Rainy Mouffetard

I dream myself back to rue Mouffetard often. I think it's because this market street is how I imagine Paris when I'm not with her. Imagining being in Paris goes in cycles. For while, after a visit, Paris is so present for me that I sometimes almost get up from my chair to head for La Hune to see what's new in my favorite bookstore. After a while I get used to not being there. I watch French movies and when Paris scenes flash on the screen a little involuntary sigh escapes me. I feel homesick, I miss her streets and the life in them, I miss the culture and the art, I miss the cafés and museums, I miss the parks, I even miss Sundays. Being in the middle of Paris life on rue Mouffetard centers me. This is what it would be like to live here. It is just a short walk from the apartment and shopping for food in Paris is an everyday event. Apartments are small with small fridges so you buy fresh almost everyday. In a different life that would be almost unbearably intrusive. But think of the benefits: you can decide just before dinner what you want to have; you can decide “What the heck, I'll just eat in this café”; you can sit and have a beer while you decide. Or perhaps, as I did on the day I made this image, you can just hang out and watch the people around you go about life in probably the same way it was done 100 years ago or even 200 years ago. The light has a difficult time reaching down into this street and the rain helps soften the edges of things making it all seem like a flashback to times past.

Things you forget about ...

You can visit Paris for her beauty, you can visit Paris for the food and wine, you can visit Paris for her Art, or you can go for the things you forget about until you see them again. In a way you never really forget them, they just sink back in your mind until, after a while, they lie quietly, like misbehaving children trying not to be noticed. Or worse, like a denial that this is the place you want to be and if they stay hidden you can pretend not to notice them. They peek out from their hiding places at the smallest opportunity. When it rains on Saturday morning and I am sitting by the window I can hear them stirring. In an instant I remember, no, not remember, I feel the cobblestones under my feet. I can't understand why rue Mouffetard is so far away. Can it really be? I was just there, it seems. It plays in my head like a movie: the old chairs demonstrating the skill of the weaver who will repair yours; the knife and corkscrew vendor who stayed home today; the older woman who glares at me as if I were a murderer for taking her picture. You won't see her because I smile and shrug and never print that image. To my left, where you can't see it is a book store. It is always warm and crowded with a long line to pay for your book. I never go in there in warmer weather, there are too many other book stores in Paris, but on cold rainy Saturdays this is the next best place to be. The best is the bar at Le Mouffetard just up the street. I know I'll be back, but soon enough? Probably not for me.

One damn thing after another

History, it has been said, is just one damn thing after another. And Paris is a place where those things keep happening, history is everywhere. Yet, how much of history do we know. A million, maybe a billion details that merely scratch the surface. The events that shaped the world or the path it would take are documented in the monuments. 13 million people a year visit Notre Dame. In how many minds has Napoleon placed the crown on his own head? But what about the events that didn't shape the world, at least not for you or me? 42 million people a year visit Paris and about 2.5 million live there. What of the history they make that no one else sees or feels? Where does it go? Given enough time wandering around in this city, say 20 years, and I begin to think about this. Can I see the ghost trails I have left here? Sitting with Jean-Pierre, a waiter at La Taverne on boulevard St Germain looking at the pictures of his grandchildren and talking about fishing. Jean-Pierre retired long ago and I hope the fishing is good for him. La Taverne disappeared last year. It is now rather more fancy and much less attractive to me. The seat in the corner where you could see the full moon over the church tower is gone but the sense of it lingers. Here are some chairs in Luxembourg Gardens. These chairs are all over the grounds, in the woods, alongside the fountains. What is their history? Just look at them. Can you see as I do that they have just been vacated, that people sat here and talked and that that moment will linger? Or are they just waiting, inviting us to sit, to make our own history?

St Sulpice after the rain

It's been raining all morning in Paris and I've been out walking in it. It is December, not cold, yet the light has that filtered winter feel about it. I've been walking in Luxembourg Gardens, getting wet in the light rain. My shoes are dusty from the pathways in the Gardens. It is truly a black and white day punctuated by an occasional dark green. I'm at loose ends, I've seen the Cézanne exhibit at the Luxembourg Museum twice and besides, I'm feeling lazy. Paris can be a demanding mistress. Come here! See this! Doesn't that look good, taste it! Sometimes you want to run and hide from even your best friends. I duck down rue Férou just because it doesn't look interesting and probably won't make any demands on me. It's a narrow street and very closed in. Halfway down the street the rain stops suddenly. I'm a little surprised, it seemed so resolute. My little alley opens out onto Place St Sulpice. The church has been undergoing renovation for several years but is uncovered now. Oddly, it has taken so long to clean that the parts that were first cleaned already look dirty. It somehow fits this church with its asymmetric towers to be dressed in several tones from white to a not unpleasant earth tone. The sky is slate gray making the light in the Place more dramatic. I see a man with a hat smoking a pipe. It sets the era back 75 years to a time when all men wore hats and Inspector Maigret was on the trail of miscreants on these very streets. Thinking of Maigret makes me think of beer and there is a nice little café just behind the fountain in this image. I'll sit there a while, care to join me?

Étoile or the Moon?

It turns out that I am in Paris often in the magical month of December (or do I plan it that way?). Paris is a rich environment and my list of favorite places to visit at night in Paris in December is quite long. Most years I don't have time to visit them all. I have worn deep channels leading to those favorite places. So deep that they are no longer possible to see out of without standing tip toe. Paris, like a good friend, is always teaching me lessons about life. “Look my friend” she says to me “I am more than these places you keep going back to. I have so much more to show you if you will only take the time.” I guess she ran out of patience with me on this night and like a good lover just took charge of the situation. I was on my way home from a meeting at La Défense when the bus driven stopped at Porte Maillot announcing service écorté (abbreviated route) fin de ligne (end of line) leaving me in an area of Paris I do not know very well. One of the wonders of Paris is her abundance of cafés. I sat down in one on Avenue de la Grande Armée and had a beer while I watched the traffic not moving. I began to feel lucky having been kicked off the bus. On a slow stroll along this Grande Avenue I added to my familiarity with Paris. Here is where you come to buy a new car, a motorcycle, a scooter, or mountain climbing gear on your way to Champs Elysées. Here is the back side of the Arc de Triomphe, up until tonight it was the back side of the moon to me.

Looking out

Sometimes you just have to stop and ask: Is what you are doing helping you to get closer and closer to who you are? Are you getting closer and closer to what is in your heart? Even in a city like Paris you could find yourself on auto pilot. Have you sensed by now that Paris is a metaphor for life? It is for me in any case. I am here a lot, almost 10% of the year and it takes an effort to not go on automatic pilot. Imagine walking home at night past Notre Dame and not even noticing! Imagine being so intent on capturing an image that you don't see the life going on all around you. If this can happen to me in Paris then think of how much it happens in Baltimore or New York or Chicago or wherever you live. So, for the hundredth time I am walking in the rain (so Paris right?) taking pictures on rue Mouffetard and around Place de la Contrescarpe when suddenly I see that I am not seeing, anything. It stops me and I begin to look for and see things I haven't noticed before and to take chances with the life around me. I see two men talking in front of a café. I know one of them owns the café in this image. I walk into the conversation and learn things about the history and life of this place I smugly thought I knew so well. It began to rain and I went into the café instead of sitting outside. I went as far back as I could and as I was reloading film in my camera I saw out into the Place de la Contrescarpe from a new place. Paris is a world of possibilities.

Vachement Paris!

There is kind of a crease in the day in Paris. Things stop, or at least slow down. As though the city is taking a break before it all starts again. Everyone is shedding the day and getting ready for evening, except of course for those who will be bringing us our evening. The hour is between 6 and 7. It is already getting dark and the streets are oddly deserted. There are three, no maybe four kinds of people about if you count me with my camera watching the other three. There are the last minute customers in beauty parlors and nail painting shops and of course the people who work in those shops. The third kind you see here. The people who will be making it possible for us to eat those wonderful meals. I never thought much about them until I read George Orwell's “Down and Out in Paris and London.” His descriptions of the inner workings of a restaurant, describing the amount of work and pressure these two people taking a last smoke break will experience over the the next 5 to 7 hours gave me a new outlook and a new respect for them. They are going to have to work as a team, each pulling his weight to get through the evening. The kitchen is small, the tables close together, many of the customers can't read French or English and it is their job to provide not just a good meal but a good experience as well. Because I eat dinner early I see them often, sitting together at a table grabbing a quick meal before the doors open, or, as these two, just relaxing for a minute with a cigarette and a little banter. Their Paris is probably vastly different than mine.

Quiet Fog

Paris is a great distorter of time. On a sunny day she is definitely 21^st century with traffic and commerce, tourists, modern buildings, and chrome cafés. But in the quiet fog of an early gray morning she loses any definite sense of place in the river of time. Something in this constantly changing sense of exactly when you are here in Paris is a great part of her charm. If you let it, it can help you escape from who you are and open the possibility to be, for a moment anyway, a new person, a possible person, unfettered by the conventions that have so far defined you. It's time to dream and you are in the right place for it here in Paris at Place de la Sorbonne. Normally there are several cafés sprawled out on the sidewalk yet today there is just the one, generously giving its contrast to the fog softened Sorbonne dome. Each of you would have, could have a different dream to dream here and I'll tell you mine. It is not now (2011) in my dream. It is in some not too distant past when photography existed but cell phones didn't. I spent last evening trying to capture the night time aura along the Quays and ended up at La Palette with my friends. We drank and talked until the early hours. As the new light began to press against the fog I walked along boulevard St Germain and up boulevard St Michel looking for a quiet place to sit alone for a minute with coffee and a croissant. It is Sunday morning and I am not finding an open café. Then I see this inviting tent and head towards it. It is only the car parked there that pulls me back to today.

Innocent Eye

There is no such thing as an innocent eye. What we see depends on who we are, what we have experienced, the system of symbols we use to navigate through our world, which is different from the other worlds of other people. What you see, and more importantly what you feel as you look at this image is unique to you, it will vary depending on your interests and habits. If you know Rodin you will see something familiar in this image, if not, you will probably be a little disoriented at first. What you see will be more abstract, maybe not even human. If you have spent time in Paris you may have walked past this sculpture, you may have noticed it or not. You may have been on a mission and walked past it unseeingly, or, you may have been looking for it as I do, as a touch point, taking comfort from the fact that it is always here, staring out into the world, belligerent, striding, overseeing its domain. Yet, what you are actually looking at is a flat area on your computer screen that is filled in with various tones of gray. What it becomes depends on who you are, on the symbols that you use to create your world. I walk in Paris with my camera through a sea of images created by my experiences and emotions and I record them to share with you, never sure exactly what it is I am sharing, what it is that you see or feel as you look at this abstract thing on your computer screen. Photography is a science and the pictures are just the experiments. If I am doing well, I am capturing the relationships among the objects that constitute my Paris and making them yours.

Friends in Paris

You don't really know something until you teach it, say it out loud, what you think you know. And that is where the rub is. Suddenly you realize that what was clear to you in your mind is not as clear as you thought it was. You begin to see the gaps in what you know and it is only in seeing those gaps that you truly begin to learn. This is why I love to share Paris with my friends. Sometimes it is quite a challenge, especially if it is a first visit. They want to see the things, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Sacré Cœur, the icons, that have defined Paris for them. How much sweeter is it when it is not your friend's first trip? They've been here before and are ready for something else, something more, the way Paris could feel if you were lucky enough to live here. Yes, we do some of the iconic visits but they are just a start. A pleasant visit to Sacré Cœur ends with a stroll through Abesses at dusk when the dark blue of the sky makes the colors of the market displays along the street more vivid and the café terraces more inviting. When a visit to Île St Louis after a pleasant dinner ends at Le Flore en l'Île. It is cold and dark, the awning is flapping loudly from the strong breeze, a sound that makes sitting outside under the heater even cozier. As we crossed from Notre Dame to get here I dropped a 2 euro piece into the cup of a lone accordion player sitting on the bridge and he played the whole time we sat here enjoying dessert and talking about our day. So, I learn, Paris is love and also friendship.