15/04/2024 – Old world glamour, the good bits 2

We returned to Paris in a heat wave. Carey’s mint-green, discount, supermarket nap blanket served him well. I sweated under the hotel duvet. Luckily, the dregs of the households discount bin yielded another throw. Mine is a disturbingly organic shade of brown, but, at 15 Euro, it’s a delight.

It’s the second thing I have bought to leave behind. In Atlanta, worried about the cold, I bought a sweater in the Target bargain bin, for 9 US, including tax, (specifically, an electric orange, girls’-14, fleecy bomber, with flowery sparkles). It has brought me much cosiness on chill mornings, and quite a lot of secret sparkly-orange joy.

Those who expected to see pictures of us elegantly sipping beer in a sunlit café on the Champs Elysées, know that 50 Euro has been repurposed. Imagine us instead, lounging with our nap blankets, sipping a decent rosé, chilled (us and the wine), eating discount nibbles from a towel on the bed between us, listening to a mutually interesting podcast (history, politics, art, satire…), the city’s sounds wafting in on the breeze through the open windows. That’s living!

I’m feeling very grateful (and stimulated) this week. My self-imposed 500-word limit just isn’t enough! You got the merest sketch of Versailles, nothing on Montmartre, or the Louvre. Hence, 3 posts today.

As Louvre members, we have a special line and move straight to the front of the “Groups” entry queue. Actually doing that requires a degree of assertiveness. Carey is a karate black belt, but goes full-Canadian at doors and turnstiles, especially crowded ones. I had to literally pull him onto the tube by his collar in the London rush hour last week. At the Louvre, as we reach the front, I make eye contact with him and mouth “follow the old ladies” (of whom I am proudly one). With our small size, shrewd judge of weakness and pointy elbows, we parse the milling throngs with precision.

We finally found the African-American-Polynesian galleries. They are clinical, square spaces, sparsely furnished with extraordinary, potent figures, presented in clear boxes that seem as much to keep them in as fingers out. It is a miscellany of “otherness”. To be fair, the Louvre is a culture-blind, aesthetic, objectivist project. All its collections are presented as objets d’Art, from Egyptian mummies to Rood Screen figures. But, I can bring context to the other rooms. I know so little of these belief systems (from dozens of peoples) that the absence of interpretive material is a rattling choice. I came away feeling that what these pieces had in common is that Imperial France (and its artists) would have called them “Primitive”.

On our way to the Louvre today, the streets were plastered with posters from the Pacifist Society: They translate as “War on War! Down with Putin’s aggression and “No!” to rearming NATO”, (in American/British English). Due to the French pronunciation of “Poutine”, what they said to us was “Down with feisty delicious-curd-and-gravy-fries!”