French 75

Rêver, Aller, Revenir

I moved here by myself at the end of 2005, chasing down a dream of long-standing. And that is how, among other things, a few weeks ago I found myself sitting -- standing, actually -- for a portrait by my friend Markus, explaining to him the decision I had made to move back home.

The decision to leave, I told him, had not come easily, nor all at once. And not in the same way as the decision to come in the first place. I had dreamed of living in Paris, and over  time eventually made it my hobby -- collecting photos, information, restaurant reviews, and books; working on my French; and visiting four separate times over a two-year period, which was when I began laying the groundwork for a future here.

During those hobbyist years, I had had a sort of panicked feeling, the fear that if I didn't get here quickly, Paris might leave the dock, somehow, without me. (I didn't learn until some time after my arrival that the coat of arms of the city of Paris features a ship. Its motto, FLVCTVAT NEC MERGITVR, means, "She is tossed by the waves, but is not sunk.")

But Paris didn't leave, and indeed I made it here. And so there I was, explaining to him -- or to the viewfinder of his camera behind which his face was hidden -- as best I could why it was time for me to go: that it is tough to be a foreigner, a single person, and a freelancer all at once. That despite having made wonderful friends, and despite thriving on time spent alone with occasionally only the city itself for company, I felt as if I were increasingly bumping up against the limits of my tolerance for solitude.

The shutter of his camera clicked away steadily. I think it made me talk even faster than I normally do. I tried not to move too much but I had a lot to say and then again the talking made me relax a bit. (I'm not a huge fan of having my picture taken, but was too honored by his request to decline it.)

I also felt that talking fast would help keep any potential tears at bay. Because even if there are good reasons to go, that doesn't mean I am not sad to be leaving. And we wouldn't want to cry on camera.

I told him that although I loved how arriving in a new country brought with it immense and instant possibility -- for re-invention, for do-overs, for new starts (all of which he knows well, as he, too, is a foreigner here), that exhilaration wore off a bit, and I became aware that ancient history here for me only really began in 2004. And that I didn't like feeling as if I were cut off from so much of my past.

I explained that I needed to be closer to friends and to family. That ten-hour plane rides were not my idea of good solutions to any kind of problem. And that, finally, I was leaving because somewhere in my heart I felt as if I had accomplished the thing I had set out to do. Paris was the biggest dream I have ever had, and the one that seemed the most elusive. And yet I made it happen. I willed my life here into existence. Now, having accomplished it, I felt as if I had permission to leave if I so chose.

The better to make my point, I held my left hand up in a fist, and then spread my fingers to mime how I felt that Paris had in fact loosened its grip on me.

He raised his head above the viewfinder and looked at me directly. "So what we have here is a portrait of a free woman," he said.

The words themselves nearly gave me an electric charge. Certainly my heart thumped a double beat at the thought: "a portrait of a free woman." Wow. Mercifully, the plaster wall behind me radiated a gentle cool onto my back and neck, flushed as I was from the day's heat, from the embarrassment of being photographed, and from the energy required to tell my story clearly and without tears.

Behind Markus, the panoramic windows of the eighth-floor apartment yielded nearly 180° of view onto the northern and eastern reaches of Paris. Spreading out before me was the monochromatic city I love -- all gray and cream and white and beige and cinder-colored -- solid and sculptural and humming under an equally monochromatic Parisian-gray sky, a ribbon of river arching across it.

The journey did not flash before my eyes in that moment, but in a flash I understood something: "free" meant free to go, and free to return. I had followed my heart here in the first place. My heart was leading me somewhere else, but it could well bring me back again. And even more, now there were people -- friends -- who would be sad to see me go, and yet happy to see me come back. That's no cause for weeping. Not at all. It's a cause for rejoicing. I was as proud of myself as I have ever been. The muscles in my jaw relaxed and my throat loosened. There was nothing to do but to smile.

"Indeed," I said. "Indeed we do."

The shutter continued to click away.

D is for Diane. And for "Doh!"

I am puttering around the house this afternoon, breaking in a new pair of shoes while I do. To make it a bit gentler on my feet I have donned a pair of white crew socks. Safe to say that even with the trim little summer dress, it's a look that screams "Off-Duty."

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realize that the only thing standing between me and a killer Diane Keaton costume is a bowler hat, a pair of gloves, and some granny glasses.

Duly noted.

When A Pronoun's Your Best Weapon

I walked into one of those brico-home joints where you can get everything from plates and silverware to faucets and doormats and wrenches. I made it halfway up the first aisle before I crossed the path of a clerk. A guy my age, in jeans and a sweater.

"Bonjour, monsieur, " I said. "S'il vous plaît, I am looking for -- "

"A Prince Charming?"

To be honest, I don't particularly appreciate being smooth-talked right out of the gate like that. I prefer to warm up a bit first. I prefer to get to know someone for thirty or sixty seconds. I hate that feeling of getting pounced on because I am in a skirt -- or because I am a skirt. But whatever. I could see from his ring that he was married. He was wearing glasses, for heaven's sake.

"Are you saying that you have an aisle full of them?"

Chuckle, chuckle. Whatever.

"Actually," I said. "I am looking for a spray bottle [un vaporisateur]."

"This way," he said, and I followed him around to the next aisle. He handed me a metal one that looked nice for misting olive oil on a salad. It also looked like it cost about six euro. (An aside: the 99¢ concept simply does not exist here. Anything in the throwaway plastic range for which you would normally expect to pay 99¢, will here cost 2.99€, if not 3.99€. The dollar being what it is, your 99¢ is closer to $4.60. Close parens.)

I explained that I wanted something in plastic. He led me over to a box of plastic spray bottles and handed me a clear purple one. And priced at only two euro. I asked him, s'il vous plaît, to hand me the blue one instead.

I examined it a moment, pulled the trigger just for fun, picturing it full of my personal swear-by-it mixture of white vinegar-and-water, the miracle solution without which it seems I cannot perform any household chore. Just what we were looking for. I pronounced it perfect.

"Yes, it is perfect," he said. And -- this is where the movie goes all slow-motion -- he reached out and took hold of the neck of the bottle, and proceeded to stroke it slowly, up and down. "Perfect," he said again, nodding at me.

I was so stunned that I might have felt an electric charge go through my body. Or perhaps it was just that in the moment of silence that followed I was picking up the humming of the fluorescent lighting overhead.

Unbelievable: a new low. Never in my life -- for all the trash that has been talked my way, every unwelcome attention, every time I have ever wanted to vanish utterly from sight, or perhaps to pull a gun from my purse the better to express appropriately my outrage -- had anything so overtly vulgar and inappropriate been tossed (heh) my way. And never at such proximity.

I don't count that moment at Martin Luther King Junior High in 1978. I was in a full hallway in between classes on my way to pre-algebra. I was walking along the lockers the better to fight my way upstream. Out of nowhere a hand reached out and felt my -- frankly, nonexistent -- right breast. I looked and was surprised to see a boy, smaller than me, whose face I recognized vaguely but whose name I didn't know, smiling warmly at me.

Smiling at me.

I turned away and kept walking. I have no recollection of ever seeing him again. I was too young at the time to be anything but absolutely bewildered by what had happened. I may have had a fleeting sense of shame, certainly I was surprised, but I simply didn't understand it. Which is probably a good thing.

But standing in this store thirty years later, my hand on the base of the bottle, no bewilderment at all: only questions. What do I do? Laugh? Leave? Spit? I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of getting a rise out of me. He was pathetic, and therein lay the problem: to respond in kind to that sort of crap is to  risk "going there;" it is to risk getting it all over your shoes.

I felt a million miles away from both my idea of Paris, and (if it is possible) even further still from the Paris in which I have contentedly spent the past two and a half years. Here, I am Madame: that slightly better version of myself, with all the privileges that entails. Here, I am left alone to my thoughts. I am allowed to mind my own business. I walk safely at night. I am free to go where I please.

I was also tripped up because this was happening outside my language. My synapses in French are slower. The right word doesn't always come when I need it, though the wrong ones often do. I speak more carefully in French, in public at least, because the rules for engaging strangers are so clearly laid out.

This is a place, and a language, where form trumps content regularly.

So what I said next surprised me, because it happened so quickly so as to be almost instinctive. Without even thinking about it, I revoked the formal vous. "Vous" is not just grammar: it is part of a social contract. Addressing each other as "vous" is the means by which strangers assert their mutual respect and equality. But "vous" is a privilege that one can lose. You see it happen from time to time on the street, when a squabble erupts. Someone will use the familiar "tu" in place of the formal -- courteous, "correct" -- "vous." It is a loaded moment.

Properly applied, it can be the verbal equivalent of wiping your feet on someone, telling them to eff off, or of disciplining a bad dog with the swat of a rolled-up newspaper. Improperly applied, it debases the speaker and proves them to be unworthy of respect.

But I knew what I was doing.

I snatched the bottle from his hand. "Arrête." I said, in the familiar. "Ça suffit."

Knock it off. That's enough.

And then, just to make clear that this exchange had taken nothing from me, nor changed my plans, I headed to the cash register. I didn't look back.

For Those Playing Along At Home

The answer to Saturday's quiz:

The Place Jacques Bainville, 7eme.
Just off the Blvd Saint Germain at the rue Solférino.
M° Solférino.

Peony Porn. Again.

The first step is admitting you have a problem.


OK.


I have a problem.

YSL 1936-2008

I was sad to learn that Yves Saint Laurent had passed away last night.

(Here he is in his studio. I want just such a couch. With the same hats.)

As I sipped my coffee this morning, I decided that I would drop by la maison to offer my thanks. There was no address to look up, as I have been to 5 Avenue Marceau before to see exhibitions at the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent. And 5 Avenue Marceau 75116 Paris is also the title of a wonderful documentary about the creation of his last spring collection. It is a film I highly recommend to anyone interested in couture, in the creative process, or in gentility.

The film takes place there, in the stately building at 5 Avenue Marceau, and opens with Catherine Deneuve being fitted for a suit. She stands there before the mirror, smoking one of those skinny "lady" cigarettes. She is pinned and re-pinned and fussed over, and assesses herself fairly critically in the mirror. All the while she is talking about how much she loves the hens she keeps at her country home and how pretty they look in the garden.

We then see him -- Monsieur -- sketching, and watch how each sketch is handed off to a different woman in the atelier and assigned a model. (I don't know quite what to call "them," because "seamstress" or "tailor" hardly seem the right words for what these extraordinary -- and yet very ordinary-looking women -- are capable of creating.) A toile is made, which is then modeled for Monsieur. He sits there in his studio, flanked by Loulou de la Falaise and and Anne-Marie Munoz.

Their loyalty, their silence, and their chic are formidable.

"Magnifique" he says, smiling. "Comme c'est beau." Always praise to start, always. Then the three of them make comments amongst themselves, very hush-hush-hush, and Monsieur gives further direction to the kind woman with fairy fingers -- gently, and in a soft voice -- and she bows and nods and says, "Merci, monsieur. Merci."

The toile is then made up in fabric. It is heaven to watch as the model emerges into the salon, reflected in the mirrors, and to see Monsieur clasp his hands together, breaking into a beatific smile, cooing "mais c'est un rêve!" ("But it's a dream!"). It's no wonder at all that the clothes are so beautiful. How could they be otherwise, considering that they develop in this cocoon of civility and gentleness. And friendship.

So I headed over to the 16th arrondissement today to thank Monsieur Saint Laurent for a gift he had given me. Not quite five years ago, I was invited to a black tie wedding. I chose to wear a black suit of mine, even though it was not a proper "smoking" (French for tuxedo). My suit, rather, was a non-pedigreed polyester thing, just another raving bargain in a string of many markdowns that I found on the sale rack at Bloomingdale's in Century City. The suit's primary virtue, apart from simplicity and the nice drape of the fabric, was that it fit. Perfectly. That's because after purchase, I had taken it the tailor to be re-worked, and so it both flattered and evaded accordingly.

I bought strappy red satin sandals and red chandelier earrings to go with. (I don't remember if there was a red mani-pedi as well, but surely there ought to have been. No matter.) No one would have mistaken my Kaspar Petites suit for couture, nor me for Betty Catroux, but still I felt beautiful walking up the steps of the Pacific Union Club on that Saturday night. I felt steady on my four-inch heels, my black beaded bag tucked under my arm, and my head held high.

High. That's important. Some women cannot bring themselves to go to a movie by themselves, let alone a wedding. It's not an easy thing to do. But I was made otherwise: I can go anywhere by myself. It's rarely easy -- I am always emboldened by the presence of others, but it is certainly something I can do. This wasn't the first time I have taken -- as the poet said -- "the road less traveled by." Nor the last.

But as far as weddings go, I prefer to go unescorted. I find it easier. Mingling on one's own is effortless. But even more, I wouldn't bring someone along to a wedding if I weren't fairly certain the two of us were going to be having a wedding of our own someday. That logic doesn't make sense to everyone, but it makes sense to me. And so, during my five stints as a bridesmaid, and at the however-many weddings I have attended over an adult lifetime, I have always done so as a free agent.

Admittedly, it can mess with the seating chart. It invites scrutiny in a way that bringing "a friend" -- or a trusty gay friend -- would not. But that's just not me. For better or for worse. This is who I am.

That night in San Francisco, I felt like something apart from the woman who had traveled those other roads-less-traveled-by. Not simply because I was wearing pants (even though most, if not all the other women, as it turned out, were in dresses). I felt beautiful and feminine and in full possession of myself. Also in full possession of my choices, and more powerful for it. Perhaps not dressed in a Saint Laurent tuxedo, but dressed certainly in Saint Laurent's idea of a woman in a tuxedo.

He is often quoted as having said: "the most beautiful garment that could dress a woman are the arms of the man she loves. For those who have not had the good fortune of finding that happiness, I am here."

It's a pretty notion, but one I do not suggest scrutinizing too hard. It doesn't hold up. (Much like some of the things you see sailing down a designer's runway -- very pretty to look at, but wholly unsuited for a life that includes mundane activities like sitting down or walking down a flight of stairs). But yes, certainly he was there for me that night. And remains so, in a way -- namely that the idea of the woman in a tuxedo isn't so much about how it makes her look as how it makes her feel.

And that can make all the difference.

Hiding in Plain Sight

Summer approaches. You'd know it for sure because it stays light nowadays til nearly ten at night, and because the leaves, seeming to have breathed more deeply now of chlorophyll, are well and truly green. You wouldn't know it however from the weather, which is officially "iffy" -- our balmy May springtime delirium has been replaced with standard-issue Parisian forty-shades-of-gray and afternoon showers.

But June, she is tomorrow! And no matter the weather you know summer is coming because Paris is filling up ever more rapidly with a lot of people, a lot of them in groups. Not that those shuffling hordes don't have every right to be here, bien sûr, but still. The buses. The clots of them on the sidewalk. The teenagers, for heaven's sake. The chatter. The obliviousness. It is a challenge to my aspiring -- i.e., precarious -- Buddhist equilibrium.

Times like this it's good to have a few places up your sleeve where you can catch a few minutes of solitude. Sometimes hiding in plain sight is the best way to get away from all of it. All of them.

So here's one of my favorite non-hidden hideaways. Perhaps you know it.

It has six benches -- two of which offer a view onto the rather large display windows of a nice bookstore. The subway station to one side seems to soak up most of the human traffic that might otherwise be coming or going. It's a perfect place to cop a moment of calm. To escape Mr. Sun on a steamy day. Or to eat a sandwich in peace. Picnicking in some of the more obvious locales -- the Tuileries or the Jardins du Luxembourg -- entails getting hassled by aggressive pigeons. Which is kind of...I don't know...irritating and bad for my digestion. Nothing ruins a meal quicker than watching two pigeons preparing to peck each other's eyes out over a stray shard of cheese that has tumbled from a sandwich.

This spot, rather, has little chickadee sort of birdies hanging out. The cute, soft buggers, that cheep-cheep-cheep and hop silently over to you, tilting their heads quizzically as if to say, "I'm thinking one crumb would really hit the spot. Can we make a deal?"

Do you know where this is? I will give you some hints. It's on the left bank, near Socialist Party HQ. It is a leafy little cranny (or perhaps a nook), conveniently along the trajectory from the Madeleine to Montparnasse. No secret handshake required to find it, it's just off a busy street with like 100 different bus lines that pass by. It's named for a journalist-historian I'd never heard of until I had read the plaque on the side of the little place.   

It is also located at a sort of deceptively dangerous intersection. No kidding. So look both ways twice before you cross the boulevard.

Happy hunting.

Answer on Tuesday.

"Sex and the City" Premiere Photos

"Sex and the City" opened in Paris yesterday. And yes, bitches, I wuz there. I am here to report that not only did I go; but rather, that I went big. With tickets purchased in advance, on a computer, and in the company of four -- that's right, un-deux-trois-quatre -- devoted escorts. Boo-ya.

Which permits me to offer you my very own "Sex and the City" premiere photos, below. (As for the what-are-you-wearing question, I think one of them had on something Dolce. The rest is a mystery.)  I do it less out of die-hard fandom of the show (way less than less), than as a token of love for my pals. (And one of respect, I suppose, for the complete saturation that the "Sex and the City" marketing and P.R. machine managed to achieve. Their sheer domination of the collective pop-cultural unconscious and media landscape over the past six or so weeks I put on a par with the most merciless carpet-bombing campaigns: so powerful and devasting that everything, absolutely everything, has been blasted away. Only numbness and boredom remain.

Truly. I live several thousand miles away from New York, in the opposite direction of the United States, no less, and I could feel it from here. I can only liken it to the sunburn one has as the end of an overcast day spent outdoors. It just doesn't seem possible, but there you are, cheeks reddened -- with shame or UV rays, no matter -- and with a newfound respect for the searing rays of starpower. Bang.)

So here is the Sex and the City Premiere photo. As advertised.

Apart from resenting a little this sensation of drowning in its ubiquity (or inevitability?), my feelings on this cultural phenomenon are hardly what I would call complicated. They are about as complicated as my feelings for Nutella, or for Voici magazine. Although that does not preclude my having opinions on it as a subject.  As you know, despite my having spent several years there -- in New York, in the nineties, in the watering holes of Upper and Lower Manhattan, very much in the demo -- my character was written out of the show in the early phases of development. Shrug.

But anyone who believes that the show's main characters represent the only archetypes of single women in turn of the century urban America is either a simpleton, or born after 1978. Or both. Those are the people -- girls, more like it -- who mistakenly took the series for a role model, some kind of how-to, and not for what it actually was. A sitcom.

The film -- don't worry, no spoilers here -- acknowledges (and I suppose encourages) this delusion, opening as it does with a Carrie voice-over saying that how since time immemorial women in their twenties have flocked to New York looking for "the two L's" -- labels and love. Which is not so much erroneous (though it is that) as it is a self-referential nod to the fact that since the first season of the show was released on DVD, women in their twenties have gone to New York hoping to "be" -- or to "become" -- Carrie or Charlotte or Samantha. (Because no one wants to be, or become, Miranda.)

I moved to New York a million years ago, before anyone had heard of Pastis or Jeffrey or Spice Market. Because in pre-history, they didn't exist. I was 28. Candace Bushnell had yet to begin writing her column in the Observer, and thus my image-repertoire was 100% Sex and the City-free. I didn't want to "be" anyone in particular. And as far as I know, I have only become myself. Amen.

I was looking for neither labels nor love. (Of course I hoped that I would fall in love, but that's something I always hope. I hope that everywhere and always. Who doesn't?) I moved to New York looking for a city that eluded me, somehow -- one that I had only glimpsed in fragments during two prior and brief visits, and in dozens of cultural references that offered hints, suggestions, inspirations, but certainly no definitive answers (nor any role models). Among them: "That Girl;" the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade; "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwiler;" Harriet the Spy; the photos of Alfred Stieglitz and Helen Levitt, among others; the B-52s; the Village Voice (esp. the joint weekly effort of Guy Trebay and Sylvia Plachy); the Talking Heads; Edie Sedgwick; Dorothy Parker; Spy Magazine.

It was in a similar spirit, and with a heart full of nearly identical hope (although a very different set of references) that I set off in search of Paris. To say that neither place met my expectations is not to suggest that they have disappointed me. Far from it. But rather, that my expectations, being woefully human, are simply no match for what I have come across -- most often, transcendent beauty -- as I have made my way I-don't-know-why.

I don't know what I was looking for, really -- neither long ago in New York, nor more recently here -- but thank heavens I didn't go looking for a pair of Manolo Blahniks or "my" Mr. Big, let alone anything I could name. Feh. Had I been looking for something so contrived, I might have missed out on a dozen random moments, among them the monumental and unbidden sensation (not unlike falling in love) of standing last night in the middle of the Place de l'Opéra with four friends, watching the sky turn a deepening pink. As if just for us.

A nice Cosmopolitan pink? A Parisian pink? Or just pink, a blessing from above? Depends on what you are hoping to see.

Prochaine arrivée

So we've already had tulip time, lily-of-the-valley time, lilac time (all too brief), and now we have peony time. Right on schedule for la Fête des Mères, which is today. I was wandering around this morning, delighted by the sight of so many floral deliveries being made on foot. Back home that all tends to happen by truck. But hereabouts, your local neighborhood fleuriste sends somebody over. And they all looked to be in a big damn hurry.

That was this morning.

And then later, multiple generations of families out to lunch.

(from top to bottom: Bercy; Bercy; rue Vavin)

Packing Essentials

A follow-up question from the French 75 reader who will be spending several months this fall in Paris.

Your packing list was really interesting. With hindsight, is there anything you'd change about that? And did you bring everything in checked baggage or ship some things? (I'd like to avoid the expense of that, especially for only three months).

So to answer the last part of the question first: no. You do not need to ship anything. Save your money. I arrived in Paris on December 29, 2005, assuming that I would be staying for the year. I had two suitcases (one big, one carry-on), a stuffed-to-capacity purse, and a laptop. All of it came with me on the plane. That was it.

I am happy to say that I neither over- nor under-packed, and I hope the same for you. I'm glad I brought along my own supply of sticky lint rollers and of L'Oréal mascara (both of which are pricey here). I'm glad I brought along the chef's knife: I use it every day. (Except for that day in March when I didn't use it, and ended up slicing off the tip of my ring finger with a viciously sharp IKEA paring knife that belongs to my new apartment.)

There are very few packing errors that you can't correct with a trip to the BHV, le Bazar d'Hôtel de Ville, anyway. It is a relentlessly useful department store on the rue de Rivoli in the fourth arrondissement. (With a nice view of the area from the cafeteria upstairs.) There you can buy accessories for your computer, adapters, light-bulbs, sheets, towels, picture frames, hand lotion, stockings, bicycle helmets (even though they are not super-popular here, your American self knows its a bad idea to zip around without), desklamps, stationery, pens, books in French and in English. You will visit more than once during your first weeks here -- this is half of the fun of settling in.

(An aside: because this is Paris and because apartments are small and closets are smaller, give a minute to consider where you are going to store your suitcases once you have emptied them. Many apartments have a basement storage locker called a cave; others still do not have room under the bed for much storage. Ask your landlord before you leave: a relationship with duffel bags may be in your future.)

Speaking of corrections: once you get here and start converting everything into euro it's all going to make you the tiniest bit nauseous. Just roll with it. To my mind "I want" and "I need" should never be seated next to each other at a dinner table. They get up to no good at all. And yet that is the remarkable power, I find, of our piteously weak dollar: it can make one better at establishing priorities. Simple cross-referencing of the list of things one imagines it impossible to live without, and the list of things that cost way more than seems right, can yield an even shorter list of what one needs to live well and happily.

The other part of packing is asking yourself what will come with you to make your furnished rental feel like home. I am reminded of an article my sister sent me by Elizabeth McCracken about the peripatetic life she and her husband led (12 moves and seven countries in five years):

"We learned to travel with fewer outfits and more homey objects, though in our case 'homey' meant our favorite marionette named Mr Sartorius...a small doll named Horace...a bust of Hans Christian Andersen...and a collection of tiny, plastic gold figurines of important figures from the French Revolution that came with a can of coffee."

"Home," she says, "is where your puppets wait."

If you ever went to summer camp, or to boarding school (or both, as did I), you already know plenty about personalizing a space that only belongs to you temporarily, and of the steady comfort that something familiar -- like a puppet -- can offer in an otherwise unfamiliar landscape.

For years in Los Angeles I kept on top of my stove the Le Creuset casserole in the shape of a tomato that my mother had given me in 2001. She had come for a short visit with my dad after I had moved into the little cottage on Sunset Drive in Silver Lake. It turned out to be the last home of mine she ever visited. She had admired my kitchen (tiny though it was, just a corner of the main room) all in red and white. I had bought a toaster and coffee-maker to match the red tiles in the backsplash. It was cute. A few days after they left I received the heavy box from Williams Sonoma, and the gift enclosure inside with the message that made me laugh. "Snazzy" was so one of "her" adjectives -- a word of praise and appreciation, but mostly of enthusiasm.

I hung onto that little card, and at some point framed it. Before or after her death, I no longer remember. The casserole went into storage after I sold my apartment. (It weighs a ton. And it's from France in the first place. No point in shipping it all the way back here.) But the little framed message is in my kitchen. Rather than being a stand-in for an absent red enameled casserole, the frame is more like a tin can tied to a very long string. I don't even need to lift it up to my ear to have a comfort of home -- one which, as it happens, cannot be replaced nor recovered. Nor bought at the BHV.

My mother's voice.

Renting in Paris

A reader and friend in Los Angeles will be spending three months this fall in Paris. She is looking for an apartment to rent, and asks:

I'm somewhat familiar with the city, but are there any areas you'd recommend avoiding?  I don't need to be anywhere fancy, just need something safe and convenient to the Metro and hopefully close to active street life - shops, cafes, etc.

I thought that the answer to this question could be of interest to the room at large, so here you go with my subjective list of neighborhoods that might appeal to the long-term visitor. It is based on my two and half years of residence here, as well as the four vacations enjoyed here prior to my arrival, during which I rented (or borrowed) furnished apartments in various areas.

Bear in mind also that I am very Goldilocks in my approach. I am looking for something not too cool, not too far, not too pricey, not too complicated. I am looking for a just-right place to serve as base camp for all kinds of adventures.

That said, I recommend that you avoid renting in...

...the 1st, 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 16th arrondissements. They tend to have very high visitor/local ratios, very high numbers of American families, and/or very high rents.

...the 10th. It is up and coming, and, to my liking, has really yet to arrive. I am not too hot on the parts of the 18th and 19th adjacent to the tenth, either. Neither. This opinion will not be met with universal agreement locally. And I am fine with that. 

...the 20th, even though it is one of my very favorite arrondissements. I find it leafy and interesting and I also find it at the top of a big damn hill.

I recommend the following areas...

(Open up a Metro map and follow along. Don't have one? Here you go).

...the ninth arrondissement. I have a lot of friends who live and/or work up there. If you draw a rectangle more or less from Place de Clichy across to Anvers, down to Cadet, west to Trinité d'Estienne d'Orves, and back up again to Clichy, that's a nice bunch of streets. Among other bright spots, it features the rue des Martyrs, the Musée de la Vie Romantique, the Love Hotel, and the rue de Douai (aka guitar row). It lacks terribly in green space but offers other ambient qualities.

...the third arrondissement, overlapping a bit in to the eleventh. Imagine a trapezoid connecting Republique, Voltaire, Bastille, Arts & Metiers. The rue de Bretagne, Picasso Museum, the Cirque d'Hiver, and plus-que-trendy Haut Marais are all in here, as is the colossal Richard-Lenoir market.

...a slice of the fourth-eleventh-twelfth. Imagine a zone around Bastille that extends west to St. Paul and east to Ledru-Rollin. That's pretty good. I like the rue Saint Antoine a bunch. My personal map of the fourth arrondissement, though, has a big black "x" on it where the Marais is. Nothing against Kiehl's and MAC nor the rue des Francs-Bourgeois, but those narrow, ancient streets can get mighty crowded.

...the second arrondissement is complicated for me by its proximity to the big eyesore slash bad vibe magnet known as Le Forum des Halles. That said, there is a slab of it from the St Eustache church N/NW that works for me. This area is delineated by the rues Montorgeuil, Etienn Marcel, Montmartre, and des Jeuneurs.

...I like the 17th a real lot, too. But I find it underserved by the Metro, and in some parts seriously overserved by the Bugaboo. I like Montmartre, too, in random patches. But I do not like that the metro stations up there have endless, endless stairs. And every time I get off at the Abbesses or Lamarck-Caulaincourt stations I always think to myself that it would be kind of a pain to live with that every day.

On the other side of the river, I happen to know the fifth and 13th arrondissements very well, having lived in this general vicinity, and happily, for two years. Draw a big rectangle from Place Monge to Tolbiac, up to Port Royal and back to Monge again.  This shape intentionally skips the medieval part of the fifth closer to the river, the Sorbonne, and Place de la Contrescarpe (student bars, student noise, students vomiting), and the high-rise, mind-boggling "new" parts of the 13th. A friend of mine explained that the high-rise monsters on the Place d'Italie were put there to protect the Butte aux Cailles, a charming and winding little idyll, from being over-run. And then it all made sense.

The fourteenth arrondissement. Where I call home now. The zone delineated by the Port Royal, Mouton-Duvernet, Gaité, and Montparnasse Stations. There are about 35 screens worth of movie theater in Montparnasse, good marketing on the rue Daguerre, and a quick escape on the RER to the center of town (Courtesy of the RER B one can be at Chatelet in about 5 minutes). I didn't include Plaisance and Pernety because I don't like to have only one choice of metro line.

The charms of the fifteenth arrondissement can be elusive. I know people who have lived in Paris forever and never set foot in it. There is sort of a triangle that covers La Motte-Piquet Grenelle, Volontaires, and Charles Michels that is pleasant and well-served by the subway (farther out than that, the metro stops get fewer and longer between). I like the rue Saint Charles and the rue des Entrepreneurs and the rue du Commerce -- all pleasant, useful, and devoid of fabulousness. I am never dressed wrong to shop over there.

Happy hunting to one and to all.

Viva Mexico

San Angel, Mexico City.




Church of San Jacinto, Mexico City.





Nueva Vallarta, Nayarit, Mexico.





Saturday.