Paris Journal 2009 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com

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Paris is clean, compared to the way it was during and after World War II. I spent part of yesterday afternoon pouring over a book of photographs taken by André Zucca during the Nazi occupation of Paris. He was conscripted by the Nazi’s to take photos for Signal, one of their propaganda publications. This gave him access to color film produced by Agfa. Few photographers had such access at the time. So many of the photos I was examining were in color – a strange color, with intensive, deep reds. One of the most jarring contradictions in the photos was the huge difference between the rich and the poor. Contrast the peasants sifting through trash at Les Halles with the ladies in outlandish hats at Longchamp. Most unnerving was how everyone was trying to live a normal life, many in great complicity with the occupant, despite what they may have claimed after the liberation of Paris. Paris is so much cleaner now. The men who clean it wear bright green uniforms with yellow irridescent vests. They are called “the little green men,” even though not all of them are little. They work all the time. They run the garbage trucks, and you can see garbage trucks operating seven days a week, well into and past the dinner hour. They also clean the streets, using an ingenious system of running water through the gutters and creating diversions of that water to keep too much of it from running straight into the storm sewers. They sweep the water around with their brooms and mops, and adjust the diverters, which are made of old pieces of wall-to-wall carpet, rolled and tied into log-shapes. When you see a little roll of carpet here or there in the gutter, don’t think it belongs to some homeless person who was using it for a pillow; rather, it is a tool of the little green men. These men empty the trash bags in the metal stands throughout the city’s parks and along its sidewalks. Even along the Seine, on the cobbled banks, even on a Sunday, you see them emptying the green translucent bags, carting the trash away in a very small vehicle that’s perfect for squeezing along the cobbled walks. I saw two of the little green men emptying the trash bags ahead of us as we walked along the Seine last Sunday. They were having a lively discussion. The shorter man was speaking in an animated way to the taller man, who was mostly just listening. What do they talk about, I wondered? My French is good enough now that I can pick up all kinds of phrases as I walk past people on the streets. As I walked past the little green men, I heard, most distinctly, “cat shit.” They were talking shop. I guess they have to deal with all kinds of unpleasant things during the course of a work day. Somehow this reminds me of a funny “pronouncement” that Carol and Ron shared with us during their visit. They were, as Britishers, thoroughly enjoying the warm, sunny weather here in Paris. They are much more accustomed to gray, damp cool weather that we all call “English Weather.” Here’s the “pronouncement”: In deference to The Archbishop of Canterbury and The Royal Commission for Political Correctness, it was announced today that the local climate in the UK should no longer be referred to as English Weather. Rather than offend a sizeable portion of the population, it will now be referred to as Muslim Weather. In other words, partly Sunni, but mostly Shi’ite. The weather is now cooler in Paris, and yesterday we actually had rain all day. That is only the second time that has happened all summer. It has been much too dry here, in fact, requiring a lot of watering of plants at the apartment in the 15^th (fortunately that is over and done with for the season), and even here in the courtyard in the 6^th we’ve had to water the plants a few times because mostly the people living here don’t care about them. The few who do are away on vacation. Well, maybe Madame Zaoui is back now, but after yesterday’s rain, nobody will have to do this little chore for a while. I’ve been puzzling over the general differences in the occupants of the building in the 15^th and the ones here in the 6^th. The neighbors in our building in the 15^th are thoroughly polite, thoughtful, quiet, and considerate. That’s not so true in this building in the 6^th. Nobody slams their doors when they leave the apartment in the building in the 15^th. Here, in the 6^th, everyone does, it seems. Except for us. We never do that. Why would everyone slam their doors in this building while nobody does in the other building where we live in summer? This is strange. Even the literary critic living below us slams his door when he leaves. He probably slams it harder than anyone else. Why, I wonder? The young Spanish woman tromps around loudly in her apartment above. At least she did until she found a new boyfriend the other night. Love seems to have calmed her a bit. But she still slams her door. Here in the 6^th we’ve all been given special, educational information about the recycling bin because some people in the building have been putting regular stinking trash into the recycling bin. Tsk, tsk. Here in the 6^th, the apartment itself is something I just love. Its location is unbelievably good. There are places everywhere in the apartment where we can actually put our things away. There’s a space for everything, and the apartment is so well designed and “put together” even though it is small (compared to the other place). Last night, we didn’t do anything special because most of the day was wasted on nonproductive work involving a legal addendum to a contract. It goes under the heading of “no good deed goes unpunished.” If you have a book that is successful enough to have survived many editions and still it keeps on selling, and so therefore your contract dates back to the dark ages of 1977, you are punished. The lawyers just cannot leave that contract alone – it is too old and strange, I guess. We just walked up to the rue des Ciseaux for a simple dinner at an Italian restaurant. This name, street of the scissors, dates back to 1429, when there was an ancient sign there displaying a pair of golden scissors. There was also a building called the Hôtel des Ciseaux there at that time. ← Previous Next → Sign my guestbook. View my guestbook.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 Little green men discussing cat dung while emptying the trash on the banks of the Seine on Sunday. Notre Dame on a beautiful day. Men sunning themselves at the end of the Ile Saint-Louis. This modern sign is reminiscent of the old medieval signs that graced Paris streets when most people were illiterate.