Saturday is market day !

One of the most excellent things about my teeny little garret is that it happens to be on a street which has a super market every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Going to the marché on a Saturday morning is one of the great quotidian pleasures of the week (and the prices are better than in the local Franprix !). Every one is intent on examining the arrays of colorful vegetables and fruits, the venders are eager to help you, ringing out, “Et avec ceci, madame…?” each time you ask for something. There are fishmongers, cutting open the coquilles St. Jacques right there behind their stand, splaying the turbot and saumon, deboning the caubillaud or morue for a customer. There is the extremely hospitable traiteur libanais – clearly one of my favorite stands – who hands out sample upon sample of his delicious kibbé, tabouleh, labneh or hummus to the passersby. There are ample, overflowing flower stands, with rainbowed bouquets or elegant arrangements. The cheese masters are slightly more reserved, their counters an exercise in the various shades of white, cream, beige and yellow, with the occasional blue-veined tint of a Roquefort or the ashy crust of a chèvre providing the bottom of the minimal color spectrum. They don’t call out to customers, but simply wait for you to examine and decide what kind of fromage you desire. Today, the woman in front of me at the cheese marchand carefully selected five or six different kinds of cheese and it was a marvel to watch the monsieur carefully cut each cheese, each cheese with its own proper cutting tool, and its own specific cut – whether a long, rectangular slice for the comté or cantal, or a round little pyramid of chèvre, or a wedge of brie or camembert.

Since I love lists, I thought I'd share what I brought home today :

Endive

Roquette = arugula

Courgettes = zucchini

Avocats = avocados

Pommes = apples

Tomates cérises = cherry tomatos

Kibbé

Tabouleh

Saucission sec = dried sausage

Fromage St. Nectaire = cheese

Cantal = more cheese

Jambon de pays = fatty delicious ham !

All of my reveries about vegetables reminded me of this line that I saw on an interesting piece of art at the ultra contemporary museum, Musee MACVAL. In this work, the artist interviewed a series of immigrants in Norway, who had come there from different places around the world, and asked them about their newfound life in the bottom rung of the Artic circles...This quote jumped out at me:
= No, I haven't lost anything that important -- just my last name and fresh vegetables.

O the places we'd seen !

I feel unbelievably lucky that Tadhg could come for 10 splendid, soleil-drenched days in the capitale. It was remarkably bright and warm during his stay and we made the most of it, splaying ourselves on the grass devant le Pont Alexandre, spending a whole afternoon sitting in the ancient arènes de Lutèce, watching a group of young boys, très doué, play soccer, while on the other side of the venerable stadium a group of old men milled and squatted in the shadows, a game of pétanque making their deliberations seem all the more quaint.

We strolled arm in arm through the plein air Jardin de sculpture, we went through the Jardin des plantes and marveled at the dragon made of recyclable things, his curlicued breath, upon examination, turns out to be the filigreed six pack plastic rings from soda cans.

We went to the marché on Port Royal and the beautiful heads of lettuce seemed more beautiful than the tufted heads of children.

We ate saucisson and comté as snacks. We strolled through Père Lachaise, hurriedly looking for Oscar Wilde’s tomb before the security guards sussed us out. We were chased from the Parc de Belleville right before sunset and we didn’t even mind, having laughed together at the three small children who ran like martians, silently and delicately, each carrying a pastel balloon from McDonald’s like a glowing orb, around the parc, pointing at but never touching the flowers which were pushing up in this early burst of spring. The drama of the small boy responding to the garde’s warning that the park was closing, his face a small battle between petrification, tears and insolence – mustering up “On ne touche pas” and then repeating his claim, once more, this time more quietly, to the girl among them “On ne touche pas” – I shall never forget his face, nor the lovely classic way he pronounced the 'e' on the end of ‘touche’, just as if his small stand against the ravages of time were a half-alexandrin, dropping off into the wind. This boy and his memory makes a bookend with the Van Dyck painting I saw at the Jacquemart-André the day Tadhg left, Le Temps coupe les ailes de l’amour where old Time, having laid down his scythe, holds the boy against squirming as he cuts off his delicate wings with rough shears.

Sacre Coeur a mon coeur

I love this church: it is impossibly beautiful, peaking out from the ends of les grands boulevards here in Paris from atop its perch on Montmartre; it appears white, made of clouds from far away but as you approach you see its traces of grimes and layers of dirt, its onion domes remind me of my absolute favorite church, la Basilica San Marco in Venice.