The Girl from Ipanema Goes Walking

One of my neighbours above me is learning to play the saxophone. This person has been practicing a verdantly mellow impression of the song "The Girl from Ipanema," in the late afternoon, an hour or so the French High School Pony Express has cauterwauled past my window. The saxaphone loops its way down to the street, and I can't tell if it is someone from my building, or from someone across the alleyway.

I must admit, I am kind of in Love with this person. It must be a man, because what woman would play such a song about another irresistable woman. Unless it's a lesbian, in which case the whole thing becomes a fitting jazz-lite hobby for the mature French woman who wears imported Merrill sport clogs, also does danse oriental and takes her expressos at Le Cid, the local Out and Proud café, not because she likes the scene, but because she feels a reluctant solidarity. Dollar votes and all that.

Anway, my version of the phantom saxaphonist is a young man, mid 20's (coincidentally in my dating age pool) with shaggy hair and a Master's in finance. He's working in Avignon, in quasi-creative post two degrees separated from the plummy Avignon tourist industry. He's originally from Paris.... no, from Toulouse, and he really has taken up the saxaphone because his first love was dark-eyed waitress at a jazz club when he did his erasmus (study abroad) in Milan. He learned all about jazz just by sitting in the bar for several months, drinking beers, and flirting with the waitress, who never went out with him.

Of course, the saxaphonist could be the 10 year old older brother of the crazy toddler that every morning runs back and forth the legnth of the appartment above me.

The whole point is that... what a song. One, it is one of my favorite songs to hear, especially in the graying afternoon. Two, I may not be from Impanema, and maybe the French High School Brat Pack doesn't go "ahhhh" when I pass by, BUT in this full whole week I have been living in Avignon, all I do is walk.

Avignon is old, and has had many makeovers. However, the basic winding and looping layout of the original compact walled Medieval city has remained intact. If there was a single street that crossed the city from one end to the other in a straight line, it would probably take you only 10 minutes to walk that street. Such as it is, no place in the intra-muros (inside the ramparts) is really more than 25 minute walk away.

Being unable (but not unwilling) to start in on my French paperwork to get paid and cement my visa and all that, I have had absoultely nothing to do except come up with excuses to go walk around the city. First it was finding a dance studio, which has been found. Then it was finding the weekday flea market, which was never found, but the weekend flea market was found, and it was all crap. The room of my own remains empty in a very anti-woolf way. I didn't even buy myself any flowers at the flower market on Saturday.

Interspersed were bouts of looking for the luxest looking bakeries to post my flyers advertising my tutoring services. Have posted at least 20 flyers, have not had any interested parties contact me.

Add to this an ill-attempted jazz-funk danse class, which left me with my left quad and hip flexor so particularly sore, that I walked with a gangsta lean (read: limp) for four days. All this trotting, or rather, unintentioned swaggering around was further done in flimsy ballet flats, my least-obviously American shoes. I steeled myself against comfort in favor of fashion, as any française would do, and now in addition to my very sore calf (ill-attempted ballet class), my left big toe joint is probably broken, and certainly strained at the least.

So this girl from Pasadena goes walking like a gimp, and as I pass, all the gentlemen go ahhh... poor girl, she's lame.

The only person who could comfort my bruised ego is the Saxaphone player, but honnestly, he doesn't exist outside the wafting and lilting afternoon notes, so maybe I'll just scam one of Renaud's yogurts.