the path

I have a theory that it is impossible to be perfectly on time when you live in Paris; that is when you are not a native. You are either despairingly late or you are pathetically-walking-around-for-fifteen-minutes-window-shopping-so-you-don’t-appear-desperate-early. The causes of tardiness or earliness are far and few between.

You are only out and about for three reasons:

1. You are going somewhere, and thus always in a hurry.

2. You are coming back from somewhere, and thus irritated from either being too early or late.

Or

3. You are enjoying strolling along the majestic grands boulevards in the beautiful city of lights, and thus completely uncomprehending of the pushing, shoving, mean Parisians that are ruining your lovely promenade.

In all three of these cases there is one thing in common. The sudden blinding rage when someone gets in your path.

Imagine with me…you are trying to exit the metro and as in any large city, when you go up the stairs all those who are as slow as molasses on a cold day in Vermont stay to the right…letting the speedy, hurried and harried people pass in the middle, while the people descending the stairs do so on the left hand side. A flawless and perfect system, theoretically...

Back to the imagining…so you are exiting the metro, you are already late because for some reason the train you got on stopped dead for an inordinate amount of time at every single station, you are already at your wits end because in the metro you were stuck underneath someone’s pungent armpit, having your ankles assaulted by an oblivious mother and her stroller and your carefully styled hair has come undone thanks to the pressing humanity on all sides….anyway you are finally off the train silently rejoicing when you try to exit the station. You select your path, but hélas there is a group of tourists blocking the stairs, you niftily wend your way through the maze of hefty Austrian tourists and try to dart up the stairs, but of course you are instantly confronted with some wide-assed woman with varicose veins-not staying to her right (we all know she is slower than the molasses on a cold day…etc.) but rather taking up the entire stair case. Like a boulder in the middle of a river people are breaking the theoretical perfectness of the ‘large-city-stair-rules’ and splitting and weaving around her large behind and her boxy handbag….but you can’t get around. You are thwarted…desperate, sweating, red-faced…the blinding rage comes and gives you the super-human ability to push a child, shove an elderly lady and yell at the varicosed-veined-amply-assed woman causing your frustration. When you are finally outside the bowels of the metro system gulping the polluted air you think…there must be a better way…

In my sweaty despair I have noticed that the ‘real parisiens’ are rarely desperate or sweaty, they always find a place to sit on the metro far from the odors that prevail throughout the metro system, they can cut through a crowd like a hot knife through butter, and mount staircases without mussing their perfectly draped scarves…so what is it that they have that I don’t?

I conducted a field test with Jean-David when we were in a crowded area…I promptly got caught behind a family of five with their shopping bags impeding my progress to rejoin the speedy Jean-David who was already crossing the street. When I finally caught up with him he laughed at my exasperation and said, “You have to work on your path!”

I practically sobbed with gratitude “Teach meeeeee oh master of sticking to your path!”

So here it is: the Parisian ‘how-to-work-your-way-through-any-crowd” in three easy steps:

1. Fix your eyes on your destination.

2. Adopt a look of utter disdain and unconcern

3. DO NOT DETER FROM YOUR PATH!! (the rule is, no matter the obstacle you do not slow your pace or waver from your determined track…other people move, not you!)

I constantly practice this, specifically in the swirling people-filled atrium of Gare St. Lazare. Timid at first, but the first time someone weaves around you and gives you a glowering look from a sweaty red-faced visage you feel not a surge of undetermined rage but the sweet sweet feel of triumph.