Chaos basins alike

This is the what I guest blogged on CL today:

In Julie Delpy’s neurotic comedy drama 2 Days in Paris, Marion divulges her partner’s theory that: “The illusion of chaos in which we live is actually orderly and definitely linked.” While watching the film on my way back from the French capital – as a way of reliving my holiday experience – this poignant statement instantly transported my mind back to Joburg, its alluring chaos and how I fell in love with a similar but grander type of defunct order Paris offers. 

Living in Jozi – labelled one of the most dangerous and chaotic cities in the world – has been known to feed hysteria, desensitivity and paranoia to its denizens. But while travelling, the (arguable) illusion of anarchy adopted on the streets of Joburg became the perfect survival kit when adapting to even greater levels of dreamy disarray in a city like Paris. 

For seven days and six night my Jozi lover and I scuttled on, under and through the narrow streets of Paris not looking, but serendipitously finding reasons why great South Africans such as Gerard Sekoto could relate to Paris and undoubtedly why William Kentridge’s first animated film was titled Johannesburg, 2^nd Greatest City after Paris (less the irony).  Cobbled streets, quaint cafes, intimate brasseries, tiny archways that lead to great quart yards and vivacious yet still streets with lamp posts straight out of Victorian novels is nothing like Joburg. Yet, as the two of us sauntered around Paris, discovering the similarities between Joburg and Parisian chaos was magnificently painted before my very own eyes.

Finding a chesa nyama (braai), car wash party or a shebeen that serves Black Labels might not be easy to come across during the Parisian winter (or any other season), but on my voyage I stumbled upon plenty of alternatives interesting enough to make any Soweto stylist or Parkhurst poppy envious. Whatever suits your desires, the roadways of Paris are bound to have it. Streets lined with foie gras; baked oysters; bottles of French wine; freshly baked baguettes, alas, without butter –any time of the night and wee hours of the morning, is more than I had bargained for. Narratives of arriving, getting lost, becoming a stranger and then understanding “your” community could be representative of Joburg’s urbanisation of miners in the late 1800s, or the many Jane’s who came to Joburg in the 50s, but this time it’s the story of me and my fellow journeyman in Paris – all making sense of the urban anarchy we treasure like gold.

My partner’s infamous avuncular saying: “Joburg makes you wys” (said with a hand gesture resembling a shakey ILY sign), which roughly translates to Johannesburg makes you street-smart or overly observant, stayed in my mind while venturing the city of lights. As we set off to visit the very same ex-pat uncle in Paris, I realised that being wys is the perfect tool for filtering every dessert-dressed window display, open wooden shutter behind a dainty balcony and the picture perfect landscape the city shows off in just one frame. Note; this alertness also comes in exceptionally handy when dealing with pick-pockets while displaying tourist tendencies, such as juggling cameras, maps and luggage. 

The city of Paris was organically built to handle chaos, tension and a vast amount of human traffic. Its walls have seen and heard so much and its streets paved with a history of bloodshed and rebirth that sustaining the thousands of tourists and immigrants that storm the city today, is simple. The city of lights is always awake; there are countless amounts of camera flashes going off at every second, car lights steady flickering and the Champ Elysees leads strays home. Finding a hang-out spot on a Friday evening and socialising in butterfly-like (no relation to the butterfly effect) tendencies is as second nature to a Jozian as waking up to an espresso is to a Parisian. Like us Jozinites, Parisians are curious, they stare, they eat, they drink and most importantly, they are passionate – the perfect ingredients of chaos to make any Joburger feel at home. 

In Paris, the pace was by far faster, but coming from Jozi, where stagnation is frowned upon, I found keeping up easy. 

The uncontrollable melange Joburg breeds is just the city’s nurturing way of readying its inhabitants to adapt to the greater scale of disorderly function that exists in cities like Paris, Rio de Janeiro, New York and more. It’s the same bedlam which gives us hope, gets us up in the morning and helps us find structure in the relative pandemonium. But one only realises these Jozi survival tendencies when, at 6am, you find yourself conversing passionately with a shady character using the bits of French remembered from watching AfriMagic, while eating escargots and drinking a coup de champagne on a Parisian street corner, with no regrets, no alarm and no fear.