Every (Vie En) Rose Has It's Thorn

"Des yeux qui font baiser les miens

Un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche

Voila le portrait sans retouche

De l'homme auquel, j'appartiens"

Edith Piaf

The Parisian Gentleman who greeted me smiled as if he were welcoming an early morning guest into his home.  And as he escorted me toward the diminutive perfection of my “table for one,” it was with an air of excitement and amour-propre . . . as if he ever-so-secretively knew that this experience would be unlike any other this city had so far treated me to.

 But then again, in hindsight, of course he knew.  That canary in his throat was singing La Vie En Rose.   And the secret was one that, in this moment, he held singularly against me.

Sunrise service at Angelina is a ballet whose Pricipals are turned out in classical length black skirts, black tights & flats, eyelet aprons, and peter pan collars below which the (period) most (period) exquisite (exclamation) teensy black bow hangs. It was as if Mademoiselle Coco herself had silently willed them into brilliant costume with her years of faithful patronage.

 I, personally, imagined the upper half reinterpreted as a cashmere topper, and the bottom as a full on tutu - calling for Repetto’s Ballerine Cendrillon en Python Noir with an impassioned “Madame I beseech you!”

There was but one place for me to go for an encore. 

And so it was that I walked through the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, and I crossed the Place du Carrousel, and I acquainted myself, in the first light of day and for the first time in all my days, with the Musée du Louvre. 

And if you fancy yourself an optimist, then this is the only way to begin a day that will later serve up one missed train and two sanity-threatening teens who sing (what I could only interpret as the Croatian rendition of High School Musical) all the way to Antibes.  

The Ninth Day?  Dancing ladies?  Well . . . Only if they are rhythmically forming nine rings (around this Princess Odette) to perform a modernist interpretation of Dante's descent as an Ode to traveling the M14 from Opera to Gare du Lyon.

I'm more, much more, of an M12 girl!  The M12, whose musicians, school children, gallery seating and accessibility deliver a stark contrast to the ghost-conducted, assylum hued, over-crowded M14.

Though leaving was not easy, I now know from experience that . . .

“There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. "

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast