observing the unobservable

I tried to do a derive today. I rode the 13 to the end of the line and was all excited to discover a whole new Paris, a periphery culture.

It really wasn’t terribly interesting.

I passed a garage, a gas station, a nice-smelling Indian restaurant. There were people having a barbecue in the park (Happy Memorial Day) and what looked like a pool or gym sort of place. It actually looked a lot like Saginaw.

I haven’t had too much success with derives, honestly. I do try. I don’t know, maybe it was easier before there was so much globalization and industrialization. I would love to derive around at the end of the 19th century, when the city was new. To see how Haussmann’s changes changed the way people interact with space.

Maybe part of the problem is that we don’t really interact with space in a traditional manner anymore. Space gets you from place to place. Everyone, especially in Paris, seems always to be in a rush to get someplace else. Even when you’re not in a rush, there’s not the same interaction with people or space. We don’t stop and chat with strangers on the streets, but text on our phones. We mask the scent of a city with perfume, the sound of a town with an iPod. Modern day spectacles are not outside in physical reality but on Youtube. People don’t gather to discuss the news but read and comment online. Our world is becoming increasingly virtual, and I think it has left the real world looking rather pallor.

At any rate I’ve always thought people to be more interesting than places, so on the way back I thought I’d take a subtle personage derive and observe people on the metro. The trouble is people tend to put masks on as soon as they step onto a train. They (and I, too) plug in, zone out, do something to pass the time in a less-than-conscious state.

Maybe I’ve just had bad luck. But maybe there are fewer and fewer occasions where people come alive and let themselves shine through. Or a combination of the two. Next time I won’t take the 13.

Sometimes you've got to get out of your own way and in someone else's.

I’m already becoming a Paris snob. I have been silently, and not so silently, criticizing those Parisian-Parisians who walk round with their nose so high in the air they can’t even see all the normal-heighted people they’re knocking over along the away.

But taking my parents round the sites of Paris this weekend I’ve gotten so tired of crowds and people who stand in the middle of the walk to take a picture and loud Americans and I even tried to ask a guard if I could cut the line (which he understood!! But didn’t let me.)

It could to some damage, I think, living here permanently. I think I’d rather be an obnoxious tourist than an obnoxified Parisian. I’d rather be a traffic disruption but open to wonder and appreciate all Paris has to offer than to rush past everything like a ghost and grow dead to the beauty. I have no need for mini Eiffel towers, but I never want to find the shimmering lights annoying or disruptive. I want to be mid-way between a local and a tourist.

The middle road. Yep, that’s where it is. Right in the middle of the side walk.

Please I'm terribly sorry, do forgive me I know this is a touch late, please thanks for understanding. Please.

England is the most polite country I think in existence. Maybe not the security checks, but in the actual ununiformed people surely are.

An actual conversation: (at a Starbucks, also. Not some quaint little cafe with a sweet old woman serving. An oldish businessy looking man and a rumply looking girl.)

"Yes good morning, how are you?"

"Fine thanks, what can I get you sir?"

"Ah grand. May I please have a cup of your very fine home brew, if you don’t mind."

"Yes of course, what size would you like please?"

"Oh gosh sorry, a large if you don’t mind. With some extra room for milk please if it’s not too much trouble."

"Not at all. 3 pounds 95 please. To stay or to go please?"

"To stay, thanks."

"Right here you are thanks, have a nice day then."

"Thanks so much, to you as well."

Even the traffic lights warn you before they’re going to switch to green. "Don’t want to startle you but here we go now, get ready please."

I’d always been made fun of for being overly polite, and I know why it is now. In all the times I’d been to England I hadn’t noticed it before. But when you come direct from Paris you can’t help but laugh. It is a bit ridiculous, the amount of sidestepping and extra words it takes to speak British English.

It worries me a bit that I found it so strange. I don’t want to become Parisian. I don’t want to audibly scoff and turn up my nose to last season’s Prada and cross roads illegally as though it’s my right. Though that last one I do, alright. That’s an Ann Arbor thing though I think more than a Paris thing.

I like Paris, I do, but I am very content being a foreigner in Paris. I don’t really like being mistaken for French. Especially when people talk to me in French and then are shocked when I don’t reply quickly and perfectly.

There’s something to be said for saying what you mean and getting to the point, but there’s also a little thing called tact. And courtesy. Gracefulness. I like these things. I don’t want to lose them in the rush of Paris.

Somewhere in the middle would be nice. Somewhere in the middle is generally a good place to be. Maybe by the time I get back to the states Paris will have balanced out my English and I’ll be perfectly American, in America. That’d be a good state to be in.

Housman's book shop

I had been meaning to get to England since I got to Paris, so when I booked trains I booked them so that even if a volcano spewed lava in front of us on our way to London I’d be able to make the connection to Grantham. However there were no spewings of any sort, at least not near me, so I had a 4.5 hour wait in London.

Which was great.

Because Kings Cross is right at the center of London and you don’t have to wander far to get away from Starbucks and McDonalds (though why would you ever, right). So in a few minutes I had wandered down and up a street where there was a book store called "Housman’s something-or-other." And I said to myself Hey. I know a Haussmann. So I went in.

Turns out it was this crazy left-wing radical bookstore with these two great middle-aged men who when I arrived were talking heatedly about the election (though to be fair everyone was–ENGLAND WHAT ARE YOU DOING.) And they had sorted their store by political philosophy–communism, Marxism, non-violence... with stationary and posters interspersed. I really liked that the organization was a bit wonky. I'm sure it wasn't a commentary on Haussmann, but it still made me smile.

Upstairs they had a room for activist groups to meet, and then in the basement they had just this room of piles and piles of lovely great smelling old books and not so great smelling ones and old issues of Communist magazines and propaganda from all sides... though that stuff got quite expensive. The rest of it was £1. But they had original works in Russian and German and French even, though that’s not quite a vocabulary I’ve mastered yet. And actually I found a pretty great old St. Paul’s hymnal with scores for the Messiah in it too.

These guys were great though. I can’t remember the one man’s name but the other was William, and he gave me his mobile number in case I ever needed to find something. They genuinely just wanted to help people and spread knowledge. They knew so much; history, current events, historical literature, literature on history...

The remarkable thing to me was that neither seemed to be the least bit bitter. I feel like if I had read cover to cover, and not just the back flap, of all those books I browsed through I’d be a very cynical, untrusting person. I think I’d hate America, and Britain, and all the empire-ish Western nations. But it’s not as though I’d like to live in a dictator-run country either. Or one with an actual king (unlike our beautiful figurehead Queen).

But really, is any place free? Does there exist a single society free of corruption and entirely for the people?

I want to know what their secret is. I want to know how they can be so informed and entirely aware of these massive injustices and lies and deceptions that aren’t progressing, except maybe in terms of complexity, and remain so chipper. Prozac? Zoloft?

How can they can retain such optimism and happiness in the face of humans at their absolute worst? Maybe that’s what freedom is.