What?

What have I been doing with myself? I ask myself, having just sat down--with my feet up, the only way to read and work--having washed and dressed and, with considerable satisfaction at having done something useful with visible results, stripped and changed the bed and started a white wash, anticipating with pleasure getting out the iron and ironing board, later, when the sheets are dry but not too dry; having taken a mug of tea out onto the little back porch overlooking a disorderly range of zinc roofs, and some doors that open onto thin air, and having read Neruda's "I'm explaining a few things":

                         I lived in a suburb,                                                                                                                                  a suburb of Madrid, with bells                                                                                                                and clocks and trees.

and thought I might start the day by translating it--Spanish looks pretty much like French, and if I did this more I might be able to have better conversations with my Salvadorean cleaning person, Amerika, back in California, who must truly think I am limited because in our almost ten years' association I still haven't advanced beyond the basics and body language; having made a pot of Verbena, with leaves from our neighbour, dried last fall; and, oh, I had some breakfast, seasoned with the news of mass shootings, various wars to the east of me, refugees arriving in Norway through Russia on bicycles that are immediately confiscated because they don't meet Norwegian safety standards:

                             and one morning all that was burning,                                                                                                  one morning the bonfires                                                                                                                        leapt out of the earth                                                                                                                              devouring human beings--                                                                                                                     

The sun is making zigzag shadows on the church. It is lighting my neighbour's little balcony full of geraniums and climbing plants one street over. The garbage collectors have returned to work. I hear them coming down our street.

Paris India

Last week I went to the Bouffes du Nord theater Saturday afternoon to see Part 3 of Peter Brook's 1985 film of the Mahabharata, the old Indian epic. It had been playing on all day--6 hours of film in 3 parts of which I caught the last, and stayed for the conversation with Peter Brook, who turned 90 recently, and some of his actors. Most  were familiar: they have been acting in his plays over the years. What was strange was that the 1985 film ended and then suddenly the same actors came out on "stage' (there's no stage, just "ground"), only 30 years older and in their street clothes. For a second I felt as if I'd experienced--in a flash, as we say--the passage of time. Then the mind does its tricks, and everything seems "normal," whatever that means. There were eight or ten old men sitting on the stage on kitchen chairs talking to the audience, answering questions. Seconds before they had been giants wielding swords in lavish costumes.

Yesterday I went back with friends to see Brook's new play, "Battlefield," based on the Mahabharata, but only an hour long and with four young actors and a musician. The theatre is in what has become Paris's Indian neighbourhood, so after we had dinner in an Indian restaurant in one of Paris's old passages, the ones Walter Benjamin writes about, though I don't think this one. And then, since we'd already flowed downhill from the theatre at La Chapelle we continued flowing downhill through Saturday night crowds to the Seine and home.

Institut du Monde Arabe

The bus (#63) came along, I jumped aboard and got off a few stops later at the Institut du Monde Arabe, hoping to find the great Bedoin tents I saw on the Place last year, but they were gone, so I visited an exhibit of Egyptian objects found at the bottom of the sea in the Mediterranean and climbed up to the spectacular 9th floor terrace, whose view of Paris would be hard to be, especially on a clear day like today. Drank a pot of mint tea and read a book I have to review. Stopped off in a lecture hall where four women were talking about feminism in the Arab world, then walked home along the Quai. The shady side of the Seine, unfortunately, but still a good walk. And now I'm starting to read Ferrante all over again, because I want something Italian to read, and it's here.

The sun comes and goes, and it is wise to take an umbrella. When there is sun it pours into the kitchen all morning and it's hard to go and get any work done. The clouds are magnificent, and ominous.

Yesterday I walked, almost ran, because I kept getting turned around and was afraid of being late, over towards the Invalides to meet a friend for lunch in a tea room, "Les Deux Abeilles," behind the Quai Branly museum, where she had been guiding some architects around the building all morning. We had a lot of catching up to do. We used to live across the street from one another.

And the day before yesterday I ended up in the southwest corner of the Luxembourg Garden, my usual spot by the orchard, near the sequoia. It was 5 pm or so, rain threatened, but I had a book to read, and there were people to watch and eavesdrop on, and a deep comfortable chair to sit on (on a nicer day they would have all been taken) and another straight chair to put my feet up on; and then all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I saw an older man strike out across the lawn, which is strictly forbidden, and then a few seconds later, his wife came running after him, to bring him back to the gravel path. I looked around for the park guard--there is always one with a whistle nearby--and just as the wife caught up with her husband and put her hand on his shoulder and turned him back, the whistle blew, not too sharply, and the guard pursued them a few steps over the lawn, and then she stopped, and watched them--old Adam and Eve; and turned her attention to a pair of kids with a frisbee instead.

I think I've said before, other years, that I like these calm green swaths of lawn, like ponds, to look at. I like them better than if they were crowded with people, as would be the case in Canada or the U.S.--maybe in Britain too? They are peaceful, the emptiness, the shadows, the odd leaf, the flowers, are calm.

Lit window

It is 9 pm, and I am sitting on the tiny back porch (lucky to have it) meant for mops and buckets and brooms, and maybe a rag drying. O'm looking across to a very steep roof with a window set into it, two windows, actually, that I admire during the day because, small as they are they are full of green things climbing on the walls. It looks like a cosy place to live. But now the window that is set back into the small terrace is lit, a warm light, and I can see inside a wall of bookshelves and imagine someone sitting there reading, though all I can see is a lit corner with shelves full of books.

The picture I took is not very good: the street lights make streaks of white light.

I woke up, sometime in the night, and got up. I didn't know what time it was, or maybe some bells rang and I realised it was about 2 am, I don't remember. But there were voices coming the street below, resonating, because everything is stone, and the street is like a gully at the base of cliffs of buildings. The voices sounded like people talking in bed--an image from Larkin, and Bishop, I guess--slowly, quietly, with spaces between the talking, half talking half dreaming aloud, and then it stopped, and in a little while I looked out, and, sure enough, there was someone sleeping in the doorway of the church, but there was no sign of anyone else, and I went back to bed and fell asleep myself.

Paris, later

Almost 7:30 p.m. I walked over to the Centre Pompidou, via the Ile de la Cité. I thought I would go by the Flower Market and tell the gardener thank you again for the catalpa-weed he kindly let grow for me, all year, and gave me free, that I had planted and labelled it on my little back porch and that I might even find someone to water it when I am not here, so it will survive the summer heat.

But there was band music coming from the Place Louis Lepine, between the Prefecture de la Police and the marché aux fleurs (which had turned into a bird market for the day), and it was not resistible, not for me and not for a crowd of other people either. It is the Journée du Patrimoine, the day when monuments that are normally closed are open, and this was part of it: a concert by the Orchestre d'harmonie des gardiens de la paix, the Harmonic Orchestra of the Keepers of the Peace, aka, the police. Who'd have guessed. The youngish conductor in a band concert uniform, with braid, had a wicked smile, he bounced, just the right amount, he moved his fingers delicately, they were having a wonderful time, and we were too. It was hard to tear myself away.

And now I'm home again, but I stopped in at the church and caught part of a tour of the Delacroix chapel by a witty and dramatic young man who had stories about the Knights Templar I am going to have to do some research on, and now I'm making some tomato sauce for my spaghetti and there's some singing seeping out of the church.

Paris

God, how I hate getting up in the dark. But I did, after failing to persuade myself I could go back to sleep for an hour. It was 6 a.m. after all.  On a weekday there would have been people sounds in the street, but it is Sunday, and the people sounds were at 3 a.m. 

What is it about the dark, being awake in? 

Never mind. It is now 8:30, the sun is up, the air is crisp, too crisp, given that the heat won't be on in the building for another two weeks, and I am bathed and dressed and warmish, and I have a hot cup of tea, and it is unusually quiet and I'm going to do some reading and writing before the hymns start in the cavernous church across the street.