I've tried time and again to trash the myth of 'romantic Paris'. No one ever seems to believe that day-to-day life in Paris can be just as boring as anywhere else in the world so I'm determined to spend the next few days doing the most boring things possible - just to prove Paris is simply not romantic - and anyhow - the windows could really use a good cleaning.
The problem is - that, as soon as I decided to undertake this project - I realized that washing French windows is not a project to be undertaken with disdain. There are some who might even consider it to be heroic.
The typical 'pierre de taille' high-ceilinged apartment has equally high windows that require a sturdy, four-step ladder to reach the highest panes. Pity the debutante window washer who thinks that a bottle of blue tinted so-called 'window washing fluid' is going to be of any use with double-glazed windows encrusted with at least ten years of Paris pollution and pigeon shit.
(I told you Paris isn't romantic!)
After half an hour of smearing the blue stuff around in endless circles (this has to be the perfect example of samsara), I finally decided to use a more common sense approach> I filled up a bucket of hot water with a small dose of dish-washing liquid (or my French guests would have suggested white vinegar), and then wiped down the huge panes in broad strokes.
You've heard of weekend warriors who pay big time for their zeal, but wannabe window washers take the cake when it comes to payback time. Example: Says husband: "Why are you walking bent over that way?"
Answer: "Don't ask."
The husband can't tease too much. He has only a few days earlier fallen off of one of those handy, dandy cane chairs that are so useful for museum goers. Fortunately he tumbled onto the grass in the Bois de Boulogne, not far from the Shakespeare Garden. Are we getting more romantic yet?
The best way to finish off the windows to totally clear, transparency demands the use of rolled up newspapers. Is this the only way that one can find true clarity in life? By rolling up a coherent, meaningful essay into a messy jumble of carbon, creating friction with glass and liquid cleaning fluid?
Everyone that I've ever spoken to swears that newspaper print is by far and away the best way to get clean mirrors and windows.
The sun is shining and there is not a single cloud in the skies above Paris on this June day. I'm standing on the window ledge/balcony, one floor above the street and foot traffic. My body appears to be strangely out of place in this suspended state which suddenly feels pretty close to those outer body experiences people talk about when you've been meditating for a really long time. Well, okay, I'm not really outside my body, but my body's outside the window, and that's already far out.
A tour bus goes by and I wonder if the tourists are watching the woman washing windows and suddenly, my body has become part of the Parisian landscape and it no longer belongs to me but to Paris.
Is this what life is all about?
Our bodies as part of our landscapes may indeed be part of what life is about....if you come across the rest of the answer to that question, rochestergirl wants to know!
ReplyDeleteNow to make the scenario fall into the "Paris is always romantic" myth, an artist would happen to sketch the lady washing her lovely windows....and....?