How to Gather Roses in the Winter: New Year's in Paris, 2005
by James Purpura in Europe , France
Text by James Purpura, Notre Dame photo by Uschi Gerschner.
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Look out of the window of the subway train on New Year's Eve, on the line that is above ground, and look. Look like you have never looked before. Look like you will never look again.
Don't ever forget what you see by metro stop
BarbËs-Rochechouart. For when the time comes, and it fairly might, that you have
sad thoughts, and you are far away from here, remember. Remember what you saw.
Make it vivid, just like you're there.
Remember the Arabs, remember the cafés and brasseries and p‚tisseries, remember the gray streets, the small cars, the crazy way they drove, that the car headlights were yellow, the problems pronouncing BarbËs-Rochechouart. Remember New Year's Eve in Paris, 2005, working twenty minutes over because a delivery came two minutes before you were supposed to leave and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time and that the boss grabbed you. Remember that you thought the reason why the sidewalks seemed so deserted was because everybody was on the metro, on your train, in your car, crushing you into oblivion. All those strangers were anticipating a brand new year together. The car was flooded with it.
Remember the noisy Italians and how their boisterousness and openness made you feel warm and that you were surprised the Italians made you feel this way because you thought you didn't care for Italians. Remember the rest. Remember you were in such a great place; you were elsewhere.
Then there was the moment that punctuated it all when at the top step of Sacré Coeur as you looked down on your Paris at the fireworks and lights and glowing moments and monuments , as you thought of all the celebrations, private and public, big and small, intimate and not so, going on down there, and the big one around you (now this was some carousing) with smashing bottles and bottle rockets and people counting down to 2005 in fifteen different languages, and the moment 2005 came when the whole world exploded around you. Above all, however, remember you, as a young man, on the eve of the sixth year of the decade, in Paris, healthy, happy, and secure in the knowledge that you did the right thing coming here, that you made the right decision because you listened to your heart. So remember, because memory is the power to gather roses in the winter.
The Wee Hours of 1991 and Beyond
I learned that the normally reserved French actually can party hearty and make some noise if they really want to. Most Parisians walk around with American Gothic-stiff faces, but as I was walking home in the wee hours people were leaning out of car windows screaming 'Bonne Année!' to complete strangers. Strange.
It was New Year's Day. By far my most memorable. I went alone for a walk shortly after noon, once again with my Walkman. I put on the most appropriate song I could think of: U2's New Year's Day. All was quiet except for the music, passionately searching you could say, a tune the city moved so well to: cars racing everywhere, the overcast sky, the old buildings with stories their architecture could barely begin go tell, and the people, all dressed in black: somber, pale faces, not those of twelve hours previous, fine brown hair blowing everywhere in the cold wind, the rhythm of pedestrian traffic, their marching to the ra-dat-tat-tat military march of the music. Where everybody was going was anybody's guess, but we all came from 2004.
