Paris
Monday, August 15, 2005
Sign
my guestbook. View
my guestbook.
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Every summer,
there is a new piece of public art at the end of the pool for the Medici
Fountain in the A sign nearby
explains that this work is by Aurélie
Slonina, and it is called Aquapolis, 2005. There are supposed to be translucide fish
in the aquarium with the recyclables, but I didn’t see them. Here’s a translation of the rest of the
sign: “Aurélie
Slonina, born in 1970, imagined a ‘futuristic city’ for the fish in the Medici
Fountain. An Aquapolis modeled on the
tensions and unsolvable paradoxes across the globe: a world where the transparency and opacity
must coexist.” The company
responsible for maintenance and installation of this aquatic artwork is
called Anicash. I decided that this must be a very low-tech
company. See how they affixed the
sign’s post to the lovely metal fence around the fountain’s pool (below). I call this “frengineering.” They used black duct tape, applied
badly.
Girls feeding
ducks in the Medici Fountain.
The Medici
Fountain. |
Yesterday was
Sunday, and today is the Feast of the Assumption, the two slowest days of
this year in But yesterday,
moviemaker Guillame Canet had several hours in the middle of the day to shoot
acter François Cluzet crossing many lanes of traffic on foot. Don’t try this at home. The movie is Ne le dis à personne, based on the American novel Tell
No One by Harlan Coben. Last year, the
Feast of the Assumption fell on a Sunday.
As I recall, the open market under the tracks on boulevard de Grenelle
was open as usual on a Sunday, although with far fewer vendors and
shoppers. And that meant that the
newpaper kiosque was open that day. It
normally closes on Monday so that it can be open on Sunday. That kiosque is
the only one around here that I know is open on Sunday, and it is where I
always go on that day to buy the three newspapers we read every day. I knew that
buying the papers today, Monday, would be a challenge because the Grenelle
kiosque would most likely be closed as usual on Monday, and that many other
kiosques would be closed because it is the Feast of the Assumption. But I ASSUMED that, in orderly Parisian
fashion, certainly some kiosque would be open somewhere near here. Oh, did I ever
have to search. I started north on
Commerce. Kiosque on Emile Zola,
closed, as expected. Kiosque at
Grenelle marketplace, closed, as expected.
Two other nearby kiosques, closed.
Surely the
kiosque at Cambronne would be open, I reasoned. It usually is. So I hoofed it over to Cambronne. Closed. Well, then I
remembered that when Tom was robbed in 2000 (or was it 2001?) I was looking at a newstand in the La Motte
Picquet métro station while he bought tickets. A creep loitering at the newstand was
watching us and he saw exactly where Tom put his wallet. I went down
into the station, and of course that newstand is not there anymore. I hope it was eliminated for security
reasons. It gave creeps an excuse for
loitering and picking out potential victims in the métro. I was starting
to wonder if, even when I found a newstand or kiosque, there would be any
newspapers left. In particular, the
American paper, the International Herald Tribune (owned by the
New York Times), is known to sell
out sometimes before noon. Back on the
street again, I decided to walk way over to Place Charles Michel. There is a kiosque there, which I reasoned
would be closed, but there is also a little store selling newpapers and
magazines, right next to the McDonalds.
I hoped, since it seemed to be a busy little shop near a busy spot,
that it would be open. Hooray! It was!
I bought the papers! They had
PLENTY of International Herald Tribunes! I’d arrived
there just in time. When I left the
shop, a line of people was forming that would surely soon string out onto the
pavement of the Place. Then I was so
curious about this phenomenon that I decided to walk home in a slightly indirect
way so that I could see if a similar, but smaller, shop near avenue Felix
Faure and rue des Entrepreneurs was open.
It was not. And our favorite
brasserie near there, across from the church, also remains closed for
vacation. Sob. The church, however, was open. After rounding
the corner onto the rue du Commerce, I walked past the kiosque that we
usually use on weekdays when I want to pick up supplies at the little but
nice supermarket called G20. It was
closed. By the time I returned to the
apartment, it had taken an hour to run this silly errand! There were
almost no cars on the street this morning.
And the few pedestrians I saw were rushing to someplace (church?) or
commiserating with each other about how difficult it was to find a place to
buy a newspaper. This afternoon
is a bit livelier. I do miss our
favorite restaurants. A couple of
them, like l’Epopee and Oh! Duo will open before we go home to the I remember
speaking with her about the loss of the 2012 Olympic games to We looked up
“lobbying” in the English side of the French/English dictionary (Bantam’s I looked up the
noun, “lobby,” in the French dictionary (Le Robert Micro). It gives the definition “groupe de
pression.” That is a bit closer to the
real thing. But I think that Madame
Valero may be right; the French need to learn how to lobby. |
