Peaches and Cheese

 

 If you were to travel to the Loire Valley town of Chinon, here is what you would see:

      A low white train station with an elevated clock tower.

      A fruit and vegetable store, the Marché Rabelais, across the street.

      Many houses for sale, Tudor-style and stone, lining the cobbled-stone streets.

      A histrionic-looking Joan of Arc astride her horse, straining against the reins.

      A wide river with wooden skiffs moored along the banks.

     Many young people whipping along the sidewalks in state-of-the-art wheelchairs.

      A statue of the French novelist Rabelais (who was born here) with a square cap on his head, at the end of a street that ends at the river Vienne. 

     A fortress high up on the town's highest hill.

 If you were to stay at the hotel, Lion d’Or, here is what you would notice: 

     A hot color scheme: not just the bright red Indian bedspread, but also pink walls, and burgundy carpet. You might think you’d been trapped in a box of Valentine’s Day candy.

     But then, when you opened the window, you’d feel as if you’d opened the box and bit into the tastiest little chocolate.

     Geraniums (more red!) in the window boxes.

     Plane trees arching above your room and the street. 

     A breeze of precisely the right temperature.

We had traveled by Métro to Paris’ Montparnasse train station.

We’d taken the high-speed TGV for just over an hour to Tours. 

We’d disembarked with our suitcases, and boarded a bus for a ride of equal length to Chinon, past rural villages and bright fields of sunflowers.

Friends were getting married. They got married each time they had a child, and the second one was now on its way. We’d missed the first wedding, but were glad to be here for this one.

The celebrations would begin the next day. Now we wanted to rest after our travel.

But first we needed to stock up on water and snacks. We unpacked, then wheeled our empty suitcases back along the cobbled street to the Marché Rabelais.

How can I convey to you the dearness of this market? It was so simple, mostly fruit and vegetables, with some nuts and beans and olives. Nothing fancy. Nothing slick. Neither a supermarket nor a farmer’s market. But the owners clearly had the most personal relationship with their vegetables and fruit.

They treated heads of lettuce like little people, friends of theirs.  A sign said, Touchez moi avec délicatesse.... Je tiens à mes feuilles. 

The shelves were stepped, with no refrigeration, each step containing just a few bouquets of broccoli or carrots, with plenty of breathing room. As if each were being displayed as a discrete offering, an individual life calling out, Pick me! No, me!

The peaches were fairly screaming, Adopt us! Take us home!

The figs were humming in low voices. I couldn’t resist picking up a container, though I hadn’t had a yen for figs in years. Richard was seduced by the trail mix.

The farmer-merchant stood among the potatoes, giving them his full attention. He called out a few gruff words to his stout wife at the cash register. She barked back, but was friendly, though shy, with us.

“Ahh!” she said, as Richard loaded the six packs of large water bottles evenly into our carry-ons. “That’s why you come with suitcases.”

We rolled our suitcases back to the Lion d’Or, and unpacked them onto the desk in our room.

I bit into a peach which dripped so that I had to lean out the window and "water" the geraniums.

Richard opened a container of trail mix so fresh that it seemed as if the nuts had been cracked that day.

We stretched out and listened: to the doves calling, “Amour, amour,” the crows engaged in a strenuous quarrel, the murmur of French and English in the sidewalk café below.

A breeze. A nap.

At 6, we went out to find dinner. In the section of town west of the hotel, we found cobblestone streets closed to traffic. We scanned the menus along the way. None served dinner before 7:30 p.m. Mais non! It’s France.

We were too hungry to wait. Meandering down a side street, I saw a wine bar, La Cave Voltaire. Inside was a big butcher block, with a freshly-baked loaf of bread on top. To tide us over till dinner, we’d have a bit of bread and cheese.

We settled at a table outside with a view of the fortress.

After a while, a young woman with abundant curly blond hair and a wholesome manner brought us a plate of cheese.

“Now I will explain the cheeses,” she said delicately in French.

They were arranged in an artful circle around the edge of the plate—five made from vache, five from chèvre. The waitress lovingly named each one.

  

By the time she had finished her litany (it was a song!), we were enchanted. Richard neatly divided the plate in half. “La vache pour moi; le chèvre pour toi.”

But on his third cheese with bread, he began to mew, and said (though he knows I prefer goat cheese), “You have to try this one.”

Obedient wife, I spread it on bread.

The taste began as mild, then turned slightly disgusting, then lingered, a delicate taste. It was the best cheese either of us had ever tasted.

We scoured the plate.

The girl came back and asked us brightly if we had enjoyed our cheese.

“What is the name of the cheese which has a slight aroma of garlic and onion?” Richard asked.

“Ca n’existe pas,” she said. (Really? It doesn’t exist?) “Only our fromager makes it. It’s called a Coulouvier mascarpone ciboulette.” (Only their personal cheese-maker makes this particular cheese? Ooh la la.)

I took out my small Moleskin, and asked her to list the cheeses in the notebook. She carefully wrote down each one, with a “(v)” for vache, or a “(c)” for chèvre beside each.

The sidewalk café had filled, perhaps with people who’d smelled our ecstatic food trail pheromones. We heard German, English, Dutch, Spanish, French all around us.

The restaurants were open now.

“Do we want to eat any more?” Richard asked.

“I need an omelette,” I said.

We returned to At’ Able, an inviting restaurant we’d passed on rue Rabelais. 

The hostess brought us menus. Cold. A brusque waitress came to take our order. Cold. She had all the humanity of a rock. Opaque, not a trace of kindness about her.

The omelette had local mushrooms, tiny buds. It’s a simple dish—how could you ruin it? But they did. “It was almost inedible,” I said, as we walked back to our room. “Runny in the middle, tasteless, and gray.”

“My pasta sucked, too,” said Richard.

Back at the Lion d’Or, I tried a fig. It was exquisite. I began to sing.

All day, the food had matched the spirits of the people serving it. Cold and lousy at one restaurant. Warm and astonishingly good from the Marché Rabelais and La Cave Voltaire.

Maybe it was the spirits of the writers hovering over their namesake food purveyors. Perhaps it brings good luck to name a restaurant or market, Le Café de Beauvoir, or Le Marché Baudelaire. What do we really know about the magical links between the material world and the spirits, anyway?

The Weave of Friendship

Tuesday was blazing hot, almost Arizona hot, but in Paris, you simply wait ten minutes and the weather will change. We didn’t know if we’d need sweaters, but we carried them just in case for dinner on Mort and Jeannette’s boat on the Seine.

We did know that we needed to bring a very good chocolate dessert, since this couple leads chocolate tours of Paris.

As we walk from the Concorde Métro to the Seine, other boats float through my imagination:

The barge where I lived on the Thames as a student in Oxford.

The schooner on which I crossed the Pacific from Honolulu to Marina del Rey, and on which I lived for two years while we renovated the ship.

The bateau mouche we took with my niece and her boyfriend the previous weekend. We’d pointed out Mort and Jeannette’s boat as we motored by.

Rivers are the circulatory system of the earth’s body, boats and their cargo the cells carrying nourishment and oxygen and ferrying toxins away.

We cross the larger boat to which Mort and Jeannette’s boat is moored, and see four old friends. Tonight, every cell that surrounds us promises to be nourishing.

Mort, a combat reporter who is the former editor of The International Herald Tribune, and writer of numerous books on food, the Seine, journalism and travel, wears wonderful round tortoise shell glasses and looks fresh and rested in spite of having just finished co-leading a ten-day tour of Paris. 

We talk of Obama, our hopes and our disappointment.

Phil has just co-led the tour of Paris, and right before that, gave lectures on a Mediterranean cruise. Though he’s still standing, he seems paused at a point of stillness, between breaths, gathering energy for his next Sisyphean task.

Porter is overflowing with good spirits. He and his wife, Louise, have just found a magnificent apartment for a well-known novelist in a chic part of Paris a block from Catherine Deneuve, and he and Louise are about to renew their wedding vows in a second ceremony in the Loire Valley.

The boat has a canvas canopy, open to the sides, and the table is set in Jeannette’s usual charming fashion.

Jillie, Mort and Jeannette’s neighbor in this houseboat village, steps on board. I recall meeting her on this boat several years ago. We had talked of my joining her on one of Jeannette’s labyrinth walks in Chartres Cathedral.

Jeannette brings up dinner from the galley. Garlic buds, cherry tomatoes, and marinated endive. Wine and hard cider. A curried fish stew with vegetables and rice and fresh bread, followed by a salad, and two cheeses, Roquefort and Camembert with a baguette.

Our interwoven stories began on Richard’s 1983 trip to Paris, when he met Porter, a Beaux Arts painting student who financed his studies by importing and selling “Louisiana” pecans. The French love Louisiana. Instead of returning home to Birmingham, Porter stayed in Paris and began to buy, renovate and manage apartments as rentals.

In 1984, Richard met Phil in Marin County, where Phil was teaching Myth, Dreams and the Movies, inspired by his encounters with Joseph Campbell, whom he would later celebrate in a documentary and book.

In 1986, Richard and Phil covered the Cannes Film Festival, then both helped Porter renovate a flat in Paris.

In 1988, Jeannette, a top-notch San Francisco travel agent who had helped Phil organize a tour that featured Mort as a speaker, met Mort in Paris and stayed. Richard and his stepmother were here for that tour and witnessed the burgeoning romance.

And in 1994, on this very date, Richard and I met at a poetry reading in Santa Monica, and so I joined this web of friendships and stories.

In 2006, Porter helped us remodel our Paris apartment.

The weaving is intricate and full of refrains: Two of us grew up in Arizona. Three have roots in San Francisco. Four of us are writers. Six of us are American. And six of us, not the same six, live in Paris. Four of us lead tours of Paris. Four of us have lived on boats. Four of us are obsessed with myth. And all seven of us loved Woody Allen’s newest film, “Midnight in Paris.”

I ask Jeannette what is in the stew. In her usual low-key, self-effacing tone, she says, “Just fish; and I threw in all the vegetables in the fridge.”

Jillie tells a story of her cat awakening her with a paw on her face, just before dawn. She heard a noise, came out of the bedroom in her tattered nightgown, and into the salon, to see a man standing there.

She gently and calmly talked him into moving up on deck, as skillfully as Athena, weaving peace where another might incite a dangerous battle.

Her neighbor on the next boat spotted the man and yelled at him. Instantly, the stranger’s aggression flared. Jillie pantomimed behind the man’s back, “Should I call the police?”

Her neighbor nodded yes. In three minutes the police were there, and took the man away.

I’m impressed by the cool-headed savvy with which Jillie handled the break-in. 

Mort tells the story of their cat not waking them up several days later when intruders walked across the deck of their boat, though they heard the footsteps and scared the men away.

Porter tells how his father, facing a diagnosis of terminal cancer, gained seven more years by researching and writing a book about his grandfather, who commanded a battalion of “buffalo soldiers” after the Civil War.

I tell a story of driving cross-country to Key West, and stopping for water at a 7-11 in Georgia. Startled by the enormous amount of ammunition on the shelves, I asked the woman clerk what it was for.

“Why, for killin’ things!” she said, as if I were the oddest human she’d ever met. “Squirrels and deer and such.”

Phil tells how this most recent tour overlapped with the fortieth anniversary of Jim Morrison’s death in Paris, and how the throngs gathered at the rock singer’s Père-Lachaise grave wanted to touch him, like some holy relic, when they found out he had co-authored The Doors’ drummer, John Densmore’s, autobiography.

The bateaux mouches pass by, ablaze with light. We turn to wave, and Richard points out, on the opposite bank, the narrowest building in Paris.

Wind comes up and lashing rain; we dash below deck to fetch our sweaters and jackets, and the wine and stories flow on. And, thank the gods, everyone loves the chocolate cake from the best pâtisserie in our neighborhood.

This continuing weaving of stories and lives has been alchemized by Jeannette. By inviting us all here, setting a beautiful table, “throwing together” a meal—by creating this ambience, she is Demeter, goddess of the harvest. And Penelope, who invites the weaving of stories, while her husband still travels to war zones to cover breaking news.

Castor and Pollux

One of my favorite words, one of those words that exist in one language and are difficult to translate into another, is zeitgeist. In German this means “spirit of the time.” I think it applies not just to an era, a decade, but also a year, and even a day. As I write more about daily life in this Paris journal, I notice more and more that there is a spirit of the day, if you simply pay attention. Often you can’t see it until the day is done, and looking backwards, you notice the pattern, the leitmotif, the zeitgeist.

I usually make the 45-minute walk to see my acupuncturist in the seventh arrondissement. Wednesday, I needed to write a bit longer, so for the first time I took the Métro.

Crossing rue des Écoles, a block from our house, a flock of school children were crossing in front of me. A couple of young women in their 20’s were herding the children across the street. Many of them wore little backpacks, and most of them went two-by-two up Cardinal Lemoine. As I passed, I heard their musical chatter, and then at the front of the flock, saw a couple of boys holding hands. They were close friends, speaking perfect French, little brooks of sparkling clarity. I asked the dark-haired young woman how old the children were.

“Quatre et Cinq,” she said.

Adorable, yet, descending the steps to the Métro, I felt melancholy. These four-year-olds and five-year-olds spoke far better French than I would ever speak. 

           *                       *                            *

I'm always hungry after my acupuncture session, so my ritual is to stop at the Italian trattoria on rue de Sèvres, and have a little pasta or fish. Tonight the Coquilles Saint-Jacques looked exquisite. A place must have ravishing food for me to be willing to stand up at a counter while I’m eating. Here, I stand.

The owner/chef was big-bellied, stolid with black hair and a slow manner. His assistant, a young woman with short red hair and a tattoo on her neck, which after much searching between us in French, English and Italian, I figured out was an elf, had a dancing humor in her eyes and mouth—like a dolphin…or an elf! Just seeing her expression made me happy.

As I waited for my Coquilles Saint-Jacques, I stood behind two boys, maybe twelve years old. They reminded me of the four- or five-year-old boys holding hands, the closeness and innocence of young boys who aren’t embarrassed to show their affection towards one another. They were asking the chef about various dishes with such gastronomic confidence, I was sure they could only be French. I could see how close they were, how similar their body language and voices. I felt a great love towards the two of them, the innocence of boys before the self-consciousness of adolescence begins. And there was some quicksilver lightness about them that was quintessentially French.

Ahh, my Coquilles Saint-Jacques was ready. I placed it on the counter and lifted my fork.

“Pardon,” I heard, and glanced over to see the shorter of the two boys looking up at me with such sweetness in his face that I put down my fork.

“Do you mind,” he asked delicately in French, “if we ask you what nationality you are?”

Oh good, a game. “You must guess!” I said.

The two boys jumped in. “French?” said the smaller one. (That instantly wiped out the melancholy of listening to the children earlier.)

“Noooo,” I said.

“German!” said the taller boy.

“No.”

“Italian?”

“No.”

The red-haired girl was laughing quietly behind the counter, a Celtic elf.   

“Polish!”

“Noo.”

“Spanish!” said the taller one, who stood slightly behind the shorter. Both had John Lennon glasses on, and were slender and sensitive and smart.

I shook my head. “You two seem like twins,” I said. “But not identical.”

“We’re brothers,” said the shorter one.

“And you’re how old?”

I am thirteen.”

“And I am eleven,” said the taller.

“And what is your age difference?”

“18 months!” said the older and shorter.

“Just like my sister and me. We are very close, just like you two.”

They both nodded, Yes, we are.

“Portuguese!” said the younger one.

“Nooo.”

“Wait, let’s slow down,” said the older. “Let’s look at the physiognomy of her face.”

He pondered. “You’re not Chinese.”

“You can see that I’m not,” I said.

“English?”

“Now you’re getting warmer. Some of my ancestors were English long ago.”

The older one looked hesitant. “You won’t get angry if I ask you something?”

“No,” I said.

“I don’t think you’re American because you aren’t obese.”

I laughed. “Well, you’re right and you’re wrong. I am American. And you’re right, there are more obese Americans than French.”

“Because of the fast food?” asked the older.

“Maybe, partly. Do you live in Paris?”

“Yes, we are Parisian.”

“You walk a lot here, so almost no one is fat.”

“Don’t people walk in the United States?”

“Yes, but not as much. We drive a lot. And not everyone is fat. And Americans have many wonderful qualities.”

“Like what?” He asked the question with great delicacy, signaling me that he wasn’t asking this as a challenge, but was just curious.

“Oh, energy, exuberance, spontanei—” I couldn’t get the word out in French.

The younger brother tried one translation, and the older brother corrected him. “No, she means spontaneity.”

The older brother was doing all the interviewing now. I thought of my sister, Jane, and how close we were at these boys’ age, and still are. Also how when we were children, I talked too much, so that she talked too little. Though she’s certainly made up for it since.

“Well,” said the older brother, “you see, we were only thinking of Europe.”

The younger one nodded.

They both noticed that my Coquilles Saint-Jacques was getting cold, and said goodbye. Then turned around at the door and asked, “Do you live in this neighborhood?”

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“How often do you come back?”

“Every other Wednesday, about this time. And I always come here for dinner.”

“Well, we’ll see you back here then,” he said, and they turned to go. “Arrivederci,” they called to the Italians behind the counter and slipped out into the street.

“They were adorable!” said elf girl.

“Weren’t they?” I said.

The dish was amazingly good. I’d bring some home for Richard. Plus some of that risotto with lemon.

I ate and thought about these two twin-like brothers, and earlier, the two four or five-year-olds holding hands. The two older boys had such a quicksilver intelligence and sensitivity. What empathy in a boy that age. He knew that a disparaging comment about Americans could very well hurt my feelings, even if it didn’t apply to me. They were sensitive enough to realize that people identify with their nationality and where they live. I thought of adults we know from other parts of the country who didn’t hesitate to make rude remarks about Los Angeles when we lived there.

They made me think of the Celtic roots of French culture, a heritage that traveled up from Crete and Greece through Spain and France and as far north as England. The courtesy, the light intelligence and spiritual sensitivity, it runs through La Chanson de Roland, the troubador tales, Chaucer, Blake, and up to the present time; it is evident in democratic ideals and the courteous treatment of women.

Later, at home, Richard wolfed the Coquilles Saint- Jacques and agreed that they were superb. I looked up the astrological aspects that day, looking for the pattern, the zeitgeist, and saw that the moon was in Gemini. The Dioscuri, the Twins of the zodiac, are ruled by Hermes, who in ancient Egypt was the god Thoth. An ibis-headed god, he was the scribe, the magician, the poet, the one who named things.

In Greek myth, the twins were brothers, boxers and horsemen, who so loved each other that when Castor died, Pollux asked Zeus to let him share his own immortality with his twin, and they were transformed into the constellation of Gemini.

Mercury/Hermes was the favorite god of the Celts, a tribe who were fond of magic and poetry. And these twin-like brothers seemed to me to appear suddenly (as Hermes always does) to offer some magic words: do not despair. You haven’t lost your voice here in France--that was a fine conversation. And making French friends may not be so difficult after all.

Shine A Light

We ventured so far into the inner world in the past two posts that I’d like to focus on something external this time, like, say, a list of differences between life in France and life in America. And why not present the list in the context of the vision quest? Those twelve sea creatures metamorphosed into variants of the Greek gods and goddesses, each with their own realm of action, so let’s look at the French and Americans through the eyes of the “invisibles.”

Any such list is entirely subjective, of course, coming as it does from our limited experience of living off and on for three weeks to three months at a time since the ‘80s and now as permanent residents of Paris for a mere three months. But here are a few things that Richard and I have noticed:

Poseidon (sleep, dreams, the Collective Unconscious)

We live in a stone building that was built in 1862. Our apartment is on the fifth floor and looks out onto two courtyards. We have three fireplaces, none of which work but which look good, especially the salamander in the dining room, and herringbone parquet wooden floors that creak when we walk but which we wouldn’t change for the world.

A salamander

At night, if you lean out the window far enough, you can see the lights of every one of the twenty apartments in the two wings of our building. I am knocked out by the discipline of the French in relationship to sleep. By 11 p.m., almost every window is dark. By midnight, everyone has gone to sleep, including Richard and me…unless we are writing or editing photographs or studying French or we just got back from dinner with friends and are a bit too wired to sleep yet.

Beaujolais, the house cat at Rotisserie Beaujolais

The French are our model for good sleep habits. They are Benjamin Franklin’s delight, “Early to bed, early to rise….” But we don’t always follow this model.

Dionysus (passion, desire, silence, the Personal Unconscious)

I’m going to get in trouble here, but here goes: We keep running into examples of the French notion that marriage and passion don’t go together. According to our French friends, mistresses and side men are rife, for both sexes. It seems to me that Americans place more value on fidelity in marriage than the French do. My advice to American women who are considering moving to France: find an American mate first, and move here together.

On the other hand, silence: we could write a book about the different public attitudes about noise in the U.S. and in France. It is shocking to sit in a restaurant surrounded by French couples or groups of friends who modulate their voices so that everyone in the room can have a private conversation; then a couple of Americans sit down and the shouting begins.

Or you fly back to the U.S. and land in NYC or Dallas-Fort Worth and before you’ve even reached customs, a TV overhead is blaring news or some inane reality show.

The relationship to silence seems to me to reveal something about a culture’s embrace of, or fear of, the soul. You cannot hear the voice (or voices) of the soul in the midst of a constant barrage of noise. Creativity begins in the soul. 

And the French have a tremendous respect for creativity.

Artemis (emotional security, cleanliness)

Let’s just talk about showers. American showers are better, the plumbing is better, since it’s not hundreds of years old, the water has less calcium and it makes for less fly-away hair.

Then there’s toilet paper. Over the years, we’ve laughed at stories we’ve heard of people who bring a suitcase of their own, but it’s true, if you want sandpaper, go into any French bathroom.

I can’t speak about emotional security except one by one, within individuals. And I don’t know enough French individuals to say.

Hermes (education, reading, inspiration)

A friend just sent me an Internet link that compares how many independent bookstores there are in New York City to ones in Paris. The difference is staggering: something like 1400 in Paris versus about 18 in New York City. I’m not surprised. You can’t go for more than a few blocks in Paris without running into a bookstore.  

“If you don't listen to the Guardian Books podcast, I recommend it. It's free. Regarding Montaigne, the podcast in Paris also distinguished the French, in contrast to the Brits and Americans, for loving and publishing essays, liking to read about ideas.”

Richard and I watch French TV for an hour a night, as one of our French lessons. It’s striking how many shows have intelligent debate about books, literature and ideas, and how few dumb sitcoms and idiot reality shows and dancing with celebrities there are. Our acupuncturist here told us how the American CBS series 60 Minutes did a long, admiring piece about the highest-rated show (at the time) on French television, an hour-long, prime-time Sunday night talk show called Apostrophes, which featured interviews with writers the caliber of Marguerite Duras and André Malraux.  The show Apostrophes still has its own definition in the Larousse dictionary. 

Daedalus (creativity, art, craft)

In this realm, there is something that is so striking about Paris that it might be half the reason we moved here: the street signs. You can’t go more than a block without reading some plaque on the wall that honors a poet, a novelist, a photographer, a sculptor, an architect, a scientist, a doctor, a philosopher. Often it is where that artist or inventor was born, or only lived for a year.

On our short street alone, there is a plaque at #74, where Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, lived; a plaque at the town house, #71, where Joyce finished Ulysses in the apartment which was loaned to him by Valéry Larbaud, poet, novelist, essayist and translator; a plaque at #67 for the philosopher, Blaise Pascal, who died there in 1662; a plaque for Jacques-Henri Lartigues, the photographer and painter; and at #2, where the poet, Verlaine, lived for a time. Creative people are respected and honored in this city. Perhaps that’s why so many have lived here. You can feel it in the stones, in the buildings and in the streets.

Athena (government, management, money, peace)

It’s inevitable that a country such as France, which has known so many wars on its own soil, would be more cautious than the U.S. about invading other countries for imperialistic aims, whether to gain resources or territory (in the name of democracy, bien sûr). The U.S. is too young a nation, too naïve about the costs of war, to have much wisdom about the value of peace.

After divesting itself of its colonies during the wars of liberation in the early ‘60s, France has maintained liberal relationships with its citizens abroad, and immigration, while flawed (but at least they don’t build border fences), still rejuvenates French society daily. Most neo-logisms, which the French Academy tries desperately to keep out of the language, are now coming in from Arabic and African languages, not American English.

And money? The French pay about 70% of their income in taxes. Most entrepreneurial Americans would find that unthinkable. But they haven’t experienced the safety net—the infrastructure and the health care—that the French take for granted. More on the latter in Demeter’s realm.

Hestia (house, home, garden, interior and architectural design)

Parisians live in apartments with fewer square metres than the average American. We moved from a house of 2,500 square feet to a 900 square foot apartment. While there’s no room for all of our books, it is considered relatively roomy by Parisian standards. And we immediately have a more expansive life here than when we lived in a larger house. We can walk anywhere in the city and join friends in restaurants that are open to the street, or to any one of the theaters you find every few blocks or any of the world-class museums to be found within walking distance. Imagine, a troupe of world-class Sufi dancers from Syria performing two blocks from your apartment.

But “home” brings me to another subject: household appliances. Americans win that one hands down. We cannot figure out why a European Maytag washing machine takes several hours for a load of washing and several hours for a drying cycle and is noisier than the jets coming in and out of LAX. It’s a mystery. But Americans are better at manufacturing machines.

Aphrodite (beauty, morphos, shapeliness, style, love)

Paris is the center of fashion, so fashion is in Parisians’ genes. What is striking, in contrast to the outlandish styles you see on the fashion runways, is how French elegance combines three things: fine material, simplicity of design and understated refinement. And it seems that mini-skirts never go out of style here, they’re just accessorized with leggings or dark stockings in the winter.

And shapeliness? It’s startling how few fat Parisians you see. This is due, we think, to the nourishing diet, and to the ease of walking in Paris.

The French seem to have built-in radar for temperance and restraint in standards of beauty. You rarely see huge artificial breasts, bad face-lifts, over-bleached hair, sloppy gym clothes in the street and men who dress like boys in shorts and T-shirts—again, elegance seems to include the notion of measure and appropriateness here.

And love? Aside from food, it’s the national religion.

Demeter (food, cooking, nourishment, health)

No one who’s ever spent three days in France forgets the food. The bread! The cheese! The chocolate! The artistry and deliciousness of the cooking!

Poilâne bakery, the world's best 

But let me just mention what the French lack: Whole Foods. There is no market like Whole Foods in Paris. I miss the American spicy salmon and California guacamole they sell. And though the French make a better almond butter, they can’t approach American peanut butter.

Then there’s health care. Our health insurance payment here is equivalent to our old Anthem Blue Shield, but it pays for all medicine, all doctor visits, and a doctor’s visit means the doctor comes to your house if need be. But we wouldn’t want any such socialism in our country, would we? Well, maybe if we’d experienced French health care, we might.

Ares (goods, shopping, purchases, travel, war, practical community protection--such as firemen and policemen)

In spite of my fondness for Whole Foods, it is so soulful to walk to the boulangerie to buy bread freshly baked within the hour, cheese from a fromager where every clerk knows the history of fifty different kinds of cheese and what bread or wine would go best with it. And if you’re a chocolate kind of person, you can buy that dark chocolate and carry it out in a turquoise bag that is more beautiful than a bag from Tiffany’s.

And the public transportation? It makes us weep with gratitude. Though most of the time we can walk to just about anywhere in the city (Paris is only 41 square miles, smaller than San Francisco), when it’s raining or very late, we can hop on a Métro and reach any distant destination in the city within 40 minutes at the most. After driving for hours at a time to get to a destination in Los Angeles, this human scale, of buildings mostly not much taller than five stories, of restaurants and shops mixed in with residential apartments, of great public transport, everything feels intimate here. And that has a relaxing, pleasurable effect on the psyche.

As far as protective services, my hairdresser in Los Angeles, who was from Paris, told me that after experiences like being occupied by the Germans in World War II, the French will not put up with aggressive local policemen. He said we’d get to know the police in our arrondissement, and run into them at our local cafés, and get to know them by name. And that compared with American policemen, they’re much friendlier, and less confrontational.

We experienced this when Eric, a policeman, was called to our building. He was a blond young man on a bicycle who seemed about as threatening as the pre-med student in your dorm in college. (But that’s another story.)

Apollo (performance, enjoyment, celebration)

Okay, here’s a story from 2009. Richard and I went to see Martin Scorsese’s film about the Rolling Stones, “Shine a Light.” It was in one of the theaters in what used to be the former public market, Les Halles, a rather Dionysian part of town near the rue St. Denis, where all the hookers hang out. The theater was full. We had good seats in the center of a central row. Now, no one goes to see a film about the Rolling Stones unless he or she likes rock ’n’ roll, and has some attraction to the Dionysian brand that the Stones have been giving us since the ‘60s.

The film was terrific. One great song after another by the greatest rock band in the world (And if you disagree, you’re just wrong.) We could hardly sit in our seats we were so ecstatic. Richard was once a disc jockey in the San Francisco Bay area, and we both came of age with the great rock bands of the ‘60s. It was crazy to be listening to this music and sitting down. So we moved in our seats. How could you not?

But we slowly became aware of the oddest phenomenon. Everyone around us seemed rapt. No one was leaving the theater. But everyone sat, not moving, hands in their laps, like good children waiting to be allowed to eat. No one around us even moved their heads slightly in time to the music. We wondered if we’d hear people saying afterwards that they hadn’t liked the film or the music. But no, in the lobby, we heard low murmurs of approval in French in every direction. We stood by the exit door and listened. The very thing that makes it so pleasant to be in a public space with the French, their decorous restraint, seemed lunatic while listening to the Rolling Stones.

We came away with two impressions: that Americans with their impulsive exuberance might just know how to let loose better than the French, at least in public. And this is why great rock ‘n’ roll has come from England and the United States and not from France. It’s just not the gift of the French.

Zeus (generosity, gift-giving, blessing)

The uninhibited nature of Americans makes it easier for them/us to express generosity. Or so it seems to us at this point. Though, as we get to know more French people, who knows what we’ll find? The French, we are told, are notorious for their initial reserve—smiles are earned, not given freely as they are in the United States. But, we are also told, they are warm life-long friends once you break through that reserve. We’ll keep you informed. 

En Plein Cœur de Paris (Right in the Heart of Paris)

 

The ingredients: Beauty. A body of water. Culture. Walkability.

A block and a half to the post office. Drop them in the box.

Loop around rue des Écoles and back down rue Pontoise to the gym. It’s Sunday night and closed. But you take an iPhone photo of the schedule taped to the window. Yoga and Cardio and Stretching and Salsa all day.

Cross Blvd. St. Germain and continue down rue Pontoise past a restaurant with tables outside, which looks inviting. But it’s too close, we wanted a longer walk. Rue Pontoise comes out on Quai de la Tournelle, and Voila! it happens again. We emerge along the banks of the Seine in a state of delight. How little it takes to generate happiness. A river. Evening light. Your hand in mine. The statue of Sainte Geneviève in stone rising above the Pont de la Tournelle and the Seine.

The legend goes that in 451 when word came that Attila and the Huns were about to invade the city, Geneviève held them off with the power of her prayer. And she became the patron saint of Paris. In 1928, the sculptor Paul Landowski was commissioned to sculpt a statue of Sainte Geneviève to rise above this bridge.

“Did I tell you what the sculptor went through with this sculpture?” you say.

“No, tell me!”

“Apparently, Landowski wanted it to face west towards Notre Dame. But the city insisted that it face east as a rebuke to the Germans against whom the French had fought WWI. As a kind of echo of Geneviève’s resistance against the Huns centuries before. You can see who won.”

The statue faces east towards Germany.

“Where did you read that? It wasn’t in the account I read.”

“In Colin Jones’s book, Paris: Biography of a City.”

“It’s 8:00 p.m. and still light. I love these late evenings.”

“And soon it will still be light at 10 p.m.”

We cross the bridge. People are lined up with cameras trying to capture the sun setting behind Notre Dame.

One couple, the woman with legs like sausages, is kissing so intensely I have to watch. The man is gripping her jaw with his hand as if it’s a fish that might slip back into the Seine if he doesn’t hold tight. I love to see hefty middle-aged couples convulsed with passion.

We cross into the central street of l’Île Saint-Louis and pass all the familiar shops and restaurants. One more bridge and we’re in the Marais.

We pass a Jewish temple. A rabbi in a fedora comes out and scolds a couple of young male students. His gestures are classic. He holds up his hands to the sky in helpless dismay, but he speaks fluid French; there’s something dear and funny in this combination of the familiar and the strange. Richard asks, “How do you say “Oy veh” in French?

Men walk by on the other side of the street with tefillin[1] and payot[2].

As we turn onto rue des Francs-Bourgeois, I spot graffiti on a wall that I've never seen, an old-fashioned full-length portrait of a man.  "Do you have this one?

"No," you say, and pull your camera from your bag.

"Why does it not surprise me that you just happened to have that camera on you?" I laugh. 

You snap the image from several angles and we continue on. A little lèche-vitrine[3]. Here’s a long dress in a shop window. I don’t wear long summer dresses, but this one I like.

“What do you think?” I ask.

“Nope. It’s not you.”

That’s all I need to hear.

I hoped there would be an empty table outside. There’s a slight breeze but the air is warm. We don’t want to eat indoors. And there is, in the corner against that ancient wall. We sit across from each other, one table away from a young French couple, who, like most French people, modulate their voices so that you can talk without the conversations of others distracting you.

Foiled in our last attempt to have galettes, tonight there are no obstacles. We’re radiating joy and the waitress feels it, comes up to our table and smiles and laughs!

I’d forgotten that they have galettes with goat cheese here, which is better for me than cow’s cheese. And more important, is delicious.

You look flustered. Too many great choices; what will you have?

The waitress laughs. She’s small and dark-haired and possibly Middle Eastern.  She takes our orders and comes back with a big bottle of Pellegrino, pours it for the two of us.  

“I have to tell you one thing about you that I really love.”

You raise your eyebrows. Moi?

“You. I know how hard these first two weeks of French classes have been. I think four hours of instruction in a new language are the equivalent of eight hours of work at anything else.”

You nod in agreement.

“What moves me is the way you put your whole heart, mind, body and soul into learning something new. Your wholeheartedness—you approach everything that matters to you that way.”

You nod.

“The way you disappeared into your office all day Saturday memorizing pronouns and articles, and then practiced them later with me. Really, the French language doesn’t have a chance against you. You will master her. Just like Sainte Geneviève conquered the Huns by her attitude alone!”

You laugh. The galettes arrive. “Bon appetit!” The waitress sings, and swings away to the next table. We hold hands above the meal, thank the goddess Demeter for this food that smells so good we have to cut short our thanks and demonstrate our gratitude by quickly digging in.

“Ohhhh.”

“Ohhhh,” you echo.

“No, this is the best place for galettes in town.”

“I have to agree. And this one has goat cheese, which I haven’t found anywhere else. I’d offer you a bite but it’s too good.”

“You can’t have a bite of mine either.”

“I wouldn’t want one, with all that boeuf on it.”

We eat, sighing. “I passed a men’s shop on St. Germain with the perfect black linen jacket for you in the window. That is, if you want one.”

“Let’s go by after dinner and take a look.”

After dinner, we cross the street and Voila! there’s a graffiti image that I hope is… “What do you think that is,” I ask.

“An octopus,” you say.

“I could use that image,” I say. You photograph it, and then as we walk down rue des Francs-Bourgeois, there is another, in orange. And then another green one. You photograph each.

The Missing Star

The restaurants we pass are all wide open now to the street. Many are full of men with men, in groups, in couples, and standing in front of the restaurants, hunting. And very tall, thin black men who look like models, walking arm in arm in the street.

We cross in front of the Hôtel de Ville de Paris. To the right is a long fountain and a carrousel, to the left, the magnificent ancient building.

“Look at the light behind that statue.”

We look, then glance at each other. No words are needed. The joy on your face mirrors what I feel.

Through the Place du Parvis-Notre-Dame, the square in front of Notre Dame. Boys are tossing up a toy lightning bug, which twinkles in the church’s dramatic lights.

Tourists eat ice cream. A Russian family crosses our path.

A girl is draped across a boy’s lap; they’re kissing. The beauty of this city brings out romance.

We look for the jacket, but the shop must be farther up St. Germain. You’ll pass it tomorrow on the way to school.

The secrets of the magic of this city: beauty, the river, the culture, but most of all, that you can walk everywhere. If we were meant to drive every day, we’d have been born with wheels on our feet.

[1] From Ancient Greek phylacterion, form of phylássein, φυλάσσειν meaning "to guard, protect"), are a set of small cubic leather boxes painted black, containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah, with leather straps dyed black on one side, and worn by observant Jews during weekday morning prayers.

[2] Payot (also peyot, payos, payess, peyess, peyos Hebrew: singular, פֵּאָה; plural, פֵּאוֹת‎ At Yemeni jewish it is called 'Simonim' too סִימָנִים) is the Hebrew word for sidelocks or sidecurls. Payot are worn by some men and boys in the Orthodox Jewish community based on an interpretation of the Biblical injunction against shaving the "corners" of one's head. Literally, pe'ah means corner, side or edge.

[3] Window-shopping. Literally, “licking the windows.”