The Weekly Screed (#856)

Rules for well-fed romantics
by David Benjamin

“Paris is a place where, for me, just walking down a street that I’ve never been down before is like going to a movie or something. Just wandering the city is entertainment.”
                                              — Wes Anderson

PARIS — Lisa, who’s much younger than I and naturally contrarian, leans toward sarcasm when I issue one of my rules for how to behave in this city. Despite her protests, though, I think Lisa secretly understands that Paris is, to the French, as Yellowstone is to Americans, a national treasure wherein a certain standard of comportment must be encouraged, lest it succumb to the human tendency to trample and deface the most beautiful places on earth in pursuit of a selfie.

I often suggest, for example, that people should not bring children under the age of 25 to Paris. Leave them behind, preferably in a nice kennel. There’s nothing here for kids but EuroDisney — which is poor justification for shlepping two or three bored-to-death mozniks to the lascivious domain of Josephine Baker and Serge Gainsbourg. Disney has outposts closer to home, where the sweaty hireling inside the Minnie Mouse costume speaks English and takes regular baths.

Lisa is especially irked by my ban against ordering eggs for breakfast here. The French make the best omelettes anywhere, but for lunch. Morning means bread and coffee, and maybe an overpriced glass of O.J. I cannot, I know, prevent tourists from demanding bacon and eggs over-easy with white toast and jam, nor can I console them when they learn that no such options appear on any Paris menu.

Likewise, I’m powerless to prevent Parisian victualers from trying to accommodate — and even  emulate! — the philistine tastes of my countrymen. For example, Paris is recently gripped by a bizarre hamburger outbreak. Suddenly, in every café, you see trendy hipsters jabbering in French and eating deluxe baconburgers, but… with a knife and fork? Lift the bun and you might find stuff like foie gras, avocado slices, fourme d’Ambert and tapenade. I know. This is wrong.

Just as Americans will never sculpt a proper croissant, the French will never really figure out the cheeseburger. And they don’t need  to. This is a city where — in any of a thousand bistros, you can sit down to simple, sublime dishes that nobody makes properly anywhere else: pot au feu, boeuf bourguignon, confit de canard, ris de veau, souris d’agneau, sole meunière, a half-dozen little garden snails drenched in garlic butter. Amidst this culinary luxury, there is no reason for people — even homesick foreigners — to blow $20 on a faux Whopper.

The same goes for pizza. They have ‘em here, but they don’t get it.

In Paris, food should be everyone’s foremost objective. Not museums, not fashion, certainly not souvenirs, not the Eiffel Tower, not the boat trip or the fake artists who infest Montmartre, nor even the Ferris wheel in the Tuileries (but you should ride the Ferris wheel!). Here, the prime directive is to eat — well! A couple of rules: First, be thrifty but don’t be cheap. This only works if, second, you read a little. There are dozens of guidebooks to conduct you into cozy, friendly, affordable bistros where each dish is lovingly concocted and served with a proud flourish.

One other thing: Drink wine at lunch… dinner, sunset, bedtime! This is Paris and tomorrow you die.

But enough about food. Most of my Paris rules are personal — reminders to myself that prevent me from hunkering upstairs, settling into a rut and missing the latest gay-pride parade. Among my most important rules: Obey the sun.

Paris weather blows in unimpeded from the Atlantic Ocean, changing not daily but hourly, bringing with it Cole Porter’s drizzle and Voltaire’s mordant overcast. So, when the sun peeks through and the sky goes capriciously blue, I’m out the door with camp and camera, observing another rule: Details, details.

The views of Paris are magnificent, like the nave of Notre Dame seen from the pont de la Tournelle, or the sacred heart of Montmartre from atop the Butte s Chaumont. But broad vistas are few. Most are obstructed by cars and buses, walls, buildings, trees and scaffolds, or what I usually call “human clutter.” In the absence of panoramae, I seek out the overlooked minutiae, small features that distinguish Paris from anyplace else. One example is a street name etched into a limestone cornerstone on the narrow lane where I live. The building has to be at least 250 years old, because it was in the 18th century when street names were chiseled right onto the walls. Paris did not then have those cool blue street signs.

I look for chiseled street corners and take photos when I find one — rue de Bussy, rue de l’Hirondelle, rue des Rats (really!). But the one on my corner is special, because it’s defaced. This happened in 1789, when the anti-clerical leaders of the French Revolution violently edited every street, square and edifice that bore the name of a Catholic saint. Hence, my street, rue St. Séverin, became rue Séverin after some Jacobin zealot sloppily plastered over the “St.” on the corner building. In all the years since, that vandal’s handiwork has yet to be properly repaired.

Another rule: Go to church.

Paris is a city of churches, most centuries old, with ceilings that soar and buttresses that fly. Walls covered with forgotten art, by great masters and pious daubers, flicker with candlelight. These eglises are cool and hushed, except when the organist is practicing or the choir is rehearsing. They are refuge from the hurly-burly and a stroll through portals of time into the past. There’s always one old lady praying. If someone I know back home is sick, I drop a coin and light a candle.

I use the churches of Paris to rest and reflect, but also to test my modest skill as a shutterbug. In the shadowed colonnades, lit mostly by sunlight through stained glass (if the sun is out at all), I bate my breath and try to hold still long enough (a fifth or a quarter of a second) to get a clear, focused image of the altar, its towering crucifix and the stained-glass madonna beyond. I steady myself against a pillar and fill five, six, ten frames. If I’m lucky, one shot succeeds — a small triumph and a lovely image. Usually, I forget the name of the church.

One more: Explore!

Every tourist knows the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay (and its crowds), but few ever hear about the funky hunting museum in the Marais, see the Monet lilypads at the Marmottan or visit Gustave Moreau’s slightly spooky house in the Ninth. Not to mention all the naked ladies, in oil and bronze, at the Musée Maillol.

By obeying my hiking imperative, I’ve watched ballerinas flit past the windows at 41, rue du Temple. I’ve gone due west from the Métro station at Pré-St. Gervais by way of rue Mouzaia in the communist Nineteenth, popping into the cobbled streets (called villas), erected for the workers who built the park at Buttes Chaumont, now some of the most coveted and charming townhouses in the city. I’ve traversed the Promenade des Plantes, stumbled into the Marché d’Aligre and its amiable wine purveyor, Le Baron Rouge, and found the secret garden of the Société des Gens de Lettres. And I’ve lingered with itchy feet at the polished circles in the pavement along the Seine which on every summertime Friday turn into dancefloors, for deft partners circling effortlessly through tangos and waltzes, quick-steps and salsa, through the jitterbug, the peppermint twist and the cha-cha-cha.

I’ve even found the zoo.