Snow Day

Snowing this morning in Paris. Thick white flakes falling, snow piling up on the ledges and zinc roofs of the church opposite, though not so much on the sidewalks and streets, yet. Hoping to go over to the Marais later for lunch with a friend. I was planning to take the bus, but if there are snow-related traffic snarls, perhaps I’ll take the Metro instead. Paris isn’t really prepared for snow—I mean there’s a tendency to let it fall and see what happens, unlike, say, Montreal (Boston, New York?), where people plan ahead so the economy doesn’t come to a halt. Here, it will be another drop added to the demonstrations that kept shops from selling stuff around Christmas, shops that seem mostly empty to me, as the January sales go on.

Still it is pretty, especially when it falls straight down, without gusts of wind pushing it, making you reluctant to go out. I wonder where the homeless man, who now comes late to curl up on the sidewalk and leaves early, is. In the fall, he took socks, money, tangerines, rice—anything that fit in his pockets or stomach—but didn’t want anything more encumbering like an isothermic blanket or a backpack: ‘Don’t need that, don’t need that.”