charming?

Isabelle suggested un beau mini-voyage into the country courtesy of that best left unpronounced RER. A town called Chamarande or something very close to that. The town was never visited and the suggested forest only slightly slivered but the "chateau" (not really a castle but more of a manor house) was explored and I have to say the grounds are most beautiful after closing time.


Sun goes down, makes my memory run backwards past real experience, to beauty incapable of everyday existence and therefore altogether unreal even in its natural setting. See how still the water runs?

I loved that. I want a house with red vines and a matching life. The picture below is unbudging brook that reminded me of Klimt but refused well my offers of portraiture.

Finally, here is more beauty of a similar color palate. Maybe if you click on it to make it bigger it will suddenly look more interesting, and you will notice jus how perfect the reflection appears, how wrought the bridge, how quenched the tree.


The coolest thing about the manor, though, was the interior decor. Far from seeking to recreate the place to its swankiest historical possibilities, some wise someoneorother decided to reappropriate the old space for new, at least middlingly-interesting art. There was a strange cartoon movie, loud repetitive and with good transitions; there was an evil duck flying from one of the evilest sculptures I've ever seen. There was a light-up cube, we assumed made for disco and acting on assumption failed even to break some art. Tristan squished a penny on the rail tracks, though.

That was last weekend, along with the artist who wanted to be Franz Kline but really was just a guy with some good owls and a really excelent cat. I can't remember how many letters anything has. HmmWell, this weekend--who knows? The week, well but not now. I'm tired and worn through and out, and I miss my love-ed ones, be. You.

en retard

Meant to post this a week ago or something. Oh well next post will be nice and pictureful to make up for it.


Near-tardiness. The first week or so I was here I was so out of it. Tired like I don't know and a brain stuffed to hurting with whitebread. I was always rushing and never making it places, or else making it there really stupidly early, then standing around being tired. I know I'm adjusting because that trend is changing. The past couple of days I have been consistently convinced that I'll be late, I'm so late I'llbelateaaaahhh, and then it's fine. Always fine. Tristan and I missed The Science and Sleep two times before. The first time it was our fault, the second time I ran in on time, slapped the money down and the woman claimed the theater was closed--she was off the clock so fuck us, basically. So the third time, a handful of days ago, we're clearly going to be at least a minute late and we think, well we're toast but let's try anyway. So we get off the metro and run, and this other woman--what does she do? Not only does she sell us the tickets, but because we break down and spill all our money out to prove that we don't have enough for full-priced tickets, she gives us the reduced rate even though she's not supposed to. Plus, the movie was fucking amazing.
So then at school--yes, I do go to school here after all--I think I've missed the inscription time slot and anyway I know I'm at the wrong building. The office door is closed so I bang on it and start breaking some French, and the guy just wants to know what's the matter--oh there's no problem--hey look, here's a detailed map readymade telling you where to go and don't worry, you're not late at all.
Okay so apparently you enjoy lying in advance, school, but whatever, that's great. Then yesterday--a phonetics test, maybe it'll take some time?--as if. It's talking to a woman for some minutes.
Class today and I thought for =sure= I'd be late. Ended up waiting on the stairs for five minutes just to get inside the classroom, AND I used the bathroom before I went up!

Okay but I guess that's a little out of context. See the thing is, the bathroom is on the ground floor and I have to walk up something in the vicinity of 135 steps every godddamnday in order to get to my classroom. However as for the class itself, I'm fine with it. I like my teacher, and her methods are more interesting than I anticipated. That sounds more exciting than it is--I just mean to say that we get to read and work with literary passages too rather than completing infinite grammar exercises.

Other than my daily class (from 12 to 2), I have two cultural classes (art history and one lit or another), and every other week I have an hour of phoenetics every day. Strange schedule--oh yeah and then a film class--anyway it's fun because I understand a lot of French now. When did that happen?

An artist's atelier complete with french people, a friendly variety of pettable cats both at home and about, trips to the country and a slow-cooker comprehension of the city--life is starting to pick up. a bit.

vegetable

Oh actually BIG NEWS:
so I was walking back from drawing at Père Lachaise yesterday (also I have decided to stop ignoring accents in my typing, since appaaaaarently they can radically alter meanings), and by the way, for anyone interested, drawing graves is a really excellent exercise in proportion, distance, and foreshortening. SO I was walking back and wandering in a purposefully-lost sort of way through as yet unvisited streets in my neighborhood...oh but first should I tell you about my neighborhood?
Okay so there is the metro stop, Gambetta. Back just a block or two (small Parisian blocks, nothing like New York) is Père Lachaise, the minatour maze of famous, powerful, and simply very old people's graves, with no minatour at the center but just very nice, quiet, unliving folks. Also ravens. Also so beautiful and fascinating that you never really want to find your way out anyway, but the security guards come and tell you where it is after six o'clock but whatever fuck them I could totally hide if I wanted to. This is not the point at all.
Right, so here's the traffic circle with some big pointy sculpture I don't particuarly like in the center. Back from that is this:


awww...okay but back to the circle. Branching out of the circle are something like six? majorish rues/avenues maybe seven. Each one possessing many side streets, some of which connect right over to the other roads and most of which just land you majorly lost. It is very difficult to keep a sense of direction in these set-ups (of which there are simply billions in Paris), because you are always making circles or at least spirals and then at some point you've come to the next confusing intersection and anyway there's the same set of stores on most streets (not the same stores but the same types of stores: the swank cafe, the slighty sleazier brasserie, two produce shops and infinite flower dealers, a 'papeterie' that sells...well I'm not really sure but not paper, a butcher's and bread shop and many patisseries, the librarie (and you have to pay for books, how rude), the tabaccanist which is really a code word for phone card vendor, the panini-peddler who often seconds as a crèpe-dealer (addictive), also always some crap pizza joint and some snazz enthic cuisine. artist galleries.) There is variation but if you visualize all these things crammed on a nice little street with sidewalks small but big enough for trees to live on, and if you imagine this street repoducing itself in a thousand different ways and crawling pell-mell across a smallish area around a big dirty wonderful river, then that is a lot what Paris looks like. Granted some areas sell one thing and that is fashion, or that is monstrously expensive cups of coffee, or that is kittens, but on the average street those are the things you will find. Thus, those are the things you will find on my street, but what you will NOT find but which I found some easy blocks away is...BIG NEWS:
tofu!
Yes! That's right! I found the bourgyhippy store at last, and it's just a protein-powered skip away from my home. Hurray! Really, I feel much better today. Well that's all...I made a deal with myself I'd be out of the house by one today. Yesterday I tried but oh that seductive boy, I never can resist that Harry Potter. Also it is possible I will mention french Harry Potter in every post until I finish it--which should be a long time since though I've been reading it a fair amount the past couple of days I am only on page 74. But it's fun--it's like being a kid again and reading books where I didn't understand a lot of words but could feel myself learning them just by reading and reading. The pleasure is manifold: reading a good book and acquiring the language, then to realize that I am acquiring language by reading a good book. It's all good! Or a hell of a lot better than talking to people, that's for sure.
Scanning back over this entry I realize that the entirely absurd structure of this entirely mundane narrative is in fact just a trap that I've set for you. For you to read, and remember some conversation with me quite clearly, thence remember not to miss me quIte so much. But neverfear, I still miss you all quite so much.

historic terror

This was going to be a post of pictures from my neighborhood, but in light of North Korea's new feu d'artifice, instead I'm just going to post the most terrifying pictures on my camera. And here they are.



These were taken in a history museum.
Other than that you should know that Harry Potter would be just as enjoyable in French as in English if they'd stop calling Harry's wand his "baguette magique." It's distracting.

Up and down, up and down. It's life.

in limbo

Sophie tells me that something over a month overseas, she has begun to feel human again. I eagerly await this time's slow approach, and in the meantime content myself with joy in les petits trucs. As in, I am on my way out the door and my host mother calls to me. Believing she has just offered me her umbrella, I say ohno, thanks thanks, but I already have a little umbrella-mine. However thirty seconds into the rain I realize I don't have a little umbrella-mine and that dear Isabelle was in fact offering me mine own umbrella, set in the bathroom to dry. I love it, and that's good because otherwise things could get a little gray around here. As in, the city is entirely gray, has been for days, and is likely to continue in this way for let's say five months?
Today I finally took this stupid grammar test. Think I did well on it but who knows--French people like to explain things very quickly and with such an air of expected comprehension that I often am out the door and down the block before I realize I haven't got it at all. I don't even find out my schedule until the eleventh. I am starting to suspect that I am never actually going to be allowed to attend a class here. FUNNY JOKE, FRANCE. Education, bah..

Okay so to brighten the mood of this unnecessarily pissed-grandpa post, I will post a small selection of images.

Parisians sucking up the last sunrays--taken days ago, of course.


Another indistinct reflection of myself! Wow, my iTunes is playing really good songs tonight. Anyway, Paris is full of images within images, all within multiple frames. Each narrow street is a shaded framing for a brightlit scene of ancient spires, each window a beautiful garden and a sky filled with birds.

And lastly, if you want me to send you a video of these adorable French kittens kicking the shit out of eachother (really very cute), just comment with your favored email address. I tried to post to youtube and then link and blaaaah but blah so yeahno.

Lastly, and needless to day (j'espere), I miss each of you dear-ones and think of you daily.