Friday afternoon trip around Paris. First stop: Beaubourg contemporary art museum, Centre Pompidou (closest Metro stop: Rue Rambuteau). A young lady sits with her legs crossed on the cold stone ground blowing into a long didgeridoo and hitting its side with a wooden shaker. She, who could very well be part of the exhibition, attracts a lot of foreign and domestic visitors. We catch her just as she is finishing her last song. Her lip is violet.
Once inside, we follow the crowd up a broken escalator to the second floor, where an exhibition of an imaginary children's play-space in 2050 draws whispers of awe and confusion, while an innocent contemporary compilation of xylophones serenade us in the arriere-plan.
Outside, a Gypsie handing out ads catches Tiffany with a soft heart and begins begging her for money. "I'm pregnant, please help me," she moans, pointing to her stomach, her eyebrows bent in an upside-down "V." Tiffany dives into her wallet and searches for some coins. But the lady points to an ad and asks for more. Her camarade soon approaches me with her own stack of ads, her stomach bulging with a young miracle inside. With my heart stuck in a paradox of sadness and skepticism, I avoid all eye contact, quickly shaking my head in reply: "Non."
Rarity
Next stop: Champs-Elysées. On our way to the Metro stop, Tiffany gasps. "Librarie chrétienne"!I sI France, according to my French professors, is hardly what one calls a "religious" country. Few people feel a sense of belonging to a certain church, and even less live out the true Gospel of incarnation. So, imagine our disbelief as we stood in front of the humble hole-in-the-wall bookstore, our jaws anchored to the narrow Parisian pavement.
We entered in awe, as if entering God's house. Immediately, I start humming to the chorus of the song, albeit in French...
Saviour,
He can move the mountains,
My God is mighty to save,
He is mighty to save.
A middle-aged lady of African descent starts humming too, as she stands on the opposite side of the waist-high bookshelf. I look up at her to smile, but she continues to flip through the array of booklets. I smile to myself.
I spent a long time at the CD section, searching ravenously for worship music to feed my famished soul. A week without music is a week without food. If music be the food of love, play on. Of course, love not so much in the romantic sense here, but love that is God.
But alas! Abundance in rarity - what to choose? I fork up enough courage to look over at the young man next to me with cool dreads and open my mouth. Finally, I give up my pride: "Excusez-moi, monsieur." During the next few minutes, I learn the names of the most well-known French Christian artists, and he learns that Chris Tomlin is extremely well-known in the U.S.A.
I thank the lady at the cashier for this amazing bookstore:
"C'est rare en France, hein?"
"C'est vrai," she nods.
Begging
We take the Metro to the Place de la Concorde to see the Obelisque and L'eglise de la Madeleine (Metro stop: Concorde). We observe the Arc de Triomphe in the distance and soon begin our pilgrimage up the Champs-Elysees (French Fifth Avenue).
As I peer into the classy glassy boutiques, I see him, his back the shape of the crescent moon, his fingers wrapped tightly around a wooden make-shift cane, his legs bent in the wrong direction. One step at a time, he manouveurs his way against the flow of the mob. Then, he stops.
I hate the way he stands in the middle of the pavement, where everyone can see him like that, where everyone bumps into him from left and right, where everyone looks at him but no-one sees him.
My legs carry me through the current of the crowd, and - before I know it - I find myself standing at his side. My hands extend towards him with a "Pink Lady" apple that I packed in case of emergency (that is, constipation). "Voulez-vous une pomme, monsieur?" He looks up at me, then at the apple, and takes a moment to lean his entire body on the short wooden cane, before gently accepting my offer. As I turn to leave, he lets out a quiet cry that spins me around like a baby's sniffle pulls the mother's heart strings. He shifts his weight again and points up. Starbucks.
He shows me the three bronze coins in his ungloved hands, asking me to help him buy a cuppa coffee. In defense, I raise my hands, cozy inside two layers of red cotton gloves from Christmas, and give him a below-par rebuttal: "Il y a une pomme." He doesn't give up so easily and keeps begging. I don't give up so easily either and keep repeating that there is an apple (as if he were blind), all the while speed-walking far far away.
Outside cathedrals, museums, high-end Fifth Avenue stores, coffee shops, chic restaurants with glass windows, train stations. Gypsies. Handicapped. On their knees. Heads lowered. Do we know the colour of their eyes? The shape of their nose? The sharpness of their cheekbones? Do we know who they are?
Do we want to know who they are?
Do we want to know who they are?
Reims
Pronounced [hanz], Reims is a city located two hours north-east of Paris by bus. The Notre-Dame de Reims is a magnificent cathedral, where numerous French kings were baptized and coronated, up until the late nineteenth century. A tour through the cathedral is like a tour through a free art gallery, the best exhibition of which is the grand collection of different countries' artistic representations of the Nativity Scene.
For lunch, we stopped off at L'Apostrophe for a three-course meal. For my entree, I chose rabbit with caramelized red onions and a glazed salad, accompanied with freshly-baked baguette. For the actual meal (le plat), I chose salmon baked in foil with rice. For dessert, I decided to try du pain perdu with custard and ice cream. Literally translated, it means "lost bread," so-called because it is no longer fresh and thus cannot be served as is. Instead of throwing it away, the not-so-fresh bread is baked with raisins and raspberry filling until golden and served in a large bowl of custard with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, pistacchio shavings, and sifted icing sugar. I topped off the afternoon with a medium-sized cup of tea (which, by the way, came with a piece of dairy milk chocolate). Definitely worth a taste. Or two. Or three.
In the late afternoon, we visited a large wine cellar, which from the outside looked like a castle. We descended a long flight of stairs into the large cave and took a guided tour, in awe of the carvings by the artist Nablet and furrowing our eyebrows at the contemporary pieces. After a long ascent that left most of us out-of-breath, we were treated to a glass of champagne. D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S. If you get a chance to taste Brut Royal Champagne, you should be careful - you might drink too much of it.
I slept like a baby on the way back.
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