Riding the first wave: Lockdown in Paris

Lockdown can feel like prison. No long walks, nor catching up with friends. Everyone you know is scattered across the city, out of physical reach. Policemen patrol the streets. You sit alone in your room, grim and anxious, perhaps even depressed.

You feel that lockdown is a personal insult.

“How dare they?!” you rage.

But then a second later, your conscience whispers that the cause is just. At eight in the evening, you approach the window and join the collective expression of moral support for health workers. Indeed, they are the ones in a difficult situation, not you. All you do is stagnate quietly by yourself in your room, tension building in your chest. 

At least you still have windows. 

In poem number sixty of “Le Spleen de Paris”, Baudelaire suggests that night windows are more interesting than day windows. Behind them is a riddle, a sense of mystery. And peering out of your own window at those distant, yellow squares, you agree with him. Above them all, a stunning young moon looks down, a keeper of mysteries. 

Perhaps the most bizarre thing is the mixing of the real and the surreal. Who knows what’s happening in the city centre, beside the river? Perhaps somebody’s smuggling a herd of elephants across le pont des arts. There’s no-one to disprove your theory. Three days ago, riots erupted in Saint-Denis. Willingly deprived of news for the sake of peace, you only found out today. Anything could be happening. 

Every lockdown has a beginning, middle, and end. Unless, of course, there’s a second act. Or a second wave, as the media outlets have christened it. You can imagine it so clearly: a giant curling white crest. It’s not here yet and may not come at all. Then, beyond all this, something worse: a tsunami of economic troubles, which may deplete the coming years, they say.

Now is a moment to rejoice. Something else has happened besides the lockdown: spring. And spring is arguably the best season in Paris. Streets and squares, previously home only to ghosts and possibly elephants, now fill with people and laughter. There’re so many characters moving around out there. What can they all be doing?

Society emerges from its solitude. What held us together all this time? Trust in the powers that be? Goodwill? Fear? 

You know that life is best when you take your bike and ride through Gobelins and pass the walls of Arène de Lutèce. So many things are forgotten in just a few hours. Other things last as long as men can breathe and eyes can see. One suspects that misfortune is merely a prompt for a different kind of vision.