Sleet/hail. I'm not sure what it was. But it came down like madness from the Paris skies a moment ago. Nice. I lived here for three years and have been here many other times, and I've never seen that.
You know what I like about this city (among other things)? It doesn't change. Of course, the Notre Dame isn't going away any time soon. But it's also really nice to go to a favorite cafe or bar or restaurant that's been here ever since I was a lad. It's difficult to find this in the US. Everything in DC becomes a Starbucks over time. Eventually our houses will be Starbucks - great for the morning coffee, but pretty bad for walking around the house naked with the stereo cranked.
Here, I make little stops. Sometimes I rediscover places - "oh yeah, I remember this place. I was with so and so, who I haven't thought about in years. We had a great time." This is what builds a sense of history, which the French are constantly saying Americans really don't have. That's a double-edged sword, of course. Age-old disputes draw from history. But also the meaningfulness of places and people. There are a lot of people I might never remember if it weren't for places associated with them. Think of what disappears in the US through the constant recycling, building/demolishing of places based on whatever the market tells us is rational behavior. It's not just the places that are lost (and we could use fewer pointless strip malls, after all). But it's the people. They may not be the most meaningful people in one's life, but they're there and they're a part of your history. Our closest friends and family are ones with whom we have meaningful histories, experiences,... the relations of time and space, sounds, smells, thoughts, emotions, and touch all bind us to people. Without these relations, we're lost. There's no such thing as a relationship devoid of other relational qualities.
That's what a city like Paris is. It is a complex bundle of histories built upon histories where some become landmarks, places and sights and sounds imbued with meaningfulness, people who change and people who stay the same. For the flaneur, this makes it one of the richest of cities. You only need to be receptive and active.
3 comments:
Yes. That sense of oldness is so easy to take for granted when you are European, or in fact from anywhere but the US. It wasn't until I came to live in Calornia that I began to crave it. Just the sense of stability that being within ancient walls gives you. The sense of a span of time, of a place enduring, of a link to the ancient. After a while here, you begin to float, held by nothing, in a sea where the current changes with the flow of dollars.
Too much place history can make one feel like an interloper, but then maybe that goes with being able to earn a belonging feeling. Anyhow, in a way history is downloadable an American dream is to be able to shuffle. Maybe that goes with being "undiscerning," which could be a mislabel. Disneyland and McMansions don't fool anybody. They're just legitimate play. Many German cities have ancient histories but so much fresh paint and stucco they look like Disneyland, which I don't think a dozen affairs with so-and-sos would overcome. I think central Paris may be just an especially chic Disneyland. Not to mention: Funny you cite Notre Dame for immutability, because it looks so different now than a decade ago --shockingly different from the movie and photo images that primed me--since it had its face scrubbed. It was a little like Las Vegas. "Just a little" I mean, because I'm so discerning. Anyways, re sociogeountetheredness in the USA, I feel your ennui.
(In fact, blogger say I guawp you)
Aw, c'mon, the Notre Dame is just clean. But it's still the same structure. The National Cathedral down the street from me in DC has a Darth Vader gargoyle (among other oddities). I don't think there's some kind of stable Platonic form of culture and its instances. It's just that some people know better when deeper structures to a society destroy things that are ordinarily meaningful to people. Some other people take great pride in that destruction.
Post a Comment