Sequel Potential

In the category of private pleasures, I put very near the top of the list the weekday matinée. It flaunts everything healthy and upstanding -- the sun, productivity, the company of others. As such, it is a total abdication of responsibility to everything but your own pleasure. There is absolutely no excuse for it; the only possible answer being “because I feel like it.” Keep your lip buttoned tight, and it is nothing but a two-hour secret between you and the usher with whom you unapologetically make eye-contact as he or she tears your ticket.

If you add the consumption of candy to the mix -- particularly something sticky or chocolatey, eaten with head held high, and in lieu of a nutritious lunch -- you’ve have officially summited.  There’s just not much of anything better than that.

To me, anyway, there’s not.

Unless, that is, you find yourself seated at La Pagode, a theater often referred to as “the most beautiful cinema in Paris.” A place so delightful, unexpected, and pleasurable that candy is optional. A bona fide Chinese pagoda, free of both kitsch and of zen pretense, it was purchased once-upon-a-time by the director of the Bon Marché department store as a gift for his wife, then dismantled, shipped from China to France, and re-built in 1895 in a corner of their garden.

That’s really all I know of its origins. I do hope that he -- his name was Morin -- was motivated only by a surfeit of love, one that could only be expressed architecturally, and not in penance for having been a bad boy.  I feel guilty for even thinking it aloud, but certainly it wouldn’t be the first extravagance undertaken as a testament to someone’s renewed commitment to fidelity.

Much later, it was spared the wrecking ball by a group of cinephiles, and now shows art house films. It is terribly discreet. If you were walking too close to the exterior wall, or keeping too close an eye on the sidewalk, you could miss it. Both the neon blue sign glowing twelve feet or so above street level, and the structure itself, have a tendency to play peek-a-boo behind the leaves of the trees.

The garden is smallish but lush, with bamboo and such. Big lions -- they are lions, aren’t they? -- guard what was once the entrance. What looks to have been a little stream or koi pond is now dry. If you’re lucky, meaning if there’s room, you can sit out and have tea there at one of the three or four tables under the trees. The experience is akin to finding yourself suddenly at a very exclusive and very fabulous garden party. You can’t believe your luck.

The “Salle Japonaise,” the main screening room, is a study in fading beauty. The walls are covered in what I am guessing to be brocade -- wide-mouthed dragons, twisting in browns and tans, it seems, and threadbare in places. Brass cranes fly across the northern wall. The sconces are in the shape of gently curving stems of lilies, with a small round bulb in the center of each flower. A black net has been stretched across the ceiling, to protect from falling plaster, perhaps. Behind the net, some kind of mural or fresco or something that is almost impossible to make out.

The room also rakes upward toward the screen, adding a pleasant sense of physical distortion to the mix. I always find settling in there to be an adjustment. Not unpleasant at all, but necessary because it is so dimly lit, and because it bears no resemblance to the world on the other side of the threshold. It is quieter, more shadowy, and indeterminatedly fixed (if indeed it’s fixed at all) in time, space, and geography.

About “settling in:” there is an excess of that, both at La Pagode and at every other theater, as the lights dim entirely on a weekday afternoon. Because this -- the matinée itself -- is the domain, first, of the retired and the elderly. There is effort required, and quite palpable, as old (and often fragile) people make themselves comfortable and quiet. So there are some rattling coughs, others that are deeply tubercular. There is fidgeting as dry throats are cleared, elbows and hips arranged just-so, soggy tissues and hankies retrieved from the pockets of cardigans. Noses are blown in such a way so as to make you think a flock of ducks has entered the room. And, of course, there is the careful polishing of eyeglass lenses.

A while later the lights will come up.

Which is its own problem. A really good movie is as absorbing, restorative, and amnesia-inducing as a good night’s sleep. It is something to which you surrender. But instead of closing your eyes and letting go, you give in by keeping your eyes open and letting the story take you where it wants.

And that is the somewhat precipitous part of the otherwise delicious solo weekday matinée: going back to who you were -- or what, or where -- before the movie started. There’s no real easing into it: it requires the psychic equivalent of throwing off the blankets and letting the cold air hit you.

That is exactly where I found myself Wednesday afternoon. The movie was over. And then, what? No one was expecting me anywhere in particular. Whatever was to come next -- Wednesday, this week, for the rest of the year -- was mine to say. I’ve spent nearly a year now in Paris, and do not wish to go back to where I was. Far from being an abdication of responsibility, it feels just the opposite. It feels important. But my staying here is contingent on so many other things  -- details and what-ifs and matters to be settled.  It’s overwhelming. Something has gotten me this far, but I don’t know that it will carry me the rest of the way. It's the uncertainty that hurts most. Maybe it's just a question of ballast.

I dreamt a while ago that I was walking across a pontoon bridge, which consisted of large lightweight, blue-white styrofoam platforms roped together.  There was water slopping over the sides, and the whole thing seemed to bobble with each step. It was awfully tippy.

I watched my feet as my dreaming self walked, one tentative step at a time. I was about to admit -- to whomever -- just how very uncertain I felt about the whole thing, how afraid I was that it would all just slip out from under me. But before I could, the thought appeared clearly to me: “This is what I am good at.”

Maybe.

I stood up in the empty theater, pulled on my coat, and walked out onto the rue de Babylone, and in the direction of home.

Comments

[Lucia Davies]

Cheri,
You are right. You haven't been brought all this way just to get knocked off the bridge now.

And yes, this IS what you're good at.

Keep walking. You're amazing.
Love you madly,
L

[Jean]

Thank you, honey. I need you on Team Jean. Have you "here" as almost as good as having you sit four feet away from me. But I don't laugh nearly so hard.

[kek]

yeah. stay.