...et puis, je fume

most of you know that i once went to france.
there was this one day, toward the end of my sojourn in the country, that makes me laugh when i think about it. i still wonder how it managed to happen, and what it means about who i really am.

the last ten days of that summer i spent in paris. the first half of it was in the home of a woman not much older than me who taught my friend at his summer language immersion school and was taking a vacay in morocco. she rented me her apartment in montparnasse, within walking distance of the bastille circle and the huge FNAC store. that neighborhood seemed to be the carroll gardens of its time and place, lots of mediterranean and middle eastern foot traffic, turbans and caftans abounding, a bakery where i went to buy one piece of baklava and was given it instead, a shop that i don't know what i went in for, but turned out to be a cave of colors that sent me back into the sunlight blinking and disoriented.

the second five i intended to stay in a hostel. but the owner was a shrewd man who, having told me one hour that he had vacancy, turned me away the next hour when i came back dragging my suitcase. "well, i rented the room since then!" he told me. "there's another hostel down the street." it wasn't a hostel at all, but a comfort inn franchise. i was distraught at the thought of spending so much more money. that night, i called home for some comfort in my loneliness. i can't remember what anyone said.

i began to walk.

i had made plans about the things i would search for, the objectives that would give me a reason to get out into the city, even if they were never achieved. it was a good idea--i don't know how i managed to have it--i'd recommend it to anybody traveling. i decided i was going to find and attend all the regular open markets in paris during the week, especially the organic one on saturdays on boulevard raspail, as i'd learned long ago from adam gopnik in paris to the moon, and i was also going to visit all the public gardens--the jardin de luxembourg, the jardin des plantes, i think there was another on the list. and also i was going to pay a visit to all the english language bookstores in paris. i think there were five--shakespeare and co., the san francisco book company, the red something or other, the princess bookstore (i think it was called) in st. germain, the abbey or abbott or something (owned by a canadian)--this one turned out to be my favorite, because it was the pokiest and also because the owner mistook me at first for a frenchwoman. for my part, i mistook him for sebastian cabot--he had that dry, mildly prepossessing lecherous air about him. i asked him, "can you usually tell when someone walks in whether you should speak to them in french or in english?" he said, "usually. but you were ambiguous." sometimes i still wonder after him.

i think it was the same day--anyway, i was wearing the same clothes, i'm almost sure. they were a skirt i had bought in biarritz, and a thin white shirt with a tuxedo front and tiny sleeves that i had bleached from yellow to white while i was in the north country on a sheep farm. i began the day, i remember, walking down the hill from the pantheon, my unkempt hair tied up with a flower in it. two men working with a white van on the side of the road watched me as i passed and saluted me with the most brilliant gallantry, calling me "lovely miss" and gesturing as if they were doffing their hats, as i passed them. oh! in that moment, something fell off and something came over me, simultaneously. the heartbreak i had suffered earlier, in the spring, evaporated completely. and i realized, "i am pretty. just by virtue of being a woman, i am lovely and powerful and a benison on the earth...at least as far as men are concerned." i had never felt pretty in my life. not like that. never convinced.

i pattered through st. germain and i heard the strains of jazz being played as i approached the church. there were three skinny white guys set up near a bus stop--a drummer with only a snare, an upright bass, and a guy with an electric keyboard. the bassist was singing. i sat down on the bench and stared at them with open-mouthed delight. i felt as if they'd been waiting there for me.

there was a guy sitting on the bench beside me, but i didn't notice that he was there until he said to me, "are you waiting for the bus?" i said, "no, i'm just listening to the music." he was the musicians' friend. when he learned my name, he shouted, "doc!" and the bassist looked up. he told them to play a song that has my name in it. i felt as if they really had been waiting for me, there. they told me about themselves a little, and that they'd be playing under one of the bridges that night.

i sailed across one of the bridges late that afternoon and was stopped by a group of american students who motioned and gesticulated at me to take their picture. again delighted, i made indistinct noises and nodded my head and took the picture. they all said, "merci, thank you, merci." i wished someone was around to laugh with.

and then i heard jazz, again. this time it was a saxophone, all by itself. i stopped in the middle of the bridge--i wish i could remember which one, it wasn't pont neuf, at least--and leaned my elbows on the edge and looked down. a young black man in a white t-shirt and dark jeans, with a clean-shaven head, was playing alone on the river-side walk. when he finished his tune i began to clap for him. he looked up, saw me, and he broke into a smile and motioned for me to come down. i did go down to him, because his smile looked just the same as how i felt--as if he'd been waiting there for me to show up.

i went down and learned his name was jean, and he was recently returned from a stint in new york, and he couldn't wait to go back. i don't remember what all we talked about, but we arranged to meet later that night, for he was playing with a group at one of the caveaus off boulevard st. michele.

i met him there, quite late. the little square was busy, full of noisy bars and dark shady entrances to the caveaus. i remember a very big greek restaurant as brightly lit as a denny's. i went down into the caveau where i was supposed to meet him. fortunately he was right at the bottom of the stairs. he introduced me to his friends--one of them wore a leather jacket and no shirt underneath. we all gave kisses. the room was bathed in red light, the couches uphosltered in velvet, full of young dark-skinned men and bored-looking, cheap-looking white girls who sat as only american girls ever do. i met their eyes and decided i wasn't one of them. i sat near the front with jean and we watched his friends begin their set. it was dynamite. it was beautiful. i told jean how i liked it. he was scowling at how derivative, how uninnovative it was. then he got up and played. it was sublime. it was transcendent. he was better than all of them. he made their already fluid music tipsy and god-like.

then he said he was going to meet a friend at another caveau, maybe play another set. i said i'd go with him for a minute, but had to leave soon. we found his friend at the other caveau but the music wasn't happening, apparently. as we walked through a wide alleyway, we passed two of the skinny white guys i'd met earlier, doc and the guy who had been sitting on the bench. doc was carrying his bass. they both passed me and looked worried when i said hello.

it was at that point that i realized jean was no longer smiling as he had been under the bridge. i asked him what was wrong. he began to rail about the jazz scene in paris, how it meant nothing, how he needed to go back to new york, many specifics about people i didn't know and music i hadn't heard. i told him i liked what i had heard thus far, it reminded me of john coltrane. he said it was nothing like john coltrane--coltrane was an innovator, there was nothing like that in paris, jazz was dying or dead there. we proceeded toward the metro stop that i needed to get back to my hotel. i stopped at the stairway and said, "well, thank you for..." he looked at me but seemed not to see me at all, and said, savagely, "have a nice night." i booked it down the stairs.

i was the only one on the platform. i waited for a long time. it occurred to me that jean could have said, or done, quite a lot of things as we walked around the wet streets, those crowded and those empty, in those last two hours after midnight. i saw three young people come down onto the platform opposite me, two guys and a girl, all dressed as only americans do, loud and laughing but mercifully sober. i couldn't wait to go to bed.

they talked and talked among themselves, mentioning frequently how annoying it was to wait so long for the train. then an attendant materialized and walked up to them and said they had no more trains coming that way. "what?" they begged him, stricken. i strained to hear him. he said, "no, no more trains tonight coming this way. only that one..." he pointed toward my side of the tunnel. and in the same moment i saw the light and heard the approach of the train bound for montparnasse. the last thing i heard was the three on the other side bandying about the word "taxi."

on board the last train home, i couldn't wait to go to bed. i couldn't wait to wake up the next morning. all the cliches are true. paris, je t'aime. i love paris in the springtime, i love paris in the fall. something wonderful happens in summer. april in paris... il y a tout ce que vous voulez aux champs elysees...

i look back and i think, "what? me? how?" was it summer madness? was it drunkenness on self-discovery?...or something? i came back changed. truly God was looking out for me, and i thank him very kindly for it. but was it foolishness, or was it qi, that secret something of which deepak chopra's book is only the first to advocate? i wish i knew.

i think it was sparks to a tinder that was already there. it has become a fire that still burns, sustained by the breath of certain mad moments, impetuous imperatives, exultant craziness that somehow avoid embarrassment even if they deserve it.

...makes me wonder if i want that little fire to grow. i think that i do, most of the time, but who knows? it might lead to worse places than a deserted metro stop in the wet midnight.

we used to discuss at school whether fire was alive (sorry, we were reading the greeks). it gives the appearance of other living things, in that it breathes, in a way, and it has forward motion, in a way, and it certainly consumes. yet it is immaterial--it can occupy the same space as a material body without being lessened itself.

after these observations, it seems possible that fire is sort of the natural world's parallel to the human soul. everything alive must follow the pattern of fire by "burning" its particular form of energy for its own sustenance--oxygen in, carbon out.

this conclusion doesn't really resolve my personal question, though. soul is essential to the human as fire is to nature, but it can overcome and destroy its originators. you think you'd do well with more, until you have suddenly have more than you can handle.

soul is not something to be played with; it wants supervision and a skilled hand to control its growth.