Rituals (France)

Locking the public garden for the night. 

The Luxembourg Garden, which has a fence around it, an elegant fence with a number of gates that are closed at night, keeping the birds in and people out, is locked at sundown like many other French parks. There is a ritual for this; last night I stayed to enjoy it.

At about 6:15 pm (at the moment) policemen close the children's playground, a gated enclosure within the gated enclosure. You hear their whistles in the background over the noise of the children. More whistles, loud, short, shrill, playful, and fewer children's voices. The merry-go-round is wrapped up.

Now there is a half hour of quiet before--6:45 on the dot--the whistles begin again for the rest of the garden--a whistle off to the left, to the right, in the distance, coming closer--until the last chair is vacated, the last basketball-tossing kid throws his last shot, the last chess players gather up their board. Small children have gone, older ones head off on their skateboards, the petanque players put on their coats. People walk towards the exits, north, south, east and west. The joggers continue--I've been among them; you avoid catching the policemen's eyes until you've made it round for the last time and out the right gate. A policeman stands at each gate, keeping people from coming in--I've tried to do that too--if you are crossing the neighbourhood from west to east or vice versa, it is a good deal further when you can't cut across the Garden. The policeman will make no exceptions, the garden is closed, sorry.

Bonsoir Madame, the policeman says to the frowzy blonde woman in a mini-skirt. A demain.

Women who lunch

Today I met an old friend for lunch, and we talked and talked. Each of us wanted to catch up on a year's news of the other and her family, but the conversation kept going off on a tangent, tangents which would eventually lead to a question that brought us back to our immediate lives, but it all came in fragments, pieces, a puzzle to be put together later, connections made. It is a kind of literature, the kind with no beginning and no end, just middle, everything always middle. it was lovely and we made a date to go to the Nikki de Saint Phalle show at the Grand Palais next week, having not begun to say everything we had to say. She left to go to a Borgia exhibit at the Musée Maillol, I came home to work on an introduction to a translation, and now having done what I can for today on that, I am going to crunch a Melatonin pill (for jet lag, see The Fleet Street Jet Lag Calculator, online, it seems to be working) and take a book--which book, Elena Ferrante, I think--to my corner of the Luxembourg Garden, under the sequoias, put my feet up and read until the sun goes down and they whistle us out.

Marché aux fleurs

Predictably, the plants on the back porch died over the summer, of heat and thirst. So today I walked over to the flower market on the Ile de la Cité to replace the Choisya with another Choisya--I love the lightness of its leaves, the way they flutter. As I was leaving I noticed that the seller had some plants sitting along the edge of the metal roof of the building, a couple of which looked like just-sprouted catalpa--the market is surrounded by catalpas. So he climbed up a ladder and brought them down and sold me a pot with two six-inch catalpas.

 I window-shopped home: j'ai fait du lèche-vitrine, I licked the windows, lots of windows, and the bookstalls along the Seine, and I came home and read the second chapter of my new book by Elena Ferrante.

Paris

I did my favourite thing: commandeered an armchair and a chair without arms for my feet and sat in the Luxembourg Garden under two sequoias facing the orchard, on the left, and beehives on the right, with the last of the dark-eyed Susans and some blue delphiniums on long stalks. The sun was going down behind an apartment building on the Rue d'Assas. The students from the Lycee Montaigne had all gone home to do their homework. Around me were others reading or having conversations I eavesdropped on shamelessly.

It is, or was, a beautiful day, the chestnut trees are turning colour and the plane trees' fingertips meet overhead, making the allees into tunnels with light at the end. Something was happening in the Orangerie: that section of the Garden was blocked off and guarded and on the other side of the barrier paparazzi milled round with long lenses on their cameras. Pairs sat around tables playing chess, usually with a few onlookers. It was blissful.

Moving

Going to Paris on Monday, but here we are moving too, to an apartment downtown, so I am packing my books into boxes, which will be moved in my absence, and I am wondering how I will find everything again and how long it will take to sort my life out into physically manageable proportions when I come back: ie, the dish towels in the kitchen, the poetry books--where will I keep the poetry books and how long will it take to find them all again? There are bookshelves in the new place, built in, so will I leave my little black Ikea bookshelf here? Here is furnished, there we will need furniture.

Disorder distresses me. I fear that if I let a little disorder sneak in, soon I will be submerged in disorder. Papers will go missing. Just the thought of it makes my pulse speed up, my breath grow fast and shallow. Quickly I get up and jot a note on a post-it. I wake up covered with post-its. 

Untidiness is the flip side of  tidiness, as procrastination is the shadow of punctuality. Marianne Moore, I have always thought, judging by her poetry, must have been a person obsessively neat. Obsessive, period. Elizabeth Bishop perhaps not quite so much. I am not going to draw any conclusions from this.

Loose Ends

I am tying them up before migrating to Paris a week from today, and trying not to think too much about the middle seat that was all that remained when I booked my ticket. Two days ago I finished watching "Breaking Bad," and breathed a sigh of relief. Now maybe I could get back to reading. But last night, at a dinner with friends in Berkeley, someone said "The Wire" was fantastic (and someone else said her brother-the-lit-professor was teaching a course in "Breaking Bad.") Sure, it's violent, but the form of the thing is fascinating" the quick changes of register, the humour, the characterisation in which verisimilitude is not the point, the landscape shots, the credits, the veerings into pure cinematic abstraction, etc.

What to read on the plane? I think I'll download the kindle version of Louise Penny's latest thriller--that should keep me from screaming for a few hours and maybe I'll even sleep, given my intensive course in meditation. It's the arriving after a white night that's worst, the metro trip, the lack of an escalator at my station, the opening of the shutters, the empty fridge, the body adapting to all this.

Had a problem the other day. I was about to order a new Italian novel to be delivered in Paris, but when I went online I discovered it was half the price on Kindle, a serious difference, something like $11.00 as opposed to $24. And I'd have it immediately. It's not as if I can find it in a bookstore, unless I go to Italy, which is out of the question. Still dithering.

Finishing up the final draft of a Bonnefoy translation, and first draft of a new Cixous translation. Reading a biography of Penelope Fitzgerald, not in itself an outstanding book, but interesting especially about her life after she began writing and publishing.

Normality

In lieu of other cities. The dryer is spinning away with a reassuringly repetitive hum. Normality. Nothing but normality. Even the front page, normality. And the harping on atrocity of one kind or another (beheadings, the domestic abuse of various heroes of popular and money-making sports, the war cries, Scotland, the stock market). Normality. I mean the sky is blue, without a crack. There are birds chirping. The campus prepares for the onslaught of new and returning students by painting bicycle lanes with one-way arrows in front of the library, and shifting a few palm trees around. I'm going to make lunch, fold the dry laundry. Normality. What could go wrong?

Back to School

Just found this found poem in my Work in Progress file, which provides mostly horrors to trash and a few gems. Since this "poem" is in fact almost entirely (I added the spacing) a math teacher's back-to-school note to parents, I think I can, without immodesty, call it a gem. The school in question was no doubt the one I taught in, an English school in France.

Mathematics is

“Mathematics is
     a useful and important discipline,
which offers many opportunities
     for pleasure, satisfaction and wonder.

Pupils, however,
     may spoil exercises for themselves
and others when they forget equipment.
     So please ensure your son / daughter

has a pencil case
     containing: a compass, stubby pencil
and ruler 20 cm long,
     a protractor, an HB pencil

and a sharpener
     (with reservoir), eraser and a small
safe pair of scissors. These things must come
     to school each day, and we advise

they be kept away
     from the coloured pens and pencils, keys
and marbles, jacks and other items
     children bring to school.’