Paris is Raining

Paris is raining. As the banks of the Seine continued to rise, inundated with several days' worth of constant rain (the water has already obliterated the walkways along the river edge), I realized I have already been in a flood this past year. Of course, the scale of that other flood was much greater, as was the extent of the destruction, and the sheer amount of water, so it may be fruitless to compare the two... But taken as a pattern, it makes one wonder.

This flood seems out of time, and my sense of the season is disrupted again. It is June, yet cold, and damp. It is also my first time here, and in my preparations I've imagined summer in Paris to be a balmy season of flowers and breezes and textured skies... But the Paris I found here was moody and sunless, shrouded in a half-light. We walk the streets anyway, and absorb the sights, trying to recognize in this Paris the "City of Lights", now so ironically muted. It does not yield; it is misty and subdued and a bit mysterious. It offers us emerald green chestnuts in city parks, by way of colour; glimpses of bright object; the occasional bright scarf on a chic Parisian lady. (That the women, and men, are a study in elegance is self-evident).

I, too, imagined I will be very chic in Paris; but it's hard to be chic with clothes for the wrong season. My partner and I are underdressed for the unexpectedly low temperatures; we shiver, envying the locals their readily-available coats and boots and sweaters. To warm up, we hide in cafes and in museums, but eventually continue on into the rain...

And what reminds me most of the last time I was in a waterlogged city is the opaque flat sky, the heavy low light, the sense of twilight. Even when it didn't rain, there was no sunshine, as if someone needed to prevent shadows from forming... I wonder if this is what it is like to live in London, or in Vancouver. I've never been to Vancouver, but I remember London otherwise. It was also May last I was there, but though it was chilly, there was sun, and sunsets, and a sky.

But this was a Paris of slicked sidewalks, of wet umbrellas, of a heavy mist in the air... The sort of Paris one expects in the gas-lit smokey world of impressionist nocturnes.

All the same, it is Paris. We listened to an evening jazz concert at the Luxembourg gardens, we strolled the winding streets of St Germain des Près, we explored the islands and bridges, we sat in cafes and ate marvelous cheeses and fresh croissants, the sort of diaphanous croissants that successfully achieved that delicate balance of just the right amount of crispness on the outside and softness on the inside... Like a truly elegant lady, Paris remained unruffled, it seemed, by the cataclysm. I wandered about the Paris of long ago; about the wars and revolutions, the march of the ages, the succession of regimes and fashions, the current socio-economic struggles. Somehow these human affairs seem almost separate from the city herself, as if they were just so much dust on the hem of her coat, brush it off and it is gone. What are cities, if not the organic, physical manifestations of human collectivity? Yet somehow she remains aloof, cool, charming. Even though Paris is raining, roses flower in her gardens, and she is beautiful.