Last Week's Derive

For last weeks derive Jessica and I walked around the 1st (starting from that AMAZING Chinese noodle place. Thanks for that Lisa) to observe but the trouble with observing other people is avoiding being observed yourself.

The first strange thing we saw was a group of 3 people walking in front of us, one woman and two men. And the woman was hitting the man closest to her, for reasons unknown to us, but as we were speculating (subtly, I might add) they noticed us and the two men started holding hands and touching each other and being generally awkward. Or maybe they were genuinely awkward.

People act differently depending on where they are and who they’re with. And who’s watching. And it’s all very interesting but I want to watch what I’m not supposed see. Not in a weird way but just to see people not on guard, not conscious of what they’re doing. That’s hard to do without being creepy though.

So we split off from following them and wound up near a fountain, sort of in the middle of nowhere. Not nowhere as in unpopulated, there’s no “nowhere” in Paris — everywhere is somewhere important. I just mean that the fountain wasn’t in the middle of a plaza or really given much space, it was just on the point where two roads meet. I can’t remember the name of it now (M something) but you can look at Jessica’s pictures if you want. The point is it wasn’t a huge deal or terribly famous. But we wanted to figure it out so we made the grand tour of it and looked at all the statues and detailing on it and decided it was a philosopher who was thought women deserved rights too. Maybe. As we were reaching our conclusions about the mysterious women and coded documents (not actually coded but in French so pretty much) a group of tourists came up and ooohed and ahhhed at it. We hung around thinking maybe they knew what it was but they just as soon took a picture and left. Maybe they thought it was something because we thought it was something.

The difficult thing about people is that you can’t always tell how or if you’re impacting them. Obviously to a certain extent everyone impacts everyone else, but how much? It’s impossible to be sure.

Our next discovery (I think, I really have an awful memory) was of The Gaudiest metro stop ever designed. If you can call it design. I haven’t a clue what to make of it. It was the sort of thing you see and either laugh or sigh. It was an arch of bright, big glass bobbles that allowed neither for any kind of intelligent analysis nor contemplation; just wide-eyed awe. How anyone could think that was worth creating and paying for and putting into material existence is beyond me.

These metros really get me. Each one has their own design and sort of “thing.” Their own look. Why?? Paris. Okay. You’re glamorous, you’re interesting. We get it. But it’s difficult to appreciate all the beauty (and the gaudy, because I think there is a place for gaudy in the world) when that’s all there is. Without contrast there’s no scale. Everything is relative, but without any discrepancies, there’s just one thing. It’s not great or terrible, it just is. Which is sort of terrible in itself. I want to find the ugly Paris.