To be a Flâneur in Paris

To be a flâneur in Paris is, admittedly, a cliché. But what allure in those streets!

How much more of a cliché, then, to quote Benjamin on the subject:

An intoxication comes over the man [sick] who walks long and aimlessly through the streets. With each step, the walk takes on greater momentum, ever weaker grow the temptations of shops, of bistros, of smiling women [and leering men!], ever more irresistible the magnetism of the next streetcorner, of a distant mass of foliage, of a street name.

When we could, we walked. Although we spent most of our time in the center of Paris, along with throngs of other tourists who, for the most part, must not have been Americans, (as I read in the paper the other day that there is a 50% — yes 50%! — decrease in the number of American tourists who are visiting France, preferring instead to stay home and pour out bottles of bon vin français into their suburban sewers. Quelle pays nous avons! Je la deteste!) we spent a lot of time exploring some of the ethnic areas of Paris as well — the African area east of Chateau Rouge, the Indian neighborhood just above the Gare du Nord, and various middle eastern and north African streets near Barbes -Rochechouart. (The name of that station reminds me of the French singer Brigitte Fontaine, who has a song that goes “La nuit/ est une femme a barbe” — which, means, of course, that the night is a bearded lady, not that the night is a woman from the Barbes area. Because Fontaines’s song has such an Arabic feel, though, I think my alternate hearing is not entirely illogical.)

My French got a little better when I was there. It was hard at first, as it always was (this was my fifth visit!), when someone spoke to me and my brain told me to answer in Japanese. I’m convinced there’s a second language slot in the brain in which one language is always dominant. I learned French before I learned Japanese, but I never achieved the kind of fluency by lengthy immersion in it that I did in the language of the floating archipelago. Therefore, it behaves as my third language rather than my second, dorming, I mean sleeping, until I have some reason to use it, and when I rouse it it is very cranky from long hibernation and behaves fitfully. I managed to guide Gary around, though, getting him from one bandes dessinées (comic books — not to be confused with ban de ciné — a hardon in a movie theatre) shop to another, and more or less figuring out the delightfully pretentious menus.

Favorite things:

Belly dance scarves bought in the fabric district at the foot of Montmartre: seafoam green with macrame and gold coins, sheer brown with gold coins, deep red with coins and iridescent beading.

Pain au chocolat.

Grilling merguez with friend Stacey Benoit in her backyard in Montreuil. Holding her tiny new son Rufus. His expressive uncontrolled gestures.

The painted doors, and the grand door handles.

The crazy old woman sitting outside at one restaurant making faces at tourists and telling them to go back to their countries.

The Monoprix! A little tartelette bought there — crust a bit mushy but oh the little berries… and stay-up-by-themselves aubergine fishnet stockings…

Gargoyles. Yeah!

Old postcards of “gypsy” women bought at the flea market.

Elaborate cobblestones in Montorgeuil.

The culture of HANGING OUT and TALKING. How fucked is America?

The graineterie at the Marché d’Aligre where we bought cardamom-rose sugar and pastilles de vanille. The heirloom tomatoes there.

The totally kitschy hurdy-gurdy player outside the great pizza place just off the Boulevard St. Michel. And the rapper/accordeonist duo on the metro! A little different from New York.

Froufrou: jewelry, ruffles on clothing, absurd hats. It cracks me up. I more than sorta dig it.

Dancing with the bellydancer at a Moroccan restaurant in Les Halles, Au Pied de Chameau. Her dancing a cross between Turkish cabaret style and the Moulin Rouge! Body glitter! Oo la la!

Basquiat exhibition at the Musée de Maillol.

The Puvis de Chavannes paintings at the Orsay.

Goat cheese.

The Oum Khalsoum café we stumbled into after a long meander down the Rue Mouffetard.

De rigeur greetings.

The taxi ride to the airport on the way home — a shop in an Arab neighborhood called “Oh! Nada!”, a Hindu temple, shops with wild “oriental” furniture.

The sweet burning dust smell of the metro.

Doggies.

The contraption at Paris Plage — a “beach” rigged up on the rive droite — that sprayed a fine fine cooling mist onto passersby. Standing in it at certain points I could see a perfectly circular rainbow.

More Benjamin:

We know that, in the course of flânerie, far-off times and places interpenetrate the landscape and the present moment. When the authentically intoxicated phase of this condition announces itself, the blood is pounding in the veins of the happy flâneur, his heart ticks like a clock….

I’m finding it difficult to be back — not just because of the swoony weather and endless thunderstorms, or the weird hallucinations of giant humpty-dumpty faces along the sides of cliffs brought on, no doubt, by jet lag, or the incompetencies of the phone company that keeps turning our phone off for no apparent reason, or having to deal with ongoing emotional “situations”. New York, as ever, feels vulgar, vulgar — and damn humid. The depths of Brooklyn here filled with barbarians — mostly friendly ones, but barbarians nonetheless. And nothing behind the deli counters looks at all appetizing.

Now… my goal… to get through the poetry season (we’re all so damn productive here! As Stacey pointed out to me, in Paris all you have to do is be an interesting person at parties…)… then… where will be the next adventure????

India??? Do I hear India???