Impressions of Paris

One more meal eaten, one more dish washed up, drying in the rack, put there by my soapy hands as thoughts wandered to France, van Gogh's France, the South, the North, then to Paris, my own first (and only) lasting impressions of Paris.
The year, 1994. The month, April.
Or at least I remember it as being around April as it wasn't winter and it wasn't summer and the weather was very changeable. The year I'm a little more sure on, but trying to affirm either led to disagreements with and between the parentals and so...
it was '94, it was April. I was thirteen. A moody teen, and a still quite new vegetarian. My older brother, the dog, had died that January, and so this was my first European foray if you exclude the Channel Isles. Prior to that it had mostly been dog-friendly staycations (though the phrase itself hadn't been coined then). We didn't fly, we went by Eurostar. Off the back of an exotic (and it was exotic then) late booked holiday in February to Tunisia during Ramadan.
Paris, then, had a lot to live up to, though I knew little, other than it was meant to be a romantic city, or at least that's the marketing my thirteen year old mind had picked up on, and I was determined at that time not to like romance. Or boys, unless they were older and cooler. I was equally determined, therefore, not to be impressed, and so I wasn't. I really wasn't.
In 1994 this was not a city to be a vegetarian tourist in; it was all cheese baguettes and omelettes and overpriced pastries which my brain and body didn't thank me for and it became rather a bore to eat, as well as the cause of some fierce arguments.
Culture fared a little better, but only a little. At thirteen I wasn't all that interested. And yet it's amazing what stays with you: going up, not all the way, the Eiffel Tower on a windy day (it might have been raining also), my mother, with her vertigo, staying put on firmer ground; the crazy driving round the Arc de Triomphe; the exterior of the Notre-Dame, I don't recall seeing its inside; queuing for the Louvre and the Pompidou Centre; the smoky cafe atmosphere; and the chic women, walking little dogs, and the pretentious men, though I wouldn't have known that word then, just that these men were careful to exude a certain air.
On the whole I felt Parisians were rude and rather disdainful of the English tourist, but then I had un petit peu French at that time (I don't have a whole lot more now), my mother was the fluent one, so to me it was all sights, sounds and smells. It was all, for want of a better word, foreign. And made me feel, at thirteen, ugly; uglier even than the ugly duckling, and hungry too for the beauty I had been promised and hadn't found. Where was it? Paris, aided by the weather, seemed so gloomy. I couldn't for the life of me understand, all thirteen years and four months of it, why it was so raved about. And I've never (once grown) returned to find out, at least not in person and not to modern Paris.
The Paris I have been enthralled by and revisited on more than one occasion is the Paris of the 1920s. The Paris Hemingway wrote about in A Moveable Feast. That is still there, you'll say, but I have very little appetite now for real travel as opposed to that from a comfortable chair. No; I prefer reading of the Parisian atmosphere, for I think, much like van Gogh, I'm more of a small town and country person. At thirteen, I wasn't, I was for the bright lights but Paris didn't hit the mark.
A year later we went with extended family to Normandy, which is mostly memorable as the house we stayed in was full of medieval artefacts like something out of Bedknobs and Broomsticks. There were country roadside walks too to the market, in single or double file, with most of the bread bought being eaten on the walk back. The year after that (and the one following too) we went to Euro Disney (we watched Princess Diana's funeral on the train), but that I don't think you can say is France. It's American French, or French American. It is not France, just as Las Vegas isn't America. It's a playground.
No, the real France, the one I was too young to appreciate, though I had already been introduced to drinking a little wine with meals, is grown up. Paris especially is for adults only.

Picture credit: The Roofs of Paris, 1886, Vincent van Gogh (source: WikiArt). 

Written July 2020.

Knees Together

What I didn't have, like J. in Three Men in a Boat, was housemaid's knee, nor was I like him sure what it was, but then nor did I have all the ailments he thought he had. No; what I had didn't have a name but came to be known by me as knees together. For that was the advice given: to keep them together when transitioning from one position into another, anything, in other words, that involves twisting the lower half of the body. By keeping the knees together the movement will not be pain-free but more comfortable. It became in certain situations, getting, no, crawling into bed, to be more accurate, being one, my mantra: knees together, knees together, keep knees together; yes, that's the way to go from all fours to the side, and from the side lain on to all fours then a backwards crawl to get out and onto feet placed gingerly on carpeted floor.
Knees together when sitting too; no gaps. Knees together when getting into and out of a car. Oh, but it was hard, because with a car the leg and foot had to be lifted first, first one then the other, just a little ways off the ground, but that little way was challenging, to bring knees together, turn. Keep the knees as close together when putting on trousers too, from a seated position, with the trouser legs gathered up like tights so the foot can be wiggled, toes, then heel, through the hole. The same with socks and shoes, seated, knees together, and bending over them. The difficulty, as with getting into and out of a car, is how to lift the leg and get the foot into the sock, into the shoe. The answer: the leg has to be helped with hands – yours or the loan of another's.
And obviously knees together when preparing to get into and then into a kneeling position, before going onto all fours or into a slightly modified Child's Pose: sat back on heels, chest lowered, arms stretched out or down by sides, palms up. Ah, relief, some. But how to get out and get back up? Knees together? Well, yes, but still how? Will my pelvis allow the toes of my feet to take my weight? Yes, it will. Sit back, lift and pull yourself up at the same time. Each side equally in use, no dominance here. This is exhausting...
And yet sleep is had, if it's had at all at the end of an interminable and exhausting day, in fits and starts in-between repositioning of the body and the pillow. Pillow, eh? Yes, but not the one beneath the head (and it is just the one) but the one that is essential to sleep on your side with it between your thighs. It cushions the pressure that otherwise would have been applied had you remained on your side without it, and I personally have no chance of sleep in any other position even in more mobile times. Generally I start out as a starfish (in yoga I believe it might be termed Corpse Pose, which is somehow though more appropriate much less dignifying) – it helps the body to relax – and then turn onto my side – one or the other, and curl into what is known by the professional and non-professional circle as the foetal position, but knees together (with pillow) needs to be established straight away so as to lose as little sleep, and to cause the least discomfort moving again so soon after getting into bed, as possible. But always, of course, even throughout the turnings of the night, alert to pain.
Pain is a funny thing, as those of us with a clumsy or accidental nature or of a certain age, will have by now come to acknowledge. When it's there, as I've aforementioned, you're alert to it and the danger of causing it, but once gone it's hard to recapture, by mind alone, exactly how it was or how you bore it. And it changes too, with the occurrence (or recurrence) and over the course of your complaint. What worked one day to mitigate it may not be so successful the next, and the pain, particularly if it's relative to bearing weight, your own, might have moved, and so a new remedy to it which allows for some mobility, if not flexibility, may have to again be found. What's also peculiar to it, as I was to discover with knees together, is that I was although alert dumb: I failed to take much else in, around and in front of me.
All routine had broken down. There were limits now. Had I been a drinker, I might have thought like J. 'a little whisky with a slice of lemon would do it good', or perk me up at any rate, but no, it had to be knees together and (mostly) stoicism.

Picture credit: Kneeling Nude, c.1888, Edgar Degas (source: WikiArt). 

Written June 2020. 

The Artist Thief

'All artists are thieves anyway', the radio voice said.
Are they? News to me. Is it really? said my mind.
No; perhaps not. But the expression is. I'd not heard it voiced like this before, quite flippantly as if it was a well-established fact. Perhaps it was, or became so, and I'd somehow missed it.
Actually, the missing bit is less surprising. Bubbles in my world – living in one – are not a new phenomenon. Often I'm not really listening to the radio if it's on, until a few words like those above break me out of a philosopher's reverie and put me into another.
But does a thief know he or she is a thief? They may not.
There are only so many ideas in the world, I forget how many, and instead lots of variations on, especially when we're as far along in history as we are. Nothing is really new, just a new take on it. And so it's inevitable a similar storyline, the same sequence of notes will occur. In my book that doesn't make a thief, unless it can be proven, and then it's a homage to isn't it? Although if the latter the artist thief should have long ago acknowledged it and have got in first, before a story of their stealing could be made.
Ideas thought to be original can bear traces of the past, a past unknown, a past unresearched. The idea thought to be your own turns out not to be. But should you then acknowledge something that isn't true? No, because it seemed to come to you, from nowhere, from somewhere, but not from there.
The original can also be had at the same time by different people. Two people work on a similar book and race each other to the finish line. Thief! One will say, it was my idea. They battle it out, use the same sources (and possibly ask those same sources to withhold information from the other), and then wait to see what the critics say, who they declare the better. Critics always weigh; there will always be a winner. And that winner may not be the reader's choice. Both books may throw different light on the same subject, may actually complement each other, but still there will be an outright winner, if not won by review then won in sales.
Another:
The bones of a story are contested. Was it mine? Or was it yours? Both deny all knowledge of the other. So who is the thief and liar? And how should it (if one is indeed a thief) be determined? Seeds are sown. Some promotional material might have semi-consciously been taken in, in a publication it is known one regularly looks at, wherein the bones were contained. These bones, it is supposed, sank into the thief's conscience. The story they began sometime after therefore a lie, for it would not have occurred (the other claims) without this influence. The thief's story then is also theirs. And the similarities don't have to be strong for a case to be made. Doubt casts doubt and advertises doubt and promotes the need for an investigation, though it will, where it occurs, not conclude to the satisfaction of both concerned. One will lose and one will win, and there the matter will rest. Except it won't because it will from time to time be brought up, be remembered even after the writers themselves have gone to writer heaven.
Such a lot of fuss. When the assumed thief was likely innocent. When they had no knowledge of taking anything, especially not from anybody they confessed to know or to have read. And so instead their unconsciousness is accused of theft. Can you be a thief without knowledge, any knowledge of your crime?
Perhaps you can if you've grown so accustomed to your thieving nature that you don't recognise when theft is being committed. If it's become all part of the process, the writing process. What you read you think on, what you hear and what you see in the course of the day you also think on. Who can say how any of it influences? Will the artist always know when it does? To tell apart which the theft and which the art?
The declared artist thief might see it instead as weaving; weaving from or into another's story their own story. As more of a tribute than an act to be punished.

Picture credit: Portrait of a man writing in his study, 1885, Gustave Caillebotte (source:WikiArt)

Written June 2020.