On s’arrache les cheveux!

I’ve decided that we’re only going to shop for little tiny things on overseas trips from now on. Since our next trip (God willing) will hopefully net us a tiny little Chinese daughter, I think I can keep this pledge. The immediate reason for this pledge has to do with the giant headache facing us as we try to haul all our stuff back to the States in two days. Last night, after finally laying everything out on the bed, we both just wigged out. The closest French equivalent Marguerite could find for us is “on s’arrache les cheveux,” tearing out one’s hair.

It’s not that we’ve spent a lot of money necessarily, it’s just that what we have bought weighs a lot. The 3 major offenders are:
1. Paper goods. Paris is brimming over with boutiques, shops, and even department stores full of all kinds of art paper for writing, card-making, stamping, and just admiring. Many types of paper just aren’t available in the States.
2. Books. See previous blogs about our bookaholism. Suffice it to say that, if we were ever “on the wagon” regarding our book collecting habit, we certainly fell off the wagon while in Paris.
3. The mother of all Christmas crèches. I’ve already blogged about this beautiful and morbidly heavy set of Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, shepherds, Magi, and animals, all exquisitely hand crafted and painted, and all made of dolomite, a mixture of crushed rock and resin.

It’s the latter offender that is causing me to become prematurely “chauve.” Just a little bunny trail here: the French word for “bald” has the same root as our word “chauvinism.” This word, by way of the feminist movement of the 60s, has come to mean a sexist or a misogynist, so I thought it might be associated with the balding heads of the “establishment” that caused feminists to begin using this term. Alas, occasionally a word in English looks like a cognate in French, but doesn’t actually have the same meaning.

In this case, a French word (chauve) that looks like the root of another French word (chauvinisme), doesn’t exactly match up. Chauvinism, according to my trusty Oxford PDA dictionary, means “exaggerated or aggressive patriotism, or excessive or prejudiced support or loyalty for one’s own cause, group, or sex” (this last meaning is certainly the one most Americans understand best). The origin is from the 19th century, and named after Nicolas Chauvin, a Napoleonic veteran noted for his extreme patriotism. It’s possible that his family name derived centuries ago from a family trait of baldness, but that is just conjecture, I’m afraid.

In light of the full meaning of chauvinism, it’s interesting to note that almost any vociferous special interest group, including feminists themselves, could easily be identified as chauvinistic. There is good reason to stick to Aristotle’s “golden mean,” always shooting for the middle ground when possible, since the truth is usually somewhere in between the two extremes. It seems like an ironic case of poetic justice to correctly identify a feminist as a chauvinist, at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Back to the morbidly heavy crèche: we checked on the internet, and found a DHL office for package drop-off near the Bourse (appropriate, since it’s the French equivalent of Wall Street). We walked there (needing to either walk off lunch or pre-train for dinner) and inquired, in a mixture of French and English, how much it would cost to ship the statues back to the States. It turns out that it’s fairly expensive, but weighing our options of having DHL insure, ship, and deliver the package intact, or having the baggage handling gorillas at the airport abuse the overweight suitcase out of spite, we have decided to put the delicate objects in the hands of DHL.

Of course, they don’t have boxes or packing material to pack the statues in, so this morning we will be going on a mission to find a box, packing material, and strapping tape. I think we’ll pull it off, but not without pulling out more hair.

We had a French lesson with Marguerite yesterday near the Louvre, which is where we identified that we were tearing our hair out. We are making good progress (in French, I mean, not in hair-tearing): I now know the difference between “having style” and being a “goth.” I’ve always wondered where I fit along that spectrum.

For our lesson, we were visiting the Museum of Decorative Arts' boutique shop, and comparing and contrasting the various “artsy” gifts found there. We decided—in French—that French women are “a la mode.” This doesn’t mean they come with ice cream, which is how Americans understand that term; it means that they have a sense of style and an eye for detail that we barbarians can appreciate, but will never achieve.

After our lesson, Beth and I went into the exhibits of the Museum of Decorative Arts, and saw the most exquisite art nouveau jewelry and furniture, as well as furniture and furnishings from the Middle Ages up to the present. It was fun to follow styles and designs through the ages and into the 20th century. When we got to the exhibit on the 70s though, I started to break out in hives. The decade of my adolescence has to be the ugliest and worst decade in history, even in fashionable France. Apparently, all the designers world-wide were high on drugs during that time.

We left the museum when it closed around 6 PM, then walked all around central Paris, from the Louvre to the Bourse to the Madeleine to Concorde to St. Germain des Pres, where we stopped at Café de Flore, one of the two famous cafes on the corner near St. Germain des Pres church (the other café is called “Les Deux Magots” or the two maggots). Many literary and political celebrities have hung out at these two institutions since the 20s, including Hemingway, Picasso, Dali, Camus, Sartre, and de Beauvoir. The salad and soup was pricey, but the Art Deco décor and the people watching was fabulous.

We got there around 8 PM and got the last good outside table. We spent the evening nibbling salad, slurping gazpacho soup, and eating an omelet (this is lunch or dinner fare in Paris, rarely eaten at breakfast). Many jealous couples eyed our table and grudgingly went inside the café. We just smiled a little and sipped our petit café. We’ll never fully stop being barbarians, but I think Paris is rubbing off on us just a little…