I just found a spark of joy from an unexpected source: a French civil servant.
Not only is my native country a mess, France isn’t filled with joy these days. Cases of COVID-19 are on the rise, about 12,000 a day on average. As a proportion of the population, that’s higher than in the U.S. Rules and restrictions are multiplying in the hardest-hit cities, including Paris. And the weather has been rainy and in the 50s for more than two weeks and is predicted to stay that way for the foreseeable future.
Indeed, it was in the rain that I rode my bicycle to the local mairie – city hall – recently to renew my expired French passport. I was directed to an uninspired building in the back courtyard.
When my turn came, I was called to a Plexiglass-shielded desk and seated myself in front of a genial middle-aged official in sneakers, blue jeans and a mask. He carefully reviewed all the documents I had presented, announced cheerfully that all was in order, took the photos I had brought with me and began to attach one to my application.
So precisely. He snipped the photo out with a kind of extractor that produced the perfect size. Smoothing the application, he pulled out a tiny square of adhesive and gently rubbed it onto the place where the photo would go. Then he removed the cover so only the sticky part was left. Taking the photo, he placed it perfectly onto the little square waiting for it. It was a thing of beauty. It looked sort of like this, except 100 times straighter.
Everything went into his scanning machine, lined up perfectly. I think he even redid one page to get it just right. All I had to do was sign the application — making sure, of course, that my signature didn’t touch the black lines around the box. My passport would be ready in a couple of weeks, he said amicably. I would be notified by text, he said.
I walked out of there with renewed faith in mankind, at least, Frenchkind. That gentleman clearly didn’t just like his job, he made it an art form. Every perfectly placed photo, every correct passport dossier, was cause for pleasure. If he could enliven his day like that, I thought, I could quit sulking about having to hang around the apartment a lot.
People in France, in fact, are good at creating beauty around them. I don’t just mean the art, or the cuisine, or the architecture. I mean in their own everyday lives. That’s why children are required to learn to use a fountain pen in elementary school, because the result is so lovely. As Jean Veillon, then-president of the French pen company Waterman, told me in 1997 when Louise was struggling with that skill: “In America, what’s important is the result. In France, it doesn’t matter if it works, but it has to be beautiful.”
After my pleasant passport experience, I started to see other people who were either enjoying what they did or making life happier for others.
There was the musician on the circle in my neighborhood.
And the man who happily struck a pose next to an outdoor sculpture as I walked through a park along the Left Bank of the Seine in eastern Paris (not to mention the park designers who had filled it with sculpture).
The person who made his or her houseboat a work of vegetal art:
And the incredibly aesthetic design of the fruit and vegetable stands.
All that has always been here. I just need to remember to pay attention. Oh, and I just got a text from the mairie: My passport is ready for pickup, ahead of schedule.