like the one that will forever be known as La Vie De Tout.