And So, To Paris

There was a moment, as my flight landed at Charles De Gaulle airport in the very early hours of Tuesday morning local time, when I believed fully that I had made a mistake.

I was going to have to speak to some French people and my low-energy, three year stint learning the language, by what I hoped was largely osmosis, seemed then to be manifestly inadequate. And while this sounds like a superficial concern – I wasn't going to starve! – it represented something greater than mere awkwardness. As we landed, I felt all of the distance from home. It ran through me in an instant, as if the sensation was hot-wired at the touch of aircraft wheel to tarmac.

For whole minutes I practiced saying the numbers in my street address so I could at least make it through the taxi ride with some dignity. The way the French say numbers must have been designed by a sadist who thought it not enough merely to make people recite a number but that they must also do maths about it at the same time. So my address was 79 Boulevard [redacted] in the 18th Arrondissement which becomes sixty+ten+nine Boulevard in the eight-and-tenth Arrondissement, or soixante-dix-neuf and dixhuitieme.

You're making me to do algebra in a romance language? Fuck out of here.

And despite all of my preparation, I entered the taxi and recited my address to which the driver grunted and said: 'Huh?' Defeat, within seconds. He was actually very nice about it as I stumbled and stuttered my way to a Google Maps introduction. Later, as we drove past the Stade de France he pointed it out and said 'Stade de France' and I said, in my best French, c'est tres grand! And he looked at me the way I looked at my 17-month-old nephew when instead of saying my name Ricky he only managed Dicky: with a sort of beaten, frustrated love.

Later, however, when we entered our second hour of the worst traffic I've ever seen in my life, I plucked the word for 'traffic jam' out of nowhere and said 'embouteillage' and the driver's eyes lit up and he replied, in French, every day. I might have reminded him of a Furby his children had when they were young, speaking only in a few key phrases and words but big-eyed enough to make him think twice about giving it the hammer when the fur starts to discolour and the batteries fade.

So it was that I made it to my apartment in Montmarte (or is that my Montmartment in Apontmarte?) and squeaked up several flights of stairs in a nineteenth century Haussman-esque building with 40kg of luggage. Even as we arrived at the location the wide street seemed fairly empty. It was almost 9am and the place felt devoid of life. I’d booked into a ghost area, I thought. It was just like that time I’d first moved out of home aged 17-years and 9-months to the thriving metropolis of the Gold Coast and, having only been there twice on two school camps, had to guess at an area that might have been worth living.

‘Parkwood sounds nice,’ I said to Mum, as we scanned the newspaper classifieds together. She had even less of an idea than me. It sounded nice, I thought, because I liked both parks and wood.

‘It does,’ she said.

Parkwood was not nice. It had an aggressive suburban air and a very infrequent bus service. And here I was again, peut-etre.

To console myself, I researched a nice cafe two blocks away and went for a stroll to get a croissant and something approximating a flat white coffee. And then I kept walking, not even very far as it happens, and a street opened up on my left that seemed to climb all the way to the heavens, capped as it was by the tips of the Sacré Cœur basilica that straddled the imposing hillside and which rose directly from the earth as if on a plinth.

I had nowhere to be, no timezone to which I yet belonged, and so I climbed. I followed the glimpses of the basilique’s spires the way a migrating bird uses magnetic energy to guide its flight and climbed up and up and up until, at once, the whole of the structure filled my frame of vision. It was one of those moments in life, especially during travel, when time expands the essential unit measurement of experience and you manage to sense all of what the world is offering. The heat, the hazy blue sky, the exact shade of green on the leaves of the tree, the path the sweat takes as it beads down your back, snatches of conversational French.

So much of life is a shortcut in the brain and then, occasionally, you get to dwell in time for a little bit and the effect is indistinguishable from magic.

I’d come across the basilica from the non-tourist side and it was absurdly quiet, which only added to the nectar of this discovery. By the time I’d circumnavigated it and run into the actual pack of tourists streaming up and endlessly from below — almost an unbroken line from the top of the mount all the way down to the Quartier Pigalle in the ninth — it didn’t matter at all that I was in a swarm of humanity. They were drawn, as I was, to this prize on the hill.

From this vantage point, just after noon, the entire city of Paris was laid out like a diorama under the summer sun. Gold domes and spires, monuments and historic edifices penetrated the gaussian blur of the heat and gave an observer the distinct impression that some part-time deity had been asked to model the city with particular attention paid to its landmarks.

When I left for home again, back toward the quieter northside of the basilique but along a different route, Paris began to crawl out of itself and I watched in real time as the city sprang to life. At one point I walked past a cream and blue-coloured bistro as the metal shutter — they call these rideaux, the same word for curtains in the home — was being rolled up for the lunch service. I walked for blocks and the rideaux everywhere had come up and the sun-bleached streets were heaving with life. The footpaths and cafe terraces teemed with people as they ate, drank and smoked.

I have not stopped walking since. In fact, after a 7pm-ish dinner, I have taken to wandering the streets in the full daylight — the sun sets around 10pm — and gawking at the rows and rows and rows of gorgeous, Haussman or Haussman inspired apartment complexes. On some streets, positioned just right, you can catch the curve in their street frontage as they snake through the city for kilometres. The effect is a lot like being on the metro when you can see all the way down the middle of the train as it undulates through the subway tunnels.

Eager to acclimatise properly, I joined a gym. Je courir, I told them. Incidentally, I have only just now realised that must be where we get the word courier from; the runner. My legs were weak and I’d gone from a 6C morning in the Scenic Rim to full heat again so I only managed 3.5km before attempting a late afternoon nap.

The Australian writer Sarah Wilson has made Paris her home for a few years now and happened to be free on my first night. She messaged after my largely failed nap — too exciting, too much to consider — and we arranged to meet for 8pm dinner and a glass of wine at Le Compas in the second arrondissement. I caught the metro to Étienne Marcel and emerged from the subway into a soft, yet full, evening sun and a neighbourhood that seemed to exist purely for the pursuit of epicurean delight.

At the bistro, on the outdoor terrace where tables and patrons were tessellated within inches of another, Sarah pointed out to me that there was none of the raucous Australian drinking brinkmanship and raised voices we remember from home. There were dozens and dozens of us just at this spot, all engaged in passionate conversation, and we could each hear our companions perfectly. The bistros tend not to play music. This was not a club, nor spectacle, but a way of life.

I ordered a glass of Chablis and the burrata with tomatoes and rocket.

I had precisely four cigarettes.

To be clear, I no longer smoke and haven’t consistently for three years, but I allowed myself this most pleasurable of entrees to the French experience and despite the cataclysmic hangover the next day, a combination no doubt of days’ of pre-travel exertion, a day of travel and now being awake for almost 19 hours on my first day on the other side of the planet, I am so glad I did.

Le Compas was and remains the furthest I have ventured from my little quartier since I arrived. I have never been the kind of traveller, indeed the kind of person in my home life, to want to do everything at once. It took me just two hours to be born and Mum says it is the only time in my life I have ever done anything fast.

On the rare occasions where I have travelled overseas before now, I have not bothered trying to do all of the attractions. How could you possibly fit them into a week, or even two or three? Once, when a particularly indulgent gay friend of mine decided to have his 30th in Hawaii — destination birthdays, can we not? — I reluctantly went despite liking neither the beach nor planned activities. With few exceptions, I just wandered the streets eating and smoking (a different time, as it was). The one thing I wanted to do, which was to see a volcano, I could not afford.

My experience of that trip reminded me of the testimony of some of my friends and acquaintances who have been to Paris more times than me but complained it was dirty and filled with tourists and expensive. They weren’t completely wrong, but also they weren't exactly right, either. Each had been on short stays on a broader European tour and really only did the must-see things, pinballing from one attraction to another. All they saw of Paris in some cases was other tourists and the flash of neighbourhoods from a bus window. I’m no Anthony Bourdain, unfortunately, but we can at least share a philosophy about this city, indeed travel generally, that works.

“The vacation gone wrong in Paris is almost always because people try to do too many things. Most of us are lucky to see Paris once in a lifetime. Please, make the most of it by doing as little as possible. Walk a little. Get lost a bit. Eat. Catch a breakfast buzz. Have a nap. Try and have sex if you can, just not with a mime. Eat again. Lounge around drinking coffee. Maybe read a book. Drink some wine, walk around a bit more, eat, repeat.”

Excellent advice from the great man himself. On a similar note, he suggests that instead of paying to climb the Notre Dame steps just take a photo in front of it and then go and have ‘sex with someone French’.

Bien sûr, good sir.

And so, to the point I temporarily abandoned several paragraphs ago, we go slowly in this house. Lentement. Small things were on my list for the first few days. I needed shampoo, for instance, and thought I would just get it at the same time I went to the pharmacy for paracetamol (see above re: chablis and cigarettes) and, hopefully, glasses cleaner. I don’t know whether it was unique to this particular pharmacy or a more systemic issue but the store sold exactly one type of shampoo and it was €16, or approximately four-hundred Australian dollars, and I had invested too much time in my halting French to turn around and explain that I would just go and get Head & Shoulders from the supermarche so I bought it and carried it around with me for the rest of the walk.

And when I washed my hair that night, the strangest thing happened: I emerged from the bathroom fully fluent in French.

Ha! I jest. It washed my hair, is what it did.

I'm almost too mortified to tell you about the salmon but I will because I also have no capacity to stop myself. My rebrand as mysterious-in-France is not going so well.

Having wandered on to the exceptional and gorgeous Rue des Martyrs that historically led and, I suppose still leads, to the Sacre Cœur I was so entranced by all of the fresh produce and gourmet food stores that I decided to make dinner for myself that evening with the freshest ingredients I could find. On Sarah Wilson's advice I also bought a punnet of strawberries and began eating them as I walked. I found a fromagerie called La Souris Gourmande (the gourmet mouse? is this a Ratatouille reference? did a big mouse hand roll this pasta?) and bought some fresh handmade tagliatelle and elsewhere picked up some lemons and on the vine cherry tomatoes so red I thought them painted. And pine nuts, and lemon. Oh I was feeling good.

Far from the cosmic horrors of Tasmanian farmed salmon, a treat was in order. I passed a poissonnerie and ventured in. There, in the cabinetry, was the most beautiful and delicate 200g piece of salmon I have ever seen, straight from the Atlantic. If I’d breathed on it the whole thing might have come apart it was that perfectly brittle. The salmon was diaphanous, do you understand me? It was diaphanous and I was drawn to it like an old time cartoon character to somebody else’s pie cooling on a windowsill.

The salmon, also, was €34 which is legitimately 60 bucks in Aussie dollarydoos. It had an education. It probably drove an EV. In 2009! Once more, I was too far gone to suddenly reverse this transaction and save face. I smiled and presented my card.

One of my closest friends once told me that, overseas, Australians should never think about the time back home or the currency conversion rate but I think you do. I really think you do have to think about at least one of those things. Because I set out to make myself dinner and be budget conscious and now, collectively, I was about to make a $100 pasta to 'save money' on my second night in Paris.

The very kind man behind the counter asked me how much longer I was going to be walking around outside. Only 30 minutes, I told him and he looked displeased.

'Non non,' he said, 'too hot.' He produced the cutest silver travel esky the size of a purse from behind the counter, inserted a single refined and pre-packaged sliver of ice and then gently set the salmon inside. What I'd give for a man to treat me the way he handled that salmon. And to have a house with cooling, also like the salmon.

Maybe it was the long summer day, the golden evening buzz of the neighbourhood right outside my window as I chopped dried chilli with a blunt knife or, perhaps, the other-worldly harmonies of the Beach Boys on whom I'd been raised – a band that, for me, represented and still represents a kind of perfect life, my disdain for beaches everywhere notwithstanding, if only because their ethereal vocals made me feel like the sort of person who could live that life – or, finally, maybe the $60 salmon really did transcend time and space but the meal I made that hot evening was a liturgy.

It was one of the best meals of my life. What's more, even if I bought the exact same ingredients and prepared them in the exact same way the true wonder of this production is knowing that I can never have it again.

Addenda

How's the Serenity

I am reliably told that when I first landed at Charles de Gaulle airport almost a week ago Mum expressed a similar dismay to me that the view from my window was farmland for as far as the eye can see. I knew the airport was a way out from Paris proper, but I didn't think it was in a field. I suppose Melbourne is sort of like that, but you still get a sense for the urban build-up when you fly in. Anyhow, I texted this photo to the family group chat:

Shortly after my sister, who was on that moment sitting on the lounge with our mother, texted back to say that Mum had the photo zoomed in on her phone and had exclaimed: 'Where the fuck is the Eiffel Tower!?'

O Say, Can't You See?

There is not much to be said about the latest round of political violence in the United States except to reiterate that there are always consequences for speech. That is not to say we should stop people saying ugly things – my critics would be surprised to learn that I personally believe freedom of speech, with its critical counterweights, to be a cornerstone of a healthy society – but that any society actively promoting harm through systematised cajoling, institutional provocation and executive permission is a very sick one. It may no longer even qualify as a society at all. Certainly, it leads to physical acts of violence.

The most recent of these, of course, is the targeted political assassination of Democrat lawmakers in Minnesota that left one dead, alongside her fatally wounded husband, and another shot alongside his wife. The suspect in the shootings is Vance Luther Boelter, an armed security contractor and rightwing Christian with a side hustle in trying to convert 'Islamic militants'. As the Washington Post reported, his list of potential targets included the (peaceful) 'No Kings' anti-Trump protests for which he had local flyers and then also:

'A list discovered in the vehicle named prominent abortion rights advocates in Minnesota, including many Democratic lawmakers who have been outspoken about the issue, according to a person who had seen the list and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the ongoing investigation.'

As with 'free speech' the world is filled with stories where historically privileged and powerful people wind up experiencing just a lick of the state power and brutality often meted out against minority groups which propels in them a victim-complex so consuming as to railgun them directly to violence. Imagine if every minority group currently being kidnapped, quite literally, by the Trump ICE goon squads turned around to protest state over-reach by blowing up a federal building in Oklahoma? Because that's what Timothy McVeigh did after personally visiting the site of the Waco, Texas siege while the cultist Branch Dividians were under siege by the FBI following a botch Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raid.

The resulting bloodbath, through a firefight and the long disputed source of the fire that engulfed the compound (almost certainly lit by the cult leadership as captured on audio) resulted in the deaths of 86 people, all but four of whom were Branch Davidians including more than 20 children.

As payback, McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, Kansas on April 19 1995 – exactly two years after the Waco siege ended in horror – in what remains the largest act of domestic terror committed in the United States of America. 167 people died in the bombing. Another, a rescue worker, died trying to help others out of the debris.

There is a direct, causal link between the failure of a nation and, more broadly, our world to take the threat of what McVeigh symbolised in the aftermath of the Oklahoma bombing and the country we see today, riven by sectarian violence and ruled by a cabal of Timothy McVeigh adjacents who realised you don't have to physically blow up a federal building to get payback, you can just take it over from the top and dismantle it from within.

The millions and millions who turned out for the No Kings rallies around the US, as opposed to the smattering of folk who watched a truly pathetic military parade ordered by the Kim Jong-Ew of US politics know what is at stake.

A Brief Scene

I am looking for lunch. Have had perfect baguettes several days in a row but decide on a chunky hand-made sausage roll in the window of a hole-in-the-wall Paris bistro. Do I want it as is, the waiter asks, and I say that's fine. I am planning on taking it home to eat anyway.

Perhaps sensing something ineffable about my character the server looked asked if I had an oven at home and then locked her pleading eyes with mine and begged, quite softly but with an urgency that could not be mistaken: 'Please. No Microwave.'

Nobody Asked, But Here's My Beach Boys Top 5

To the extent that I have any opinions about music at all (and really, I do not) I feel I have at least an above-average affection for The Beach Boys, if not a technical or musically literate one.

1. God Only Knows. One of the greatest songs ever written. Haunting, gorgeous etc.
2. Don't Worry Baby. You can actually feel this one reduce your blood pressure as you listen. Like, physically. Also one of the all-time great openers to a track.
3. I Can Hear Music. Press play, melt into the world.
4. Sloop John B. What is a sloop, five-year-old me often wondered. And who is John B? And why does this singer want to go home? Has he been kidnapped? This one often played on the interminable 14-hour road trips to go on a holiday dad never wanted to go on. 'This is the worst trip I've ever been on,' the singer sang and five-year-old me would nod solemnly. I hear you brother.
5. Wouldn't It Be Nice. Dead set banger. Impossible not to move with it.

Honourable mentions for nostalgia points: Cotton Fields (The Cotton Song), Kokomo, Heroes and Villains, Then I Kissed Her and Darlin'.

Oh heck, let's just name all of them. Yours?

Rest in perfect harmony, Brian Wilson.