Promenade

When I waltzed home late last night, containing three glasses of wine (and one each of cranberry and orange juice! and half a pastry: drinking responsibly), I had a hunch I wouldn't be getting on a 9:15 train this morning to go out to Vaux-le-Vicomte. And I was right! Plus, I'd thought David could just come let himself in to deal with a backed-up shower drain, but he's being a stickler for politeness, so I saw, in the morning light, his email response to let him know whether I'd gone on the excursion or not. I fired off the "no, it's fine, I'm here, decided to wait" message and proceeded to tidy the apartment since he, in turn,would be turning up an hour earlier than he'd originally predicted.

Last night was a party in honor of Spoken Word Paris' ninth birthday (I asked that David, David Barnes, what on earth he had in mind for the tenth). It began at his apartment off Ledru-Rollin, then moved after about an hour and a half to the Le Motel bar downstairs. All drinks were free, funded out of the euro collected from attendees every week at Spoken Word, which normally go to fund serious endeavors like The Bastille, its literary magazine, other publications, special readers, and so on. David hung out the window welcoming me as I walked up the passage, the party already well underway); some unknown neighbor arriving at the building's front door at the same time, not a part of Spoken Word, let me in.

The little apartment (nominally a couple of rooms, plus bath) was already wall-to-wall people, but they kept arriving. When I asked for white wine (only red on the rickety table against the kitchen counter, along with vodka and other non-wine), Alberto, the co-host of the original Spoken Word, fetched an unopened bottle from the fridge, but then asked me to check a bottle sitting outside on the window sill to see which was cooler. This involved gingerly moving another small rickety table covered with vintage issues of The Bastille for sale away from the living room window, trying not to bump into anyone, just far enough that I could swing open the casement and retrieve said bottle. It turned out to be cooler, so I replaced it with the one from the refrigerator, and Alberto opened it.

And so on, and so on. In due time, all of us remaining upstairs gaggled down to the tiny bar and began wedging ourselves inside. Two Spoken Word regulars were going to provide the evening's official (other) entertainment with song and guitar. While--even  before--they set up on the small stage, we slithered back and forth between the front room and the back, actual bar, room. David B. was passing around tickets for free drinks--alcoholic ones only, I discovered when I attempted to order something not, so, on to the third, i.e., one past my limit, glass of wine.

The music began. It was good (I'd heard both of these guys play at various Spoken Word nights, and they both are actually good). One of them, Victor, played a whole set solo. James began his solo, but then brought Victor back onstage, and they finished out the set together. All the while, we sardines mostly stood in place, turning to let other people slide past. At one point a young woman who works in a bakery showed up (so we gathered; it wasn't as if we could really see her from halfway back to the barroom), and David began proclaiming "Cakes! Allison has brought cakes!" (David is English, so this is his generic term.) Which was very nice in theory, but there was no way we could actually get to them.

Mercifully, in the shuffle between sets of music, some non-Spoken Word people left, and these people had been occupying most of the bar's seating--benches around the wall of the front room--so with immense relief, I sat, and was then face to face with the spread-open containers of various breads and pastries. I consumed mainly part of a loaf containing--dried fruit of some sort, and nuts, enough to sort of soak up some of the wine (was my theory). Perhaps half an hour later, I left. The party was due to continue until closing time, but I was still harboring the vague notion that I might take the train out to Melun and visit Vaux-le-Vicomte.

That didn't happen, though I'm considering it only postponed, not cancelled. I had a hard time getting up in the morning, then there was the email, and the straightening, and the drain-opening process, and breakfast. After all that, I debated what to do instead: the "Photoquai" exhibit outdoors at the Musee du Quai Branly I'd like to see again, but have never managed to work up enough enthusiasm to actually go through the museum itself. I looked at train schedules and maps with the idea I might go out to Fontenay-aux-Roses to check it out, one of the little suburb towns I've thought might be a plausible way to afford living near, if not right in the heart of, Paris. But, then, that looked excessively complicated once I got there, sort of like Chartres, where I'd have to put more time and energy into learning how to get from the train station to the town center, or town something: bus? walk? (but it didn't look as if the station was very close to anything) Etc.

THEN I remembered that I'd wanted to see the Promenade Plantee, the elevated, elongated parkway that used to be the Vincennes rail line. The day was still chilly and pretty gloomy, but that prospect actually sounded interesting. So after making and eating lunch,getting changed and bundled up, I took off. Familiar old Metro Line 1 took me to the Gare de Lyon, the same station I would have been departing from earlier, and then I walked up bd. Diderot to Daumesnil--and there it was! obvious, easy to spot. Seeing as it's a three-story brick--edifice, running alongside Daumesnil itself.

And it is so very charming, such a lovely idea carried out. There are wooden bridge portions, paved portions, arbors covered with grapevines, shrubbery and beds of all kinds along either side. There are flaneurs, intent walkers, parents pushing strollers, lots of joggers. Especially on a Sunday afternoon, when, after twenty minutes or so, the sun even broke through and made it a lovely day. There are lots of benches, modern-ornate light fixtures. You have, all along the way, an elevated view of the neighborhoods around you. I won't pretend it's some utopia: the first stairway I attempted actually appeared after a couple of levels of some other garden, and it was blocked off for replacement, obviously, of its wooden treads, and there were two groups of--well, gangish young men quarrelling in the upper level. But the second stairway, just up the block, got me there, and emerging onto such a lovely scheme to make people happy was enough to guarantee a smile.

The Promenade goes on, and on, but I turned back after a few blocks' worth, knowing I meant to do considerable walking at ground level yet, and descended and made my way back to the Gare de Lyon and Place St.-Paul, and the Ile St.-Louis and my preferred bakery there (and hordes of tourists out for the afternoon, too), and home. By St.-Paul the sun had gone back in (leaving me wondering whether it was still out over at the Promenade), for good.