Day seven: July 18, 2004

Destination: parc Georges Brassens, rue de la Convention

Weather: overcast/sunny spells

Time of departure: 1pm

Canine breakdown (today’s offerings were hard to identify): 4 chiens, one of which was a Labrador and another a kind of terrier

Public transport options: 62 bus, 69 bus, PC1


Dimanche. Sundays are still sleepy in Paris, the by now empty significance of a day adhered to like glue. The route between the 14th, 13th and 15th arrondissements is becoming homeground to me now, and I know my way around these streets better than most. Today my route takes me down boulevard Jourdan to Porte d’Orléans, right on avenue Géneral Léclerc, left on rue d’Alésia and straight on to the rue de Cronstadt, where I take another left and enter the parc Georges Brassens. Back on rue d’Alésia, there’s a wall covered in prehistoric beasts, some kind of postmodern attempt at cave painting. .







my favourite is the mammoth, who’s really quite wonderfully rendered. I’ve always appreciated the fact that these particular beasts have ‘woolly’ in their name. .







A little further down rue d’Alésia, in fact just where it seamlessly becomes rue de Vouillé and just before it equally effortlessly turns into rue de la Convention, is a street that tugs at my heart. .







Hi, I say. Hi. And then enough with this misty-eyed sentimentality and on with the mission, dammit. Two great bulls guard the entrance to the park. I realize that I have no idea what I am looking for here, only that once I have found it I am meant to head to rue de la Convention and break with just that. The bulls are cool, but they don’t call out to me. There’s a statue of a donkey inside the park, all kitschy and weird and filled with flowers. I don’t think that’s it either. Just ahead, a large slide… am I meant to go down this? I think it’s closed. How the hell will I know when I find this thing. I ban all notions of U2 lyrics from my brain. And then I turn to the left. What’s that? Under those iron eaves? .







And there it is. I smell books. Nose in the air like a true old book hound, I run around the park like a displaced eejit trying to work out how the hell to get TO the books. A bit of scrambling later, and I’ve found the entry. .







My wallet feels lighter already… what are you doing to me, monster? Is this some kind of test of my willpower? Don’t you know me well enough by now?
There’s another sign on the door, encore un chat perdu.
It’s a very cute message. These people obviously love their beastie very much.


LOST
ORANGE CAT
Male, good and fat, yellow eyes, miaows a lot, tattoo on his right ear.
If you’ve seen him, or let him into your house recently, please let us know at:
01 44 19 05 95
or
06 07 23 53 68
THANK YOU ALL.


Bonne corpulence! Miaule beaucoup! The French language is very, very wonderful and versatile and strange.
I see no sign of the yellow-eyed meowser, and so wander on into the hall of books. Ninety minutes, eight euros, and a beautiful copy of La Princess de Clèves, another of Camus’ L’homme révolté, Vercors’ La Marche à l’étoile, De Brissac’s essay collection O dix-neuvième! and (best of all) a lovely edition of Poe’s Le Chat noir et autres histories, translated by Baudelaire later, I leave. The ‘later’ in that last sentence is far too far away from its fellows.
Back onto the rue de la Convention, then, where the day’s food market has just finished and several glâneurs are searching the debris for melons, camembert and apples that have been left behind. A street cleaner chundles past, spraying the footpath with streams of water. Paris uses a lot of water. I take advantage of the clean footpath to do a cartwheel. Will that do? Does that break with anything? Apart from common decency? I don’t know. Next to me the hippotami look out from their window, laughing.








p.s. I forgot about the orphanage. I've never seen one either. I guess we'll both have to wait a while.

Day six: July 14, 2004

Destination: parc Larousse, ville de Malakoff

Weather: glorious

Time of departure: 1.30pm

Canine breakdown (parading of dogs obviously illegal on national holidays): 1 poodle, 1 poodle cross & 1 choc Labrador cross sitting in passenger & driver seats of abandoned car

Public transport options: PC1 and 89 buses, metro line 4 to porte d’orléans



This particular project may have been hexed from the start. Several days of freezing rain made it impossible to do any kind of sitting around in a park. Last night it cleared up and I set off, only to realize half an hour into the trip that I had forgotten my dictionary. Trip aborted. Today I had already reached malakoff before I worked out that my camera was still in my room. But the weather was glorious, it’s a national holiday, and I refused to go back.
So no pictures. I would write about the fascinating RER harassment unscandal going on here right now, but maybe I’ll just point you here, as it has absolutely nothing to do with this site.


Walking down boulevard Jourdan to boulevard Brune, there is nothing but fumes and bleary-eyed people, hungover from dancing with the pompiers last night. The buses have little French flag ears, fluttering in the wind as they come speeding down the boulevard. Traditionally, the president of the Republic pardons criminals on Bastille Day (although this year he’s decided that race crimes and sex crimes will not be forgiven… and it’s the first time!!) and so I think that the bus drivers all break the speed limit on purpose, five times over, thinking that there will be a reprieve. It’s just that the policemen are also hungover, and have more important things to worry about today.

I take a left at Porte de Chatillon and immediately everything takes on an ambience of strip mall. There’s a super GO SPORTS across the road, claiming to cover some 3000 sq m of space. It’s pretty big. And then a SUPER MONOPRIX which, being more patriotic than the GO SPORTS, is closed. None of the other Monoprix branches are closed today. Perhaps that’s why this one is super.

Crossing over the periphérique feels a little like sticking my nose in an exhaust pipe and breathing in deeply. But once I turn off the thoroughfare and onto avenue Larousse, the city ceases to be sprawl and becomes a town. Bars and brasseries, all very male-dominated. Little alimentations. Bakeries on vacation, with lists of other non-vacating bakeries on their windows. The parc Larousse, when it appears on my left, is rather small. Not even so much of a park, at least not when compared with the likes of Buttes Chaumont or André Citroën or even my own Montsouris. It’s closer to one of those narrow meridians in the city proper, with a few trees and some gravel and some old men playing pétanque. Except this one has eradicated the old men in favour of a kiddies’ playground. The kids don’t seem to care. There’s very little grass here, and so parkgoers are spread out on a series of green benches. One holds three youngish men, one with a guitar. They are later joined by a couple with two young children. At one stage an old man comes into the park and hands one of the young men a plastic bag. Then he leaves. Another bench features a middle-aged man and his bag. They’re reading. Also reading is the young man with the ponytail on my right. Beside him, two 20-something year old women, gossiping. They are interested in my dictionary. And then there’s the woman with a towel wrapped around her waist, trousers rolled up, baseball cap, rugby shirt, washing vegetables and clothes in the drinking fountain. Next to her, a sunbather, lying on her back. Behind is a high-rise, all pink with balconies. Les chiens sont interdits. So no dogs, but lots of pigeons.


My random words:


Mutiné(e) adj mutinous, rebellious n m/f . mutineer, rebel.


Catégoriel, elle adj 1. category; classement ~ classment by category. 2. SOCIOL: revendications ~les: sectional claims. 3. LING & PHILOS category.


Commendataire adj. Commendatory.


Se jeter vp (emploi passif) un rasoir qui se jette – a disposable razor.
vpi. 1 [sauter] to throw o.s. ou to hurl o.s. ou to leap (off) into empty space. 2. [se précipiter] to rush [headlong]. 3. se ~ dans [commencer]. 4. [cours d’eau] to run ou to flow into. vpt loc. S’en jeter un (derrière la cravate] to have a quick drink.


Rattrapable adj.: une telle erreur ne serait pas ~. A mistake like that couldn’t be put right.


My story


Le soir, au crépuscule. La mutinée est entrée dans le parc. Elle regardait les gens autour d’elle, en essayant de les mettre dans un classement catégoriel. C’était commendataire, mais un tel but n’était pas rattrapable. En se rendant compte de ce fait, elle est montée dans l’immeuble rose en face et elle s’est jetée par la fenêtre.




Words found for Jean Moulin


Cher M. Moulin,

Veuillez noter ces trois mots :

FENDILLEMENT

RIPAILLER

MOUCHARDER

Merci,

Nicky Agate


A fendillement is a cracking, spitting, splitting, springing, crackling or crazing. Ripailler is an outmoded verb that means to have a feast. Moucharder is to tell tales or grass on someone. I leave these words on a scrap of my notebook on the avenue Jean Moulin, chef du Conseil National de la Résistance. A wall, half tumbled-down, looks like it should have been here when he was. I tuck the piece of paper between the stones and watch its erratic descent, past spiders’ webs and memories, to a niche behind some wood.

Day five: July 6, 2004

Destination: jardin de Tocqueville

Weather: absolutely gorgeous

Time of departure: 11.40am

Canine breakdown: 1 golden retriever, 1 poodle, 1 husky, 1 westie, 1 shih tzu

Public transport options: 6 metro to charles de gaulle étoile then 2 metro to villiers





Preamble: There was something about this one that was bound to go wrong from the start. The time of day, maybe, or the fact that I was distracted by the deuxième démarque in the monoprix sales. Capitalism... i don't know. Whatever the cause, my decision to find the jardin de Toqueville and attempt some physiognomy in order to better know the city in the space of an hour and a half, and to walk there from Passy, should not have taken after a double-dose of vending machine coffee. .







Anyway.

Passy being within a stone's throw of the tour Eiffel and that part of Paris in which the sixty year old women are dressed like 20 year old girls and the 20 year old girls are dressed like middle-aged women, but in the most expensive clothes, I am tempted to do a fashion breakdown instead of a canine one. Normally, an average walk from the metro to my school will reveal several thousand poodles and no other dog larger than a teacup. Today doesn't provide much better rewards, but the fashion becomes much less interesting after five minutes, when Passy cedes to Trocadero and Trocadero to one of the most touristed (and polluted) intersections of the city: l'arc de triomphe..


One could also do a car breakdown of Paris. Cars are just a means to an end here... half the population of the city drives a tiny smart car, the other half some clapped-out old volkswagen of golf. And SUVs (les quatre-quatres) are banned from the city streets. It's very refreshing, especially after two years of living in the midwest of the United States, where every corn-fed student seems to be given a gas-guzzler (or worse still, a hummer) on their 16th birthday. I digress. It's the influence of Monoprix.



Paris also smells and sounds different around here. Perfume, exhaust fumes, sweet popcorn, dog shit... and then the sound of English in its many accents, and of German, and Italian, and not being a true polyglot I don't really know what else. But very little French. None of the sing-song cadence of the boulangère as she sings good morning to each customer.



Round and round the arc de Triomphe I go, remembering last summer and a certain afternoon spent circling the thing in an aforementioned smart car. Now they are bringing out a four-door. Apparently one's feet will still feel like they are touching the earth. At avenue de Wagram I take a right, and slowly the sounds of cameras and coaches fade as the 17th becomes truly inhabited. Haussmann's influence is strong around here, almost oppressive, but the rigid effect of the avenue is soothed somewhat by the occasional well-placed square.



I reach the place des Ternes, and am beginning to wonder if this was such a good idea. It's already 12.10 and I have to be back and in the classroom by one. Tant pis... right again on the avenue de Wagram and on up to the place of the same name. I see signs all round for the périphérique ... it's fluide and realize how close I am to the ceinture of the city, to her belt. place de Wagram, right onto boulevard Pereire. It's late... almost 1230. I feel like I can't do justice here. Nor can I read anyone's face, I'm moving so bloody fast. Finally! The rue de Tocqueville..







And it is here that I make the error. In my haste, I take a right instead of turning left. There's a beautiful woodsmith's shop on the corner.


Marching marching marching and I stop to take a picture of a 19th-Century carving on the wall of an old insurance building..



oops i lost the picture



But where's the damn garden? The numbers are descending, and I realise that I can't remember where I was meant to enter the garden. I look at the time on a parking meter. 12.40. Mission aborted. I have to go.

Day four: July 5, 2004

Destination: rue de Casablanca

Weather: overcast

Time of departure: 7.30pm

Canine breakdown (scarce pickings; I took the bus): 1
golden lab, 1 poodle, 1 mutt with a pointy nose

Public transport options: PC1 or 62 bus







An immediate dirth of canine activity on the PC1 bus.
Begin to rue decision to take it but as we pass
outpost after outpost on the Parisian circumference,
it becomes worth the decrease in dog activity. The PC1
is both the least and the most Parisian of the city’s
buses. It never leaves the periphery, not once
venturing into the inner circles of urbanity, but it
connects with the last stop on many metro lines. It’s
an heure de pointe and there are people everywhere,
armpits in the face of other’s human heads. The
peripheral settlements vary hugely in their social
status, but by the time we reach Porte de Vincennes,
my chosen stop in the 15th, we’re well within
bourgeois ground.
Walking up the rue du Hameau, I’m first struck by the
restaurants. Middle class, of varied world cuisine,
and empty. Then I reach rue de la Croix Nivert and
realize that it’s this quartier’s architecture that
renders it most strange. It’s a good time of night to
be out, the shadows cast by a setting sun insisting
upon the incongruity in architectural style.

The pigeons – and there are many – seem to prefer one
particular kind.




rue de la Croix Nivert is full of trash. Everywhere
the big green bins are overflowing. Was there a block
party this weekend? Or do the bin men come tonight? I
don’t know, but the sight – and the smell – are
striking. There’s even trash where a rusty sign
specifically states that trash is unacceptable.







Moving swiftly on, I pass a little T-junctioned lane,
with a plomberie on one side and a theater on the
other. Both have wonderful signs, and just in case you
get them confused, someone has thoughtfully spelled
things out on the space between the two.






And then a little further down, I see a poster tacked
to the noticeboard of a Laundromat. Reading it through
the window, I see it concerns a lost cat. She looks
like one of ours, lemonstre. The note is so sad: they
think she may have got lost on one of the neighbouring
terraces, "the scaffolding having served as her
trampoline," and are asking if anyone has seen her, or
if they should broaden their search. On first glance,
the picture suggests that it is the girl, not the cat,
who is lost. A dubious tactic?







On the corner of rue de la Croix Nivert and rue
Lecourbe, the advertising in a bistro window cries out
to be noticed.







The winsome ghost on the guingette poster is just odd
and lovely; the fooding poster I have noticed all over
town. It’s an advertisement for a new magazine called,
unsurprisingly, Fooding. If there’s any way to sell
things to the French, a combination of gastronomy,
reading matter and suggestive photography would seem
to be just it.







The rue Casablanca is just opposite. It’s tiny – I
could walk it in maybe thirty paces. There’s a
brasserie on one corner and a hotel on the other.
This, too, is a dead end… what used to be a lycée
téchnique, and is now just a derelict building
site.



On the left hand side of the street as I look to its
dead end is an art gallery of sorts; the art inside
seems as close to bad as I’ve seen. I wonder how they
pay the rent.







Disgusted at my own snottiness, I walk away, but not
before trying to inconspicuously snap the young man
wolfing down what looks like poached eggs on toast (in
Paris?) in the brasserie.



didn't work.


Feeling like I may have cheated the quartier by
talking the bus, I decide to walk up the rue de la
Convention until I reach Alésia… from thereon in I’ll
be on familiar ground. The walk is worth it for three
precious moments: a comic-book store with everything
in its three windows displayed upside-down, apart from
the handwritten sign that reads “DERNIER BD AVANT
L’AUTOROUTE!!!”; the baths, still operated by the
city

And the nail shop.








I take a leaf from my good friend Jennifer’s book and
decide to photograph the shop window. I suspect I may
not have done justice to these disembodied hands.

Day three: July 3, 2004

Destination : rue Didot

Weather : overcast

Time of departure : 5.30pm

Canine breakdown : 1 black lab, 1 german shepherd in a cafe, 1 pregnant mutt in a cafe, 1 westie, 2 yorkies, 2 terriers, 2 airedales, 5 poodles

Public transport options : 62 bus



I can’t find my map and so need to turn to the route suggested to me by maporama. Straight up and into the parc Montsouris, which I try and visit at least once a day to laugh at the ducklings as they learn how to swim. People are everywhere in the park today: older ladies drinking tea at the buvette, mothers watching their kids play in the climbing area, picnickers, lovers, football players, joggers, and all around the lake people watching, alone but relaxed in their solitude, happy in it, reading or writing or looking out onto the lake.







The water birds are beautiful, and over on a flat, wet rock different coloured ducks lie sleeping beside a basking turtle. The little boy next to me turns to his brother, “T’as vu? T’as vu la tortue? Sur le rocher là? À côté du canard? Tu l’as vu?” At first the kid can’t see it, and then suddenly he gurgles in delight, “Ouais!” I walk on past the ponies (the word is spelt ‘poneys’ here) who spend their day trekking round and round the park and débouche onto the Avenue Reille. Waiting for the lights on the other side is a wedding party, the second I have seen heading for the park since I arrived in this quartier.







On up the rue Saint-Yves and over to Alésia. A lived-in calm hangs in the air around here; it’s a place, one of those corners of a city’s nexus, where people live. The only stores respond to quotidiana: boulangerie, alimentation, bar-PMU. Even the graffiti is calmer here.


The rue d’Alésia itself is like most of the minor but still heavily used Parisian thoroughfares: Monoprix, balconies, boulangerie after boulangerie. Atkins is nowhere here. Nowhere. I reach the rue Didot and take a left, wondering off in search of villas. It was Richard Pevear who told us there were so few villas in Paris, I remember this now. He lives at villa Poirier, and we were at villa Gaudelet at the time. The first I come to today is villa Duthy, a little alley off to the left of the already-minor rue Didot.







And then a few steps further down, villa Deshayes.







These streets seem to get older, more cobbled, more faded… more lovely as I descend rue Didot. Villa collet is next, also on the left, just a few steps from villa Deshayes.






They just don’t stop. But then they do. I know I have to cross the road to find villas Leone and Mallebay,











but I don’t know where villa Jamot has gone. It’s only now, looking at an in-depth map of the area, that I notice that Jamot is shaded in grey. What does that mean on a map? Is it a ghost villa? I don’t know. Just past where it should be, the road passes over an old, overgrown railway track. The evening sun (entre chien et loup?) dapples through the trees and onto the track, evoking some kind of temporal leap in my consciousness. It is early 1930. I will be on the next train.



Leone deserves a closer look. The façade is amazing, and reveals nothing of what lurks behind. I wait for a few moments, hoping to catch a resident on their way in or out, but nothing happens.


I never do succeed in finding villa Jamot, despite walking the length of rue Didot several times over. There are flowers, though, discarded on the pavement and keeping their secrets close.







The people walking behind me start to become annoyed at my consistent stopping and photographing. They are pushing a pram. I keep walking, until I come across the vending machine. It’s quite a sight.







From this machine, should I so choose, I can extract anything from an omelette du lapin to chicken wings to camembert to petit écolier chocolate biscuits to milk to nutella to sandwiches to salads to something called doowaps and zazoo condoms. Wow. I tear myself away, and right at the end of the parallel rue des Plantes I find, as I expected to find, the villa Brune.






Nearby, a street is named after Giordano Bruno, and uncommonly (even for Paris) the facts of his death are also on the plaque. A philosopher burned as a heretic in 1600. And Italian. I wonder about his significance to this part of Paris.






I’m disappointed about my failure regarding villa Jamot. I wander around a little more, coming across the most beautiful tree by the Hotel ibis.






And then, as I start my path back to my green and white room in the polyglot college, I remember a little side street I’d seen on the way here. Not the one I’ve been looking for, but another villa nonetheless. Not quite but almost. I’m done with chasing ghosts.

Day two: July 2, 2004

Destination : avenue d’ivry

Weather : overcast

Time of departure : 5.30pm

Canine breakdown : 1 chow chow, 1 grey terrier, 1 pitbull with a black eye, 1 grey poodle, 1 pug, 1 fat golden lab, 1 springer spaniel pup, 1 boxer sporting a red cape, 1 unidentified pointy thing

Public transport options : 67 bus, 62 bus



I can see Les Olympiades on the map. There is no indication as to what it might be. Crossing boulevard Jourdan i reach rue d’Arcueil, which curves round to the right before meeting a post office and the rue de Rungis. Here, a rotund bonhomme is leaning out his balcony window. At place de Rungis, people are drinking, laughing, getting home from work for the weekend. Yet another fat bonhomme is walking a very little springer spaniel, holding up traffic while everyone stops to look. Emboutillage! It’s while I am waiting for the traffic jam to clear that I see the tigers:







On up the rue Bobillot and look! over there on the park bench two men are huddled over a small thing… there’s a transaction going on. A little further up the street, just before it meets rue de Tolbiac, a grooming salon for dogs. Toilettage. Another block, and it’s flagrant desire.



rue de Tolbiac is insanity at this hour. As I walk past the upper end of rue Charles Fourier, the church seems more imposing in its looming beigeness than it did yesterday. The patisserie directly opposite is now closed... which makes the experience of walking past it so much more rewarding:







Tolbiac is a hotchpotch of everything Paris could possibly represent, a microcosm of some kind of inhabited Parisian ideal. There’s the art gallery, which is currently closed, its insides gutted and messy, dustpans and paint on the floor. I couldn’t have gone anyway; the entrance fee is too high:







I’m not sure too much here makes sense. There’s a poem of sorts, about seven feet high, on the right.







I could stand here forever trying to work this place out, but instead I let the pull of one of Paris’ best interpretations of capitalism, the bookstore, take me away.







Right onto avenue d’Ivry and suddenly I am in Chinatown. Every second building is an Asian grocery store, every third a Chinese or Vietnamese restaurant. The cultural make-up undergoes an immense shift and here, amongst supermarkets called BIG where every fruit and vegetable is shrink wrapped in plastic – even the lettuce, even the oranges, even the bananas. Shooting to the sky are several towers and high rises, and everywhere the crowd, la foule. The French seems to contain the idea of madness within its crowd. I like it. It seems like the whole world is outside. In search of the Olympiades, I walk down to the Porte d’Ivry metro, but nothing advertises itself as such. The post office is on the rue Simone Weil, and the many signs pointing to it force the idea of this strange suicidal white philosopher onto the topography here. Things don’t mesh around here. I’m still wondering what and where the Olympiades could be, and have started trying to make things fit. I am almost convinced that it can be what I want it to be:







(it turns out these are part of the Université de Paris 1: Centre Charles Mendez France) when I see a sign that reads OPTIQUE OLYMPIADES outside a grotty shopping complex. I go round the back of the OPTIQUE building, past the billiard hall and the dank corridors lined with stores, and on the other side I find proof that there’s at least a memory trace of this word, even if I still don’t really know what it stands for.



I look around me: tower blocks everywhere. And there’s one called the IMMEUBLE HELSINKI and another named the IMMEUBLE TOKYO, so, for lack of any other inspiration, I toy with the idea that it’s a collective name for this miniature high rise city, the names of the towers corresponding to the countries of the world. Some very French attempt at cultural unification through baptism. But still, je ne sais pas. Je n’en sais rien. I squeeze onto the 62 bus coming from the Bibliothèque Nationale and start my ride home, still wondering.

Day one: July 1, 2004

Destination : rue charles fourier

Weather : overcast ; chill in the air

Time of departure : 5pm

Canine breakdown : 2 golden retrievers, 1 wire-haired dachsund, 1 unidentifiable mutt

Public transport option : 67 bus




Today's destination isn't far from where I'm living, and as my instructions say i have to approach from the south, there's no point taking the bus, which would leave me at the north end of the street. I take boulevard Kellerman, and almost immediately before me is the stade charlety, where the world record for the 100m was broken in 2002. it's a great white shark of a building, with wings that fold like armadillo scales towards its body. Following the boulevard to the left, I pass the BAR PMU LA MASCOTTE RAPIDO COURSE PAR COURSE, and wonder if the food is served as quickly as the bets are played and the name is said. Kellerman briefly becomes the rue des Longues Raies before reverting to its former self -- somewhere around here come the two golden retrievers and the saucisson a pattes. Left under the bridge and onto the rue des Peupliers -- on the corner, a couscous restaurant. It was crowded when I walked past two days ago; now there's just a lined man, sitting in the window, looking without seeing into space.





My dumpy Kodak digicam is looked at with some suspicion, especially when I photograph the dustbin and the street sign at place de l'Abbe Georges Hencoque. From here, the rue Charles Fourier doesn't look like much, although it is wholly dominated by a goliath beige church at its northern end. The third building on the right is a little hard to find, because they all seem to bleed into each other with little regard for architectural style or numeration.

I pass the mini strip-mall offices of Europe journal and orchid tours and eventually decide that number sixteen is the most legitimate candidate for the third building on the right. Number 16: on the right we have a glass door, a sheet of letter paper affixed to it. CENTRE NEY. On the left, a blue arched door and the words MIE DE PAIN.




Two men, one in his seventies, the other closer to forty, watch and whisper as I stare at the building -- there is nothing remarkable about it -- and then take a photograph. Next door is the CLUB OMNISPORTS. I am yet to decide whether this establishment officially forms part of the third building on the right.