The Lexicographer's Rules

Real school doesn’t begin for me until July 3. Began a wine and cheese how-to course at school yesterday, an extracurricular thing taught by a French-looking Frenchman: blue blazer over a cotton shirt with the top button undone, no undershirt, grey chest hair showing, thriving head hair springing out at all angles but still in control, leather soled dress shoes, army green heavy slacks. He’s got that slightly elongated Gallic head. When he speaks English, his voice is higher than when he speaks French, though this is variable; I suspect he is amusing himself by imitating some of the American accents. Funny guy, anyway, and even though some of the jokes were tired. We ran over by about a half hour. The room was packed with people who just wanted to drink wine and those who know everything about it already. What is it about a 19 year old that prevents them from biting their tongues every time they know the answer? Was I like that? I think I was. Saraya and I had dinner at La Caspienne, on Raspail, a small place with a bit of elegance, but otherwise of no particular note. We had meant to go one block up to an Italian joint called Mamma’s, but we were gabbing and not watching, and so turned one block early, sat down, looked at the menu and noticed there was no pasta anywhere. We stuck around for decent Greco-Persian food. The waitress chided Saraya in a friendly, motherly way for not finishing her food. Nice woman. Saraya is 19, and the whitest, palest Brazilian I know. She speaks four languages and has an Italian boyfriend, to answer your unasked question.

Otherwise. Ran across the Jardin de Luxembourg today, about the time I needed a break. A great, beautiful place. I took a wad of pictures, but none of them really captured how pleased I was to run across the trees and benches and finely manicured beds and the greenness everywhere, French folks reclining in all poses, necking even, but no sun-bathing on anything but the face, shoulders and hands. Non-Parisian French old folks on holiday in Paris look exactly like English old folks on holiday in Paris. My boxes arrived via UPS yesterday looking like war relics and carrying a hefty import duty. Morons in New York are responsible for this, but I doubt I will find satisfaction from here. At BHV, I bought an answering machine and two electric socket strips. I have yet to find a laundry.

The best way to pick your Paris guidebook is to find out if it mentions BHV, the Bazar Hotel de Ville. If it doesn’t, don’t buy it. The BHV is a cross between Macy’s, K-Mart and Home Depot. Absolutely incredible. The basement is a paradise of knobs, hinges, plugs, little odd metal pieces, hardware, hammers, screws, saws, signs, nails, plastic, aluminum, awls, axes, mallets, brushes, buckets, sinks, tubs, windows, scoops, shovels, picks, batteries, maps, oil filters, air filters, everything. Upstairs is a huge quantity of clothes, electronics, music, books, perfume, lingerie and the other usual items. The place isn’t quite as big as Macy’s, but it’s in the running. And it’s a five minute walk from my apartment.


Okay, okay. The audience clamours for pictures of things they’ve seen before. I dunno why this is. So, left to right, Notre Dame, the Seine and the Metro. In the upper left corner of this page is Centre Pompidou. It’s obvious to you by now, I think, that these pages are not written for the long-time Paris visitor or local, yes? They are written for people who will never get here, or perhaps have visited once for a short time and wish to return, and they are written, of course, for myself. An audience is appreciated but not necessary. I ran across Notre Dame by accident and was inspired to create the Notre Dame Index for Acceptability. The Index measures the likelihood that you will feel like a tourist even if you’re not. Of course, you’re asking me, Grant, how can you be a tourist if you carry around a camera? I keep it in my pocket when not in use? Attitude? I dunno. Anyway, the Index: Count the number of Americans you hear. Divide by the number of French voices you hear. Count the number of pictures being taken and multiply that by the number of groups of two or more people wearing the same shirt, usually student groups, but sometimes families or couples. Add the first number (voices) to the second number (picture taking groups) and add the number of Germans, crying babies, crying German babies, and multiply by that whole result by the number of white Reeboks you see. Notre Dame, on a quick walk-by, rated a high of 485. The street outside my apartment rates a zero. These are the two extremes on the scale so far.

No surprises yet. My French, which I have been decrying for weeks as justification for lynching, has turned out to be more successful than I expected. The right words just seem to fly out of my mouth.  I visited the school’s “campus” yesterday to pick up some paperwork, and today to use their computers (LibertySurf, the free French Internet service provider I installed, had screwed my TCP/IP preferences; all is fine now). I am struggling to keep an open mind about my classmates, as I will be spending the next year with them, but they are working overtime to stimulate my misanthropy. They remind me of when I first returned to school last year: I couldn’t figure out what that supercilious grin was on everyone’s faces. A constant, subconscious smirk. I’ve decided this is the smirk of privilege. This is what a certain type of spoiled child who knows he’s got a good thing going wears. That is what my classmates are wearing. Otherwise. Paris radio is way, way better than New York City radio. More variety, fewer commercials. Lots of African and Middle Eastern music, more ecletic programs. Cloudy and rainy yesterday, mostly cloudy and drizzly early today, partly sunny later. It took an hour and 15 minutes to get from Charles De Gaulle airport to my apartment. Cabs are not driven exclusively by immigrants and men. The subway cars run on big rubber tires like you’d find on a bus. Makes for a quiet ride.

You just knew I’d start sprinkling everything with French words, didn’t you? So far, everything seems slightly cheaper than New York City, probably because of the great exchange rate. Shopping last night: muesli (hey, it’s Europe), orange juice, butter (the real kind), a box of Earl Grey tea, sterilized milk in a box, two peaches: FF51.55, about US$7.34, figuring about seven francs to the dollar. Left to right shots of my apartment (closet, radiator, windows, yellow curtains, etc.), and a picture of the kitchenette.

I am now in Paris. An uneventful flight. I exchanged my seat with an old Frenchman so he could sit next to his wife, which meant I sat next to a thin scummy Chinese man in a three-days-old, three-days-worn tan crepe suit over a horizontally striped French-style t-shirt. He wore a platinum and diamond ring the size of tractor lugnut and carried a woman’s Louis Vuitton handbag. He fondled two expensive pens bought duty-free. His hair was half-peroxide auburn, half grown-out black. He stank of unwashed Chinaman and cigarettes. But when he asked me to fill out his disembarkment card, I did it anyway. He said “I no speak English” as if he’d spent more time listening to Tonto and Tarzan tapes than he had listening to native speakers. Or as if he was actually faking not speaking English, though I don’t know why he would. He pulled out his wallet and gave it to me. I went through it in order to fill out the blanks on the form. Two driver’s licenses, one from New York, expired in 1997, the other from New Jersey, expires 2002. So he’s at least been here six years. And that’s all the English he speaks? Seven credit cards. Same birthday as mine, but different year: July 16, 1957. I put “businessman” in the appropriate field, but I think he’s a snakehead on his way to spend some of his extortion money as the illegals he imported wade ashore off of Red Hook. The first photo is out my kitchenette window. The second is a look out the window on the stairwell. This is the stairwell itself.