Indiana Frusk in the Temple of Fashion

Today was a long, busy day. We went to the Centre Pompidou in the early afternoon. The permanent collections were closed, but we enjoyed the panoramic views from the escalators running up the outside of the building. Also saw a fun exhibit on the moving image, which explored connections between the technology of motion pictures and other art forms. It was fun and smart and deep in a particularly French sort of way.

Martha went and gave her paper late in the afternoon. I went down the rue Sevres to the Bon Marche and la Grand Epicerie de Paris—basically an upscale department store and a grocery store that was Whole Foods on steroids. For me, strolling through the aisles of the Bon Marche felt like being Indiana Frusk in the Temple of Fashion. I just couldn't believe the hordes of women grabbing up clothes that seemed to me wholly impractical and obscenely overpriced, not to mention, um, small. I realized, of course, that I had to be missing something, that there was something perverse in my DNA or my upbringing that made me unable to appreciate the delights of designer fashion. There were dogs in that store who seemed more in their element than I did, surrounded by rack after rack of eye-popping clothes while walking around in my Target travel pants and my old running shoes with the hole in the toe. The devil may wear Prada, but sensible middle-aged dykes on vacation wear strictly Saucony, with a little Mephisto thrown in when they want better service in restaurants.

Met up with MN at the Sorbonne a little before 6. We walked to the Louvre for what had been billed as “a private tour.” Turned out to be a short lady in a green raincoat who had nothing to say and didn’t seem prepared to “guide” us at all. We hadn’t even bothered to pick up maps at the entrance because we assumed we wouldn’t need them, so we hung out with folks who had maps long enough to stop and pay our respects to the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa, then bailed out because we were exhausted.

Here’s an amazing story, though. At some point when we were looking out the windows to try to figure out which of the four wings of the Louvre we were in and how we might go about getting out, we realized it was suddenly pouring down rain. Well, we thought, might as well not hurry to leave, because I had left the umbrella back in the apartment to try to lighten my load. As we re-traced our steps, we passed back through the room that houses the Mona Lisa and several dozen other masterpieces of Italian Renaissance painting. (It’s enough to make a girl feel sorry for Titian and Veronese, I swear—These guys have these incredible 30-foot wide Technicolor canvases with dogs and Christ and angels and food, and all anybody comes to see in that room is one little painting of an overweight Italian nobody!) Anyway: As we walked back through Mona’s room, we suddenly found ourselves caught up in a bit of museum hysteria. The guards were telling everybody, “You can’t go this way, you have to go that way,” which Martha processed as “blah blah blah, blah blah blah,” and which I processed as, “What the hell is up with these uppity Frenchmen, always telling us, no, no, no, you can’t do this now, you should have done this five minutes ago, but now it’s absolutely impossible?” So, they’re trying desperately to herd us one way rather than another, when suddenly I look up at and notice that there is WATER pouring down one of the walls behind a group of PAINTINGS not fifty feet from where her majesty, the Mona Lisa, the queen of western civilization, is hanging. And I do mean POURING. We stood there transfixed by the horror of it—Renaissance masterpieces, greatest museum in universe, and WATER, WATER pouring down!--and spent the rest of the evening re-assessing our whole sense of the French and their cultural superiority. I mean, really, I may be Indiana Frusk in the Temple of Fashion, but a couple of weeks ago when we had ourselves a nasty series of summer storms in the Washington area (with something like 15 inches of rain over a three-day period), I managed to keep my artwork dry! Folks, this is water management 101: don’t get water on the great masterpieces of Western Art! Fine, if you’re too snooty to install air conditioners that actually COOL or internet connections that consistently function, please do the world a favor and at least try to assure that the Mona Lisa doesn’t go to mold.

After the trauma of flooding in the Louvre, we needed serious sustenance. Fortunately, we had a late reservation at l’Epi Dupin, a restaurant not far from our apartment that had been highly recommended to us by a couple of people. It was just the two of us, and we had an extraordinary meal, possibly our best yet, or maybe we were just so tired and hungry that it made a huge impression. We both had a festive drink to begin, a kir royale for me and a glass of champagne for Martha, to chase the Motrins we had taken before dinner for the aches and pains we felt from all the walking of the last few days. I had a lovely shrimp salad for an appetizer, just three shrimp on a bed of greens with a light vinaigrette and a light piece of parmesan toast. Martha had a cold soup of little peas with a piece of herbed chevre—also very light and delicate. For entrees, I had a steak with mustard on a bed of spinach, and Martha had duck breast with polenta. We even had a cheese course tonight, because we had a smashing bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape (La Bastide Saint Dominique 2002) to finish off. Then, for dessert, I had a roasted peach with pistachio ice cream, while Martha continued her chocolate tour of Paris with another little soufflé.

We finished with espresso and an armagnac and then went home to blog, to bed, to dream perchance of floods and fires and all the terrible threats to Westuhn Culcha for which neither the French nor “Homeland Security” is prepared.