Monmartre

Monmatre
Originally uploaded by killerfemme.

Okay, all cheesy Amelie references aside and despite the fact that my sister and G. shake their heads when I mention Monmartre, I was really happy when another friend G. took me to a neighborhood bar in Monmartre. It was sweet and friendly and we sat outside and chatted with people at neighboring taables and drank red wine with bread and cheese because we were "obligated" said G. I hope to return.

View of Sacre Couer

View of Sacre Couer
Originally uploaded by killerfemme.

How very parisian. This was taken from the 6th floor of the Centre Pompidou (see review of show below). This is one of about 20 photos I have taken of Paris rooftops. I am obcessed.

Butes Chaumont

Butes Chaumont
Originally uploaded by killerfemme.

Last Sunday we had a lovely picnic in the parc butes chaumont. It was really steep and we kept sliding down the hill as we tried to eat our lunch. K. and G. decided to try to roll down the hill, though the grass looked too dry and potentially hurtful for wimpy met to give it a try. We encouraged some small children to try it as their mother's were ignoring them sunbathing. Are we a bad influence?

Shakespeare and Company

Shakespeare and Company
Originally uploaded by killerfemme.

The second floor of Shakespeare and Company is a reading room crammed full of old and new books . Despite all the tourists it is suprinsgly peaceful and offers a really nice view to the cobblestone street and Seine below.

Musee Dorsey

Musee Dorsey
Originally uploaded by killerfemme.

Inside the Musee Dorsey, an old railway station converted into a museum for impressionist paintings. I saw my favorite Van Gogh painting, the one of this blue room with the orange/red bed spread. Unfortunately, my friend J. also shut his finger in the door of the terrace in plein air and we got a behind the scenes tour that included the nurse's office!

More Museums

Last Monday I went to the Centre Pompidou to view their Los Anglees exhibit (which is now closed, maybe making this entry irrelevent). The exhibition was sprawling and quite impressive in the depth of each artist shown- not just one Ed Ruscha, but many! I loved walking into James Turrell's piece which was a room bathed in blue florescent light. It gave a calm, cool, silent feeling and I noticed one girl curled up in the corner, like she had been staying there absorbing the blue frequency for a long time. I stayed later than I planned to watch Kenneth Anger's video "Inauguration of thePleasure Dome," in which my favorite author, Anais Nin, plays a part. It is totaly amazing, heady mix of colors, music, costumes, sequences and emotions and makes his piece for the recent Whitney Biennial that features rock stars and Micky Mouse seem absoltely pale in comparison. My one gripe with the show was this: in a city as complex, fraught and diverse as LA the curators gave one room for both feminist artists AND a Chicano artists collective (yes, one room for both and two gay artists were given a hallway after that). And from the selection of feminist art you would think that Judy Chicago was THE MOST important feminist artist to ever live. Women artists and artists addressing social concerns seemed quite absent throughout and from the show one might think LA was just a white dude, formalist conceptualist playground, interesting, some great art, sure, but but nothing more. I also left wanting to know "why LA?" and how it connected or didn't to other cities such as NYC and Paris. And why a show of art from LA in Paris now?
Despite my gripes, which had amounted to feeling seriously peeved by the time I walked out of the show, I imagined working at the Centre Pompidou as a guide and interpreter or maybe as part of the curatorial team, sigh...

Biking through the Bois

Tonight G. and I went for an amazing bike ride through the Bois de Vincennes, on the eastern edge of Paris. We passed the chateau de vincennes which was immense, it's quite ridiculous to realize how stinking rich the royals actully were when you come face to face with one of the places they built. K. leant me her grandmother's sea green pugeut bicycle and it's so perfect for tooling around the city, though it shakes and shudders, I feel so free being able to explore the city by bike.

IMG_2512

IMG_2512
Originally uploaded by killerfemme.

On the Canal de St; Martin, an area that is incresingly branché (hip yuppie) but I found it pretty neat. Um, I hate to say it, but this rivals the graffiti in the Brooklyn Museum's Graffiti show.

IMG_2511

IMG_2511
Originally uploaded by killerfemme.

So obviously I love horses so I couldn't resist this horse on top of the carousel near tourist infested Sacre Coeur, which G; told me was built after the first Paris Commune to wash away the sins of the communarts. Thata made me look at it way differently.

IMG_2492

IMG_2492
Originally uploaded by killerfemme.

Looking over the Seine at sunset. Is this what makes Paris romantique?

IMG_2505

IMG_2505
Originally uploaded by killerfemme.

Chirac's museum, the Quai Branly (see entry below for a critique) and the Eiffel Tower in the background, classic landmark and new institution. Where's the dialogue?

IMG_2506

IMG_2506
Originally uploaded by killerfemme.

What more to say? I went up theEiffel Tower with my family when I was 12, so I am spared that tourist rite now. It's still a good photographic subject though.

IMG_2479

IMG_2479
Originally uploaded by killerfemme.

On a very hot day last week I went walking in theJardin des Plantes. My favorite part was a wmall labyrinth which lead up to this coupola.

Chirac's Project

This past week I went to the new museum for "primitive" art, Quai Branly, which just opened and has been called Chirac's project. Interesting that he should go on about "dialogue" accross cultures while immigrants are being treated so badly in France and while legislation has been passed that students without papers in schools can be deported. I thought the special exhibtion of Chiwara masks spoke to this contradiction. The way they were displayed silhouetted them against a window through which you could view the Paris skyline. I think this is a metaphor for the treatment of the "other" in a northern/western postcolonial nation- separate, an object of interest, curiosity, desire and maybe study, part of the society, but only in specific ways which are defined by the majority, relegated to their own separate places, objects to admire but not see as participants in a dialogue, and still a bit mysterious, weird and strange. Wait, sounds a lot like colonial nations.

Right now cries of "Allez les bleues!" ring out from everywhere. There is a quiet tension building up for the match this evening. Some kids have proposed a huge critical mass style bike ride through Paris while the streets are empty due to everyone watching the game. I will be watching though and not riding as I am spending the weekend at my sister's house 60 km outside of Paris.

forgetting completely

Today I completely forgot the significance of today's date for some people in the US until I sat down on Gael's windowsill to write in my journal and wrote the date. Hah hah hah happy birthday US, or not, this probably being the best fourth of july I have ever spent since I don't have to acknowledge it at all (and yet I am).

Speaking French is actually not that scary (speaking it correctly being another matter all together), but I am somewhat baffled that anyone could actually understand what I am saying and I know my pronounciation totaly sucks. An example of this being that I totaly confused a waistress in a sushi restaraunt by asking for "suelement concomber, pas de saumon" but my "seulement" (only) sounded too much like "saumon" (salmon) and so I ended up with salmon sushi, which I embarassingly had to explain why I could not eat. But I will always enounciate "seulement" from now on.

The other students at the language school are from countries all over the world, easing my fears somewhat that I would just be surrounded by a bunch of people from the US. It's a nice challenge too because often French is the only language we really have in common and so if I want to have someone to talk to and eat lunch with I have to talk to people in French. It also automatically makes me really open and friendly with people, which is a nice feeling.

Now if only I could always use the correct tenses when I speak that would be awesome.

safe to france

I have arrived and wandered around and felt out of it and then went to the bois de vincennes with gael and we ate sandwiches and looked at swans. So far the pace of Paris is to my liking. But tonight is the big France vs. Brazil game and though I do not plan to watch I am sure I will know about it either way.