PARIS
City of Lights
Ah, les beaux toits
de Paris
Faut-il que je me souviens!
Attendant le Metro
(awaiting the Paris subway)
Junior Year in Paris - die and go to heaven - they're really speaking french!
1964 was a cold winter. We stayed with families. Who were paid to put up American students. In advance.
The word bourgeois is french. "Madame" kept a sharp eye on the electric meter lest I put in stronger lightbulbs or, bon Dieu, an electric heater. She kept a sharp eye on the gas meter too - four inch sitzbaths, "Ca suffit." That's enough. Pas de discussion.
I lived Rue du Cherche Midi, walking distance to the Sorbonne. Though I hardly ever went. I mean six months of lectures on one novel by Stendahl by a mumbling professor behind a stack of overcoats 100 yards away was daunting. I preferred to sit in the Coupole or the Rotonde, studying vocabulary lists in a caffeine buzz and watching the girls go by.
I also got pretty good at "jouant les flippers," playing the flippers and pushing the tilt envelope on the pinball machines.
PARIS
City of Love
"Mais, ou sont les neiges d'antan?" Where are the snows of yesteryear? Souvenirs. The black tobacco; the pissoirs for men only (gone, gone, gone beyond); the distinctive kerosene smell of the buses (not gone); the trick of getting off the metro before it came to a stop (start running in midair).
Madame controlled the pursestrings but Monsieur controlled the cheese. Each evening it was Monsieur whose solemn duty it was to poke the Camembert and declare it ripe: "Oui, (pronounced on the inhale) c'est mur." To everyone's relief it was always "mur."
Hurdy-Gurdy Man
Pont des Beaux Arts
1973
And it was always delicious as was everything due to my being half starved all the time: "Vous mangez comme un paysan," was madame's take on my taste for bread which had more to do with a paucity of alternatives at least after I ate the family out of a year's stock of "cornichons," precious little pickles, in a single sitting.
I developed other overpriced tastes that year: Calvados - brandy from apples that nearly knocked me off my scooter; and creme brulee of course, nothing like flan and so much more.
First Class Metro 1973
ALLONS Y!
Point c'est tout.
Pour le moment.
