An excerpt from a recent instant messenger conversation with my best friend at Emory:

Emorly: So how are you?
Moxie Ringwald: Oh, you know... I’m young and single in Paris– how much better does it get, I guess?
Emorly: Yeah, when you put it that way, you’re pretty much the cover girl for Cosmo.

And I don’t know about that, but I do know that for the most part, it rocks to be here. But being single and young in Paris on Valentine’s Day? Suddenly that first part loses all its appeal.
But I refused to let it get me down. Mostly. I mean, except for the past two weeks that I spent dreading today.
This morning was cloudy and gray, and it rained all day. At first I thought that was good, because if I am going to be stuck single in the most romantic city on the most romantic day of the year, at least the weather could sympathize with my mood. But then I remembered how Paris was just made to be seen in weather like this. Which made me angry. Until I realized that I could still enjoy this city, even though I was doing it alone.
In the US, I would have planned something with my girlfriends, or with all my single friends, or whatever, but HERE... We all know I have a limited network of friends here– I haven’t been here long enough to be a total social butterfly. But every single one of my Parisian friends is in a relationship– two of them are out of town visiting their significant others, a couple more have significant others visiting them here... and the rest live here all the time and are doing something romantic together. Lovely. But this morning I decided I didn’t care... so I went to my sociology class, and then in the two hour break between classes, I wandered the Latin Quarter, looking for the Rue Mazet– a tiny street I stumbled upon one night really late after everything was closed. I finally found it today... amazing.
It’s between Bd. St. Michel and Bd. St. Germain in the Latin Quarter, a street so tiny and short it doesn’t even make it onto most maps. It’s closed to cars, primarily because if the center of the street is at sea level, the left curb is –10 inches and the right curb is +6 inches. And halfway between the center and the right curb is probably +15. Cobbled, of course. Which means that trying to trek it in anything but sneaks is a bad idea. Especially in the rain, like today. Luckily I was wearing my beat-up Chucks, which are right now in my garbage can, because I left my apartment this morning at 928 and by 931 the shoes were soaked– from the bottom up. I somehow wore a hole in the front of both of them, so the water soaked in from the front somewhere, and I had on bad socks that were eaten by my shoes by 935. That is probably, other than wearing rain-soaked pants, my least favorite feeling in the world– eaten socks, I mean.
Wait, that was a total irrelevance.
Focus.
Ok. So I get to the end of Rue Mazet, and I’m wearing my long coat, scarf, gloves, the works, with the hood up, since I have no umbrella with me. I push my hood back and can finally see, and wonder of wonders, the street is covered by this... I don’t know, glass kind of canopy thing. I pass Salons de Thé, Papeteries, Cadeaux, etc., and then I am at the end of the street, where the iron gates are opened for the day. I walk through the stone arch and the iron gates and realize I have nothing else to do for the next two hours, so I go back down the street and stop this time at La Jacobine, which translates as "The Jacobine," probably the coolest place I have eaten since coming to Paris. Actually, I didn’t even eat, I walked in and the guy told me I could sit where I wanted, so I nestled myself in a booth in the far back corner, facing the restaurant. I ordered a Café latté frappé vanille... which is way too many adjectives for me to translate. I don’t know what it was, but it was cold and coffee, and in a country that doesn’t believe in ice, it was delicious. They served it in a sundae glass, and I sat there reading my (English) extremely beaten-up copy of The Phantom Of The Opera, sipping my café frappé delicé caramellé whateveré it was, listening to their soft classical music playing... it was amazing. They had the day’s desserts sitting out to choose from, Cromble des Fruits Rouges, Tarte Tatin, etc., all lined up there, but I just looked... and drank my coffee. The place was so cozy (or cosy? One of them is the English way and one is American and I forget which is which...???) and warm... the whole front was windowed, and I looked out onto the rainy street, and realized the place could easily have been next door to the library in the opening scene of Beauty & The Beast. You know the one– "Have you got anything new?" "Not since yesterday..."
I left eventually and went to my photography class, and then got out of there and decided to walk home. From the Latin Quarter. Which is pretty much about the distance from... I don’t know, Atlanta to Tampa. But I took off, refusing to use my map, just going left over and over until I could see the Eiffel Tower and then following it. It took me about an hour and a half to get home, but it would have been much quicker had I not been in such a mood. I wasn’t mad about being single anymore, but I was still listening to feel-sorry-for-myself-in-the-rain music when I started walking, until I remembered that (this is quite embarrassing) I have this mental block thing and I have to walk in the rhythm to the music coming through my headphones. Well, I don’t have to, I suppose, but I find myself doing it all the time, quite without thinking about it. And since I started out with acoustic uberchill music, I was crawling. I finally had to switch to screamo-metal to get myself going at a normal pace. I passed about sixteen florists on the walk, which was kind of uncomfortable, since they were all full of men standing in line with huge bouquets of roses...
But it was a great walk, I came up behind the Eiffel Tower, a view of it I don’t usually see, and was reminded again of how much Haussmann did for this city.
A petite bit of history for you: In the late 19th century, Baron Haussmann was paid to completely remodel Paris. The streets were too small for carriages, and there was no system to the layout of the city– streets wound and curved randomly, it was nearly impossible to get from one place to another. So he redid everything, knocking out buildings where he didn’t want them, getting rid of an awful lot of history, but preparing Paris to be PARIS for another few centuries. He is the reason this city has so many trees– for a big metropolis like it is, there are trees EVERYWHERE here– in the big parks and gardens, obviously, but also all over the sidewalks of almost every street. Art historians love to hate him for the buildings he got rid of, but Parisians are just sort of indifferent to him. In all the art history classes I have ever taken, he’s treated as this villain roughly the Hitler of architecture. But Parisians just shrug their shoulders– probably because they actually live here and know what a nightmare it would be to get around without him. Paris never would have survived the advent of the car if he hadn’t come along before its invention and prepared the city for it.
Anyway, of all the questionable things Haussmann did, the only really fabulous one is that he somehow managed to unite pretty much every landmark in Paris. Thus if you stand on the Trocadero platform (my favorite view of Paris), you look straight ahead (to the South) and see the Eiffel Tower, and through it the Champ de Mars, a big grassy strip, and just past that, the Ecole Militaire, and behind that, Les Invalides. Or stand at the West end of the Tuileries– look East and see the entire Tuileries garden, then the grand Louvre arch, then the courtyard of the Louvre with the glass pyramid in the center of it. Turn West and see the Place de la Concorde with the Champs-Elysees stretching in front of you, finishing with the Arc de Triomphe. Or go stand at the Opera Garnier and look straight and see the Colonne de 14 Juillet with the great gold statue of Jeanne d’Arc in front of it. Paris is full of crazy vistas like this, where you can walk down one street and pass famous thing after famous thing. So I guess if this little history lesson has taught us anything, it is that I am hip.
Also: There are these electronic boards around Paris that are used like the ones on the interstate in the US– they warn about bad traffic, protests, remind people to recycle, etc. Today the city of Paris ran some kind of promotion and people could pay to have their love note put on the boards. But the thing is that it really took off– it was kind of a big deal all day. And every time I passed one on my walk home I read the notes... Again, the movies got the romantic nature of Parisians right. When I see couples making out all over Paris, I try to tell myself they are tourists. But tourists obviously wouldn’t have used this method– the ads had to be bought and paid for weeks ago. And every one of the messages were things like, "Etienne, You are my shining prince charming, my eternal love, the light of my life, and I love you with all my soul. Kisses, Helene."
Or "Yucal, Je t’aime. Te amo. I love you. Ti ame. We speak all these languages but the one I love best is your own. S."
Ha. Oh, how I love this city.
Also, I learned the word today for crenellation. AND the fact that the crenellation is actually the gap between the stones– the stones themselves have a whole different name. I have no idea what the word for either of those in English would be, but I can tell you both in French...
Doing my best to avoid the red clichés,
B