October 6, 2015 – Timeless time in Paris

I’ll resume recording posts when I return from Paris. Thanks.

It’s Monday (yesterday) afternoon and I’m sitting on my bed in an apartment in Paris. I’ve just woken from a nap and as I look out the bedroom window, the rainwater is running down the grey slate on the sides of the Mansard roofs across the street. After several really beautiful days, we’re having some rain. I’ve traipsed around the streets of Paris in the rain before – grey skies seem more “normal” to me here than sun, really. But I’m inside today, not taking in any sights, just herbal tea with honey, lemon and ginger and chicken broth – I’ve come down with a cold – not exactly on my agenda for our Pilgrimage! After lashing about inside myself about it all, I’ve surrendered to having a new experience – a sick day (hopefully not more than one!) in Paris. I’ve never spent a day here, cozied up inside tending to myself, while all of Paris is out and about – including my Paris Pilgrims. They were sweet this morning, getting me citrus fruit and bringing over from the other apartment (we’ve rented 3 apartments in one neighborhood, living like “real” French people for a week), the starting of the soup I’d started after last night’s roast chicken dinner. My throat was scratchy last night, so I had an inkling this was coming.

One of the pictures I had for our time here was to have a dinner in. Yesterday we shopped in the Sunday morning market a block away: rotisserie chickens (French chickens just taste better), buttery yellow potatoes (ditto) cooked in a gratin with crème fraiche (the French have incredible dairy products), tiny haricot verts (green beans) and a big green salad of butter lettuce and French radishes with a shallot-Dijon red wine vinaigrette. And of course a Bordeaux from the wine shop and baguette, and we had a Sunday dinnertime feast! Two of the Pilgrims, Tania and Karen added to it, with the most exquisite looking cupcakes I’d ever seen, like gorgeous French roses.

They’re spending the day out and about without me and it’s just fine. We’ve had two days together so far, giving everyone their bearings. I don’t think that I’d have just chosen to stay in and let them all venture out if I’d not gotten sick. I’m imagining that they will come back with great tales of their adventures today. They were starting on the Batobus – a water “bus” that cruises up the Seine, making regular stops along the way. Fun! As much as I’d really rather not be sick and would love to be out with them, I’m wondering if my getting a cold isn’t really offering us all an experience that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. There is a gentle sweetness to my being inside listening to the rain, writing and resting. And they’ll spend time without my translating or speaking or navigating for them, allowing them a closer relationship with Paris without my being “in the middle.”

Before I left last week, I had a very strong feeling that I was going to miss Joe and Bo so much, I’d just ache for them. I cuddled with Joe the morning of my flight, my physical being connecting with his, wondering how I could leave? It was a new thing. I was actually worried that I’d not want to be here when I arrived! I was telling myself I’d been here lots before, was Paris all that special, really? Then we landed Thursday morning to blue skies. Riding in the shuttle into the center of Paris, bright with the sunlight, I remembered. I was tingly. Paris. I was here, really here.

As I thought about this when I was taking a hot bath earlier this morning, other timeless moments I’ve had here in Paris floated by in my mind:

• The first was when I walked out of the Gare du Nord in 1984, my first time ever here. I remember looking around and, though I did not know my way, I had the clear sense that I’d been here before. I must have lived here in an earlier lifetime, because this city has never felt foreign to me.
• Then soon after arriving for my half year in 1996, my boss, the zany Dominique, took me on a private night-time tour of all of the major monuments in the center of the city. We careened around, as he drove like a true mad Frenchman, excitedly telling me about all that I was seeing. He was so proud to show me his city.
• Returning from a long weekend in the Loire Valley that same year. It was a really warm August night and time stopped, when I was on the bridge that connects the Left Bank to the Ile de la Cité, at the back of Notre Dame. I was struck by the fact that I’d been away and had come back “home” to this.

The same view captured this past Saturday night.

• My first trip back after my 6 months, was 8 or 9 months later. It was May 1997 – I was here for meetings at my company’s headquarters. I’d arrived in late the afternoon and took a walk from my hotel along the Seine, across the Pont des Arts to the Louvre, and as I walked around the pyramid and out towards the Place de la Concorde, the high sprinklers were going in the Tuileries gardens and were caught by the setting sun. It was magic.
• A misty grey afternoon when I was here with my brother Matt – we met my friend Bruno and shopped and made a weekend lunch in Bruno’s apartment. It was a cold, cold November day and there wasn’t anything more perfect than to be warm inside cooking, eating all afternoon.
• A kir in the lounge of a posh little place in the 6th, called L’Hotel with my friend Julia. The hotel is in the building where Oscar Wilde last lived and where he died. We swear his ghost was with us.
• My last trip here with my Mama, it was a January evening and below freezing. We’d just seen something like 180 paintings by Monet at the Grand Palais. (This was while the Musee d’Orsay was being remodeled – also how we got the two big Impressionist exhibits at the De Young in San Francisco in 2010). We were wrapped up from one end to the other, our toes numb in our boots as we walked across one bridge up from the Pont Alexandre III – the most lavishly ornate bridge in Paris, the moon was full and shining on the water. It was hard to believe it was real.

That cold night in January

These “pinch me, am I really having this experience?” moments like I have here can’t be planned, but they keep happening, it seems, every time I’m here. And it is this that has inspired the “Pilgrimage to Paris” that we are on. There is a spirit of place that draws us and meets us – some of us, anyway – and it is as real as any relationship. The invitation to this Pilgrimage was “does Paris call your name?” She has been calling mine for a long time – and has inspired quite a bit of artwork to come from me. This is my hope for the six Pilgrims here with me now.

Paris may very well be the most charismatic city in the world. I’m sure there are millions, if not billions of people who, when they think of Paris, are enchanted – whether they’ve been here or not. And yet, I think it’s possible for each of us to have a relationship with her as our very own – her spirit is timeless and boundless, there’s enough for each of us to claim her as ours.

Paris, je t’aime.

Cara