Jean's coat of arms.

Cool carved-stone ceiling over part of the spiral staircase in the Tour de Jean Sans Peur.

Tour de Jean Sans Peur.

Bofinger ceiling.

Bofinger.

Place des Vosges.

The Carnavalet Museum has a nice collection of old shop signs. This one (about 4 feet wide) seemed appropriate after my lunch at Bofinger.

A glass of espresso before hitting the Carnavalet the second day.

One of the courtyards at the Carnavalet museum.

The same courtyard through an interior window.

And another window.

Inside the Carnavalet.
Happy-happy-joy-joy...

This is the organ at St. Eustache. I silhoutted the blur that was the organist taking a bow so you can get an idea of the size.

The silhouette on the left is a young Japanese guy who shared my shelter for ten minutes without so much as meeting my eye. He's either very shy, or very freaked out by an old lady laughing at the lightning, or very local.




I wish this were a better shot. I was trying to catch the rain hitting a table when I realized the guys in blue had started waving at me and my camera. They couldn't possibly be Parisians. About then was when I realized my camera was catching a lot of spray, so I had to put it away.

1) France takes credit for having invented the shopping mall a few centuries ago. Here and there around the city, there are these "passages" or "galeries," covered areas lined with little shops. This one is the Passage du Grand Cerf.

I looked up "cerf": it means "stag." Don't ask me why this is named the Big Stag.

Oh, crap, the kid has spotted my camera. I'm exposed as a tourist. He wants money for something having to do with Senegal.





2) These places are so cool. They should be humming with shoppers, but the ones I've seen have been rather dead. Even on a Saturday, many of the tiny shops are closed, and there are empty storefronts scattered about.



4) Out the other end and we're on rue St. Denis, the Big Stag Party.


5) Back inside, looking in the other direction. I like the 1800s better.

This is my neighborhood church, St. Eustache, a five-minute walk from my apartment. It was built during the years between 1532 and 1640, but the parish it serves (workers at Les Halles market) goes back to the 1200s.

Moliere and Richelieu were baptised here, Louis XIV (the Sun King) took communion here, Mozart's mother's funeral was held here, and Voltaire is buried here.

The pyramids you see in the foreground are part of the Forum des Halles, a huge underground shopping mall that was built where the old marketplace used to be.

The projections you see along the right-hand side of the church are roof drains.

On a warm evening, dishes clinking, rumble of conversation, the street sounds like a big dinner party. Which is exactly what it is.

Occasionally a glass hits the pavement, accompanied by laughter. When a full wine bottle goes, though, nobody laughs.

So there you are, seated at a tiny table on the narrow sidewalk, 10:00 in the evening, innocently enjoying your Bordeaux and your steak tartare, when--what the...?

les Motos

Another day, sigh, another demonstration. Don't ask me what it's all about. They're always very organized, printed t-shirts and all, so I think it's safe to assume they're labor unions. The bigger ones are accompanied by traffic cops and followed by street sweepers, but these little ones just appear out of nowhere.

Trying to find a fork. My apartment was designed for a seven-footer who takes up very little horizontal space. Wrong on both counts. This picture is for Susan M., who wanted a picture of me in Paris.

A fraction of the Louvre at closing time. Tiny people in the distance under the arches, far left. You go down two escalators inside the pyramid and find yourself in an enormous, noisy room surrounded by ticket desks and packs of tired tourists, at least half of whom cut in front of you in line at Starbuck's. More escalators go up into different wings of the building, and one hallway leads to an underground shopping mall. It's just like a regular mall, with record stores, etc, but as you walk along you can see walls of the medieval structure that used to be here.

Washing Pei's panes. At least, that's what I think they're doing with this machine that very slowly crawls along the metal frame. The water that you see gushing is a fountain on the other side of the pyramid.

I can't help myself: it's the "how it happens" that interests me. I showed you the Pyramid window washer, and now here is the back yard of the Tuileries Gardens.

And, if you look very carefully, you can see the Tuileries cat. No, that's not a cage. He's just sunning himself like all his fellow Parisians on a nice day. What with four outdoor cafes and a sandwich stand, he probably has plenty of work to do. And he has the sandbox that other cats can only dream of.

Parisian canines, tail end of Louvre in background.

The other night the battery in my alarm clock went dead. Not to worry. The next morning I was awakened by a small oompah band. Clusters of kids in paper costumes were parading down the street, tossing confetti at onlookers, accompanied by an equal number of parents with cameras. I haven't the slightest idea what this was all about.

Jardin des Tuileries. I had lunch here in this cafe. Louvre in the background.

Jardin des Tuileries. Arc du Carrousel in the background. Haha in foreground, cordoned off for your safety.

But where's the merry-go-round, I wondered? "Carrousel," I find, once meant a kind of equestrian spectacle, with costumed horses dancing and performing pantomimes. They were popular in the 1600's. Henri IV held one that included two elephants, at midnight, by torchlight, in the courtyard of the Louvre. The courtyard became known as the Cour du Carrousel.

Centuries later, Napoleon celebrated himself with a "small" triumphal arch there in front of his house, the Tuileries. Not "the" Arc de Triomphe, but l'Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. Nowadays, there's an underground shopping mall in the same area, the Carrousel du Louvre.

If you go to Paris in March, don't forget your coat.
(Jardin des Tuileries)

The view from my kitchen. I figured that rain-stained fiberglass to be an attic, but last night there was a light on in there, and some of it appears to be actual glass windows. It can only be the garret of a starving artist.

Bonjour Houston! Back online again, I feel as if I have just returned from the dark side of the moon.
Sorry, no photos yet. I've spent the last couple of days just feeling my way around, finding food, cigarettes, etc. It took me two days to figure out how to use the French phone card successfully (the "1" button sticks on my phone), half an hour to assemble the ironing board (part of it was hiding in the closet), and an hour learning to change the channel on the TV (a mixed marriage of satellite and local broadcast, remote and manual, with instructions to press one of the buttons "gently"). I've washed my clothes twice, as I try to decipher where the water softener is supposed to go (white crud all over black pants), and I was able to heat my pizza to lukewarm only by insisting to the oven that I am in charge here (it's a combination convection/microwave whose instructions are in inscrutable symbols--French or German words would have been preferable).
I avoided the TV as long as I could stand it, not wanting to waste valuable Paris time on brain-numbing that I can accomplish perfectly well at home, but last night I gave in and watched several hours of Law & Order dubbed in French. Pretty weird. The cute blond prosecutors all have cute blond voices, and Lenny Briscoe sounds extremely nasal--guess they got a load of that "nez" and just had to go with it.
My first day out walking, I ran across a sidewalk photo shoot involving a platinum blond model with lollipop-red lips wearing a tight outfit of sparkly pink and black. Her t-shirt read, "Shopping in Beverly Hills." She had three identical pouffy, white, immaculately groomed miniature poodles on three leashes and they were having a marvelous time darting and jumping, entangling her legs. There was a dog handler there, but they only acknowledged his presence briefly and continued cavorting. You could tell the model was professional, making an effort when the videographer called "action," but she would occasionally let herself give in to a genuine smile at the humor of the situation.
Art students: remember when we read that article about women in impressionist paintings being cordoned off by barriers like balcony gratings? I have one of those wrought-iron gratings in front of my eight-foot tall casement window! I was really hoping I would. It's so Paris.
I'm taking mental notes about what I want to photograph and in a couple of days I'm going to take my camera out and just concentrate on shooting stuff. I don't like to carry it with me all the time because it marks me as a tourist. Without the tourist gear, I can masquerade as une Parisienne until I open my mouth to speak.
Language success: I asked a simple technical question when I was buying a battery charger and I understood the answer.
Language failure: I'm smoking unfiltered cigarettes today.
A bientot!

When I mentioned my Running Away To France fantasy to N. she excitedly exhorted me to "Go to France! Go to France and paint! I'll pay you my fee if you'll go to France!"

I've never seen her quite that way before. I just may have mentioned this fantasy once or twice previously in the past 15 years.

I e-mailed G.K. about it and she replied with a three-word message: "GO TO FRANCE!!!"

G.C. told me I had to go so she could live vicariously through me. As far as I know or suspect, that is the first time anyone has ever felt such a desire. I haven't been living the kind of life, so far, that is likely to set anyone's imagination on fire.

S. used the last minutes on her phone card to call me and say, "Last week you couldn't get off the couch and now you're going to Paris?" She told me she always thought I should do that.

M. says she thinks she shrieked, and she certainly got light-headed. I haven't seen so many exclamation points in a message since Grandma died.

P.S. is always supportive and enthusiastic about all my endeavors, and hasn't let me down on this one.

P.R. said, "It's about fucking time."

You guys are so great! You've helped transform a wall of fear into a disgusting little beast that I just kick out of my way. I don't even have an airline ticket yet, and already this trip has been an enlightening experience.

Around the Ides of March, I will be in Paris looking for an internet connection, and will start posting photos soon after. This won't be a fancy-schmancy web page. I don't want to waste precious Paris time honing HTML or striving for Photoshop perfection. It's just a way to show you pictures without jamming up your in-box.

I'll have the same e-mail addresses and I can still write to you individually.

Cats love to do beadwork.