Paris is very much about either/or. Has been for centuries. Parisians make assumptions about you and who you are based on whether you live on the Left Bank or the Right Bank of the Seine. And I kinda understand those assumptions. I'm very much a rive gauche kinda guy, so I don't mind being pigeonholed as one.
Traditionally, although I don't pretend to understand the reasons for it, the Left Bank (the third of Paris to your left as you stand on a bridge over the Seine and face downstream) has always been associated with free thinkers and free livers. The academics lived there, because it was close to the Sorbonne. Artists and writers lived there, because it was cheap, and artists and writers are poor. The intellectuals hung there, because the cafes were cheap and the talk not. The Right Bank, by comparison, was the home of business, artisans, pawnbrokers, bankers, and those more attracted to money than to artistic or intellectual pursuits. Although the lines have blurred considerably lately, Parisians still to some extent pigeonhole people according to these historical stereotypes, depending on whether they are rive gauche dwellers or rive droite dwellers. It's a duality that is so accepted that it almost defines the city. So it's been interesting for me this month to live in a place that is ni gauche ni droite, neither left nor right. I'm living on an island in the middle of the Seine. Even the river hasn't decided to go left or right around the island when it gets to Ile Saint-Louis. There is a tiny park at the Eastern end of the island where you can sit and watch it decide. That's where I'm sitting as I write this, watching it decide whether to flow along the left-hand path, or the right-hand path. Given the occasional waves, the river sometimes seems to be having a hard time making this decision. Maybe the Seine is Buddhist. Buddhists make a big deal about whether they take the left-hand path or the right-hand path, too. The right-hand path is considered safer, and even its proponents admit that it takes longer. But its adherents are seeking (from their point of view) a lofty goal. They believe that their path leads eventually to what they desire, which is total absorption, annihilation of the self. Right-hand path Buddhists are a lot like Hindus that way. The left-hand path Buddhists aren't seeking annihilation, to "get off the wheel" of karma and rebirth. About the most they seek as an ultimate goal is to become boddhisattvas, and return to this plane forever. They say it's because they want to help their fellow man, but personally I think it's because they secretly dig it here. As a result, the left-hand path of Buddhism tends to embrace things like tantra (the reconciliation of opposites) and "living in the world," as opposed to going all monastic and withdrawing from it. So that brings me to here and now, as I sit here on Ile Saint-Louis, trying to decide where to go tonight to seek cool writing cafes. I'm here in the middle, neither Left Bank nor Right Bank, and only a few steps from either. Which is more appealing? Where would I have the most fun writing? Which bank would inspire more interesting writing? Duh.
