true life planet

 This is part five of a series about several weeks I recently spent in Paris.

Things done/Cost:

I go to the Tobacco Museum: free

Then to the Pere Lachaise cemetery: free

Eat bread and cheese at the grave of Proust:1.00 usd

Take part in a political protest march: free

Have a cup of mint tea at a North African cafe: I.30 usd

Head to Montmarte: 1.40 usd on the metro

and do a walking tour: free

Visit the Montmarte cemetery: free

Eat bread and cheese in the cemetery: 1.oo  usd

Visit the Museum of Romantic Life: free

Take the metro to the 13th arr. and walk around Chinatown: 1.40 for the metro

Buy an amazing Vietnamese meal/go to a poetry reading: 3.00 usd

Metro, but get lost, ending up at free jazz concert: (metro): 1.40 usd, (concert): free

Metro back home, getting off early at the Bastille stop, to look at the Bastille by night: 1.40 usd

Walk home a few blocks: free

Total spent for the day: 11.90 usd

Paris has a reputation-and a history-for being bohemian. It is this wonderful history that has inspired and sparked the interest of countless tourists and visitors, eager for the bohemian vibe and romantic notions that come along with it. I suppose people hope some of this will rub off on them and they will write the next great novel or meet a Henry Miller like character to tell great stories about later on.

I am no different. I remember when I was a young teenager being enticed by the very idea of Paris. I was addicted to reading the works of people who lived, wrote, and painted in this great city. I was fascinated by the idea of “salons” where writers, intellectuals, and just plain interesting people came together and talked, wrote, painted, argued, drank and smoked.

So today I set out to discover some of this Paris of the past, and try to find that current of Bohemian culture that was hopefully still running thru it’s center-somewhere.

What better way to start than at the Tobacco Museum? And lucky for me, it’s right downstairs. It is actually almost below my apartment.

The whole idea..of people sitting at cafes..all day..arguing, talking, reading, writing..and smoking is such a part of the history of  the avant garde, intellectual history of Paris, that it’s hard to imagine a Parisian without a cigarette.(and ..it’s rare to meet a Parisian who doesn’t smoke).

But things are changing. In January of 2007, Paris passed a law changing the smoking regulations at all public places, effectively banning it from cafes and restaurants. You still see people doing it-but it’s going to change, and possibly the whole mystique of cafe life will change along with it.

This has the curators of the Tobacco Museum quite frustrated, yet at the same time, it’s making their museum quite popular.

It’s a tiny place, filled with everything about smoking you can possibly imagine. The curators seem to want to point out that smoking, in moderation, is actually good for your health. Hmmm.

But they have a great selection of artifacts from around the world having to do with smoking-and I’m not just talking about tobacco, here. They have an amazing selection of bongs you can look at (not use, sorry) and lots of history and photos of the famous folks of France lighting up. (Note: apparently the country is slowly removing the cigarettes from the hands of famous writers and so on in photographs. Apparently this will help end smoking in France.)

One of the most celebrated smokers was George Sand. She walked around in men’s clothes and smoking big fat cigars, as if to say, “Who cares?”… this at a time when women didn’t do that (although they still don’t, actually!) . I decided after looking at pictures of her smoking that I will go visit the museum about her today. She certainly fits the bohemian ideal.

But before I do this, I head to my favorite bakery in my neighborhood, where they know me and – even better -one of them speaks English. This is such a relief to me, because I speak no French. This is strange, as I have discovered on this trip that I am quite good with languages, and yet I can’t seem to learn any French. It’s like -I have a block or something. It’s probably that it’s not really needed. It’s not like I’m in the jungle with a tribe, or trying to catch a chicken bus in Guatemala.

I buy some bread, and Marie-Louise (she’s the one who speaks English at the bakery) gives me a tiny little cheese, from the cheese shop across the street. She tells me she got for me so I would try French cheese. I have told her what my daily budget is and she’s astonished that I am eating on that in Paris (but I am and quite well!). Is it so terrible to live on a tiny budget in Paris, that Parisians feel sorry for me and charitiably provide me with cheeses? I thank her for the cheese, but tell her I am not starving by any means. Her bread is keeping me quite full and happy, thankyou very much!

I decide to bring her flowers before I leave the city. She’s been wonderful to me.

I head first to the Pere Lachaise cemetery.

I love cemeteries, but this one is beyond any cemetery-lover’s wildest dream.

For one thing, it’s huge. It’s got 70,000 people buried there, and you literally need a map to find your way around the place. Unfortunately the office is out of maps so I’m on my own.

It doesn’t take long to spot some of the more famous graves. Jim Morrison’s grave has an armed guard standing watch over it and loads of people hanging around it, all looking very serious and talking about the “energy”.

Other graves that already seem to have drawn visitors at this early hour are the graves of Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, and Gertrude Stein.

I wander around for awhile and find loads more interesting people buried there, including Proust, who I feel a certain affinity for after seeing the room he wrote his best work in, now housed in the Paris History Museum. I sit down with Proust and eat some of the bread (delicious) and the cheese (good, but somewhat smelly) and ponder why I like cemeteries so much.

I think what’s most interesting about this place is that it is so huge and so visited, by people all over the world. As I am sitting with Proust, a group of Japanese tourists come and ask to take my picture. Either it’s because they can’t believe I’m eating breakfast while sitting on a Proust’s grave, or it’s for some other mysterious reason.

They turn out to be students on vacation and they have come here to see the grave of Chopin, among others. They’re still there when I leave an hour later.

After I leave the cemetery, I hop on the metro and head to the Latin Quarter.

Anyway, I go to the Latin Quarter because I the first few days I was here I found myself in the middle of a political protest march by “illegal immigrants” from around the world. They had taken over  a church and were on strike.

One of the organizers, a student from the Sorbonne, told me there was going to be another march and asked if I wanted to march with them. Normally, since I am traveling and need to continue with my trip, I’d give a resounding no as an answer-not a good time in my life to get deported! However, this time I said yes, as protests in France , including this one, are very well organized and actually have police escorts. It’s legal and it’s fine with the French government if I join in for a peaceful march.

I met up with the group, this time quite large. Most protesters were men, but there were a few women. I was the only white woman, except for a few people representing different international human rights watch groups. Most of the people were from Africa and the Middle East. We walked together for over an hour, chanting for worker’s rights and human rights. It was an amazing experience. Everyone was so kind to me and came up and talked to me, told me where they were from and a bit about their lives here in Paris.

Some of the things they told me had me wanting to know more, so when we were done marching and they asked me if I wanted to go to a cafe with a group of them and talk more, I did not refuse. One of the students from the university went with us and he translated everything for me.

Many of the “illegals” were extremely educated, well spoken people. They were all doing low paying, menial work in Paris, though- as they could not get any job which matched their qualifications.

Interestingly, the most “bohemian” people I had met in Paris were probably these people (other than students in the universities). They were activists, they were bright, they were arguing, discussing, and philosphizing about everything from the meaning of life to what defines human rights. I found being around them energizing and intellectually challenging.

As we sat drinking very hot, tiny glasses of tea in a North African restaurant, I learned more about the hardships these people are facing.

The issue of immigration -“illegal” and otherwise- is a very charged issue for native Parisians. It is, in fact, a very charged issue in all of Europe. It’s a very charged issue in the United States as well.

The difference in Europe is that European countries are small, while the USA is big. European countries don’t have the space, the infrastructure, the resources, or the jobs to support this huge influx of people crossing their borders everyday.

That’s one side of the story. I wonder if that is actually true.

The protester’s side is much different. They leave terrible situations in their homelands, take dangerous risks to come to Europe, take low paying jobs with minimal benefit, live below the poverty line, and are at the mercy of someone reporting them and being deported at any moment. Many of the people had arrived and found themselves in a situation of being a servant without pay, or working in the sex trade without pay.

I was interested in this last scenario, as I have always had strong views on the sex trade, and how it takes advantage of poor women thruout the world. Many people I have discussed this topic with in the past have defended this industry and it’s practice of giving poor women income. I continue to strongly feel that it is a negative industry and that it does not have a positive end result, no matter how people try to justify it.

I asked one of the women from Senegal if she would be willing to talk to me about her experience in detail for this blog, and she agreed. For my part, I had to agree to let her cut my hair at the salon she was working at, because she needed clients. I agreed, and we set a date for a week later for the interview/haircut!

One of the students was working with Amnesty International, and told me some of the horror stories he had heard in his work. Stories of women, getting a much needed job as a maid in a wealthy Parisian household, but forced to sleep on the floor in a tiny room, without more than one meal a day. Women being beaten if they didn’t bring in enough clients when working the streets. Men getting jobs in construction and the boss not paying them.

I think what most affected me was that, just like the “illegals” coming over our borders in the USA, these people from Northern Africa, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, and so on, are facing tremendous risk to come here-and when they finally do come into our countries, all we can say to them is “not in my backyard”. Oh, we feel for them , we do. And we want the best for them. But we don’t want to share our resources. Many of them, if they are deported, face certain death.

It was a real learning experience, spending my morning with them. I felt so..lucky..that I come from a country where-at least at the moment-I can have certain freedoms, that many people in the world simply don’t have.

I told them I was heading to Montmarte next, and wondered if they had visited the Pigalle neighborhood? (Pigalle is a famous neighborhood for tourists picking up prostitutes). They told me many of the women they had worked with were working there or had  worked there.

I took the metro to Montmarte, getting off at the Pigalle station. It was everything I expected it to be-in spite of the time of day, there were plenty of prostitutes around and the place was pretty much low cost eateries, fancy strip clubs, and sex toy/porn shops. The name “Pigalle” comes from the name soldiers coined for the place in WW two, “Pig Alley”.

But I was after bohemian Paris, so I kept looking. Montmarte was a famous neighborhood at one time-for more than just a place to find sex. It was the center of intellectual and artistic life. Until everyone up and moved to Montparnasse, another neighborhood in Paris.

Most people go to Montparnasse to experience a bit of bohemian history, as everyone lived and frequented the place from Hemingway to Cocteau to Beckett. But Montparnasse was actually too touristy for me-I had visited it a few days before and found any remnant of that old Bohemian life gone, given over to tourists buying totebags  saying “I love Paris” and overpriced cafes, charging you more because Hemingway sat there once with his cronies and drank coffee.

I think today..that I was looking more for  a piece of the past of Paris’ celebrated  Bohemian history, but also..where are the Bohemians of today? Are they all sitting around in cafes still, discussing the meaning of life, or are they..elsewhere?

This is what led me to Montmarte..and to Pigalle.

Pigalle itself is a famous place, mostly made famous by Toulouse-Latrec, a tiny man with tremendous talent whose subjects of his paintings tended to be prostitutes. He lived  in the area and I walked by his house.

Always broke, he couldn’t afford models and some say he couldn’t be intimate, either-ergo his obsession with prostitutes, absinthe, and dancers from the Moulin Rouge.

The Moulin Rouge looked exactly as I pictured it in my mind-bright, red windmills, neon lights..and prostitutes standing outside the door.

Across the street from the Moulin Rouge is The Museum of Erotic Art, whose literature outside promises that it’s museum is “a very tasteful collection of educational art” . This didn’t cause me to go inside, as the thought of standing around looking at sex toys and drawings of people in strange positions I did not find particularly interesting.  How tasteful could it actually be? Besides, I was told by several Parisian women that it was not a good idea to go to the place alone. Apparently lonely men wander around in it, hoping for companionship! ( Also hoping for companionship were several prostitutes waiting around nearby, hoping museum-goers would be more interested in them after their visit to the museum).

I walked by the museum of Montmarte -a kind of interesting museum on the neighborhood itself and it’s history of writers and artists who had lived there. I thought it was overpriced though, costing ten dollars to get in. I already knew alot about the history of the neighborhood and it’s colorful characters by my fascination with the place in my early twenties-I read everything I could get my hands on about it back then- so I skipped going in.

The outside of the museum is perhaps more interesting, anyway, as it’s the oldest structure still standing in the neighborhood. Of course, like any old structure, they have gutted it and replaced it all, so it just..seems old..even though it’s mostly brand, spanking new.

I continued on my walk.

I found Picasso’s house and studio, which wasn’t hard, due to the crowd of tourists. It’s actually only one of one of his many studios in Paris-I think there are six-although this is the only one promoted and that tourists seem to know about. It’s called the “Laundry Boat” but I’m not sure why. Picasso lived there with a mix of other artists. groupies, and women. What’s strange it’s not the real building he lived in..the real one actually burnt down in the 1970’s and the French government built a new one on the same spot. Strange.

Van Gogh lived here, too, in total abject poverty. Although he kept to himself and wasn’t as flamboyant as many of the other famous artists who lived here.

I was getting depressed. All the sex workers, white guys driving by in nice cars and picking women up (and it wasn’t even 1 oclock yet!) , and the smell of urine combined with thinking about poor artists was depressing me.

Luckily, it wasn’t for long, as as I kept walking, the Pigalle neighborhood began to change. It suddenly seemed entirely devoted to music and musicians. Instead of prostitutes, the streets were lined with music shops selling every kind of instrument you can think of. I walked into one that had a wonderful collection of sitars, and instrument they play in India, Turkey, and the Middle East. As I tried to play it, the clerk, who was from India, talked to me in English about the next stop on my trip, Calcutta, India.

Apparently Calcutta is the place to buy sitars. (Note to self: buy sitar in Calcutta.)

It’s also the cultural capitol of India, with one of the largest book fairs in the world taking place while I will be there.

There are more writers in India-and particularly Calcutta-than any other place in the world.

My new friend was a writer, as well. There are lots of writers in Paris, and there are lots of places to read your work, as well. I jotted down some info on where to go to a free poetry reading that night, and then headed to what would turn out to be one of my favorite  museums, which was close by, called ” The Museum of the Romantic Life”.

It’s a long name, but it aptly describes what it is -a museum devoted to several of the key players in the Romantic movement.

The museum is in the house of Romantic painter Ary Scheffer, who died in the 1850’s, leaving behind quite a collection of paintings, writings, and objects from his life and those of his friends, who included George Sand, Chopin, and so on. And..the museum is free!

The entire first floor of the museum is devoted to George Sand.

Sand wasn’t a man-she was a woman, who went by a man’s name to get her books published. At least at first anyway, until she started liking going by a man’s name, wearing men’s clothes, and going around doing things men do so much that it became more than a pen name. It became who she was.

Born with the lengthy burdensome name fo Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, Sand was born into a life of wealth and prestige-she was related to Louis the XVI, and her life came along with all the golden carrots any young woman could ask for. She eventually married well, took on a title, had a couple of children..and then decided, along with her husband, to have an open marriage, for about five years or so.

During this time, her affairs and her lifestyle became quite public, and her reputation developed for being quite a different sort of woman than the women of her time. She  believed in-and practiced-“free love”. Partnered with this, she was an astounding intellectual thinker, able to debate and discuss ideas with anyone. In fact, she was one of the few women who was able to be on equal and easy footing with men, at a time when women of her class did little but needlepoint. At about this time in her life, she took to mostly dressing in men’s clothes, walking around smoking cigars, writing and acting in plays, and in general, seducing any men-or women-she wanted.

She was interested in all sorts of creative pursuits, especially writing, and during her lifetime wrote prodigiously, well, and is unmatched in how she writes about the human condition and it’s foibles.

Ary considered Sand one of his closest friends, and the museum is devoted to items of Sand’s that she either gave him or that were collected from Sand’s estate for the museum. The most interesting room is an actual room of Sand’s, where she wrote and lived and worked. It has many strange things in it, including a creepy plaster cast of Sand’s right forearm..and a plaster cast of Chopin’s left hand.

Chopin’s music plays the whole time in the museum, which gives it a eerie quality. I sort of felt like..I was in someone’s actual house that was being lived in, not just a museum.

Chopin was Sand’s main squeeze. He managed to tolerate her strange ways and wild life until about two years before he died, when he decided to disagree with her about the choice of husband her daughter had made. Sand had already disowned her daughter over it, and Chopin liked the guy, so he gave the match his blessing, and in doing so bid adieu to Sand.

Just reading all the stuff about Sand and looking at her photos made me admire her-but she must have been an incredibly hard character to live with! She was kind of…self centered…

Ary himself was a  very good artist, with his work-and that of his friends-all displayed on the second floor.

The museum had a giftshop and a tearoom, but both were outside my budget, so I moved on.

The next stop was the cemetery of Montmarte. It was somewhat of a nasty walk to get there, as it gets more and more downtrodden the closer one gets to it. There seemed to be alot of underworld action happening near the cemetery..more homeless people, more drug addicts, that sort of thing.

There were also alot of interesting old guys playing chess. I stopped and watched a game, being played by two French men who looked so old I couldn’t even guess their ages. They were being watch by a large crowd of equally old men, one of whom spoke a little English, which he learned in World War Two. He was in his twenties when the war ended, so that would make him..old!

He told me that these two guys had been playing this same game for months. Things were at a standstill.

Meanwhile, he told me he was a painter. Or had been, anyway, when he was young. He told me he had known quite a few of the big artists, long ago. Everyone struggled alot during the war and many artists gave up art. Pretty much all the men got conscripted and everyone was scared to death. People ran out of food and cafes stopped giving out credits for coffee and food, except to the most well known artists and writers, who ended up in terrible debt.There were alot of Jewish artists,writers, and thinkers in the city and the government shipped them all out. Making art became less important than the day to day things in life. So, he stopped painting and never painted again.

Whether of not all of this was true didn’t seem to make much difference,because he wanted me to believe it and I wanted to believe his stories, too. He told me a few more stories about how Paris used to be, back in it’s bohemian days, and I loved Paris in this moment-that I could happen to run into this old, wizened man and that he could give my a memory of Paris no museum could ever give me.

I said goodbye, and kept walking to the cemetery.

The Montmarte cemetery is not as big as the Pere Lachaise cemetery-but it’s still huge. It’s got lots of interesting people buried there, and the cemetery office actually had maps to find them all. Getting in was of course..free!

The Montmarte cemetery..is my favorite cemetery in the world, I think.

I say this because..it feels so untouristy, is so beautiful, and it’s so… French.

Unlike the Pere Lachaise cemetery, which is the most visited cemetery in the world (something to do with the cult status of Jim Morrison), the Montmarte cemetery mostly has French people buried there, not just some famous person who was renting an apartment in Paris and then happened to overdose in it. It’s full of the history of Paris-especially the artistic history of the place.

Some of the graves I found while walking around in it were those of: Alexander Dumas, writer; Gustave Moreau, painter; Stendal, writer; Edgar Degas, painter; and Truffant, film maker.

The cemetery itself is fantasy-like. It’s built in an old quarry, and it’s full of rocks, magical statues, and outlandish memorials that made me feel like I was in a cross between Alice in Wonderland and a Harry Potter book.

One of the most beautiful graves and statues in the entire place was for an Egyptian-born actress named “Dailida”, whose grave was marked by an enormous headstone and  a white, beautiful statue of a woman in front of it. Behind the statue was a radiating sun, in color, and this was surrounded by precise, elegant landscaping.

(You can find a photograph of her grave-and almost any important person’s grave in Paris-by going to the website www.pariscemeteries.com)

I ate my lunch in with Dailida, and wondered about her and her life. She must have been quite an actress to have such a shrine as this built in her honor.

But it was time to go, as I still had a few more things to do today.

I took the metro to Chinatown.

I had a couple of reasons for going there. For one thing, one thing I had noticed today that my search for bohemian culture, the current climate of Paris, seemed…leaning more towards finding it in ethnic, poorer neighborhoods..than elsewhere. Secondly, my new Indian friend had invited me to a poetry reading at a cafe there.

Finding Chinatown wasn’t hard. It’s a bit surreal, and looks like a bit of China plunked down in the middle of what is otherwise a comparatively bland part of Paris. It was full of incredibly cheap shops, kind of like dollar stores, and roasted chickens and ducks with their heads still on them hanging in shop windows.

Finding the cafe for the reading was hard. I got lost about six times before I finally figured out where it was, and when I finally found the place and walked in and sat down I was absolutely worn out!

It actually was a Vietnamese coffee shop..Chinatown, although called Chinatown, is more of a All-of Asian-Cultures-Town than any one culture. It’s certainly not Chinese. When I think Chinatown, I think of the Chinatown of San Francisco, which is clearly Chinatown. Paris’ Chinatown had everyone from Koreans to Thai to who knows who else. Which was nice, actually..everyone getting along.

The Vietnamese place had no name on the door, just a number and a display of rap cd’s and noodles.

Inside, it was full of students of every race and background, sitting around drinking coffee and slurping noodles and talking. I ordered a big bowl of noodles with some chili and some coffee. It was so cheap I was shocked.

This must be where all the poor Parisians eat out, I thought.

The reading began and… I loved it, even though I understood not a word of it. It was all done in a certain style, kind of a rapid-fire almost rapping style. Someone even sang their poetry. It was art performance. It was an amazing night. I finally felt like I had at least come in to contact with the bohemian spirit in Paris. It went on for hours!

At 8pm, I thought I’d better go home-in spite of the fact that the reading/art performance seemed like it was going to go on into the wee hours of the night.

I decided to take the metro home, but I took a couple of wrong turns on the metro and keep trying to guess where to go next, somehow getting fed up and ending up at the Porte de la Villette. I needed to get off the train for awhile and get my bearings..get some air. So I left the station and decided to walk around a little bit.

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because the station was right by the Parc de la Villette, a huge park that is kind of fantasy like and hosts free concerts and events sometimes.

Every September, the city of Paris actually has something that is really cool and it’s actually free, too. It’s called the Jazz a la Villette, and it’s a free jazz festival that lasts for about a week and a half. There are lots of really great jazz musicians that play at the park, and it’s a wonderful, relaxing scene as well. The weather was nice-it was a clear starry night. I sat in the park and listened to the music, and thought about how wonderful it was to be in Paris on my own.

I’ve never liked big cities, in spite of having lived in them several times. The fact that I have been able to be in this huge city alone-and manage to see some of the best of what it has to offer, alone, speaks to how much I have grown from traveling by myself in the past year. I can handle situations-and find opportunities-I would have never been able to even think about in the past.

As for bohemian Paris, I think it lives in my fantasy of the past, more than it does in the present. But it’s nice to know that there is a culture of students, writers, activists, and artists living here, that are finding ways to keep the intellectual landscape of Paris alive and thriving.

I ended up taking the metro to the Bastille station, where I got off and looked at the very beautiful Bastille monument by night-all lit up-and walked home, past all the sidewalk cafes full of smoking Parisians, past the closed up cheese shops, fishmongers, flower-sellers and newstands…and breathed in a big sign of relief when I made all the right turns to end up on the right street where my apartment was.

It’s nice to have a place to go home to in a big city like this.

Gigi

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