Contemplation past and future

 

Cold, rainy, warm steamy, Paris                                    (nan turpin photograph 2017)

TIRED, THIRSTY, WANTING TO GOSSIP

Case Study:  Here’s one thing that can happen in the hunt for a willing café (see earlier post):

One day in Paris, Birthdays invited a friend to the big buzz show of rarely exhibited 17^th century sensation Artemisia Gentileschi (Musee Maillol, http://www.museemaillol.com/exposition/artemisia/galerie-photos/).  The show was a lush archipelago of galleries filled with the often bloodthirsty canvasses commissioned by some of the most powerful men of the time.   It was a rare opportunity to get close to Artemisia’s large pictures and more than three hundred years after her death, Parisians jumped at the chance.  Every room was crowded with fans back for a second look with friends in tow.  In the spring of 2012 in Paris Artemisia was as sought after as she was in her own time.

After all that looking, exhausted and thirsty, Birthdays and friend set off to find a café and talk about the expo and everything else in the world.

Not so long ago in this town, two people could walk away from a museum, and by some special Paris radar, talk non-stop, cross streets safely and, never having looked up, find themselves choosing the best table and ordering drinks at a nearby café.  Paris has changed.

From the museum, the two crossed into two more arrondissements, looking for some place that would let them drink without eating lunch.  It was around 4 in the afternoon.  Once they actually found an outside table directly under the awning sign “Café.”  Waiters with big trays of very late lunches danced around them for a very long time around the invisible women and when the pair had rested long enough, they headed towards the Latin Quarter for a cafe that was still a plain old cafe.

In the block between rue de Rennes and Place Saint-Sulpice they saw a café.  Faint from thirst, they bolted through the door without reading the small sign on the window.  Inside they looked around the small room and what first came to mind was the cottage of the Seven Dwarfs in Snow White, charming hand-made furniture and woodland creatures peering through flowers and over fallen logs to watch the strange thirsty creatures come into their midst.

On second look Birthdays wondered if these gentle souls now stopped in their own conversations, watching the strangers were in fact a tiny group of shepherds from the Dordogne, come up to Paris for some sort of sheep industry convention.  However, they were not dressed in sheepskins, they were not wearing wide-brimmed black felt hats, nor did they hold shepherds’ staffs.  Additionally, no sheep dog dozed at their feet.  They were dressed in modest street clothes.  They seemed unthreatening but their gentle similarity suggested shared ideology that left Birthdays uneasy.  It was too late to leave.  Besides, this café was the only one in Paris willing to serve tired, thirsty strangers and give them a resting place.

The cafe turned out to be a small social center for a Catholic youth group of a particular persuasion.  Actually there were only a couple of young people in the place.  Most were older, men in their forties, fifties and beyond.

The tea was fine.  A. ordered an omelet and when asked reported it “edible.”  The bill came to about nine euros.  Birthdays thought that was a little steep for a place that really looked more like a shelter or soup kitchen.  But the prices were printed on the menu so they weren’t pushing up the price for people they thought could pay.

“Do they know we’re not like them?” Birthdays stage-whispered.

“What do you think?  Look at us!”

How were we different?  Pagan?  Clearly not shepherds?

Birthdays was grateful that in the great city of Paris, there remained one café where someone could ask for a cup of tea and a place to rest and get it, even if you weren’t a shepherd.