The organizational side of my brain is still fighting the in-the-moment side which says I need to write about Paris here and now and not overly obsess that I still haven't documented the Summer Part II--time at home and, perhaps most importantly, Jon and Molly's wedding. I want to get back to that, but it's not what I want to write about now.
The back and forth of the two tones a siren makes here are drowning out the usual street noise of metal carts on wheels used to carry "prét-à-porter" (ready-made-clothes) rolling over the rock sidewalks. Van doors slide open and I can hear heavy cardboard boxes being pulled towards the open door and then dropped onto dollies (which are then rolled over the rock sidewalks). Because it is a pedestrian street outside my window (which is violated by cars much more frequently than the other parts of this quartier), the scooters, many with their silencers removed, like to cruise up and down this street, knowing they are unlikely to be dominated by vehicles. Paris is alive. This time is called "La Rentrée" a time when everybody returns from month-long holidays and resumes school and work. Everybody is rested, everybody is tan, everybody is ready to work and be back in the swing of things. And the streets are friendlier than at any other time I've experienced. I've met more strangers and had more nice conversations in the butcherie, at the laundromat, while buying my newspaper at the kiosk, and even just walking.
Yesterday I started school. Well, orientation. Classes start Monday. I've got a solid 8 years on just about everybody. While I felt awkward in the first hour or so when everybody was standing in a line waiting to get their passport photocopied (of course, had they just told us to bring a copy, there would've been all of 5 people needing the copier). People were striking up conversation, I was determined to just speak French (unfair of me, really), and people had a hard time "getting it" that I was finished with University, that I have already started a career, that I've been living here, that I am taking these classes for the credit. But at lunch I sat myself with two guys who work for the program, knowing they were closer to me in age. Two other girls joined us, and they turned out to be fantastic. It was a little strange sitting through a session on "cultural integration" and "safety in Paris" when this is the place I now call home, but once classes begin we'll be in the same boat.
My personal "rentrée" has felt perfectly normal. It felt good to reconnect with my girlfriends, to walk into the café and just feel at home, to be welcomed back by the cute guy behind the cheese counter and the bald man in the butcherie, to organize my apartment, to hang my Turkish tapestry and buy another plant, to paint my kitchen and call a repairman for the washing machine. I went out to Anne-Caroline and Fab's to see their new baby joy (Jules) and eat dinner with them, I bought a French keyboard in anticipation of my papers, I applied for my new residence permit, I'm getting a new phone line, finished a book and started a new one, have cooked dinners and gone to see movies. We all celebrated Molly's birthday, caught up on all the summer happenings with the girls, I met Theo for coffee, had drinks with Karina's friend who will also become my friend, met a new friend who I've been spending time with (and met his friends as a result), watched more futbol, and have plans to finally go see the Opéra Garnier (the old opera house where the ceiling is painted by Chegall).
I still don't have a television, and I haven't really missed it. The program director today was telling us to sieze Paris, to make it our own, to observe it and understand its people, to explore new quartiers and walk unknown routes. And although I've had these thoughts and done these things for myself over and over again, it was a good reminder for me. There is still so much left for me to discover, for me to see and do, and maybe being surrounded by 20-year olds will serve as a good energy boost to keep fitting in as much as I can while I'm here. Afterall, "La Rentrée" doesn't last forever, and the winter is sad and gray. But I have no reason to leave this city without seeing French theater or without tracking down one of the recent "bagettes of the year," no reason to never have seen the stained glass in St. Chappelle or gone to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Paris is still young for me. And I am still young in Paris.
