understand
francofile chronicles

May, 28th 1999 "June Lentils at the Place de la République"

by David Applefield

It was probably the statistic that I had heard earlier in the day that made the park scene seem so poignant. Twenty years ago the income of the peoples of the world´s developing countries (a term we use to ease the stigma of dire poverty and the guilt of massive indifference) represented 3% of the wealth of the west. Today the figure has slipped to 1.5%.

As we get caught up in the addiction of quick fortune-building and inflated values, the divide between the haves and the have-nots actually widens. And the interest in pouring more public resources into the general good is becoming a less and less popular idea. Just yesterday I received a petition by email protesting Newt Gingrich´s congressional attempt to slash further the already paltry funding of the Public Broadcasting System and the National Endowment for the Arts, practically the only two areas of State subsidy targeted to heighten cultural values and intellectual public life in America.

Beyond these two entities lies an opulent wasteland of Intels and Philip Morrises whose contribution to the greater good is a two million dollar sponsorship of the catalog of an art exhibition at the Whitney Museum in Manhattan, for which a hefty tax credit is awarded. No one wants to sound cynical, but these are the facts.

In the Financial Times today there was an article about how the 2000 Presidential elections will be the costliest in the history of the United States. Candidates are fearfully rushing off to spend more dollars than their competitors. Hundreds of millions will be wasted on prime time TV spots, Java-scripted Internet banners on overvalued web sites, and demographically-targeted email spamming - all to sell us our next emerging leaders.

We walked, hand-in-hand, off the Place de la République, past the building in which Gustave Flaubert once lived and wrote, past my first address in Paris where I shared a somber flat with a French pornographic film-maker whose flics he marketed in the US under the name of Harry Paris. Time, generations, and future fluttered by in those seconds as Anna and Ernesto held my hand, and I wondered deeply what was really going in the world, and in which phase of history we were really in. Ted Turner recently told departing seniors at the University of Georgia graduation ceremonies that it was hard to be positive about the future when it wasn´t even certain that humanity would make it to the new millennium. Over ten thousand bombs and missiles have now been exploded in Yugoslavia and much of the world´s people think of the United States in hateful terms. Six billion dollars for more military ballistics are being approved by the U.S. Congress while it votes to dismantle the arts budget. A million dollars a missile, eight tours for 50 francs, the bowl of lentils were free.

I´ve always loved Paris for its gentle, melancholic means of seducing those of us who chose and choose to live here to think deeply about things and to contemplate with the pain of good poetry the larger daily issues of existence.