Take the last few days.
One day, I sought calm, so I sat in a park with the birds, a breeze and the intermittent sun (it IS September, a month during which one always carries her parapluie) and read a book and wrote quietly on my wonderful new, light computer that is easily stuffable into a less than gigantic back pack.
Then another day I again was looking for calm and an emotional and spiritual experience when I sat in the back of the church before the 9:00 a.m. Sunday morning service at St. Etienne du Mont - and I did, indeed, find what I sought since it is during that time when the grand and beautiful old church is solemn and silent so that the calm washes over you .
I attended the service to continue my quietude and also experience the accompanying sounds of the St Etienne organ, not knowing that there was to be much more since the organist sometimes has his own plans.
After the service, the priest and congregation filed out as the organist played a suitable up tempo escape or run-away kind of tune, but then came the surprise. After the green robed priest had shaken the hand of the last congregant filing by him and decided the rest of us were not coming his way and he, too, exited the church- the organist kept on playing. And playing. And playing.
Five or six of us just stood there, heads turned upwards towards the giant piped monster behind which he hid, and listened. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Almost fifteen minutes. He swept down and up the scale, pounded out giant sonorous chords, slowed his pace for almost (not quite) pretty passages, and then revved up once more. I could picture his elbows out and his arms jumping on and off the keyboard with an emotional vigor as if the Phantom of the Opera married Liberace.
I asked one of the men collecting the hymnals if this was a regular thing. He said it often happens, not necessarily just on Sundays, and sometimes not on Sundays, but it is a fairly often recurring phenomenon.
Then there was yesterday- a day that presented me with a number of unexpected turns.
My plan? To go up to Montmarte and revisit Espace Dali - my favorite little museum where in barely an hour you can wander among a huge sampling of his scuptures and watercolors. I assumed the museum would be back to its old normal self after having cleared out the special bande dessinee exhibit I visited and wrote about last year.
After the museum, I was to meet my friend Raluca at the Relais de la Butte, a lovely restaurant on a terrace part way down from the butte - a little off the rue Norvins tourist laden beaten path, but still with a great view.
A simple plan.
But it was to be an afternoon of surprises.
Not all surprises are welcome.
I knew that there are a number of metro stops one can emerge from around the Butte Montmarte to get there, but Abbesses is my favorite since you arrive on a lovely little Place with a colorful merrygoround, right across the street from a church, and the walk up to Sacre Coeur isn't bad, and..........................there is always an elevator to take you up to street level ..........which is a looooong way up!
Not yesterday.
The signs that the ascenseurs were under repair appeared on the platform after I emerged from the train. I think I lost my French for a moment and used a word beginning with "sh..." while others were just sighing or uttering an "oh la la" or such.
So it was around and around and around up the quaint and lovely but very taxing circular stairway up and up and up until I reached the street .
But then, the museum provided gifts that overcame the ascenseur issue.
I regained my breath and stretched my legs, I arrived at the Musee. I found that , after clearing out the bande dessinee exposition, the Dali museum had put back the regular sculptures and artworks as I had expected - but in locations other than where they had once been, PLUS they had added some additional ones I don't recall seeing there in recent years. And everything was configured in a clear and interesting organizational method. The artworks were grouped in themes, with each themed area marked by a large wall sign describing in two languages the meaning of that theme in the works of Dali and, sometimes, in the history of the world.
The section on time and science included the sculpture that Dali had done of Sir Isaac Newton - which I don't recall seeing in the museum last year - where the figure holds a ball at the end of a string (the apple in its gravitational pull) and there are large holes where Newtons face and vital organs would be.
The explanation is that Dali felt the living Newton had become to the public a "mere name in science, stripped of his personality and individuality."
I have always loved the Espace Dali, and now so much more. The changes were a surprise. A wonderful one.
Then there was the unexpected historical cabaret entertainment up on Place de Tertre.
I had wandered into the Musee Montmarte just before reaching Dali because I knew Claudia Hommel had that stop on her schedule for her Chicago Paris Cabaret Connexion activities this week (see http://Chicagopariscabaretconnexion.org ) and, since I had not been able to reach her by phone, I wanted to ask her about the time when her Saturday night concert really started (after the talks and panels) .
I found her and her group in the museum garden. She answered my question, but then also told me they were ending up at 3:30 at the Boheme de Tertre on Place de Tertre to give a presentation on black women singers in Paris.
I don't eat at the tourist places on Place de Tertre and I was looking forward to the Relais, but told her I would come a bit late.
After lunch, Raluca and I entered the lower "club" level of the Boheme to find a full room listening to Claudia and an African American woman explain the successes and tribulations of Josephine Baker and Eartha Kitt etc. while at intervals, the African American woman sang the ladies' songs from the era. Spectacular voice!
Then, Claudia brought up to the stage a woman who had been Josephine Baker's personal assistant. She told interesting an intimate stories, such as when Walter Winchell was being unkind to Josephine but Grace Kelly stepped in (she was still Grace Kelly at the time) and later when Queen of Monaco, she helped Josephine back onto her feet with a gala concert in Monaco.
At the end, a woman sitting near me stood up and told the room, in French (claudia translated) how she had been at Josephine's last concert - just before she died. She described with emotion the see through costume on the then 77 year old woman, her voice, and the electricity felt in that audience.
The woman described how Ms Baker expressed her life choice, despite her age andv failing health, to continue to enjoy the highs even if death was to arrive.
Indeed, she died the next day of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Finally, as I left the Butte to head down to sit in on a service at St. Gervais (to hear the harmonic voices of the acolytes and the old and wonderful organ), I passed a small terrace just below the walkway along the bottom of Sacre Coeur and watched a theatrical group in costume putting on a play for the few who stopped to watch.
It's Paris.
You never know what will happen.
If you are open to it, the day can go many different ways you have not anticipated.
I love her.
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