It’s always somewhat painful when the alarm
goes off at 6 in the morning, especially in winter. It’s dark, it’s cold, it’s
an unnatural time to be out in the world.
This trauma is thankfully no more than a weekly occurrence for me. On Monday mornings I voyage forth to teach
at a university out in the back of beyond, way outside the self-contained world
that is Paris. Once I get there, things generally go swimmingly, but the
process of getting there can require superhuman effort.
When I arrived at work last Monday, having gone
through the requisite trauma, I went to the reception to pick up my registers
and was received by a blank look from the receptionist, followed by a little
noise of astonishment.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “There
are no lessons this week!”
“Oh,” I said, since there was very little
else I could say under the circumstances.
It turns out that the university had a
week’s break, but since I just bungee in and bungee back out once a week, I’m
not really very plugged into the system and don’t particularly keep track of
incidental information like holiday dates.
So finding myself with an unexpectedly free
day, I wished the receptionist well and wandered back to the metro station,
where I looked in quiet amusement at all the people who had just dragged
themselves out of bed (I had by this point been awake for two hours) and who
were lumbering off to start a day of work.
There were some parks that I had been planning to visit for some time but I always got too carried away with daily routine to do so. But now with my daily routine interrupted, it was a perfect opportunity to go and tick some parks off my list.
I left the sleepy people on the metro and went to have a wander round Parc Kellerman, where I
watched ducks having breakfast and gardeners sweeping paths as well as the odd disturbingly enthusiastic jogger plodding their way among the trees.
I pressed on with a scenic walk through the Jardin
Thomire and past the Charléty stadium, to Parc Montsouris. I had a moment of
déjà vu and then realised that I had been there five years ago one a visit to Paris. Crocuses were pushing up through the grass, announcing the
arrival of spring, and a Chinese man was doing tai chi among the trees.
Suitably uplifted, I got on the train and headed towards
the city centre to the Jardin de Luxembourg. People were walking dogs, joggers
were out in full force and a man was sitting on a bench brushing his teeth. In
the background, the Montparnasse Tower disappeared up into the clouds.
From there I headed for the Jardin des
Plantes, where a slope had become eroded, exposing a tree’s roots, and a statue
of a lion was eating what was left of a person, which was just a foot.
The Jardin des Plantes is home to the
natural history museum, which had a magnificent exhibition on called Nuit,
which dealt with all things nocturnal.
The first section of the exhibition was
about the night sky – the moon, the stars, the planets. In this section I was most suprised to learn that the planets in our solar system all spin on very different axes. How did I get this far without knowing that? Uranus has somehow turned onto its side, and Venus has tilted so far that its top and bottom are entirely reversed.
I also learned how tides work,
which was another shameful gap in my general knowledge. Everyone knows that the moon pulls on the sea, making it rise on the side of the earth closest to the moon. But did you
know that the moon and Earth create a centrifugal system as they rotate round
each other? And that centrifugal system sends the water on the side of the
Earth opposite the moon swinging
outwards? So the ocean on one side of Earth is being flung outwards by
centrifugal force and on the other side it’s being pulled by the moon, which is
why the tide is high on opposite sides of the Earth at the same time.
I also found out that on 10 August 2014 the moon will be at its closest point to the
Earth, and will be quite magnificent. Put it in your diary.
There was this video display (happily also available on YouTube) on the relative sizes of various celestial
bodies, which was possibly the most intimidating thing I’ve ever seen.
I watched it through four times and came away with shaking knees and a crushing sense of insignificance, and went to seek solace
among the creatures of the night.
The animals were beautiful and it was
slightly awkward to think that they were probably going about
their nocturnal business quite contentedly before someone put a bullet through them and dragged
them off to be preserved, stuffed and placed in a display, but I swept that
niggling thought under my mental carpet and marvelled at the stern stare
of owls, the deer caught mid-step, the grey goose suspended in flight and the
wolf pricking up its ears at a sound in the underbrush.
It’s an incredible skill, taxidermy. How do
you take the lifeless carcass of an animal, preserve it and then arrange it in
such a way – limb positions, attitude, even facial expressions – that it looks
as if it has been suddenly frozen while going about its regular business?
There was a very interesting display on the sense of smell (included in the exhibition because some animals use smell to guide them when there is little light), including some delightful pictures of animals flehmening - drawing back the top lip and inhaling to better analyse an odour.
There was also a display of the most incredible insects which mimicked leaves so convincingly that even knowing
that they were insects, I was unable to see their wings for wings and could
only see them as leaves.
Following a very cute array of diurnal
animals bedding down for the night, there were some information sheets about
dreaming, from which I learned that the reason we forget our dreams so quickly
is that the part of the brain that deals with memory is not activated during
dreaming.
Then there was a frilly pastel-coloured,
carpeted room made to suggest a bedroom, with some blurbs about monsters under
the bed and a Pixaresque animation on the subject, followed by a slightly
incongruous display cabinet full of vampire memorabilia and an inexplicable
room, empty but for two sumptuous-looking chairs, with a curtain over the
entrance, and a shadow display that didn’t work. The shadow display was set up
in a grey concrete corridor which terminated in a set of stairs that emerged
out by the ticket office.
And that was the night exhibition.
I was by this point tired and hungry, and
although I had enjoyed the exhibition very much, I was quite ready for lunch.
But my ticket gave me access to the permanent exhibition, and I thought it
would be a pity to waste it, so I went and had a quick nose round upstairs.
I was glad I had because the first thing
you see when you go into the permanent exhibition is an entire whale skeleton
suspended from the ceiling. I had been thinking about whales just the day
before and wondering if I would ever be able to see one. It remains on my
bucket list, but the skeleton went some way towards satisfying my
curiosity.
SO, WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT?
1) Those early mornings never get any easier...
2) ...but they can turn out to be worth it
3) Some people go jogging early in the morning
4) Spring is coming!
5) The axes of our neighbouring planets are a lot more irregular than you might expect
6) On one side of the Earth, the sea is pulled by the moon, while on the other side it is flung outwards by centrifugal force. That's why there are high tides on opposite sides of the world at the same time.
7) Look at the moon on 10 August 2014.
8) Stars are terrifyingly huge
9) It's almost impossible to remember your dreams.
10) Check the permanent exhibition before you go for lunch. There might be something worthwhile in it.
