All four years of high school, two years of college, and my only viewing of the movie Back to the Future in it, and my French didn’t tumble as fluently all weekend as it did at the airport coming home.
My suitcase was securitized, thanks to a 1.5 litre bottle of Perrier I had put inside because I like to make my life challenging, and all of a sudden I had paragraphs. “I forgot, I’m so sorry, that’s the only liquid I promise.”
I speak the French of apologies.
I remember my last trip, finding the Tower, buying tulips for 45 francs, going inside the Notre Dame — but I missed a lot. I know a whole song about the Champs-Élysées, but I’d never walked down it until last weekend.
The song is fairly accurate. Especially the parts that go, “hmm, hmm, de hm-huh uh, LE CHAMPS ELYSEES.”
I only ended up with one souvenir.
A footie-sleeper onesie deal with tiny baby birds on it. It’s a cute story someday I suppose. “Yes, you’ve been to Paris sort of, and you used to fit into this Petit Bateau jammie romper from the fancy street.”
We both shopped. But Ryan shopped for crepes.
I did not climb nearly as many stairs in 1995, either. To the second level of the Tower, and up to the Sacre Coeur from the 18th arrondissement.
And not doing Paris by tour bus, you get to see all the neighborhoods. We had breakfast one morning in the 7th, and I managed to order off guard and sans menu. Apologies and bread, covered.
There’s a deliberateness, an intentionality, and an appreciation for presentation that makes everything seem special.
Flowers for sale, arranged as if the sidewalk were the finest parlor.
And fruit displayed like a still life in the Louvre.
That is Paris to me. Making the every day, an event.
(And yes, he ate them. When in Rome that isn’t Rome. He had to listen to my retelling of the escargot scene from Pretty Woman though.)
The very best thing about visiting a city, is window watching. Sure, you can people watch — wonder about the old man walking home with his baguette and his chien, or the woman on the Metro about your age with her conservative hosiery and list of tasks from work, and muse what their lives might be like-
But windows let you muse what your life would be like. A window, especially if you can’t see inside, could belong to anyone. It could belong to you.
What would your life be like if you lived on that fourth floor above a bustling Sunday market, or behind that window box around the corner from the Eiffel Tower, or beyond one of those identical squares in a grid of homes the train rushes by, again, and again.
It’s not about the real estate, the apartment is just a canvas. It’s about the possibility.
It’s about who you would be if that window was yours.
What’s it called when you can navigate like a champ with no ability to judge distance? Whatever it is, I have that.
Once, the Bro came to visit me in D.C. I probably inadvertently tricked him into walking 17 miles with the simple and unwavering answer to “How far is it from here?” “Mmm. Two blocks?” Just because you can see the Capitol from the Lincoln Memorial doesn’t mean it isn’t three miles.
And just because the Notre Dame looks like it’s just around the river bend from the Eiffel Tower, doesn’t mean precisely the same thing. By the time we finally got there, my tour consisted of “LOOK. BUTTRESSES. Can we get dinner now?”
(I also tried to break the internet by taking Instagrams of macarons in Paris. Did it work?)
The two best things spotted today:
A man having a birthday, getting sung to, two tables over at lunch. The little girl at the table in between decided he needed a gift, turned around, leaned over the back of the banquette, and presented him with a frite from her plate. He ate it.
And a very soignée woman, silver hair wrapped like a cloud, in a turquoise suit, sitting at an outdoor table smoking an absolutely enormous cigar.
Honorable mention, Ryan’s face after tasting crème brûlée. “Can you make this?” “It requires a blow torch.” “Perfect. I have one in the garage.”
Once, I saw a production of the Marx Brothers Cocoanuts performed by ten year olds. This was bafflingly inappropriate and brilliant, both. It was also three hours long.
Because I am a horticultural genius and have seen at least two seasons of Survivor, I know where coconuts come from. I am also smart enough to make an alliance with someone who would do the cracking open, should we ever find ourselves on a Mark Burnett team somewhere.
And once it’s open, the real thing has as much to do with a Mounds Bar as a ten-year-old Groucho.
Air Sign says, “That which is Under the Sea shall remain known to Ursula and maybe Sebastian on a good day.” Sea creatures freak me out. Goldfish in a bowl, fine. 20,000 Leagues under, well, there IS crying in fishball.
But somehow, here…
The water is clear enough that you can SEE. You’re not surprised by some trout when it’s five inches from your face. You can float at a polite distance and wave at the pretties. They’re not all tiny Real-World-Aquarium fishies. Some are medium sized, your Clown Parrots (TM Jacques Cousteau and etceaux.)
And some?
Behold, the Dog Fish. Named such by moi because when I swam around a rock and Ryan did the “THIS BIG” motion with his hands, he gestured Golden-Retriever puppy size.
He was right. Those suckers were 18 inches long at least. And that is what an underwater scream using your eyes looks like.
No. Too big, no no no. But a lot of them were just pretty. Outlandishly pretty. And I swam with them with my face in the water just fine.
Okay, I didn’t see the barracuda Ryan did, but that’s clearly for the best. Heart is as close as I need to get to that.
“Beautiful, gorgeous, wish you were here.”*
From the first view in the morning to the last…
I’ve been to beachy places before, but somehow they were…sanitized for your resort protection. There was always a strict disconnect from the vacation zone and where people lived. It’s a hard economy, paradise. With great beauty comes great seclusion — from a lot of things, including opportunity. You can see that here. Feel it. It’s the most stunningly gorgeous place I have ever seen in my entire life, without exaggeration, and yet it’s clear — even the most stunning place on God’s green earth can’t hide struggle.
The Garden of Eden and Hell are in the same story, after all.
We went out to see what the island was really like. It’s small enough to drive around in a day — as long as you stay on the wrong-hand side. We ended up in Victoria, the biggest city, and I got to use my long-rusty French on a girl about five, with dark, curly pigtails. Paying for parking, asking how many roupie to give her, she said it in French, and then gleefully counted it out for me in English. “One, two, three, four!”
Verbs are useful, and my French accent is still better than my Italian.
The weekend market bustled the middle of town, and those plus grocery stores are my favorite places to see real. Everybody has to eat. My French earned me oil in a bottle marked with masking tape “Hell Fire” for Dad.
And seeing how others live is the spice of life.
Ryan takes pictures. A lot of them. It makes me and my gathering-illustrations-for-stories-iPhone-snappery, pale. Which makes it nice. He has his project, his passion for communicating through 819 pictures of me running along the beach this morning and the four hours of legitimately awesome underwater video of the fish we snorkeled at today (OMG. Angel fish the size of small dogs and I didn’t scream. On the outside at least.) And I have…whatever it is I do.
The point is, if you have your own passions, you develop patience and appreciation for others’, which means you get it back for yours. It’s a pretty good deal.
Uh. Speaking of passions? I am continuing mine for the almighty written word with some very important beach literature.
There isn’t any better place to read a trade paperback of the Sweet Valley High revisit, than face down on a beach towel.
Because there’s a lot of that happening too.
God bless Francine Pascal, salted avocado on toast, very hot curries, sweet warm water, tiny striped fishies, and the unending amazement that the world gets bigger the more places you go.
Love,
Zoë
(If these are the postcards, here are the snapshots.)
*Okay, not the first time I’ve used that — but since the last time was about Denver four years ago, it stands.
