Hostel coffee in Paris is a treat

Thursday morning, post breakfast,

bangs self-trimmed: 'chic'?
uniform: a loose white shirt
washed hair, and a grin

*

Frenchboy leans on car
attempts for gold in his nose;
scratches his nethers...

*

Sainte Chapelle a une file,
a line near a hundred long -
I'll watch while I wait.

Here, you speak with your eyes.

This blog, completely in French

it lights from base to crown,

glowing like an electric stove burner.

what algorithm
makes le tour eiffel sparkle
five minutes each hour?

cars have to stop for walkers at zebra stripes

like the ones at Abbey Road.

Monday, commuting impression,

look right; mind the gap
aye, this city's not so small
when seen on leathers

*

Monday, after High Street K, Tate Modern, at Covent Garden

a pasty on stones
in the middle of a square
did not take four bites

*

Monday evening, speaking of 'fancies,'

make sure that you ask
the world for what you want, friend
it's likely to give

inter-tubing

Sunday. In London.
High ceilings in my hostel;
sun shines and I'm out.


More when it's gray or raining, and when I can upload saved words from my computer.

it's nice to be up higher sometimes

friday,

climb up Montmartre
caricaturists squared up
among striped awnings

tin tr-eiffel towers
small clones of Monet's cafe
blue- and red-dipped flags

le sacre coeur: fine
the 'tres jolie' view's outside,
and better at night

*

friday, best lunch yet,

salmon, spinach quiche
in the window of a shop
crust melts in your mouth

then later, hours on
moist, pungent, nutty, berry'd -
une tarte de pistache

*

friday, new hostel,

new friends by instance
an occasion for champagne
near the moulin rouge

'meuf' is street for 'femme'

I am told that French slang is formed by taking a normal French word apart at its hinges, and reversing its syllables.

***

Thursday: Roia and Sarah invited me to join them on a bike ride this morning. We all wanted to try Paris’s ‘free’ bike system (Velib). The girls suggested the Left Bank, so we jumped on the Metro and made it happen.

While we found a Velib station and figured out how to use the bulky gray bikes, we felt a drizzle; by the time we pedaled, wobbly-like, toward the busy street St. Germaine de Pres, we were dripping. Though the bikes were surprisingly stable and solid, we were unsure of our footing in the rain, and we were being shoved along narrow lanes by large buses. Still, we were biking! In Paris! In the rain!

The unreal romance of the whole thing kept us moving for 20 minutes, but our good sense finally stopped us and led us into a café, wet knees and all.

After downing chocolats et cafés au lait, we moved on by foot. Roia and Sarah are former English majors, and librarians-in-training. We visited a café where Sartre used to take aperitifs, and a bookstore where Hemingway hung with a posse. The ladies had a lead on a William Blake exhibit at Le Petit Palace, so I gleefully joined them in gazing at his picture-sized prints and tiny pages of poetry. I scribbled a few lines in my little red notebook:

‘The eternal body of man is the imagination. It manifests itself in his works of art…’

‘The eye sees more than the heart knows.’

The girls went back to the hostel to change, and I decided to find the Bon Marche, a ritzy department store, by bike. (Velib is in my Paris top-seven.)

Not so interested in the Bon's collection of Yves St. Laurent or Givenchy (although it was tres-fab), I really just wanted a snack from the Marche’s super-luxe Grande Epicerie. Picture: mounds of flour-dusted breads, stacks of tarts sitting on buttery crusts, cheeses in all forms of cream, chocolate squares, tea-tins lining shelves. I took pictures of the delectables at this place. (To come.) And I got yogurt de marron. Nutty, creamy, tasty. You wouldn't believe the yogurt selection in Paris!

(Aside, in sharp contrast: On the other side of this hostel common room, a guy just picked his nose rather conspicuously, and inefficiently. Just saying.)

I did find an art department in the basement of the Marche, and rifled through hanging decorative papers for at least 17 minutes. What came away with me: a couple of delightfully printed veli and an old-style map of Paris.

For a long time, I have esteemed maps.

it's not hard to find Metro ligne 2

My feet hurt as if each bare muscle and bone is balancing on its own misshapen pebble. When I tilt and flex my ankle, the stiff-rubber’d muscles in my shin yearn against each other. My heels hum high-pitched growls at me.

The hostel sounds fast, beat-ful electronica with repetitive wails and calls by a soulful – or angry – woman. She sounds like my frustrated arches.

*

Yesterday, I walked. I walked a giant circle from the hostel (north at Montmartre) west toward L’Arc de Triomphe. Along the way, I stopped at a marche and spent 10 minutes deciding on what cheese to buy for lunch. I decided on a tender, cream-yellow Aussee aux Moines, grabbed a couple of Boskoop Apples, and ate on a street-facing bench in front of a church. Very shortly, I was on my feet again. Eyes unyielding, feet skipped along. At the Arc, I turned southeast along the Champs, and walked on through La Jardine Tuilerie, right up to the pyramid of the Louvre.

Two years ago, a Chinaman snapped a photo of my mom and I in front of that pyramid. My hostelmates, pals Reia and Sarah from England, were probably inside. But I swerved right and visited le Musee d’Orsay, then kept walking along la rue St. Germain de Pres, busy Left Bank thoroughfare of shopping and cafes. How convenient! I could use a drink, and watching people is always on my agenda.

When the sky opened up and spilled, I was under the awning of Café Mondrian, so I sat down at one of the street-facing tables and asked for a menu. The waiter brought a café viennois, leveled by whipped cream, topped with cacao. I sat next to a French couple, the woman giggling and teasing the man about his chain-smoking. On the street, sheets of water slapped at the backs of cyclists, pooled in gutters and roared into drains. I watched Parisians line up like paper dolls under thin overhangs and construction covers. A portion of pedestrians had pulled out umbrellas and were still hustling along; the rest paused in their duties, keeping dry their duds.

Rain over, I walked on along St. Germain to l’Ile Saint Louis, a small island that mirrors the bigger one that Notre Dame dominates. I circled the island, photographing a woman sitting in a nook above her doorway, a red bicycle leaning against a yellow street sign, a pair of older boys in school uniforms sitting on a bench under a lone tree at the very end of the island.

I wandered over to the winding avenues of the right bank, in the South part of Le Marais. As the sun disappeared, I felt hunger, and a few corner turns later I found a falafel window, bright with French chatting and smiles. Jackpot. L’Il de Falafel, I realized: the best falafel in Paris, according to several guidebooks. Freshly fried, accompanied by forkfuls of splintered cucumbers and beets, drenched in tzatziki. Yep.

Finally, I shuffled on the Metro home, shins finally beginning to tire.

when it pours, people just stop and wait

--as if there is nowhere to be.

***
C'est une deluge, no?
Hard rain shoots up, falls back down
incandescent streets.

Cafe Mondrian
tables face'd to people watch
smoke weaves through the chairs.

rich brown leathers
neutrals pop in wools and silks
hair, shoes: intended.

***

in Paris

The City of Light is breathing this afternoon, like a slowed runner with a hot face. It's about 6:15pm, and a heavy breeze tempers the sun-heat that is still radiating from light stone buildings.

Up until about two hours ago, it was raining here. Gray and moppy. Heavy and sweaty. Teeming and lively.

Now, the clouds have backed off, but even on the side street near Montmartre where my hostel huddles, the scene continues to move. Across the floor-to-ceiling windows, with their minds on other things, walkers bounce, motorbikes whiz, cars zoom - then stop. Halt - start. Speed - screech. Veer off.

There are shutters and windows open above the street. A woman in a purple dress leans languidly over the black iron rodding of one of them, smoking a cigarette. She squints and scowls, and watches the traffic.

The hostel is playing a mix of dance-electronica. Earlier, while I scanned foreign price labels at a place called Darty to find a cheap power adaptor, the store played French rock-rap.

I've only been in Paris a few hours, and already I feel a pace among the livelies around here. It's not - so much - the individuals. Each person seems rythmic, intentional, even slow sometimes, like well-tuned instrumentation. But the group acts together, and the effect is a beat.

surely spitting she

surely, you're headed
where no others have yet gone
blindly, super strong


***

spitting nighttime mist
pattern'd my fiery sweater
as I pedal'd here


***

she takes precaution
to be anywhere but here
the days before I leave

it makes strangers chuckle together on the street

there's a great rumbling notion
that tumbles the ocean
like the waves - only stronger -
like what pushes those

it's inside my purpose
and it makes me nervous
- in a good way -
a way that I think I chose

it's this notion that brings me
to ponder the question
- what makes us all
so incredibly close -

why is it that in a pinch
we belong here
carried by currents
we follow by nose

and that infinite, inconspicuous
wind that still grows.

splendor and orange dirt

drink up, merry men
for, in days, we're on the march
again to the blue

we'll bring home riches
in all intangible forms
invisible wounds

our eyes will be spoil'd
before splendor and orange dirt,
our feet well ignored

drink it up now, men
slake the thirst, douse the rumbling
that has you unquiet

and once you've arrived
you'll be happy to know that
you won't again thirst

and lead me to it.

words spring from your mind
super-conscious, sub-ether
tied to what you know

what is it you say
without saying it at all?
tell me a story.

give me a fable
like you do everyday
and lead me to it.