Paris Excerpts

Verlaine died in a building on the Rue Descartes. Almost a century later, Hemingway rented a room in the same building. Of that time and room he wrote: "But sometimes when I started a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think: 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.'"

Nearly a hundred years have passed since Hem toiled and sputtered in that room, and I sit in an internet cafe across from his building trying to write one true sentence to send home to my twenty year old son who's in charge of his little sister, who is nine.

I settle on: "Don't forget to turn off the stove."

There are so many ancient churches in Paris that one travel book describes several as being "one of the oldest in Paris". We stumbled across a few, the first one we went into had a Delacroix mural beaming out from the dark interior.

Amidst such magnificent artistry and antiquity, no wonder the Parisian elderly have dignity in their bearing, wisdom in their eyes, elegance in their deportment. And scarves around their necks.

Ah, the scarves of Paris! In Paris scarf wearing is practically a religion. Our Lady of the Scarf, the oldest church in Paris. So I had to have one. My partner took me to a little shop on the Rue Descartes and picked out a gorgeous crimson swath trimmed with gold beads and small red tassels. I wear it everywhere.

Among the sex shops and bawdy shows of Pigalle we look for the infamous Moulin Rouge, hoping for a perfumed whiff of La Belle Epoch. But it turns out to be a tacky, touristy-looking thing, painted a chalky red. It's a fake windmill, of course, never intended to do a windmill's job, and I respect her history as a dancehall and bohemian hangout. But despite Toulouse-Lautrec reproductions on the walls surrounding her, there's no sense of the dancers and artistes who once frequented the place. She's just a giant over-rouged dame living off her past glory.

In the shade beside an ecole, I ask a handsome young Frenchman the way to the Moulin de la Galette (one of the last two remaining windmills of the original fifteen). Transported by the music of his answer, I fail to understand a word of it. Patiently he holds his burning cigarette up in the air and traces a suggested route. I watch the smoke drift in all directions as he intones: "A gauche, a droit..." It works and I find it!

Just down from the Moulin de la Galette is 54 Rue Lepic where Van Gogh once lived with Theo. I stare at the entrance and think about the flame-headed artist bursting out of those doors with easel and paints in hand and hope in his heart. I look at the cobblestones beneath my feet and think of his paint-spattered shoes pounding down on them, and of something he once wrote about an exhibit of Millet drawings: "Take off your shoes, for the place you are standing is Holy Ground." Amen.

Paris is full of carousels, some of them still hand-powered. A little pink and blue toddler merry-go-round is a sign that I'm near my destination, so I put in my earphones to listen to the Amelie soundtrack. Rounding a bend I see the carousel from that movie (top photo). It is just beyond the funicular that takes you up to The Basilique du Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre.

With the soundtrack in my ears I watch the children ride and play, and think about my daughter back home who told me where to find these painted horses. She is the one caring for her little sister today.

I pour a bath while my partner pours the wine. The tub is too narrow for two, but the bathroom itself (sans toilet which has its own little room) is big enough for a small party. We have one every night. He sits with a glass of wine next to the open window, that uniquely Parisian blue-grey light spilling in. I, reclining in the tub and sipping wine, am reborn in the cool breeze wafting in over the rooftops.

I went to Paris and came away feeling as fearless and joyous as I had each time I'd given birth to my three children. And the less fear you have in your soul, Paris whispered to me, the more room there is for l'amour. And what is that?

It is the way Van Gogh saw and painted irises and the way you see his irises. It's a kiss in the Parisian rain, a blackbird on a chimney pot singing sweetly in the morning, your lover bringing you Rhum Baba from the Rue Moufftard as you lounge in bed. It is an understanding of life and all its players that goes to the depth of your soul. And suddenly, plunging into those depths, you find yourself feeling as light as a fairy wing, ancient in understanding, born anew into love, vermillion scarf blowing in the breeze.

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