To tell the truth, today I am content to listen to the newly resurrected bells (a trial run), or to classical music, or to small kids playing in the park. It grates, though, to hear the repetitive lamentations and blame-throwing, or American tourists in Paris who chatter and whoop… as if. As if anything. Leave it there. Hard to concentrate, too, to keep up my end in a conversation or put words on the page. I’m sure many readers are experiencing something very similar. So this nth edition of Point de Vue will stay quiet, offering some recent images, along with a few words from others that have struck me over the past few days.

A gigantic, ancient ficus in le Jardin des Rosiers. Age not recorded, but the garden is a few hundred years old. Some things last.

The interior garden of le Petit Palais. Much younger than the previous tree.

A line from the monastic law of St Benedict: Learn to “live with yourself alone, under the gaze of God.”

Sunday morning post-election I went to Mass. “It soothes my nerves; besides, I like the quality of incense.” The church of St Paul-St Louis was standing room only. What new era might be approaching?

Putting the last touches on Notre Dame, due to open its doors in December!

Books are still life-blood in France. The independent bookstores, and they are everywhere, dread the approaching steamroller of Amazon. This weekend, particularly for students, for Gen whatevers, the small press fair at l’Arsenal was a big draw:

Found in a new novel by Daniel Pennac, Mon Assassin (translation mine):

“My only hope in the face of the disastrous balance sheet of my times is to become an old fart who works on disastrous balances, like one of those [liquor] stills that produce disillusionment, where characters as black as ‘Pepere’ can germinate. After all, he has to come from somewhere, this assassin.”

With bleak humor—he argues that all major world crises have been heralded by a turn to the ugly in women’s handbags—Pennac anticipated photos like these: a) Night of the 5^th at a dj’ed gathering of Democrats abroad. B) Le Monde special edition on the 7^th. c) An exceptionally furious and energized street demonstration today. Inhibitions continue to fall, along with posters of an Israeli baby taken hostage.

We must not end on such a grim note. Here’s an idea: given that we’ll need all our wits about us in the future that is now, a thing that will require some sobriety, how about nibbling chocolate that doubles as wine? Long live the artisans!

Santé!