Saturday, September 27, 2008 – Quest after Dead Leaves

Our Man in Paris, Ric Erickson, editor of MetropoleParis, goes out in search of Les feuilles mortes – those autumn leaves in Paris, like in the song.

Quest after Dead Leaves

Paris, Saturday, September 27 - Now that it is autumn it is surely high time to check the state of the leaves. Around here they have been pretending it is still spring. At least this is what they look like they are thinking so long as you aren't too close. My cemetery is green from where I sit. The big tree out back appears to be a little unsure but it is mostly green too. We've just had three weeks of cool wind from the northeast, which, if you look at a map, looks like Poland and Poland is next to Russia and we all know what that meant to Napoleon and Hitler. No good comes from there.

So, even though I have green leaves in view from front and back and the sky was nearly glass blue today, I decided that the official trees are in our official neighborhood park, the Senat's Jardin du Luxembourg. Last Wednesday they elected new senators and a new president of the Senat - without apparently putting up one single campaign poster. It was on the TV-news, presented as a done deal, and if I want to know who, what, when, where, how and why, I guess I'm supposed to look it up on Wikipedia.

But we've got a sunny weekend on our plate, albeit with that northeast wind. Across the street beside the cemetery wall I noted that the street cleaners had swept away the leaves. The grills - what are they called? - at the feet of trees were too tidy. Only a few golden shreds left.

It is also the Fête des Jardins in Paris this weekend. I forgot that. The Jardin de Marco Polo, a finger of city park poking up from the Luxembourg towards the Observatory, had been swept tidy too. Its phalanxes of chestnut trees looked like they have a different, more advanced season. Their leaves were mostly gray, brown or rusty. Made me shiver. Why is Montparnasse, 50 metres away, greener?

The Marco Polo fountain was flinging away with lots of spray, so that was my turned-leaf photo there. Further on down, in the Jardin du Luxembourg, the ground was a bit less tidy. Leaves were in piles created by the wind. But there were no big leaves, just shards. Maybe the leaves are rotting off the trees. Just like we don't know where Senators come from the effects of pollution are pretty unclear.

The Senat is also a major exhibitor of palms. In season it has a whole collection of them and they add quite a bit of fantasy to the park. The paths are some special kind of white dirt and the grass is highly manicured and there are some flowers and 500 free metal chairs, plus the pool and terraces and groves and playgrounds for kids and chess wizards, a real Orangerie, a bee farm, and all is watched by national gendarmes, because it's the Senat.

Yes. The palms were a bit faded, but in general they looked pretty green. In fact the whole thing - Marie's old palace - all the loungers around the pool - looked like the grounds of the Hotel Louis XVIX Carlton in Cannes, our little Riviera right here in the frozen north. Without the palms it could have merely been the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten in Hamburg.Under the trees a big crew filled the bandstand, making jazzy big band sounds. Much, much better than three electric guitars or Chinese hip-hop pop. Of course the crowd gathered around, in their free chairs, were none of them young enough to own an iPod. The more prosperous ones were spread around the nearby chalet café, sipping tea or quaffing Champagne. Doing the right thing listening to free jazz in the afternoon under a blue sky.

No sense dragging this out. My quest to find big piles of freshly fallen leaves, gold, red, orange, came to nothing. The place is too damn tidy or the leaves themselves are disintegrating before they land on the ground. Another mission unaccomplished. It's a good thing this isn't a movie.

Speaking of movies, from the north gate of the garden it is only a minor jump to the boulevard Saint-Michel and the discount-used DVD shops. Haven't I said before that I saw no movies for 30 years? I can go to a DVD place and find a movie I haven't seen already with my eyes closed. That's what I did and as soon as this is finished, that's what I'm doing. To hell with old leaves!

Text and Photos Copyright © 2008 - Ric Erickson, MetropoleParis

Trivia from Your Editor:

Everyone knows the old standard "Autumn Leaves" – but that was originally a 1945 French song, "Les feuilles mortes" (literally "Dead Leaves") – music by Joseph Kosma and lyrics by Jacques Prévert. The English lyrics were written in 1947 by Johnny Mercer.  Just about everyone since then has recorded a version of it.  But, you see, "Les feuilles mortes" was first introduced by Yves Montand in 1946 in the film Les Portes de la Nuit - and here's the clip of that.  And here are the full Jacques Prévert lyrics, with a literal translation.

Paris, autumn leaves – it all comes together.

All text and photos, unless otherwise noted, Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 - Alan M. Pavlik