Garbage

Friday May 13th

I begin today not with a description of where we went or what we ate, but with a statement.  I am afraid to take out the garbage.   There seems to be some sort of arcane garbage rules here that I am not privy too, and I seem to violate these rules repeatedly at least in my caretaker’s opinion. 

There is a caretaker of the apartment complex that lives the first floor of the front building.  This complex is two buildings, separated by small cement courtyard. We live in the back building.  In the courtyard is a shed that has the garbage bins.  One for plastic and paper, one for glass, and several for garbage.  The caretaker’s apartment has windows that face this shed so she can watch and listen for garbage violators. 

The caretaker is not the owner of our apartment or our landlord.  Our landlord is Nathalie, who is very nice and pleasant, but who doesn’t live here.  Upon our arrival she warned us of the caretaker, stating, “I don’t know how to exactly say it in English, but she is not very nice.”  I think the words that she was looking for were “seriously crazy.” She is a very short, squat woman who wears a kerchief on her head.

This lady seems to think that we purposely mess up the garbage each time just to make her life miserable.  She gave mom and Katie a hard time for putting recyclables in the bin on a Sunday because it was too noisy.  Seriously, it was 11:30am, not 7am!

So yesterday, as we left the apartment in the early morning (about 7:30 am) to catch our train to Giverny, she cornered me by the mailboxes in the front building lobby. I hadn’t taken out the garbage in three days, and wasn’t this morning either, so I have no idea why she was gunning for me.  However, upon first sight of Katie and me she made a beeline for me and started talking rapidly in French.  Upon seeing that I didn’t understand, she asked me if I spoke French. I replied that I spoke a very small bit of French.  She shook her head as if I was an idiot and proceeded to talk louder, become more frustrated  and throw in a lot of ridiculous hand gestures.  Let me tell you first hand, speaking louder does not help you understand any better!!!

She was talking about “les sacs” which I took to mean the garbage and something about putting them out front on the curb.  Seriously, I have no idea what she was talking about because I have never seen any “sacs” outside on the curb where she was pointing repeatedly.  I honestly think someone else did something wrong and he has it in her head that it was me.  As she jabbered insistently at me, all I could think was “How do I get her to stop talking???”  When she paused and asked “D’accord?” which means OK, I rapidly agreed “D’accord” and made my escape.  I have absolutely no idea what I agreed to.  She walked off talking to herself and throwing her arms in the air. I distinctly heard her say, “Parlez un peu francais, mais non.”  Which means basically means   “speaks a little French, I think not!”  All I could think was how ridiculous this scene would look if someone had filmed it.

So now I am terrified to take out the garbage. This afternoon when Katie and I returned home, I saw her shutters were tightly shut and she was out so we ran upstairs quickly to get the garbage and put it in the bins. Now we are set for a few more days….but then what?? I guess we are lucky that we leave for Germany soon.

Our activity today was a visit to the Georges Pompidou Center for Modern Art.  The building itself is a big draw, with all the pipes, vents and even the escalator on the outside of the building.  The building is six stories tall, but only the 4^th and 5^th floors are the museum. It was a nice collection of modern art, with some older pieces and some more recent works. 

I like modern art, finding it interesting and intellectually challenging to see what the artist intended, but Katie didn’t like it so much.  We did find a few things that she liked though. There was one small Jackson Pollack, two Calder mobiles, and a few other pieces.   I like the interesting multimedia works, and the art that makes you move around it to see all the different perspectives. I like color blocked prints and unusual sculptures, particularly those made out of found pieces that make you think about art in a different way.

Well, now I have my answer – I am going to have to make a sculpture out of the rest of my garbage and put it on the curb where the caretaker wants it.