Dateline Paris: La rentrée is but a few short days off ...and counting. Do we ever outgrow that (cue the whimsical piano) wistful end of summer melancholy...?
There is something magical, unknowable perhaps, about a Paris summer. A sense of being in something beyond boundless vaults of watercolor skies and the sudden stilled urban heartbeat barely discernible in emptied streets (far from touring throngs).
How is April the cruelest month compared to the transcendent anvil-class drag of a fading Paris summer? Summer sneaks in on the tail-end of spring as we're all busy basking in its longingly ached-for balminess. A wily and reluctant guest, it knows when to bolt. It has this dual quality – beneficence mixed with caustic reality: having only just arrived at the cottage, and still busily unpacking – the toothbrush in the cup, t-shirts in draw ....it is always aware of the time to go.
So, lets enjoy what's left!
Today's 60secondparis Newsletter Quadfecta, in no particular order:
1 You Only Guffaw After: Humbling Errors on the Bilingual Path
2 Deflating Ecos - Parisians Doing Weird Planet Things
3 Messy Artwork - The Ugly Times (Where's the Netflix doc?)
4 Zen Time - A visual for the soul
1 You Only Guffaw Later - Language Hit & Pun Accidents
Sure, its fine now. Now I can teach, write the odd article and even probably get mugged in French. I also grasp a satisfying level of French film and theater. Back at the start, there were some absorbing interactions. Here's an embarrassing sampling of some early agonizing errors suffered while learning/struggling and going mano a mano in French.
Dad is Odd - The French word for even (opposite of odd) is 'Pair', a homephone of Pere, (French for 'father/dad'). So, am enrolling my kid in a class which was being run via assigned ticket numbers: Mine was 17. We're milling about in a lounge area when the order comes: “All dads (Peres) please move to the right side”. Organizing by dad versus moms seems weird, but, okay, it IS Paris. So I sidle to the right (and was irked when some moms sneaked in, but, again, c'est Paris... folks are pushy).
A teacher materializes, spies my number 17 and quips “you are not an 'even' (Pair)'. Assuming she'd just challenged my very dad bona-fides, and my hurt aside, I begged to differ, assuring her I was indeed a father (Pere). The brief debate, my plodding flat nasal 'non non non's' etc., versus the stiletto-like sibilance of her Gallic piercings, ended when a British mom (Mere) rescued me, explaining yes I was a 'Pere' (dad) but that my number 17 was impair (French for 'odd')..also adding 'This is how it works here, Dear') and that indeed, as Mme Switchblade Vowels had oozed, I must move to the odd (Impair) side. Huffing deep breaths, and crimson cheeks, I plodded away.
What the 'L' ! About 8 months in and I'm at a swanky home furnishings store trying to buy a laundry basket (panier à linge). I spy a very overworked sales clerk and ask for a large panier de singe (monkey basket or worse, 'basket of monkeys'). She puts down her café, her horoscopes, ...her expression polite, and the laughter almost stifled, “and just what size would Monsieur be needing”? ...ooooo la! The image of that uniquely Parisian curled-up-at-the-edges smile is seared into the back of my mind – (and still tops my mental 'one day I'll have revenge ' list). The store was too snootily expensive, anyway. I went to Ikea. No problems. To this day my son will tease* with 'want me to empty the monkey basket?”
*Within hours of arriving in Paris, our toddler was 100% unerringly bilingual, meaning he could ignore me in both French and English. His tongue gaily pirouetted over lengthy and tortuous multi-voweled words. Frustrating, yet impressive!
Help! My Son is a Wild Bloody Boar! We’re maybe a month in Paris and trauma hits. We're in a temp apartment still hunting permanent digs. My wife is traveling. My son cuts his arm deeply so I bandage him as best as my freelance writer/short-order cook skills allow and whisk him to emergency.
Once at emergency the arm bandage is seeping blood – a visual not helped by the massive red Disney Cars movie bath towel supporting it. The nurses ask how bad the cut is and, racking my anemic French lexicon Rolodex, try to convey 'it is very bloody', c'était très sanglant!....but in the 'speed v. efficiency' heat of the moment, blurt out 'c'est un sanglier très sauvage' ('He is a very wild boar'). Luckily it takes a lot to stun Parisian ER nurses and doctors --'Why yes, of course he is, Monsieur' came one whispered response. Nodding knowingly and with impressive battlefield grace they thanked me and said all will be well. And, ‘will Monsieur please have a seat, over there.’
Chatting with the ER physician after I apologize for my gummed up explanation. “Oh, that’s fine. Happens often. In fact we’re thinking of starting a blog about all the funniest translations we get here”. Feeling slightly redeemed and sorta' off the hook I concur, “that'd be hysterical”. Pen in hand, he then asks if I'd mind repeating again exactly what I'd screamed out on arrival.
Took my kid and vamoosed.
2 Deflating Ecos - Parisians Doing Weird Planet Things
There are strange things done after Paris summer sunsets..especially by a new crop of eco-warriors acting to save the planet. Bands of unassociated yet committed Eco Robin Hooders are out mitigating (their claim) some of the ongoing urban environmental damage while informing people, sometimes politely, to mend their wasteful ways. As in…..
Paris - The City of Blight Energy Waste & Light Pollution: Over the past year or so Paris storefronts have become infected with a gruesome modern plague, GIANT METER HIGH VIDEO MONITORS, currently metastasizing across the urban retail landscape…infecting hair salons, dry cleaners ('pressing'), bakeries (boulangeries--is nothing sacred!) et. al., and monopolizing most of the available window acreage, regardless of size. (Videos showing homes playing in real-estate offices get a pass). But, is there any real need for 3 giant screens in the dry-cleaners' windows next door.....showing in endless loops what appears to be people in Oregon storing linen or skateboard dancing? And, while the place is shuttered for vacation?
In response at least one group has begun blotting out (with black paint) windows harboring the ever-glaring screens. The city of Paris --in a move that'd drive even Big Brother to drink, is equally guilty, erecting 10m high BRIGHTLY lit info signs capable of piercing the thickest black-out curtains or frying a retina... all so we know its 28C outside and that many Paris pools are, of course, closed for vacance! Another idiocy. Other initiatives in development call for limiting the metastasizing of these Invasion of the Monster Screens....and so on.
SUV Mastodon Madness: Deflating Ecos. Like many major cities the Paris Tyre Extinguishers are on the prowl hunting for those planet-suffocating SUV mastodons in our urban midst! See: THE TYRE EXTINGUISHERS
https://tyreextinguishers.com/
In this Le Parisien video post a reporter trails a group out deflating Land Rovers, VOLVO SUV tires etc., in the 7th (n'est pas) ..as the hulking beasts sleep. The groups thinking: maximum impact with no violence. Stickers on car windows warn drivers of the flattened tires, to avoid mishaps. Cruel, unfair? Tis far better than torching noisy cars and motorbikes --a 'thing' some years back in some neighbourhoods.
oooo—eee—ooo
WORST FRENCH INTERNET ATTACK EVER (and which got scant media coverage!) Really? A terrorist attack you never heard of? A dry run? Something far worse? Russians seeking vengeance? Hi-Tech Vigilante Vendettas?
On April 27th Paris (and France) suffered what is being called the 'most significant Internet infrastructure attack' in its history. Very early that day multiple well organized and knowledgeable groups surgically cut and damaged underground 'backbone' comms cables in the east, north & south (near Disneyland). The result tossed untold thousands and thousands into the Internet abyss and cut connectivity between several France regions. Instagram became Maybegram...
'IT IS THE WORK OF PROFESSIONALS' (Nicolas Guillaume - CEO, Nasca Group) The cuts occurred simultaneously and in identical ways. The culprits had their network-tech chops (no pun) --the cuts maximized damage and required extensive repairs. An example, French Tech folks say that after the first cut, probably with a power saw, a second cut was made with the piece in between cuts removed.
It implies a lot of coordination and a few teams,” says Arthur PB Laudrain, a researcher at the University of Oxford. And, this isn't the only attack. What comes next? The banking system, the power grid...
oooo—eee—ooo!
3 Messy Artwork - The Ugly Times (Where's the Netflix doc?)
You'll need a solemn- voiced PBS doc (English accent voice-over) or entire Netflix season to unravel the ever widening investigation into allegedly stolen/illegally obtained, false provenanced, then falsely vouched for art artifacts/antiquities ---plus the metric tonnes of political back-door pressure forcing people to buy or look away or....whatever, that’s currently ensnared the Paris Louvre, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, France Museums, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Suffice to say when you mix political and social upheavals (Arab Spring & varied regional wars) with gobs of cash and banal human greed, with rare artworks and toss same into the already murky inner (can we say quasi-legal) workings of the business end of the art world, it'd be surprising if these situations didn't occur. This seems to be but the tip of the approaching iceberg...
For outstanding news coverage on this, or great stories generally go to art.news click here https://news.artnet.com/
4 Zen Time - A visual for the soul
A Pleasing Video - An oddly calming, almost Zen-like look as a very focused watch tech dissembles then assiduously repairs a wounded Rolex. Personally I find the brand kinda tacky, but its watching the detailed repair work that is mesmerizingly impressive and pleasing. And, just what is he doing with that foaming liquid? How do they not lose one of those tiny pieces?
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