clothes

well, why not?

everyone else is doing it...why can't i?

perhaps i am ignorant, new to this blogging business but i just discovered that there are four million anglophone blogs about paris. paris fashion, paris travel, paris literature, paris pets, food, music, movies...everything...seems like everyone else got to it before i did.

perhaps i should have begun blogging years ago about being an au pair or a waitress at a diner...or a student at a physical theatre school...but those days are all over and now i am a secretary and one-half of a folk/pop duo so i guess things could get interesting...

i will not, however, write about the french "look"

(i will not remark on the ballerina flats, sailor shirts, trench coats, inherited hermès bags, messy hair, just-right vintage flair, velib-riding, cafe-sitting, chain smoking, dog-walking,

scarf-tying, pouty face-making qualities of these people. i'll leave that to the others).

on uniforms:

the pierre hermé man has to wear a very dressy black chef's uniform as he unloads the macarons at the store on rue cambon, i feel sorry for the poor guy, less sorry now than i would have if i had noticed him last week in the sweltering heat, but sorry nonetheless.

the butcher who delivers the hamburger meat to the diner every morning always wears a spotless white overcoat and carrries a clipboard.

the café richard delivery man has it easy, a few light boxes of coffee pods and the occasional filter, i believe his overcoat is blue...he is a happy little fellow.

the postman is jolly and i know he's coming because i can hear him whistling in the courtyard, he has enormous dreadlocks and an earring and a great lisp and he is very organized, i like him.

there is a hierarchy at the jean-louis david training center, the trainees have to wear white and the supervisors wear black. it is easy for the supervisors to look thin and chic, but try making ill-fitting white cotton trousers look chic...very few succeed and those who do generally give better haircuts.

the chanel girls all wear different variations of the same ugly suit, with a little cc lapel pin. i often see them at mcdonald's looking hungry.

the laduree girls wear the same polka dotted neck tie. i think it's cute, but if i had to wear it everyday, i would not think it was cute.

and on and on, i often study the people coming out of the metro and try to guess where they work. in retail we call this profiling, in life i call it observation.

i wonder where they think i work. sometimes i dress like molly ringwald and sometimes dorothy parker, sometimes interplanet janet or doris day and sometimes there is even a janis or patti nod in the mix. i wear what i please...thank you.

up there

i live in an oven on the sixth floor.

i pay a lot of money to live in an oven on the sixth floor with sloped ceilings.

you could have cooked an egg on my windowsill yesterday.

and my neighbor doesn't like it when i climb on the roof.

well, screw him... he has a balcony. and a bigger apartment.

(okay, so he doesn't like it when me and twenty of my closest friends climb on the roof...)

okay, i get it. but i can't just climb up there alone, can i? somebody has to stand on the pink chair and hold the window up enough so that the other person can climb up the ladder that i found in the street one night in front of the hotel de ville. it's a bit dangerous but that's part of the charm. and then once you're up there it's just...wow.

from here you can see most of paris. it looks like you could almost touch the back of notre dame though she's a moody cathedral. her mood really depends on the time of day and on the season, the weather, my mood, whether or not it's a holiday, what kind of beverage i'm sipping, who the company is, what we're talking about, if i remembered to bring a sweater/sunglasses/teaspoon/put the right music on in the background...

the tower is a little less variable, but moody just the same. if you're lucky to be up there when she sparkles it's really a treat.

if you tiptoe to the other end and turn your head to left and incline just a tiny bit, you can see the pantheon. it's my favorite thing to look at from up there. the pantheon is not at all moody (insert gender joke here).

he retains the same balance of light and shadow, mystery, poise, seriousness... all year long, at any time of day on the top of his big hill. i imagine men in long robes speaking latin and wearing sandals, flowing from in and out of his big columns. they're kind of ghosty but if i focus they become more real.

from either diagonal you can see the big clocks at the gare de lyon and the gare d'austerlitz. i love those clocks. (though i half expected them to melt yesterday). here i imagine ladies and gentlemen in forties suits and shiny shoes boarding trains and kissing goodbye and sipping coffee and carrying suitcases without wheels and hatboxes too...all looking at the enormous clocks. when the sun sets behind them you can even hear trains whistling.

once i met an adventurous neighbor from three roofs over. he heard us and decided to come and say hello. we gave him a goblet of wine from a box and sent him on his way. i think his name was bruno.

there is an apartment full of american students across the street (i think it's across the street though i find the whole thing very disorienting). the side of the apartment opens up (i swear) and if they don't pay attention and drink too much i just know one of them will fall out one of these days. they talk very loudly. i wonder if they would figure out that i saw the whole thing and ask me to be a witness. i don't like courts so i'm pretty sure i'd say no.

the best best best part of all of this though is when the saxophone player sits on the bridge between the two islands. the sound floats right up between the buildings and matches the boat shadows and it's then that i wonder if baudelaire and his mistress jeanne ever hung out up here. he kept a little apartment for her in my building and i am partial to the idea that it was mine...

so i think that's where i will be this evening. if i can find someone to help me with the window...