Postcard from Paris
Market cooking, bohemian entertaining, a few simple tips, and a dose of nostalgia
When I first came to France to live, back in 1999, nobody had mobile phones, let alone social media. You’d check your emails on computer in the morning or at night, and the rest of the day you simply interacted directly with the world around you. It was you alone with the field of poppies, you and glass of rosé on a terrace watching the people go by, you and the children setting paper boats afloat in a fountain in the Tuileries… I often think how lucky I was to have had those years with France back then, back before there was any pressure to document in photographs and share with the world every bite you took, every view your eyes fell upon, every café you entered. No such idea had yet crossed anyone’s mind, and if anyone had suggested it we would have thought they were mad. (How quickly the absurd can become totally normal in our minds!)
Perhaps out of a sense of nostalgia, and also because I’ve been on a bit of a social-media hiatus of late, on this latest trip to Paris I barely took any photographs at all, and posted only one to Instagram:
It was liberating to allow myself to be present where I was, and, without wanting to sound sanctimonious, because I certainly get caught in the grip of technology as easily as anyone, I found myself feeling sorry for all the tourists obsessed with taking selfies of themselves, here draped over a bridge, there pretending to hold the Eiffel Tower in the palm of their hand... I wanted to shout, “Put that phone away and look around, will you? Look where you are!” You have to wonder what their memories of the place will be. Did they notice how soft the air is here? Did they marvel at the quality of light after sundown? Did the fragrance of strawberries and peaches in the markets ever reach their nostrils or did it float past undetected?