Cathy wrote this small ode to after her visit with us. I was touched by the piece and wanted to add it here. Thank you Cathy!
We Ate Everything: on Food and Memory in Paris
As I emerged from the Metro steps at Boulevard Saint Michel, I was not prepared to be cast so intimately into Paris; stone buildings are softened with curves, fountains call for your stray fingers, and people everywhere, eating. I was swallowed up by the smell of butter, smoke and dirt as we darted with luggage in hand to the Crêperie Des Arts. Our bodies brushed against other bodies, passing cafe tables, and trees just opening for spring. We hurried. We were hungry.
We devoured them all: cheese, egg, banana, chocolate. We ate every scrap of tender crepe, then licked our fingers. And thus began be the pattern of my brief stay in Paris: great hunger followed by ravenous eating, then back again to hunger, all immersed in curved iron, spires, and door after door leading to food.
Every morning Paul brought back a small bag from the patisserie to supplement our spartan breakfasts of baguettes and
hot chocolate. It was something new every day: pain au chocolate, Norman tart, almond croissants. We ate them all,
knowing there would be no lunch and miles of walking before returned at night. In the days that followed, I embraced the
communal nature of eating in Paris. On park benches we shared bites of crackly croissants, crumbs dropping shamelessly
into our laps. We looted the scraps from one another’s paper bags, hoping for a forgotten meringue. Even at breakfast, we
tore at our buttered baguettes until they disappeared.
It’s better to buy a little knife, so you can slice the bread, cheese, and peppers you bought at the market that morning before
shopping for canvas linens for Paul’s art in Montmartre. At Abreuvior Street and Place Dalida, we found a bench, made
sandwiches, and watched the people walk by the pink houses on Abreuvior Street, down from the Sacre-Coeur.
“Do you want a picture?” I asked Linda.
“No,” she said. “I just want to sit on this bench and look at this street and the people coming down.”
We Ate Everything: on Food and Memory in Paris
As I emerged from the Metro steps at Boulevard Saint Michel, I was not prepared to be cast so intimately into Paris; stone buildings are softened with curves, fountains call for your stray fingers, and people everywhere, eating. I was swallowed up by the smell of butter, smoke and dirt as we darted with luggage in hand to the Crêperie Des Arts. Our bodies brushed against other bodies, passing cafe tables, and trees just opening for spring. We hurried. We were hungry.
We devoured them all: cheese, egg, banana, chocolate. We ate every scrap of tender crepe, then licked our fingers. And thus began be the pattern of my brief stay in Paris: great hunger followed by ravenous eating, then back again to hunger, all immersed in curved iron, spires, and door after door leading to food.
“No,” she said. “I just want to sit on this bench and look at this street and the people coming down.”
I stole one anyway. Not of the pink houses, but of them, eating olives and the last of the baguette. Over the next few days,
I took a few of Linda and Paul in Paris, and thought about how immersing in an experience without a camera represents
hope. Hope in one’s ability to remember, hope in returning, and hope in one’s experience.
When in the Louvre the next day, we saw this crowd at the Mona Lisa. We did not stay in that room for long.
Rather, we sat a long time at Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, discussing the symbolism, the politics, and the intertwining
bodies brushing the green sea.
And then there was Bernardino Luini’s Salome receives the head of John the Baptist. Her youthful, smug face, the hand of the executioner, the act of holding the plate. We sat a long time there, too.
And then there was Bernardino Luini’s Salome receives the head of John the Baptist. Her youthful, smug face, the hand of the executioner, the act of holding the plate. We sat a long time there, too.
After the Louvre we took the long walk to the Jewish Quarter for falafels, cold sodas, and fruit tarts. At the little park
around the corner we shared a bench and watched children run and the teenagers play ping pong and smoke cigarettes.
With heavy eyes and stomach we stretched our legs, smelling the blossoms teased open by the afternoon sun.
“Are we here to experience?” I asked Paul later, between mouthfuls of cream and banana crepe, “or to say that we’ve experi- enced?”
“Sadly, I think most are here to say they’ve experienced,” he replied.
It’s better to share in Paris. To feel the hunger for walking, then to eat in the sun, passing bites between you. It’s better to be frugal in Paris, to bypass the tours and the taxis and smell the city on your clothes when you go to bed. Without pictures, we fear we will lose Paris. But live like the city is yours, and it becomes so.
We will remember the smell of the wind-lifted lilacs and hanging over our bench as we drifted to sleep, the vibrant blue of the Van Goghs, and cool stone of the cathedrals. We will remember the long eclairs, the giant meringues, the tender maca- roons. I can see the stretched shadows of streets in evening light, the tree-lined paths to metro steps, and people kissing on every street. And we will remember the urine stains on the walls of the cathedral, the shoe-worn, stone steps of the metro, and riding my bike near cars so fast their sudden breeze lifts your shirt of your sweating back. In her beauty and her belly, Paris accepts you, elevates you to her own through the acting a part in her dirty, sweet opera.
I’m in a quiet corner of the airport, waiting to board my flight home. A young woman breezes past, finds a small table, drops her bags, and pulls out a small paper bag. with several French macaroons. Checking the lighting, she brushes off the table and arranges the contents of the bag—delicate pastel macarons—in a whimsical stack. As she maneuvers around the table, I hear the hear the distinct, slow clack of an expensive camera. My mind wills her to eat just one—to drop it thought- lessly in her mouth. But quickly, she stuffs the macaroons back in their bag and hurries off.
Then, I thought of the clafouti we ate on the stone steps of the Heritage building, with its dark, sweet cherries and sugary crust. And the old straw chairs we sat in at Saint Merry’s Church as we listened to the mournful baroque cello. Or the old man in the cafe in his suit and red scarf, flirting with the waitress. The ring on his finger, the hat at his side, the way the waitress touched his arm. I pulled out my notebook and began to write.
“There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.”
“Are we here to experience?” I asked Paul later, between mouthfuls of cream and banana crepe, “or to say that we’ve experi- enced?”
“Sadly, I think most are here to say they’ve experienced,” he replied.
It’s better to share in Paris. To feel the hunger for walking, then to eat in the sun, passing bites between you. It’s better to be frugal in Paris, to bypass the tours and the taxis and smell the city on your clothes when you go to bed. Without pictures, we fear we will lose Paris. But live like the city is yours, and it becomes so.
We will remember the smell of the wind-lifted lilacs and hanging over our bench as we drifted to sleep, the vibrant blue of the Van Goghs, and cool stone of the cathedrals. We will remember the long eclairs, the giant meringues, the tender maca- roons. I can see the stretched shadows of streets in evening light, the tree-lined paths to metro steps, and people kissing on every street. And we will remember the urine stains on the walls of the cathedral, the shoe-worn, stone steps of the metro, and riding my bike near cars so fast their sudden breeze lifts your shirt of your sweating back. In her beauty and her belly, Paris accepts you, elevates you to her own through the acting a part in her dirty, sweet opera.
I’m in a quiet corner of the airport, waiting to board my flight home. A young woman breezes past, finds a small table, drops her bags, and pulls out a small paper bag. with several French macaroons. Checking the lighting, she brushes off the table and arranges the contents of the bag—delicate pastel macarons—in a whimsical stack. As she maneuvers around the table, I hear the hear the distinct, slow clack of an expensive camera. My mind wills her to eat just one—to drop it thought- lessly in her mouth. But quickly, she stuffs the macaroons back in their bag and hurries off.
Then, I thought of the clafouti we ate on the stone steps of the Heritage building, with its dark, sweet cherries and sugary crust. And the old straw chairs we sat in at Saint Merry’s Church as we listened to the mournful baroque cello. Or the old man in the cafe in his suit and red scarf, flirting with the waitress. The ring on his finger, the hat at his side, the way the waitress touched his arm. I pulled out my notebook and began to write.
“There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.”
—Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
