So Begins a Trés Bell Year

Our neighborhood cathedral turns eight hundred and fifty this year.

Here on the fifth floor, with our windows open, we often listen to the bells of Notre Dame (Our Lady) from four blocks away, and had thought them lovely each time.

But what do we know? 

Not being experts, we didn't know they were out of tune. After all, the last time the ten big bells were "replaced" was during the French Revolution of 1789, when they were destroyed as part of the wave of secular sentiment. Their eventual nineteenth century replacements were four chimes, which everyone except us knew were discordant.

So, to celebrate Our Lady's birthday, the church hierarchy commissioned nine new bronze bells, celebrated this last weekend amid much pomp, incense, music, and ceremony, including an appearance by Paris Archbishop Andre Armand Vingt-Trois.

Many masses were held, at which the gargantuan bells were displayed in the nave of the immense gothic cathedral. Between masses, the devout and the merely curious mingled together, inspecting, touching, and admiring the huge bronze bells, including the six-and-a-half ton bourdon (great bell) bell named for Marie, the mother of Jesus of Nazareth.

Marie will be hoisted to the gothic south tower by herself, and the other eight, Jean-Marie, Maurice, Benoit-Joseph, Steven, Marcel, Denis, Anne-Genevieve and Gabriel, will be mounted in the north tower, joining another bourdon, Emmanuel, which has been there since the seventeenth century. 

The installation is expected to be finished by March 23, when they will ring together for the first time just before Palm Sunday, the beginning of what Christians call Holy Week. Palm Sunday commemorates the arrival of Jesus into Jerusalem, where, in the following week, he was tried, sentenced, put to death on a cross on Good Friday, and then, the story continues, resurrected on Easter, in the manner of previous fertility gods like the Greek Dionysus, the Mesopotamian Tammuz, or the Egyptian Amun.

 

Notre Dame itself stands on ground sacred long before the Christian Era began. The Cathedral sits at what Pulitzer Prize-winning architect Allan Temko called "the organic heart of Paris." And, "the eastern end of the island [Ile de la Cite] has been a repository of idealisms since men first built a tabernacle there of branches and reeds. From the floor of the Seine upward, there must be scores of buried pre-Christian shrines: first the fragile Gallic sanctuaries of wood, and then a whole series of Roman temples in stone. Finally, high on the accumulated mound, so close to the surface that they seem incredibly recent, is a collection of Christian edifices, resting directly behind and all around Notre-Dame." (Temko, Allan, Notre-Dame of Paris.  A Time Incorporated book, New York, 1962, page 11.) 

It's a powerful spot. Witness last Saturday, the day the celebratory masses began, which was blustery, with intermittent hail showers. Not quite cold enough to snow, but definitely some bitter winds. Then, as if to signify that somebody up there liked what was going on in the cathedral, the sun came out just long enough to help send this message to the assembled worshipers at the exact moment the afternoon service began.

Pussy Riot and the Power of Myth

Distressed at the notion that the three female punk rockers from the six-member group, Pussy Riot, were being slapped down way too hard for their anti-Putin protest in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral on February 21, we joined 300 other Parisians this broiling noon hour (Friday, the 17th) in a demonstration of solidarity at the famous Niki St. Phalle fountain next to the Pompidou Museum. (That's the fountain in our masthead, above.) 

As the world knows, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and her band-mates Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina, wearing knitted balaclavas, burst into the Orthodox church with three other band members (who are currently in hiding) and performed a song beseeching the Virgin Mary to oust the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, who was standing for re-election.

The choice of venue, and of the Virgin, were a protest against the way the church has become, in the eyes of the band and other Russians, an arm of the Putin State during his twelve years in power.

Pussy Riot specializes in sudden, often illegal public performances, of the kind associated with flash mobs, including one in Moscow's Red Square. In a freer tradition, Pussy Riot would be recognized as the honored form of Trickster we call the court jester, the holy fool whose job/art it is to tell truth to power. 

The State was not amused.

The women, all in their twenties, were arrested and charged with "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred," because their performance was called, by the government, a hate crime against the church. Pussy Riot called it free speech.

We call it myth. You don't have to believe in myth; it unfolds all around you, whether or not you believe in it.

In these last few days of Leo, with the Sun and Moon both in the sign, we've noticed many cat posts on Facebook. We're spending a lot of time with Marley, just admiring his feline beauty. And today, we're in a public square awaiting the verdict on Pussy Riot. 

I've been re-reading Candide. Just imagine what Voltaire would have to say about this miserable witch-burning still going on in Russia. Enlightened Eighteenth Century philosophers, writers and politicians in England, the U.S. and France, were clear about the need to keep church and state separate, and to allow free speech, without repressive repercussions from religion or the government.

In an earlier age, the band, Pussy Riot, would have been burned as witches. There is a reason why cats and witches are connected. Cats are creatures of mystery. They are beautiful, not utilitarian. You don't see cats out herding cattle and sheep.

Zoologist Desmond Morris said, "Cats are artists, dogs are soldiers." Soldiers of the state like Putin don't understand artists or witches. Witches were probably early feminists, equally versed in magic and nature. They wanted to transform the world, as artists do. As these singers did, appealing to the Virgin Mary to stop Putin. 

On a mythical level, the Virgin Mary is the goddess, Demeter. She is an earth goddess. In earlier times, women addressed the goddesses with such protests, and no man would dream of silencing them. 

Despite worldwide protests, and appeals for leniency by creative artists ranging from Danny De Vito to Yoko Ono to Paul McCartney, the women, who were jailed for the five months awaiting trial, faced up to seven years in prison.

Our Paris demonstration, as well as others across Europe, were held at the time the court was to release its verdict. Organized by the French chapter of Amnesty International, aided by the International Federation for Human Rights, this Paris iteration attracted a cross-section of Parisians, including members of the local Federation of Anarchists.  They carried black flags, and didn't mix much.

Despite the lack of shade, and an eighty-eight degree Fahrenheit temperature (31 Celsius), the fashion for the day was the balaclava, in spandex, leopard, or you-name-it, with or without slogans.

While the length of sentence was not handed down before the demonstration ended, the crowd was told by the event's Amnesty International host, who was monitoring the Internet on his iPhone, that the members of Pussy Riot were found guilty, expected information that was met with a chorus of boos.

Later Friday, the judge, Marina Sirovaya, sentenced the trio to two years in prison.

Astrology is just the time dimension, the seasonal aspect of myth. And today, as Leo draws to a close, the pussy cats are rioting.

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.