Sink Pair Sons

On March 28, my mother and I visited Notre Dame de Paris, where in 1572, King Charles IX manually nodded his sister's head in consent to marry Henri de Bourbon and in 1804 Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself emperor as the indifferent Pope looked on. As we left the cathedral, looking to get some coffee at a local brasserie, it began to rain, and so we shuffled into a busy, tourist-y looking contraption called the "Quasimodo Cafe" or something to that awful effect. Not long after we sat at a table par deux, a man whom I might describe as a very large, fleshy egg, says to the waiter with his hand up, fingers splayed: "Sink pair sons, sill voo play."

Granted, I don't speak anything near perfect French, and the effort to speak a few words to the locals is something, if not admirable, but it seems to me that if this lumbering American with his quadruple chin and non-existent neck clearly cannot reproduce "cinq personnes, s'il vous plait," then the imitation seems more of an insult to the language and to the waiter, who can speak and understand English. It did not help my disheartened humor to see that the four following Sink Pair Sons were equally large, egg-shaped, and poly-chinned.

Meanwhile, at the Place de la Republique and the Place de la Bastille thousands of etudiants, lyceens and union workers were staging a manifestation against a proposed labor law less absolutely abominable and more hated due to the circumstances of its proposition. It's a grand tradition of revolution and demonstration That they have in France. My half-French, half-Chinese 32-year-old unemployed artist cousin was among the demonstrators, though not of the ones at the Republique who were sprayed with water cannons and tear gas, I don't think. He may live in a small Communist ville just outside Paris, but as he put it, "I happened upon it and how could I not get caught up? This is my generation." He went on to talk about how he hated the extreme indifference regarding politics and national and generational identity that he noticed growing up in San Diego. He didn't like the lack of citizenship, the lack of concern with community and courtesy; he didn't like the selfishness and gluttony that leads to egg-shaped people and people "falling out of their clothes."

I've suddenly become very concerned with the history of Marguerite de Valois (we read and watched La Reine Margot in class, and I lived in a hotel at 8 Place de Marguerite de Navarre, and we rode a boat named the "Isabelle Adjani," who played Marguerite in the 1994 film versionLa Reine Margot.) even though I suppose it does not concern me at all. I suppose France shouldn't concern me at all, but I am drawn to it for several reasons, not the least of which is that there are carrousels at every corner in the city, the way there are hot dog stands on every corner of New York City. It's the first time I've ever been interested in history, probably because I got a fictionalized, romanticized version of it first. No matter, another reason I like France is because all of its truths are just about as romantic as their fictions.

On another note, I just put my phone through the washing machine, so it's out of commission. After the number of times it's been accidentally dropped, emotionally thrown, and generally mistreated, I suppose the drowning put it out of its misery. It had a lot of good photos on it and 200 phone numbers on it, though. Crap. So e-mail me your number if you want me to have it. Merci bookoo.