-
Website
http://omywordblog.blogspot.com -
Original page
http://omywordblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/things-arent-always-way-they-seem.html -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
All Comments
One of the things that always struck me about Paris - it was only the second foreign city I visited as a 21 year old, was the smells. I am very sensual that way- I experience things through all of my senses and smell is a big one for me.
So your descriptions even brought that back too.
Having said all that, I love what you say about European city life, American car culture and aging people.
And about dignity.
Did American culture trade dignity for progress and convenience? I think there is something there, I am not able to articulate it more meaningfully at this moment.
Even in April of 1979, when I traversed the sometimes seedy streets near Boulevard Barbet, where my friend lived, I had a sense of something. Then it became clearer as I spent more time near the intersection of Blvd. St. Germain and St Michel and saw the Cluny.
I knew that in the US we would be loathe to preserve such antiquity in its own environment in the middle of such rich real estate.
People are not buildings are not culture - but we are all connected with our world around us, aren't we?
So if culture can respect itself it can respect its people - no?
I am off on a tangent here but I love the thought of you walking more upright and with such clarity and with such dignity through the streets of your city.
Thank you for this beautiful piece and such a lovely way to begin my day of pondering.
Merci!
I think American car culture served to make things more convenient for us, but also to separate us from each other. Have you ever ridden a motorcycle and had the huge realization that life on the road on a motorcycle is so different than when you're cooped up in a car? In Arizona in the summer, when it's really hot, as you go travel down a road and go down into the washes, the air cools significantly, and then you are back up to the heat. You feel so much more connected to life. And taking the train allows you to see the scenery much better than flying on an airplane. These slow-life experiences are somehow much more rich for me. I feel much more connected to the world.
There's so little dignity in aging. We have to depend on others, and sometimes, we have to lose any sort of dignity we have been able to muster up through a lifetime, when other people have to help us go to the bathroom or we forget who or where we are. But I think that if you live within a family, or within a "village," the village takes care of you. But when we become just another blip in a metropolis, then we can become lost and alone. I have no children, so I can't count on any help from that quarter. I have no retirement, so I will be dependent on the state, and the state in America can't cover me. The social security I've earned while working probably won't be enough to care for me in old age. I try not to think about it.
An interesting story in reference to your experience of the Cluny - Evidently, a large British department store tried to get a permit to be on the Champs-Elysées and the locals said NO. They feel like it has become a lifeless, high-end, high-rent, plastic environment, and they don't like it! They didn't want to add another behemoth store to suck just that more life out of the place. I loved that story.
It's such a shame the way we deal with the old in America. We tried, with my mother and with my wife's mother, to take them in when they needed it, but bad health in my mother's case and bad manners in my mother-in-law's case prevented us from carrying through. My mother died in the hospital before we had to deal with her, but my mother-in-law ended in a nursing home. I think the whole community has to be involved for support, but we're so dispersed in America, that's a problem.
I had a lot of images go through my mind as I wrote this. Of crazy, mean old ladies and grumpy, mean old men. I remember a friend of mine who was an art dealer who got a phone call from a crotchety old man who never came to any of her art shows, but always called her the day after to argue with her about art. He told her his kids hated him and so he was going to hand over his estate to her, and not to his kids, if she would take care of him before he died. She had never met him! And so, she did exactly that. And he got nastier as he aged and once he took after her with a broom handle. It's not easy taking on the old and infirm.
I have an award for you. To accept - come on over to my site for the details.