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Paris daily log:

 

Every day the news shows villages under water.  Fifty seniors are rescued two by two [as in the loading of Noah's Arc] from a retirement home without electricity for two days.  The video cameras show how each one is carefully lifted down when tied to a stretcher and passed to strong men in a rowboat. You can read the terror in their eyes, but, being French, these people remember the suffering of German occupation and keep a tight upper lip. . . .

 

The Siene now rushes through the city of Paris guided by stiff stone walls on both sides.  The roadways built on both sides of the Seine are now under water and this quick route in and out of the city is now cut off.  Rush hour now begins a half-hour early and ends an hour later than normal. . . .

 

Parents are getting less sleep at night, and their children are cranky as well.  The play I went to was badly managed.  At 3:45, another play ended and the lobby was stuffed with a hundred people exiting the auditorium while another hundred were anxious to be seated since the performance was scheduled to begin at 4:00.  

 

"It's all a result of the rising water in the Seine," I tell a woman in line next to me.  

 

"I've seen the rising anxiety in the eyes of those peering into the rushing waters of the Seine.  Their anxiety rises as the water rises.  Normally the only ones looking into the Seine are children and lovers.  But, today, even the lovers cannot stand to see the terror in the eyes of their beloved.  So they have gone elsewhere to hold hands and to kiss."

 

On the left bank of the "Petit Pont" ["Little Bridge"], a woman is hawking padlocks. Here is the place were a chainlink fence is covered with 8432 padlocks.  Each lock has its double set of initials: the initials of the two lovers swearing eternal love as they close their lock on the fence and together throw their key into the Seine. I am told by an elderly Frenchman that this "ritual is better suited to maintain fideity among the young than the church weddings that did this in my day." But the hawker says to me, "Haven't sold a single lock all week.  It must be the rising waters."

 

Underground parking garages are being closed down.  Where these cars go, no one knows. . . .

 

Metro stations are being closed.  The first to be closed is "Chateau d'Eau" ["Water Castle"]--the name tells it all.  At the metro station "La Cite," I can see water squirting from between the cracks in the floor tiles.  I can only imagine that, at just the right moment, floor tiles will come flying out of the floor and the guysers of water will quickly be released and flood the entire station.

 

One side of the station has already been closed off entirely.  A Metro crew dressed in yellow vests is pushing the water back with squeegies toward a sewer cover.  Little good that does.  I notice that the water is seeping out of the sewer itself.  This whole scene is complicated by Japanese tourists taking hundreds of pictures.  They will get home and make picture books of their shots and tell their spell-bound visitors, "I was  there when Paris was slowly sinking below the waters of the Seine."

 

ur devoted LuvDoctor/LuvMaster