This morning I received a nice little note from Lumberjack describing his impressions while waiting at the bus stop. "You can tell the summer is ending in this government village," he wrote. "There's more traffic and the light is different." (He also lives in a government village. Even smaller than mine though.)
The light. The coming out of a long nap. In a few words, Lumberjack brought me back to what I will be missing this year: la rentrée in Paris.
La rentrée is a big deal in France. That's when we officially resume working after the summer break. That's when we make good resolutions and start all sort of activities that we'll struggle continuing a few months later. The air is chillier, the days are shorter, and yet there's so much pleasure in observing the capital getting ready for the cold!
I see la rentrée like a Sempé drawing where a man with a floating smile would stand on a bridge, eating le croûton of his baguette while watching the bateaux-mouches below, school kids running past him, drivers insulting each other in the background and blasés students smoking in a corner. One of his signature captions would say something like "The simplicity of this moment, so full of peace and harmony, made him wonder whether he should indulge and eat the artichoke and the paté en croûte he had bought earlier when returning home."
"Leaves also fall in DC," a friend told me tonight.
To me la rentrée is a spirit, a feeling that I belong to the city, that the urban poetry also is mine. That's why I am so nostalgic of my city tonight. I have yet to find Washington's poetry. I haven't given up trying.
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Bella, what a beautiful post!
ReplyDeleteI find some destinations poetic by their very nature. They whisper to me lyrically from our first moments together. Others are more difficult to get to know, take more time to develop an intimacy with, and their beauty reveals itself more slowly.
I agree with Lara, some destinations are easy to get to know like some people are easy to make friend with, when other are more likely to be conquered and deserved... I'm not friend with Washington yet, because I'm impatient and it/she is not helping me out to get to know her in depth, but I feel a mutual respect and curiosity towards each other, so I will try even harder. Let's not give up!
ReplyDeletejellyfishqueen,
ReplyDeletei'm a long time reader, first time comment-leaver.
this is very nicely said ... enjoy your blog. my view is that most of the larger cities in the world are by their very nature more mechanical and less poetic. it is the magical nature of a select few of them (paris, london, new york, mumbai, hong kong, san francisco, among few others) that are able to balance size and yet manage to capture our imagination ...
look forward to the mere possibility of spending time with you and the lumberjack next week.
très beau post en effet.
ReplyDeletebon, et à quand la suite?
Elle a peut être trop aimé sa grotte cette jellyfish^^...
Where are all the jellyfish gone?
ReplyDeleteI am looking forward to reading you again!