I’ve spent the last couple of weeks in Paris settling in. My every appliance, gadget and charger have been bricked by the weird, French electricity, which bobs when it should weave or something - but you still can’t stick a fork in the sockets.
I’ve also been meandering the right bank* arrondissements for fashions. Students at Université Paris Cité, in the everyday, dress more chicly and elegantly than Yalies or nerdy Harvard ‘barneys.’
I’ve noticed a lot of Asian, selfie-taking tourists in Paris. They come in like waves of invaders as the river-cruises dock. Now, anyone that’s known me for some time, will tell you that my friends and I’ve been taking selfies for decades.
Just not in the middle of the street or with total strangers trying to relax on crisp, cool, early summer morning, while sipping an espresso hangover cure. Was COVID deadly? Well, it certainly killed off the last etiquettes that separated us from the animals.
I’m not anti-tourist - nope - I just moved back here myself - but these smiling, terribly polite, middle-aged people, think nothing of stopping someone abruptly in the street to ask directions, in a foreign language - as if they’re at Tokyo-Disneyland where the locals are cast members simulating real life.
Would you expect anyone on a busy, work-a-day Manhattan street to happily stop and converse? Not a chance. Women would recoil like snakes and the men would dodge like O.J Simpson or shoulder you to the ground. Still, they call Parisians rude.
I am becoming more serpentine and evasive as I shop, as-if I were a spy in occupied territory. Charles and I form a one-man phalanx, with me following in his wake, like a dolphin trailing along a great ship.
They may need to put up signage, like, “Look (at the locals) but don’t touch,” but in what language?
Let’s wax free-versely… freever-ishly?
It’s a pleasure to walk the banks
of the dark, reflective Saine again.
and watch the warm, evenings for
the first cool stirrings of fall.
Once you’ve visited Paris, it stays with you.
Nothing’s simple here, not the moonlight,
the serene european atmosphere or
the better-than-you sense of right and wrong.
I’m young in a very old city.
I like dessert crawls, and “rock’n’roll clubs.”
Hemingway wrote, that
‘‘You receive in return what you bring to Paris.’
That’s probably not an exact quote.
but I think that’s where they got “What happens in Vegas.”
.
.
Songs for this:
Come to Me by Koop
Leena by Caravan Palace
Right Now by The Creatures
BLT Merriam Webster word of the day challenge 08/15/25:
Meander = to follow a winding or intricate course.
*The right-bank is the north side of the river Saine - if the river’s flowing away from you - north’s on your right.