An Introvert In Paris

As an introvert, I felt deeply uncomfortable for the first week in Paris. I arrived in an introverted state of mind, desiring solitude, and a chance to sit down and work and think quietly, perhaps in some nice green spaces.  Paris laughed at that.

Any time of day or night when I went outside, I saw throngs of people walking around and sitting at tables conversing with each other.  Every night, even at the grand hour of 3:00am, the river near my apartment was thickly lined with people, most of them young, some of them eating food, some sitting on chairs or couches hauled to the edge of the street, all of them talking.  The crowds waxed and waned, but they never, ever went away.

Good noms on our last night in Paris.
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Good noms on our last night in Paris.

It was constant and eternal, the conversation.  I was not used to the physical closeness of the seated crowds.  The equivalent closeness back home would be at a ballgame, or a concert, or some other collective activity.  We were packed close, and if you weren’t talking, you were the odd one out.  Almost no one sat alone.

Enjoying the random Paris rain at 3:00am!
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Enjoying the random Paris rain at 3:00am!

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Back home I could enter a coffee shop with plenty of space to sit down, and be completely undisturbed as I sat among other people, most of them working on things or reading quietly, with the occasional conversation happening in between.  I would have room to spread out papers, or a laptop next to a plate.  Often there would be music filling out the atmosphere.  I found almost no recorded music playing in Paris.  Because, why bother?  The talking would just drown it out.  It was like the busiest part of a thriving downtown, reproduced around itself, spiraling outward to the size of an entire city.  There was no place you could go, outdoors or in, aside from your own home, that wasn’t in line of sight from at least one other person, and usually a crowd.

I don’t know whether my initial discomfort with this was because I am an introvert most of the time, or because I couldn’t speak very much French, and felt isolated due to that.  But one thing that only occurred to me in retrospect is that I was witnessing a version of urban life imbued with so much energy that it actually squeezed out the presence of the smartphone, and the internet in general.  There was so much audible conversation vibrating in the air that the wireless signals now permeating everything were superfluous.  I’m certain the people here have cell phones in just the same quantity as any other modern city, but I saw them far less than back home.  When people sat down at a table, they conversed with the person across from them, and almost never pulled out their phone, except perhaps to check something germane to the conversation.  Why be concerned about information and dialogue happening miles away when there is so much directly in front of your face, pushing into your ears?

This is about an hour of waiting in line for a few scoops of ice cream. I’m sure it’s tasty but, I’m going to go with a different vendor, thanks…
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This is about an hour of waiting in line for a few scoops of ice cream. I’m sure it’s tasty but, I’m going to go with a different vendor, thanks…

Local protestors.
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Local protestors.

I arrived here by train, and I imagine almost all the other tourists either did the same or arrived by the airport, which means the impression we’re building of France is confined to this city.  The rest of France, and French people in general, could be wildly different.  I get that.  But I can say this about Paris: Nowhere else have I seen such a combination of narrow streets, packed bars, tiny tables decorated with “no laptop” signs, public parks so covered in people that the green of the grass is drowned out by the colors of clothing and skin and food, self-assured pedestrians striding out into traffic, bicycles and scooters barreling through narrow corridors cut into throngs of people, and gawking tourists with sunburns and sore feet.  I’ve seen this stuff in other European cities, including large ones like London and Copenhagen, and bicycle-mad places like Amsterdam, but not to this manic degree.  Not to the point where it feels like an expression of something fundamentally different beneath. The city feels ripped out of modern time, existing in a space where things invented this century are treated as a suspicious, uncool intrusions. Especially things that create metaphysical distance between people, like the smartphone.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this. But I imagine someone living in Paris would find practically every other city in the western world to be lonely by comparison.  Even though there is a language barrier for me, the press of constant dialogue and the sense of being insulated from all of the change and chaos of the outside world by the buffering chaos of the city itself is weirdly reassuring, as though I’m experiencing a unique synthesis of being anonymous in a crowd while also being intimately close to everyone here with me.

You can sail boats here too!
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You can sail boats here too!

There’s a beautiful little park here, somewhere, under all these people.
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There’s a beautiful little park here, somewhere, under all these people.

On the other hand, how intimate is it, really?  Americans are known for being very gregarious in public encounters, even with strangers, telling them all kinds of personal details about their lives, to the point where many foreigners feel like their privacy is being grossly invaded during the average subway ride or transaction at a supermarket.  And I suspect that reaction would be the same even for a Parisian wandering around New York.  I think they would feel hesitant, and the funny, scrappy, slightly pugilistic dialogue that’s been the baseline of my random exchanges in New York or Chicago would probably feel uncomfortably aggressive to them.

And if you took a million Americans and crammed them together in a city as close as Paris, would we all sit alone at tiny tables on the street hunched over our cell phones, too afraid – or too overworked – to talk to one another in this way?  Or would we would blossom into our own American kind of dialogue?

Actually I suspect most of us would immediately feel hemmed in by the lack of space to pursue hobbies and keep equipment.  I mean, hell, I occupy a lot less space than the average American my age, but even I have five bicycles and a heap of touring hardware, which I keep crammed in a garage.

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So many weird devices and parts…
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So many weird devices and parts…

When Ann was planning her portion of this trip, she said, “I’ve done plenty of London and Berlin, and it feels like enough. But I could always do more Paris.” Now I understand why.

Navigating Paris After Two Weeks

I came here on a bike loaded for wilderness-level touring. I couldn’t help it, because that’s the load-out I used in Iceland and the bike has been stored in a basement, untouched, since the Iceland tour finished almost two years ago. When I got here – to a rented apartment on Rue de la Fontaine au Roi – I stripped all the bags and gear off the bike and threw them in a closet, and have been going around with nothing but a phone, some Airpods, a house key, and a very sturdy bike lock.

Tried this cafe a second time, but the mocha was no better.
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Tried this cafe a second time, but the mocha was no better.

Parisians seem to love the recumbent. Of the thousands of bicycles I’ve seen so far in the city, I haven’t seen a single recumbent, so it gets a lot of commentary. I understand why it would be rare: Paris has turned out to be what I would call an “expert level” place for bicycling, much more so than any other giant city I’ve been to in Europe, and you need to be very good on a recumbent to avoid injury in a place like this. Relatively speaking, Amsterdam, Brussels, Hamburg, Copenhagen, and London are all easier.

Back in the US, I’d say New York is relatively easy, and so is most of Boston and Chicago. In terms of danger I’d say that Paris is not top of the list – downtown LA occupies that spot for me so far – but it’s a strong second place. It’s not fear of deliberate violence I’m talking about, but the risk of accident, from the sheer press of people and the contempt they show for the rules. And it bears repeating: This is Europe. I have yet to experience bicycle touring in, for example, Rio de Janeiro or Bangkok. I’m sure Paris would be way down the list by then.

The weather is perfect, but the air quality is pretty bad. I’ve noticed that smog laws in Paris are treated as suggestions, especially by people on ancient scooters and mopeds. While biking around I’ve encountered entire city blocks that stink of car exhaust to the point of making me feel physically ill.

And I’ve gone to believe that the French take a dim view of laws and government in general, which I suppose is great where personal freedom is involved but is also a barrier to organization and urban planning, even daily logistics:

Will a shop respect its own posted hours? Maybe. Will you get warning when a street is closed for construction? Maybe. Will the bus actually stop where the schedule says? Maybe. Will the postman deliver your package? Maybe. Will there be a bike lane? Maybe. Will it be on the left, right, or middle or the street? Take a wild guess! Will there be a delivery truck parked right on top of it? Maybe. Will the train be on time? Maybe. What platform will it arrive on? Nobody knows until 20 minutes before it’s due to leave, ever, even if that train line has been operating for years, and even then it may be wrong.

Every intersection is a free-for-all hash of bicycles, people, cars, and scooters. Crosswalks are a suggestion. Crosswalk signals are less than a suggestion; they are ignored. On the other hand, people almost never honk their horns regardless of the thickness of the snarl or who is technically at fault, because the response they are most likely to get is, “screw you, this is France.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. What sort of organization would I expect, from a nation whose most truly defining era is still the French Revolution? Where laws, for the vast majority of its history, were used to funnel wealth upwards first – into the laps of clergy and kings – and organize people second? The nation I come from owes an incalculable debt to the same thinkers and activists that drove the French Revolution, and the influence shows, but I get the impression that the French had to swing a lot harder to knock their tyrants off their posts, and that impact is still echoing around in the culture here.

That’s a cerebral place to go, starting from a description of the air and the traffic… No doubt it’s subjective and I’ll have other impressions as the days continue.

Still searching for the perfect mocha…

I woke up from an unpleasant dream and realized my sleep apnea insert wasn’t placed correctly. The little sleep quality graph on my watch was mostly red lines. Drat!

The first decent mocha I’ve had in Paris. Thankfully not the last!
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The first decent mocha I’ve had in Paris. Thankfully not the last!

A work in bronze by a sculptor named Benoît Lucien Hercule. Died in poverty at the age of 65, in 1913.
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A work in bronze by a sculptor named Benoît Lucien Hercule. Died in poverty at the age of 65, in 1913.

I pedaled around in search of breakfast snacks and a change of working environment, and found a place about five blocks away that made a very chocolatey mocha and a good eggs Benedict, and seems to tolerate laptops.

When the mocha looks like mud, you know it’s gonna be good.
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When the mocha looks like mud, you know it’s gonna be good.

It was still very crowded and not really a pleasant place to work, but the mocha was encouraging. The barista confessed “Sorry, we don’t know how to do it iced.”

I lingered just long enough to answer a few emails, then went back to the apartment so I could work in peace. Most of the afternoon was spent going over documentation and tweaking the “continuous integration” process for my project.

I have to admit, I didn’t really like the job. The project I inherited was over-designed and far too complicated for the needs of the company. Maintaining it was painful. I wanted to rewrite it in a much more compact form but was never granted the freedom. This kind of work is very exacting and highly abstract, and if you’re not really enthusiastic about the project you’re doing it for, you spent a lot of your work time fighting against your own brain, which is in a state of constant rebellion. (Like Paris.)

Nevertheless I did battle for about five hours, then went on another ride to clear my head.

Don’t walk under the ladder propped in front of the Lucky Bastard Cafe. It’ll just confuse things.
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Don’t walk under the ladder propped in front of the Lucky Bastard Cafe. It’ll just confuse things.

It’s a Latino thing!
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It’s a Latino thing!

During my wanderings I was astonished to find half a 5.25″ floppy diskette on the sidewalk. What in the hell??

What the heck is half an ancient IBM floppy diskette doing in the street?
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What the heck is half an ancient IBM floppy diskette doing in the street?

An inadequate meal in Paris??

Time to get some coffee and begin the workday.

While heading out of the apartment, I listened to a “Sawbones” podcast episode about Hepatitis C. Disease exposure was on my mind with the pressing crowds of Paris. Of course, for the rest of the day I obsessed over whether everyone I met had Hepatitis C…

Just a few blocks over I found a café that made an “iced mochaccino”. Will it stand up to my absurd mocha rating scale? We shall see! (Spoiler alert: No. It scored a 5 out of 10.)

I ordered tiramisu and it was totally different from what I got in Brussels, but still quite good. Also different from what I got anywhere in America. I should have expected this, really.

After scarfing that down I joined a work meeting with four other people in it, and listened with my earphones while I walked the half mile back to the apartment. A weird new first: Participating in a work meeting while strolling around in Paris with my phone, headphones, and some keys as my only equipment. I’m too old to be a yuppie, so I guess I’m an “uppie”.

Théatre du Caveau de la République has an adorable mascot! Some kind of buck-toothed pixie??
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Théatre du Caveau de la République has an adorable mascot! Some kind of buck-toothed pixie??

Street pole manifesto.
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Street pole manifesto.

Back at the apartment I wrote code for several hours, then did some documentation, and then the rest of the day was mine. I set out again for food, choosing to stay on foot for a change instead of using the bicycle.

I randomly chose a restaurant, and sat down at the usual microscopic outdoor table. Dinner was a Caesar salad which was way too dry and some “fresh squeezed’ orange juice that definitely tasted as though it sat around all day. As I finished it, I almost laughed at the thought: “Hey, it’s my first unacceptable meal in Paris! A new milestone has been reached!”

As I dined, and later on as I walked slowly around the city in the evening gloom, I listened to some of “A Distant Mirror“. This was going to be a favorite of mine for the rest of the Paris visit. While contemplating stone walls, canals, and random strangers, I heard about the arrest and torture of the Knights Templar, who were basically yet another pointless aristocracy that ran afoul of the church and were devoured by it. Their head honcho was burned alive right in front of Notre Dame (like so many, many others, especially later when witch trials began.) Earlier in the week I’d passed by the very spot on my bike.

I also heard about the 13th-century expulsion of Jews from France, and how they were scapegoated as “money lenders” specifically by the church, which considered the lending of money “unclean” but was forced to admit it was a necessary part of large-scale commerce, so they mandated that role to Jews to deliberately enflame their status as “unclean”. All dictators need a scapegoat and a war, and the church was no exception. Tale as old as time.

Back at the apartment I went down a completely different digital rabbit hole, reading about old computer games from my adolescence that I’d missed out on because they were distributed only in other countries. I ran into a game called “Princess Maker“.  Weird.  And weirdly compelling.

It is what it sounds like — sort of. You guide a young lady through her adolescence by setting her work, school, and travel schedule. You don’t control her directly, or even interact with her directly. The majority of the interaction consists of picking menu items. If you get her stats and reputation high enough, she becomes queen of the land. Lesser outcomes include “housewife”, “con artist”, and “wandering wizard”.

There’s a framing device where you – the player – are described as a heroic knight that saved the kingdom from an invasion, and as a reward you asked to start an orphanage. I assume the framing device is there to give male players a more comfortable angle to participate: Consider it practice for being a Dad? (Well, as long as being a Dad consists of picking menu items with a mouse.) It’s the attitude that counts I suppose.

Your princess-to-be, chopping a tree down with some lumberjacks as an extracurricular activity.

Hey whaddaya know, there’s a PC-98 emulator for MacOS called “DosBox-x“, and some usage directions. An interesting rabbit hole. I felt a bit too lazy to actually play the game, but it got my mind churning about cultural differences again. When I was a boy growing up in California, role models of men spending their time raising children were pretty thin on the ground. You could join the army, fight crime, be a really good dancer or singer, kick ass at some sport, or perhaps be one of those interesting and windswept loner types, but being a Dad? Maybe you could be a “sitcom dad” like Tim Taylor and dispense some life lessons, but it was mixed in with acting like an idiot half the time.

Perhaps this is why I always felt a kinship with Scrooge McDuck, who spent half an hour each weekday living an adventurous life but also taking care of three nephews at the same time.

Travel sends my brain in funny directions…

A Park To Work In

Another few blocks, another bakery!
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Another few blocks, another bakery!

Quite a view up here.
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Quite a view up here.

This is why Red Riding Hood stopped wearing the hood.
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This is why Red Riding Hood stopped wearing the hood.

Lots of strange ideas here.
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Lots of strange ideas here.

Dig that shifty character on the left.
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Dig that shifty character on the left.

Tag, you’re it! Watch out for the BANDE DE PIGEONS.
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Tag, you’re it! Watch out for the BANDE DE PIGEONS.

This garden is open until 8:30, which is pretty nice. It’s also been claimed by Action Antifasciste!
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This garden is open until 8:30, which is pretty nice. It’s also been claimed by Action Antifasciste!

Do you dig wacky tile art? You better.
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Do you dig wacky tile art? You better.

Pretty strange technique.
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Pretty strange technique.

Solidarity with Ukraine!
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Solidarity with Ukraine!

Pretty nice day in the park.
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Pretty nice day in the park.

Some park info.
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Some park info.

Did you know that rocks break off and stuff?
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Did you know that rocks break off and stuff?

Unfortunately it was closed for renovation when I visited.
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Unfortunately it was closed for renovation when I visited.

Time for some pasta and a fruit drink before I zip back down that hill at 9 miles an hour.
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https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52967190457_b290e6ddae_s.jpg
2023-05-30-180509-IMG_7480

Time for some pasta and a fruit drink before I zip back down that hill at 9 miles an hour.