In "Trouble at the Tower," a short piece that's part of Paris to the Moon, Adam Gopnik posits that Americans, who mostly "draw their identities from the things they buy," "long for a closed society in which everything can be bought, where laborers are either hidden away or dressed up as nonhumans so as not to be disconcerting. This place is called Disney World." Whereas the French, who "draw theirs from the jobs they do," want "a world in which everyone has a métier but no customers to trouble him." "This place," he says, "is called Paris in July."
It's part of the natural order: just as birds fly south for the winter, Parisians in late summer head to their maisons de campagne or sur la mer ("or, in any case, away," says Gopnik). For those who remain, the city can seem like a ghost town, with noticeably fewer people on the street and in the Metro, and many more parking spaces around the Champ de Mars. This being France, the surest signs that things are not normal involve food. Boulangeries close for a month or more (although the closings are coordinated and regulated, so in many cases next to a sign in the window reading fermée you'll find directions to another in the neighborhood that's still ouverte). At cafés and restaurants the outdoor tables may be full, but the hum is not the same, and inside they're deserted. The offerings in the cantine at work are perfunctory, at best.
The trouble of which Gopnik wrote was an altercation between an elevator operator at the Eiffel Tower and an English tourist: the latter had a ticket for the second platform but wanted to get off the on first; the former refused to let her. While Ashley and I of course empathize with the tourist -- seemingly gratuitous assertions of French authority like this drive us mad (but then again we are consumerist, efficiency-loving Americans) -- this is not at all how it's been for us in Paris this past month. Perhaps because my urgent work e-mails are fewer and further between, and Ashley's busy schedule of tutoring and volunteering has not yet started back up, we are more relaxed and ready to appreciate la via quotidienne. Perhaps because the shopkeepers and waiters are not swarmed with customers, it's easier for them to smile and be helpful.
Whatever the reasons, we have found Paris this August to be an easy place to enjoy. We take strolls after dinner, as the sun is setting (it still doesn't get completely dark till well after nine). We window-shop. We discuss the trips we'll be taking and the friends and family we'll be entertaining this fall. Sometimes we stop off for a drink at a café. Many nights we hear more people speaking English, Spanish or Italian than French. One morning, while sitting at the bus stop, I saw no less than three advertisements in English. One was for a company that gives tours of Paris, and another was for a new movie. The third struck me as a little redundant: "Disneyland Paris."
-- MBB
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