September 29 – 30
“Bonjour. Parlez vous Englais?”
Well, damn. How could we have forgotten to bring a French-English dictionary?
The information officer at the Gare de L’Est train station shrugs and says “I speak African.”
I blurt “good!” Africa is the mother continent of humanity. Surely he’s the right person to help a fatigued family find our way to rest in Paris. And he does, although my response of “good” could mean many things or nothing to a stranger who doesn’t know me from Adam.
We buy tickets for the subway and enter the gauntlet of searching for our flat; which means looking for one location to pick up a key from a box in a place we enter with a code; then getting back on the subway to go to our flat in another location. We never see our landlord, but twice we pass an Islamic woman asking for alms. She appears to be in mourning. Each time we go by I put a coin in her palm and she says something that sounds like a blessing.
Emerging from the subway we are greeted by a sweet-smelling breeze. We find our apartment on a side street and walk up four flights of winding wooden stairs. I shed my T-shirt that wreaks from the sweat of extended travel. Three days later, untouched in a pile of dirty clothes, I smell the shirt again and all trace of stink has been replaced by the scent of pastry.
In the wee hours of our first morning I awaken to hear some sort of chanting that sounds to my ear like a mix of Middle Eastern and African. In my disorientation I imagine the music is somehow associated with the High Holy Days, because while looking at a subway map I noticed there are several synagogues located nearby.
After sunrise we discover a little corner bakery next door to our apartment building. We feast on delicious challah and croissants smeared with rich French butter beside eggs we bought at a market.
For the first time in 25 years I am immersed in another language. I am the foreigner, a barbarian tourist with an American-clothed family who is tolerated, perhaps, because I have a passport and money and when I speak here I speak softly. In the company of others, especially on public transport, I take the cue that it works best to behave as if I am in a library.
Most of the words around me don’t make sense, though I know they swarm with meaning. This is daunting as we try to navigate our basic needs without offending the deeply-settled decorum of locals. It is possible to understand some of what’s written on signs and to discern through gestures some of what is spoken. Yet at times I also move about with a kind of toddler mind and just absorb the words I see and hear without getting caught up in their referential function.
Simple exchanges are adventures. Attempts to converse at a deeper level feel foolish, yet the pauses of incomprehension offer openings for imagination. As we settle into the days of awe, this spawns a sense of profundity.
The most unique book in my shop is a first edition of Gertrude Stein’s “How to Write,” published during her residency in Paris. The shop’s previous owner, Billy Hults, made sure to acquire this particular tome because it belonged to Lew Welch, a beat poet who wrote his master’s thesis at Reed College — “How I Read Gertrude Stein — which was later re-published both in book form and online. Welch was enthralled with Stein, and Billy bought Welch’s personal copy of her book because it reflected an intimate connection between the worlds of beat and bohemian literature. Billy thought it was cool.
When I read “How to Write,” as quoted in “How I read Gertrude Stein,” I think it translates a bit of my lingual experience of French back into English. Thus scribbled Madame Stein, American-Parisian art maven, peace be upon her:
Grammar. In enterprise without with whether revise prevision post when they bake. Grammar is not furtive. Round and about but they are cloudless. Grammar have useful blushes which are flushes. Have honey suckle which is of various colors, have rose daisies have orchids called Monsieur which is a name fame rename from interested them for her. How can grammar be nevertheless. What is grammar. Grammar is indwelling without a premonition of accomplishment but there is succor.
Think about grammar and a nightingale. It is very beneficent to hear four nightingales. This makes remarkably Arthur a grammar not at night but in the afternoon. Arthur a grammar, lady fingers and infusions and bother with apples.
A grammar consists in having more made maiden in eclipse. A tail of a comet is a memory. Grammar may be fortunately within a call. Consider grammar.
One two all out but you. This is a retreat.
Three four shut the door.
This is dotted.
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