by Margot Nightingale | Jan 22, 2015 | Paris |
SHOCK I’ve been here before. I know this interruption to the morning routine, this onslaught of news and information blaring from the television and radio like jagged spears. I’ve heard the siren song rushing across town. I’ve choked on smoke and ash, tasted the detritus of aftermath. The crushing pain and loss of innocence under a burning blue sky. On a grey day in Paris, years later, a red sea of fury is released. An amalgam of red and grey and black flames. Violence and chaos being the last refuge of a tired mind. Murder, confusion, protest. Tout est pardonné. One who knows his devil knows his God Do they? Do we? Je suis confused. I’ve had a few heated conversations with close friends since the attacks in Paris on Charlie Hebdo. We are all pained for the senseless loss. We feel untethered. But deeper into the conversation, differences emerge. Freedom, it turns out, is an incendiary concept. I’m not confused about what feels right in the nettle of my bones and I express it in company. Over dinner, at coffee, in the street.. everybody is expressing their expectations and boundaries of freedom. I feel as though I’m wrestling no grey matter about liberty and freedom of expression. But I must be, on some abstract level. The only way to set our eyes apart from propaganda, blasphemy, or provocative editorial is to possess enough education to know the difference between dogma and intellectual resistance. Those who wish to be offended, will take offense. Then they will take prisoners and the spiral begins. Of course this is the crux of the problem. Education. From Malala...
by Margot Nightingale | Oct 22, 2014 | Paris |
It’s late October and la grisaille de Paris has announced itself. The gun metal grey atmosphere of the season has settled in in all its mind-numbing glory. Time to start popping the Vitamin D. Time to stock up on extra wine in the cupboard. Buckle up, Jacques, the ride’s going to get bumpy… winter’s coming. Thankfully, there’s a little gift the blessed French have given us gratis… a little Christmas in October. It’s called Toussaint and it’s a two-week vacation… pause… for school children. Growing up in the States, the only “vacation” we had before Christmas was Columbus Day, now basically obliterated due to retroactive disowning of Christopher Columbus’s hero-status, and the obligatory day and a half off at Thanksgiving, creating the long weekend that truthfully felt like heaven on earth. (I can smell the turkey cooking in the oven now.) So today, here in Paris, you’d think I never lived a day in my life without the generous two-week October break. How, I ask myself, did I survive the puny days-off given in the United States? Now, under the grey skies of Paris – oops, now it’s raining, everyone in the house suddenly gets agita around the middle of the month of Toussaint break, and we each act like a horse in full gallop back to the coral as the holiday approaches. Hey, can you go any faster buddy? Out of my way! I need les vacances now or I’m going to drop dead right here! I can’t open another page of my French grammar book! No more maths problems! Can’t take one more walk to school in the...
by Margot Nightingale | Apr 29, 2014 | Paris |
A friend in New York sent me an e-mail recently confessing a petite melt-down she had recently. We had made tentative plans for her to visit in April and for all the typical reasons – money for airfare – the visit didn’t pan out. No big deal, we extended the plan for 2015. Hope springs eternal for improved financial status “next year.” Her story told of an encounter with another mom the first day back at her son’s school after Spring Break. The mom had taken her children to Paris and did not hold back waxing poetic about the amazing time they had experienced in the City of Light. Indeed the weather had been springtastic! the week they visited. (There are precious few earthly gifts more intoxicating than spending a lazy afternoon in one of the jewel-box jardins de Paris when spring finally blows into town with all her poetic force.) So after smiling and nodding along to the enthusiastic re-cap of perfect Paris recounted by the mom, my friend walked away in a fog of mixed emotions. First, that bit of shock at the news that someone else has stolen your perfect idea to visit Paris over Spring Break. Second, an overall aching envy for travel. Third, having to play delighted audience at every juicy detail of someone else’s adventure. When she arrived back home she surprised herself further by bursting into tears. Sometimes, we all revert to tender reactions when it comes to broken dreams or frustrated travel plans to Paris. As she wiped the tears from her face, she could almost smell the lingering perfume of...
