What is this place called Montreuil? Is it a vibrant underground community where borderline psychotic creative types flee the stuffy Paris center for an uninhibited lifestyle of drugs, art and wild sex orgies hosted in public parks and abandoned industrial space? Not really. It actually sort of reminds me of New Jersey.
I mean, people inhabiting inexplicably dilapidated shacks in the middle of normal suburban communities? Families who store their extra bicycles and ladders and strollers and pets on their roof? I've seen this shit before. I've seen it in Secaucus. If I wanted to watch the sad pageant of human decay against a suburban backdrop could have done it without a 20 euro salade niçoise.
A long, long walk through the environs of Montreuil today confirms basically my worst fears: I'm living in urban sprawl.
I know what you're thinking: "I wonder how long before we realize that the American obsession with the reality television show bears an eerie resemblance to the Roman obsession with gladiator combat?" Also: "Sam, I admire and respect you but that's just a picture of a street. It's just some stupid street in the middle of nowhere. Why are you showing my this?" Well you're wrong, it's not just some stupid street, it's my stupid street. That's where I live. You can barely see it but that wooden house on the right, just in front of the tree, that's my house. It looks like this:
So now the question is how do I keep my Paris exploration at its current frenetic pace while still living way out in the banlieu? It's something like an hour by train to get from my front yard to centre-ville. Maybe I should just adapt to a new lifestyle. I could do it, I think, with a little determination and all-America stick-to-itiveness. I could wake up a middle aged man with an asymmetric bald spot and a collection of ties. Sunday mornings my wife would make omelettes au jambon and we'd complain about how the espresso machine didn't work anymore. We'd read the newspaper together, then she's chide me gently that I still hadn't cleaned up that ugly tower of old books that I'd built when we'd first moved in and I'd wander down to the basement to go through them, and at the bottom of the pile I'd find an unopened box with pictures from my youth and little trappings that had held my dreams: microphones, drawing pencils, notebooks, and I'd look at those memories one at a time like fragile insects and sigh. Incidentally, this is what a clothes dryer looks like in France:
I know this is old news to most of you but I was slightly surprised, especially after learning that the washing machine actually has a drying function (this function has no effect). As an added bonus, you get to see my new underwear, congratulations. It's much clingier than my old underwear, which I'm still trying to get used to. Wearing it feels like someone is rubbing my ass just slightly, all the time.
Of course, I could also just buy my weight in delicious cheese and eat until I explode. Holy fuck the cheese is amazing here. Honestly, guys, it's as if that stuff we get at home isn't even from the same animal. For amusement, here's me negotiating the vending of some fermented curd from a local femme de fromage.
That all being said, there may yet be some secret, pulsating underbelly to this whole Montreuil business. All over I see little signs of tension, little flickering signals of unrest, of action. Like this subtle statement I passed by the other night:
Détruisons le Capitalisme, in case you couldn't puzzle it out, translates to Fuck you, Bernanke. Yes, this is the kind of thing you see if you start walking back towards Paris from Montreuil, following the metro from Mairie de Montreuil to Crois de Chaveax and, my personal favorite metro stop, Robespierre. It tickles me a dark shade of purple that every single thing in this whole goddamned city is named after some historical figure--there's a window in the 4eme called "Fenêtre de la Fontaine"--and the fact that the metro named for the blood-fueled jet engine of the French Revolution and the Turkish deli capital of Paris are one in the same almost renders me apoplectic. Anyway a journey out to Robespierre has all kinds of points of interest: beautiful abandoned buildings, an open air tapas restaurant in the steel skeleton of an old warehouse, other-worldly graffiti:
explicable but very silly graffiti:
adverts for a MOTHERFUCKING PÉTANQUE TOURNAMENT HOLY SHIT,
and finally, this place, which I found really beautiful for basically no reason:
I don't know, maybe something will come of this stay out in Montreuil after all. Maybe the peace and quiet will actually be good for me, and I'll get a lot of amazing creative work done or something. I could leave the insane city-scouring for Berlin, I suppose. Wouldn't be the end of the world. Then there is always the cheese option.
I mean, people inhabiting inexplicably dilapidated shacks in the middle of normal suburban communities? Families who store their extra bicycles and ladders and strollers and pets on their roof? I've seen this shit before. I've seen it in Secaucus. If I wanted to watch the sad pageant of human decay against a suburban backdrop could have done it without a 20 euro salade niçoise.
 |
| Apparently, Montreuil has Internet. Do they think that makes them special? |
I know what you're thinking: "I wonder how long before we realize that the American obsession with the reality television show bears an eerie resemblance to the Roman obsession with gladiator combat?" Also: "Sam, I admire and respect you but that's just a picture of a street. It's just some stupid street in the middle of nowhere. Why are you showing my this?" Well you're wrong, it's not just some stupid street, it's my stupid street. That's where I live. You can barely see it but that wooden house on the right, just in front of the tree, that's my house. It looks like this:
 |
| The box in which I'm writing this |
 |
| Above: Technology |
Of course, I could also just buy my weight in delicious cheese and eat until I explode. Holy fuck the cheese is amazing here. Honestly, guys, it's as if that stuff we get at home isn't even from the same animal. For amusement, here's me negotiating the vending of some fermented curd from a local femme de fromage.
That all being said, there may yet be some secret, pulsating underbelly to this whole Montreuil business. All over I see little signs of tension, little flickering signals of unrest, of action. Like this subtle statement I passed by the other night:
Détruisons le Capitalisme, in case you couldn't puzzle it out, translates to Fuck you, Bernanke. Yes, this is the kind of thing you see if you start walking back towards Paris from Montreuil, following the metro from Mairie de Montreuil to Crois de Chaveax and, my personal favorite metro stop, Robespierre. It tickles me a dark shade of purple that every single thing in this whole goddamned city is named after some historical figure--there's a window in the 4eme called "Fenêtre de la Fontaine"--and the fact that the metro named for the blood-fueled jet engine of the French Revolution and the Turkish deli capital of Paris are one in the same almost renders me apoplectic. Anyway a journey out to Robespierre has all kinds of points of interest: beautiful abandoned buildings, an open air tapas restaurant in the steel skeleton of an old warehouse, other-worldly graffiti:
 |
| What? |
adverts for a MOTHERFUCKING PÉTANQUE TOURNAMENT HOLY SHIT,
and finally, this place, which I found really beautiful for basically no reason:
I don't know, maybe something will come of this stay out in Montreuil after all. Maybe the peace and quiet will actually be good for me, and I'll get a lot of amazing creative work done or something. I could leave the insane city-scouring for Berlin, I suppose. Wouldn't be the end of the world. Then there is always the cheese option.
No comments:
Post a Comment