Crossplanet

Around 80 dead people and hundreds wounded after the bomb attacks yesterday night in the crowded market streets of Jaipur. My heart cries for them.

This seems to be the new game in big cities: Freeze in public places. It's started in New York Grand Central Station, then in Trafalgar Square, London, last week, and an event is scheduled in Paris at the beginning of march. Kind of funny!

There are days when I feel the luckiest person in the world. Yesterday was one of them. Just a simple pleasure, for a simple friday lunch break with a few friends on the Pont des Arts, which is one of the most beautiful place in Paris.

And I felt so lucky, sitting on this wooden bridge, above the river, and wherever I looked there was something beautiful to see: the Louvre, the French academy, the Pont Neuf, the Eiffel tower, Notre-Dame, the Cité Island, etc. Friends coming and going during lunch break, sandwich, salad and strawberries. I'm so lucky to live here!

A little smile in this world of brutes... Today in Paris the first Free Hugs operation took place. Around 50 people met in front of Beaubourg, with a beautiful sunshine and a damned frozen wind! Ideal conditions to share a warm hug with other people.

Lost of smiles, lots of surprise and incredulity. It's a strange feeling to walk around with a Free Hug sign, looking and smiling at people, showing them some warmth, strange feeling to hug perfect strangers as if they were family or friends.

Wednesday night was the craziest night I've had in Paris, at least it won its place on my Top 10 of Crazy-Things-I've-Done. I've told already about Peuplade, a site to meet people and do things with your neighbours. Well, one member had the idea to organize a picnic on a subway train. No less than that. Thinking that we all take the subway everyday, not really the best place to be in Paris, sometimes it's rather dirty, it doesn't smell that good (even if it improves over the years), it's over-crowded at rush hours, travellers are sometimes bad-tempered, etc... So if we could do something different in there, then we wouldn't look at it the same way anymore. And it works!

So the idea was to meet at 10pm at Charles de Gaulle-Etoile, on the peer of line 6, get all together into the last car with goodies to eat and drink, musicians and good humor, go all the way to Nation and back. A simple 2 hours trip. I must say that the line 6 is probably the most agreable, part of it overground, it crosses the river Seine twice, once at the Eiffel Tower, beautifully lighted at night, and once at Bercy, which is not bad either.

Around 80 persons arrived at the gathering, the atmosphere was absolutely wonderful, all excited to do something different. The car was crowded but for once there were laughs and lots of chatting in the subway, passing by cups and plates, cider and chocolate cakes. It's incredible how a group of people, most of them not knowing each other, manage to organize such a thing where there is plenty of everything that's needed: food (and not only junk food, but real home-made dishes) and drink for everybody, coffee, tea, plates, cups, garbage bags, etc.

Many pictures were taken, mines are here, some funny ones are here and here also.

But the funniest of all was probably the reaction of the other travellers, because of course during the trip people got into "our" car. Surprised and amazed of course, some of them suspicious, some of them completely happy to be with us, glad to accept a glass of wine and a piece of cake, singing with us.

At one point, 5 young men got into the car. A mobile rings and one of them answers the call:

- Allo, who is it?

- ...

- Oh hello sweetheart!

- ...

- I'm in the subway.

- ...

- I swear I'm in the subway!

- ...

He hangs down and says: "shit, she didn't believe me!" 

Collateral damages! 

For the last 2 years I've been living in Paris and sometimes I feel lonely or I complain that it is so hard to meet people in this big city. I'm not of the very expressive kind, I'm not really at ease to talk to people I don't know, so most of the time I go out alone and I stay alone.

Finally I've found a site that might change my life here, it already has in fact: www.peuplade.fr. More than a "boys-meet-girls" site, it's simply a site to meet the people next to you, your neighbours, and make things together. You need to go to the supermarket and have no car? maybe someone in the neighborhood has one and will go too. You don't feel like going to the cinema alone? certainly someone will want to see the same movie. You want to jog in the park and feel you might give up in a while? It'll be more motivating to go with other people.

In one month, I've seen activities being organized, like moms picking up each other's kids after school, workshops of every kind where "experts" share their knowledge with others, dinners in italian or english to practice the language, etc., and "apéritifs" in bars, of course (in fact there's one almost every day!).

I've met more people in one month than in 2 years, some of them are already dear and will probably gain the very reserved status of "friends". 

Saturday night was the Nuit Blanche in Paris, from 7pm to Sunday 7am contemporary art takes over the city. I'm always amazed to see so many people in the streets (even if the weather was ok) going all night from one place to another to discover pieces of contemporary art: installations, music, exhibitions, readings, etc. Officially there was around one million persons in the streets!

The second surprise for me is also the participation of the churches to the event. Several churches associate to present pieces of modern art. The church of Saint-Eustache for exemple organized concerts of Olivier Messsiaen or Arvo Part, several art work were also displayed around the church, like a giant metal crown near the altar or a tryptic from Keith Haring.

I liked even better the church of Saint-Merry which was completely taken over by art work. The chairs were piled against a wall, the central altar was lighted in red, symbolizing the blood of Christ, one of the side chapels was piled with "junk", soap bubbles were going out the pulpit, and a man riding a "elephant-bicycle" was reading the Bhagavad-Gita, strange lights and strange music all around.

I'm used to think that the Church is somehow "old-fashion" and here they show that they give their chance to contemporary artist and that, in some way, they are open to modernity.

I've put more pictures on my Flickr account, in particular of a giant octopus, symbolising the AIDS virus, displayed in the cloister of the church of Billettes, which was really beautiful.