In and Out

Friday: The source of the weakness became clear when I woke up ill, and was pretty much confined to bed the entire day with a stomach bug, feverish and wanting only to sleep. So much for the Grand Palais exhibit and the Argentine film.

Saturday: Maybe I should just change the name of the blog to “Lost in Paris.” I ventured out, finally, still a little weak and washed out the way one is after a stomach onslaught. I thought it wouldn’t be too taxing to go see the Marché des Enfants Rouges, Paris’ oldest surviving market, bearing that name from a 16^th-century orphanage nearby where the children wore red uniforms. And it probably wouldn’t have been, just the walk to Hôtel de Ville and then what looked like a not too long walk from the Métro stop Filles du Calvaire (a story—history—in every name!) to the market. I could see on the map I needed to make, not an acute-angle right turn, but a right-angle one, and somehow once on the ground, that apparently is not what I did. I did get a somewhat longer tour of the neighborhood, all around the Place de la République (whose connotations for me were previously: where I finally got my bearings that infamous Nuit Blanche 2010; and where I landed to go check out the Canal St.-Martin once) and several of the streets near it. When I’d just about abandoned hope, as often happens, I stumbled across the Rue de Bretagne and the market. It’s small, it’s charming (flowers, including masses of sunflowers; the smell of fresh fish the way New Orleans’ French Market used to be, when it was real), it was packed, even in afternoon, it being a Saturday, with locals and tourists, largely at that point because it also has food vendors (Lebanese, Japanese, Italian, etc.) and communal tables. The food looked and smelled wonderful, but still very leery of anything not completely bland for my stomach, in the end I bought only two mini chocolate (not entirely logical) cannoli and two almond cookies. And—walked all the way home.

Sunday: My seller had again offered to take me with him to a brocante, so even though it was rainy, I got up promptly and got ready. But when he finally called, he’d come down with a cold, in addition to the fact that it was raining, so we agreed on a, well, rain check until next weekend. By then it was almost noon. An indoor afternoon at a museum sounded like a good idea, and the Grand Palais currently has the exhibition “L’aventure des Stein,” the collection of the Stein family, of Picassos, Matisses, Cezannes, etc., etc., collected when those artists were relatively unknown. Think about it: a vastly popular exhibit that’s only recently opened, on the spur of the moment. On a Sunday. Afternoon. I did, in the copious time I had to repent of my stupid idea, standing . . . standing . . . in the line without previously-bought tickets. On the hard concrete. There was a clarinet player trying to amuse us all; though his tone was klezmer, he was otherwise quite good. And we got to hear, I think, his entire repertoire. There were a couple of Venezuelan women just behind me who were pretty hilarious; we bonded, after a fashion (they first came to my attention when one of them was singing the words to some South American—I would have said Argentine, maybe, because they sounded like tango, but maybe they’re just well-known everywhere—songs he was playing). “L’après-midi le plus long de ma vie,” as I finally felt very justified in saying. You know how these things go: once you’ve thrown away one hour of your life, you’re loath to give up, but hang in there doggedly in hopes of making it worth it.

The exhibit is very good. Obviously. Knowing what I know now, I would have turned back and waited for another day. Some day when there would be not quite so much “there” there.