Paris Walks
The first warmer day of not-yet-spring.
Note: I tried to send this last night, but it kept saying there was a “network error.” I am sending it today instead.
Hello there. How has your week been? My week did not really go to plan. I came down with some kind of virus on Tuesday (fever of 101, severe body aches) that put me out of commission for a few days. Nothing too serious, but out of commission just the same. Today was the first day when I really started to feel well again, and it coincided with the first really nice day of the year, so I decided to put myself together and go out for a walk.
This is a more bloggy post than I usually send, but it’s all I have to give at the moment. There’s something about getting sick that always has a negative impact on my morale and self-esteem. All the more reason to get out and into the world, perhaps, even if I feel I should have been working away all day to make up for the week’s lost productivity.
Before my walk, I stopped to get a pain au chocolat from the weekend boulangerie. The weekend boulangerie is the boulangerie that is about 20 feet farther away than the weekday boulangerie, which—you guessed it—is closed on weekends. Both boulangeries are good boulangeries, and I feel a sense of loyalty to both of them.
I got a pain au chocolate and went to sit on a green wooden bench on one of the side streets off the main market street, and a pigeon, who apparently had experience with such things, knew I would be dropping crumbs and so staked out some territory near my feet. It had only one functional foot, this pigeon, and the other was a sort of pigeon clubfoot, a stump. It limped around after the crumbs that fell from the pain au chocolate. After a while some more robust pigeons showed up as well, and puffed out their chests to flaunt their superior status. I felt protective of the clubfooted pigeon. After all, he was there first. There are a lot of pigeons like that here, with mangled clubfeet, and I wondered again how it happens. Is it injury or illness? (I just googled this, and the result was a little upsetting.)
I decided to walk over to the Luxembourg Gardens, where I don’t think I have been since the turn of the New Year. I knew it would be full of people enjoying the good weather. I live on the Right Bank, and it’s a pleasant walk over one of the bridges over the Seine and through either the Latin Quarter or Saint-Germain-des-Prés to the gardens. There are still no leaves on the trees, but I saw one little flash of pink beginning to break free of its velvety bud on a magnolia tree.
There was a band playing on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, on a corner near the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. They are often there in good weather.
The streets were full of people, lots of people all going out at once, and gathering along the banks of the river and on the bridges, and clogging the sidewalks. I recognize this kind of a day in a city from when I lived in New York for many years. There was always that first warm Saturday in March or April (almost never in February that I remember) when everyone would go out and flood the parks and the sidewalks and the air would smell of something like narcissus and warming pavement.
That smell of concrete and the melancholy floral scents of early spring, and the crush of people, and the people wearing spring clothes before spring clothes are really appropriate, when the trees are still naked and the city is still gray, and always that one woman with bare legs even though it isn’t really warm enough yet—the day that contains all these things, that day is a very specific kind of day, in certain kinds of large cities, and perhaps you know it from your own experience. Perhaps you have been the woman with the bare legs, or have noticed her.
I walked over the Pont des Arts, and then through Saint-Germain, and then to the gardens. It was crowded but not too crowded. Daffodils were already coming up through the grass and showing a few closed yellow buds, even though it is really too early for that.
I sat on my second bench of the day for a while and watched the children ride by on the ponies that are stationed in the garden on weekends for pony rides. Every now and then I would get a whiff of that horse smell, even minutes after they passed, which I don’t mind. The little procession would pass, and then it would pass again with a new set of children. I find it relaxing to watch them. I saw a French movie once where Charlotte Gainsbourg plays a woman who has a kind of work-induced nervous breakdown. Every now and then she would lose her cool again and start shouting, and then she would have to go to the Luxembourg Gardens to pet the ponies so that she could calm down.
Personally, I like how the larger children get paired with the larger ponies, and the smaller children get paired with the smaller ponies, and of course this is only logical, but there’s something pleasing about it just the same.
I heard a bell ringing and it was the man who runs the puppet theatre. I recognized him from the photos on the side of the theatre, and know he’s the grandson of the man who originally started it, many decades ago. He was ringing the bell to let the children know that it was time for the puppet show.
I walked around in the garden some more, past people reading on the benches, and a group doing Tai Chi under the bare trees, and the teenagers playing basketball, and the little boys playing soccer, and the old men playing chess, and the lovers with their arms around each other, and the fashionable women in their 70s strolling side by side, and the babies pulling at the early daisies on the grass. I left the gardens and walked back across the Place Saint-Sulpice, and back over the Pont des Arts, and towards home.
There was a painter on the bridge, beginning a painting of the Pont Neuf and the river and the Samaritaine department store. I liked that he was not selling anything. He did not have a sign with an Instagram handle. He was simply there to paint.
Back at home, peeling and chopping sweet potatoes for dinner, I heard a bird singing out the window, a high, sweet, trilling song. This bird knew what kind of day it was too.
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This has brought back so many memories. My sister used to live near Pantheon for over 10 years and I loved visiting her and discovering the city, it feels like a second home. And it's funny how it has a very distinct character from London, especially on warm and sunny days. People in Paris take to the streets, the terraces, there's even more street music than usual... In London they just go to lie naked on the grass and drink warm beer. Not the same.
my heart longs for what you describe. I recall my journeys to Paris with my wife, born and raised in Belgium and very familiar with Paris, who would guide this New Yorker to so many lovely places. Your remembrance and the magic carpet you create has brought tears to my eyes. Thank you.