20151115 Ice Cream Sundaes #7 Paris, je t'aime

Salut ,I had a whole other topic written out for today, but in light of what just happened in Paris I’m keeping that for some other time. I decided it appropriate to write something about the city I consider my home town. It’s the second time this year I’m worrying for friends living in the 11th arrondissement of Paris where I used to live, plus people in the 10th by the canal where I was staying with friends just a couple of weeks, and in St Denis where I lived as well. Too many places, too many friends to worry about. My friends and family in Paris are fortunately safe, even my friend Fred who decided at the last minute to forego his ticket for the Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan and go to a different concert instead. 129 people and however many more are wounded in critical condition weren’t so lucky. Nor were the people who died in Baghdad the same day, and in Beirut the day before. According the latest news at the time I’m writing this 129 people died in Paris, 19 in Baghdad and 43 in Beirut. My thoughts are with their friends and families.  I just came across a feature in a French newspaper going over the past decade of terror attacks in every country around the world from A to Z, 30 of them in total. Too many. I was 21 when my family had just moved to St Denis. I wanted to move out and came across the opportunity to rent a studio on the Rue de Charonne in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. The elder daughter of a good family friend was just leaving the studio she  rented and referred me to the landlord, as she knew I was looking at leaving the family nest. One of the attacks Friday took place at number 92. I was further up the street at number 152. I know the area well and have dear friends who live nearby too. I was 11 years old at the time of the first Gulf War in late 1990. I’d just started junior high school, which we call “collège†in France. We studied important worldwide events in Civics class, including the Gulf War. We were given an assignment to study and write about the war. I’d been profoundly upset about it. I decided I was a pacifist, and as such didn’t want to write about the war. I don’t remember the exact details but it was as if writing about it made me an active participant somehow. My teacher had called my mom given I’d completely refused to work on the assignment on the basis of my ideological beliefs. I’m pretty sure that’s what I explained to the teacher. After a long conversation with my mother and my teacher, I ended up understanding that studying and reporting on the current war didn’t mean condoning it, on the contrary. Studying the news of war and horror made me think of a recent double episode of the Freakonomics podcast enquiring into why we really follow the news (following up from the previous episode about how to create suspense – I recommend listening to both). I think it is important to learn about world events, and the closer to home the news are, the more we probably empathise with them. At the same time, unless we’re right there in the midst of it, it is more difficult to grasp as a reality beyond the intellectual facts. Even now I picture walking down Rue de Charonne for one of my weekend walks around Paris, or walking late at night and perhaps slightly inebriated and I have a hard time imagining familiar café terraces assaulted by mad gunmen, blood on the streets, people screaming, terrified and dying. All of that supposedly in the name of their god, the same one venerated by many of the people who died just a day earlier on the streets of Beirut. Whatever else I think of religion, I’m not even going to humour these nutters with the idea that their actions have anything to do with it right now. The first Gulf War is famous for its extensive, branded and controversial media coverage. I thought we were reaching a whole other dimension of 24h news reporting yesterday, glued to the TV for a little while. The journalists have no news, so they were publishing tweets instead. I didn’t switch channels too much but speculation seemed to run rampant. We are inherently social beings, and I can’t help but think about the fact that similar technologies were likely used to coordinate these attacks as were used immediately after for friends and family to open their doors to strangers in Paris needing shelter in the midst of the crisis. Sure I’m also speculating, though I’m not paid to deliver news one might expect to be objective. I’m not a journalist. I can’t help but think that the coverage and fear communicated by the mainstream news is exactly what the masters of the suicide bombers expect, and at the same time I don’t see what else we could be doing. We need to talk, to share both grief and anger, to empathise, and more. It’s in our nature. Whether it’s rage, fear or whatever else, the seriously deranged people expressing themselves by destroying the unwritten contracts human society is made of seem to have reached another level this year. And I’m only writing “another level†because I’m stuck for words to express how I feel – besides sad. I immediately thought of U.S. president Obama’s speech following the mass shooting in Oregon last month. How many more of those do we need? It’s basically the same kinds of events: madmen walking into a populated area shooting people, then ending their life and trying to take as many people along for the ride as they can in the process. How that can ever be considered by anyone like a holy act is mind-boggling. The worst is I’m sure some of the people subverted to these kinds of purposes have probably suffered before getting there. It obviously doesn’t excuse anything. It’s just messed up. I’m just not sure how to solve it, or if there are any easy ways to a solution. The war in Syria has been going on since 2011. Regardless of the fact it created them, the planet’s mightiest military forces haven’t managed to solve anything with wars in Irak and Afghanistan. Of course I’m no expert but more violence isn’t a solution, even though at time it seems like it could be. I’m international, and French, though perhaps more Parisian than anything. Perhaps because it’s something I consciously adopted as mine. I was brought up in suburbs far enough that Parisians would call it the countryside but I still consider I grew up in Paris, though I really started living within Paris at the age of 17. In a way old enough to make it mine, or the other way round depending on how you look at it. I’m welling up as I think of what happened to the city of lights and its people. I’m not idealising it – make no mistake there’s a lot of messed up stuff about Paris, but nobody deserves that. Not there, nor anywhere these kinds of terrible attacks have taken place. It’s a beautiful city and the 11th arrondissement was my favourite, I couldn’t have been happier to live there when I was 21. It was pretty much the best area to be for a young adult. I lived in a small studio that was right in between rue Oberkampf, Bastille, République and Nation – just a 10 minute walk to all these landmarks and an incredible number of some of the best bohemian and trendy bars and clubs in town. We’d also hang out at my place or my best friend James’s who lived another 10 minutes walk away past the Père Lachaise cemetery in Ménilmontant. Several of my friends still tell me of the memorable parties I threw in that small studio. I never get bored of how beautiful Paris is to walk around too, and I’ve been glad to experience its old streets and buildings again recently. One of my traditional circuits was to walk down my building to the smell of deliciously warm bread and croissants from the excellent bakery on the ground floor, take a left on the rue de Charonne and down all the way past the metro station, and take another left at Bistrot du Peintre, a historic and lovely bistrot first opened in 1902, the oldest in the Bastille neighbourhood. I would’ve walked past the place where one of shootings took place yesterday evening, where there are plenty of popular bars and restaurants.From there I’d walk down Avenue Ledru-Rollin, one of the large thoroughfares created in the nineteenth century, leading to the Seine river at the Pont d’Austerlitz. The Jardin des Plantes is right on the other side, very close to where I studied at the university of Censier, la Sorbonne-Nouvelle (which isn’t the actual Sorbonne but still sounds good). From there I’d wander around the left bank between Nôtre Dame or le Jardin du Luxembourg, probably stop at a book, games, or comics shop to check a few things out before swinging back towards the Hotel de Ville on the other side of the river and complete a large loop through les Grands Boulevards or République, and back home. I never get bored of admiring the architecture, changing the side streets I walk by and discovering new buildings, restaurants, or small shops. Beyond Paris, feeling a connection with the old stones and history attached to places is one of the reasons I love being in Europe. I feel like one of my favourite Terry Pratchett’s Discworld characters, Commander Vimes who can feel the heartbeat of the city through its cobblestones and his thin boot soles. This is a actually a good segue to two appropriate titles if ever you’ve never read any of the Discworld novels. I highly recommend them, particularly these two in the circumstances. Small Gods is one of the best religious and societal satires I’ve read, in which a supposedly powerful God finds himself stuck in the body of a weak tortoise because its adepts believe in a dogma more than they believe in the actual god. The second one is Jingo, a satire of the dangers or nationalism, bigotry, racism, and war. Inspired by true events, in the book two nations of the Discworld go to mindless war against one another in full-blown racism and hatred over a small island and many misunderstandings. Spend time with your loved ones, say what is needed, feel with them, and laugh with them. Stay in communication, and take care of people around you. I don’t how to solve the problems of the world, but we can solve whatever is going on with our close ones before they snowball. Whatever else you do, embrace the sadness or however else you feel. Keep reading, learning, sharing, and spending time with the people you love. Call them if they’re not around. I am fortunate to not having lost anyone in these recent attacks, but too many others have. I know losing a loved one feels, and my thoughts are with you if you have. Live Long and prosper. Thanks for reading, I'm available if you need anything. Keep in touch. Peace out. Willem

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