“The more it changes…”
“…plus c’est la même chose”. Or “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Attributed to French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, the phrase was written 172 years ago and remains very true this Christmas I spend here in Paris.
As I mentioned, it’s the first time I’ve come to the city in almost two years and I was hoping to find a different Paris this time around. Back at the airport, I realized that my intuition was right, at least in those first moments.
The first barrier is, of course, health. Tourists are required to show their negative PCR tests, even written in Portuguese. I didn’t see anyone being rejected at this stage. Which is good news.
But the entire immigration system seems to be working on what we know in Brazil as the “turtle operation”. Even so, an hour or so after disembarking, you are so happy to be in Paris that all this inconvenience evaporates like snow on hot ground.
I don’t evoke this image for nothing. One of my most beautiful arrivals in the French capital was precisely in winter, in fact, on the morning of January 1st, when I saw the entire landscape around the airport covered in white.
As I approached the center of Paris, however, I noticed that the snow was melting, with the heat of the city perhaps? The experience of seeing the urban landscape changing color on a freezing morning immediately entered my memory. Which, by the way, is vast.
During my 58 years, almost 59, I collected several souvenirs in Paris. Loves and lovers. Flavors and tears. Silences and epiphanies. How many experiences like these await me on this visit?
I still have three weeks to go and I am aware that, frightened by the omicron, the city will receive me slightly offended. Or not?
So far I’ve been to four restaurants and in all of them I’ve had to show my “vaccination certificate”. The SUS digital is valid, accepted from the very traditional Chez Paul to the modern Kunitoraya. And, between the tables, we wear masks.
Of course! The more we can avoid circling, risk catching or transmitting Covid, the better. But what I mean is that nothing here in Paris, at least so far, has scared me.
On the boulevards, we walk “face naked”. In stores, we circulate with our mouths covered. “Pas mal”, as they say around here (“Nada mal”, in Portuguese). People kiss, after all, we are in France! And social distancing is a detail.
Of course everyone is careful. I found several tents on the sidewalks of the Marais and Bastille with lines for vaccines (late). But not all current limitations deprive the French of such “joie de vivre”.
Call it “the pleasure of living”, whatever, but what is still undeniably permeating Parisians’ daily lives is this joy in being here, eating, drinking, loving and living.
My friends from Brutos, Lucas and Ninon, have a beautiful end-of-the-year celebration. My “petit frère” sommelier, David, makes a point of giving me a hug before heading off to Tours to spend Christmas with his family. Maria Fernanda, married to a Frenchman as dear as she is, outlines plans for tomorrow’s supper—if her in-laws give up on going to Normandy.
And “la vie continue” in Paris, as if we hadn’t been through a big nightmare. We still live it, as the news reminds us every day. But just being in this city that I love again makes me feel strong enough to believe again in life, in love, in people. Which is all we need to celebrate Christmas one more time.
In Paris or elsewhere.
.
