トルコのトイレ

Epic abstract art from French preschoolers, emulating Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky (totally unrelated to following post, but eye-catching nonetheless)

Today there will be nine hours and thirty-five minutes of daylight in sédusiant Rouen. The darkness descends upon us a little earlier each day until 21 December, marking the shortest day of the year with eight hours of sunlight. A feller at some cafe told me 21 December marks the first day of winter. Another feller told me European countries say it’s winter after St. Martin’s Day, 11 November. I don’t know who’s right but after consulting the wind and the rain in Haute Normandie, you’d be hard up to believe winter is still over a month away. It’s cold!!

View out my attic skylight, 7:00am

My flat doesn’t seem too cold now that the heaters work. I like it cold enough to sleep bundled in blankets but warm enough to walk around in my underwear. And there are other ways to keep warm besides an electric heater: love letters, English breakfast tea, Billie Holiday, Irish coffee, reading books in low lighting, Chet Baker. I guess mainly just reading, jazz, and hot beverages.

Le froid walk home this morning on Rue du Gros Horlage, Rouen

It’s lovely to have a phone again. A few weeks ago, my little wretch of a phone took the plunge into a Turkish toilet. I’d had a nice long day in Paris, boulevarding as I do, and was fixing for some supper. I’d been walking for maybe three hours, through the 7ème, past Les Invalides (where Napoleon is buried, bless his tiny heart) and St. Germain, into the Luxembourg Quarter of the 6ème, where I stumbled upon the Church of Saint-Sulpice. I stopped for a moment to oogle the Baroque fountain. Just as I was cracking jokes to myself about the Baroque fontaine being broken, some organ music began to ooze from the église. The open doors seemed like an welcome invitation, to I walked up the stairs past a few drunk hobos and into the monstrous beauty of Saint-Sulpice. I sauntered around looking at the beautiful architecture, miniature prayer candles, figurines and religious doodads.

Once the growl of hunger in my stomach outsang the word of God, I made my way toward the exit. I followed behind a chic old woman dressed in a peach and cream colored pants-suit. Just before walking out the door she stopped at a stone basin carved into the wall, dipped her right hand in and flicked some water onto the floor. Then she knelt down on one knee and made the Roman Catholic sign-of-the-cross over her head and shoulders. I thought to myself, when in Roman Catholic churches, do as the chic little women in peaches & cream pant-suits do… So I copied her.

By now is was dark out and I was ready for food. Just a 10 minute walk away was The Polidor. My god, this restaurant was incredible. I was the fourth patron of the evening to sit down, but by the end of my meal there was a line out the door. The inner decor at the Polidor remains largely unchanged from the 100 years. It has pink walls with green trim and soft amber lighting. The people dining sit at long, shared, cafeteria-style tables with red and white checkered tablecloths. Some interesting people have hung out at this spot and presumably peed in the same shit-hole that ate my phone alive. James Joyce, Arthur Miller, Hemingway, and Kerouac among them. I imagined them all drunk, sitting at the tables around me.

I have no photos from this point forward, on account of my suicidal phone. Here’s a stock image of the Polidor.

The waitress let me choose a seat since I had arrived before the crowd. I sat in the very front of the restaurant with my back toward the windows. This way I could observe all things happening in the guts of the joint. Most everything on the menu was 18-30€ so I tried to order a dessert à la carte. The lady taking my order shook her head and waved her finger in the air, asserting that I must order a meal. I hadn’t been there long enough to really soak everything in. I thought to myself, “oh cripes Chloe look what you’ve gotten yourself into! To hell with it, just order yourself a meal and enjoy it.”

I ordered the cheapest plat so I could also afford a drink and dessert. Plus, one can usually count on being serenaded into their meal by a gratis basket of sliced hot baguette! I had a cassis kir petillant for an aperitif, curried pork for supper and baba au rhum for dessert. Sort of a bizarre cuisine to order at a famous French restaurant, but the gleam of ordering traditional French dinners worr off for me after about a month living here. The curry was very mild but tasted otherworldly on account of my appetite. The baba au rhum was positively divine, and all washed down with a café creme. Just before this wonderful meal began, I went to the restroom for a pee. This is where my phone leapt boldly from my back pocket, plummeting into the Turkish squat toilet. Yes, I had to reach in and grab it… With the same hands I ate bread with. Maybe I washed them and mybe I didn’t. Rahaha!!

That feeling when your phone drops into a famous toilet in Paris

In addition to the phone numbers of all my new friends in France, my alarm clock, and my return train ticket to Rouen, the phone contained the foot route for my post-Polidor journey. I did all I could do– walk around until I found a new idea. So I emerged from the Polidor feeling deliciously full and defeated by technology. I walked out to the right and made another right on the corner. By now it was pitch black outside and growing colder with each minute. Just then I saw the glowing white neon lights of El Champo, an arthouse cinema in the Latin Quarter. The posters outside were beautifully designed, the stuff of which dreams are made! One of the posters was for Scorsese’s Casino. I’d always wanted to see it but for one reason or another never had. And the showing was in twenty minutes! What luck! I went inside to buy and ticket and was instructed to return five minutes before the showtime.

So I went to Le Sorbonne Cafe across the street for an espresso and to stare amorously at the theatre. It was love at first sight. And after the screening, El Champo and I agreed to be life-long lovers. Casino was fabulous, and I’m happy to have seen it for my first time in a theatre. There’s no way the opening scene has the same impact on a television or computer screen, as it does on the massive theatre screen, with the music blasting in surround sound. Here it is if you’re curious: *must watch for at least one minute*

So there you have it. The story of my phone taking a Turkish dump in Paris. Luckily I have a new one to use, although it’s not really mine. Anywho, it works.