Yesterday was another sunny and beautiful day. Both my LL and Rolinka wanted to get together before I left; I didn’t really want any commitments (I never do) to interrupt my doing-what-I-want-to-do. However, I needed to be courteous to my LL and I did want to see Rolinka and meet her new friend, Antoine. So yesterday was a good day to do all that so I have today and tomorrow to do laundry, pack, etc.
I convinced Adrian to have coffee with me in the AM at the corner café—she prefers lunch or dinner—so I could then head to the Louvre for my last look around. And I arranged to meet Rolinka in Montmartre at 3 PM but said I couldn’t stay for dinner and a movie because I needed to get home. All worked out fine. Rolinka and I went to her area's “Home Depot” (not really, but a store very similar) to look for a curtain rod and curtain—we weren’t successful—and then back to Antoine’s house for tea and conversation. Antoine is French, of course, and it was fun to compare impressions about the American way, the French way, our languages, and cultures.
We asked him to define “very American,” as when he refers to some of Rolinka’s friends with that description. He explained that the French are never happy and always complaining. “If it’s shit, we call it shit.” Americans, on the other hand, tend to be positive and pleasant—sunny and happy. (Remember, this is the French view of Americans.) He worked in San Francisco for awhile and he said he could never get close to the Americans; “they were boring.” And that’s why, he said, he finally came back home.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, “A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.” Sooo what I think he was saying—remember that he’s taking his thoughts and trying to grab the English words to explain those thoughts—was that Americans don’t have opinions or don’t feel comfortable expressing their opinions. They don’t want to rock the boat; they don’t want to offend anyone. (We’d rather talk about our miserable love lives, our abusive childhoods, our troubles at the office, etc.—all personal stuff that the French keep to themselves.) It was a very interesting discussion and I really enjoyed meeting him. Rolinka is happy with her new friend and that makes me happy.
In between both visits, I took my neighborhood bus (#96) to the stop closest to the Louvre and walked the rest of the way—a beautiful day for a walk. The temperature felt like the low 60s and the Parisians were sunning themselves in the Tuileries (all wrapped up in their winter coats and scarves) when I caught a Metro home for lunch. At the Louvre (my sixth or seventh visit on my Amies du Louvre card), I revisited some of my old pals and saw some new rooms. You can never see everything in the Louvre and you don’t want to see everything! I nearly cried when I left it for the last time (this trip).
So now it’s time to wrap things up, organize, toss, get the laundry done, decide which clothes to leave for someone else to get tired of, clean out the refrigerator—the whole mess that comes with wrapping up a trip out of the country—or any 10-week trip, for that matter. It isn’t now, but I hope it rains all day so that I’m not tempted to ignore my chores and be walking around the city…and then again…the rain hasn’t stopped me from ignoring my chores in the past!
