MOVE OVER JANET FLANNER

She is remembered by New Yorker readers for her beautifully crafted series about the City of Light. But that was sooooo many years ago, and I promised that this weblog would “look ahead.” And here I go being nostalgic about a writer so few people, except my contemporaries, would remember. In spite of Montréal-born Adam Gopnik, who also wrote from Paris for the New Yorker, and offered a stinging wit that even the great Flanner could not match – I want to do it too.

Yes, I want to do a 2010 version of “Letters from Paris.” How’s that for “looking ahead?” At my age, not only do I want to commit to a regular set of communiqués from Paris, but I want finally to achieve decent fluency in my country’s other language, Granted, the French I speak, and would improve with a stay in Paris, is not the Canadienne version, with it’s delightful twang and elisions, the dropping of half a word, a practice that leaves even the Frenchman wondering what exactly was being said. Not for me is the “bon fin de semaine” that is insisted on by the purists, but rather the very jovial Parisian “Bon week-end.” Rather “Le drug store:” than “pharmacie.” Rather “Hoover” than “respirateur.” But now I am indulging in speculative etymology. (Is there such a word?)

In the spring, all things being equal e.g. no serious health problems or sudden financial collapse, my wife and I will take up residence in the Porte Maillot area, which is just north of the Arc de Triomphe, for at least four months, exchanging with Henri and Michele. They will come to Toronto and we will go to their pied-a-terre, and perhaps to their wonderful home in Chantilly. While they do what they will in Toronto (Henri’s a designer and I am sure he will see all the new architecture that has sprouted here in the last few year) my wife and I will be taking regular French lessons at L”Alliance in Paris. (We will start immersion courses here in December.)

Because we have been to Paris about ten times for periods from five days to three weeks, we will not rush hither and yon for the sights. The Eiffel Tower still startles us. The Louvre intimidates us. The Orangerie and the Musee D’Orsay excite us. We have taken a for-old-times-sake trip on the Seine on the Bateau Mouche and we have walked and walked and walked. We have sat at a café on Rue Mouffetard (where half the people are tourists anyway) and chatted in French with the locals. We have watched the small boys with their boats in the pool at Luxembourg. We have seen the tombs at Pere LaChaise.

At the heart of this “adventure” is my own response to the dictum to be Looking Ahead.

How many years do I have left? That is not my concern. I am not ready to start resting up for the eternal rest. There are new things happening at a rate that statisticians revel in, a rate that increases exponentially with time, a rate that says we can and will learn as much in the next ten years as we have learned in the last one hundred and in that one hundred as much as we have learned since the dawn of history.

The only downside to getting older is the recognition that I will not be able to “see how it all comes out.” But to all who have reached senior years, and more especially to those looking ahead to them. Learn, do, live, experience, grow. Et Bonne Chance.

IF YOU WANT TO CONTACT ME USE THE INTERNET: lsolway@sympatico.ca