Long walks in every possible direction have brightened my recent afternoons. I see that many construction sites and restoration projects have resumed.
People are back out, in masses. Congregated especially along the riverbanks, seated in small groups, or on their bicycles, or strolling with their little children, mostly all are wearing masks, particularly in the stores.
Many small art galleries on the rue de Seine have reopened, timidly. Clothing stores, the small boutiques, have resumed business and display beautiful offerings again.
To see all the cafés and restaurants in Paris closed is still a blow, making me more and more aware that I habitually came to see these institutions as inviting punctuation points on a journey, where I found it difficult to refuse the invitation to come and sit at a corner table, or out by the sidewalk, and order a long coffee or sometimes a glass of cool Muscat de Beaumes de Venise, to open a book or just watch people carrying on with their business outside.
I hear they will be opening again in early June, symbolizing as they do for many the French way of life.
But the true intellectual life here is literature, and to see the reopening of small, privately run bookstores that still seem to be everywhere is a joy (one of the most reputable, “Chez Colette,” happens to be just across the street from my place). The booksellers on the riverbanks, which line both sides of the Seine for what seems miles, specialize in used or rare books, usually with each seller dealing in specialized subjects.
So I bought something to take home tonight, but not a first edition signed by the author! For one euro, I picked up Voltaire’s « Traité sur la tolérance. » I have it somewhere already, but that’s OK.
Earlier along the way, I had just seen a street artist near St. Germain des Près displaying this quotation by the same author:
« Si l’on n’est pas sensible on n’est jamais sublime »
– Without first being sensitive, one can never be sublime.
