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.
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.
posted by Christine at 2:03 AM
3 Comments:
i remember when kim and i discovered the ONLY shop that sold tofu (and good tofu too!) in all of venice. oh joyous day! tofu and nutella crepe anyone ;). i miss you...
did you actually stand next to his grave??? did you touch it? weep on it? did you whisper, with trembling tone, your longest, most heartbreaking observation ever, on the discovery of tofu perhaps,into the massive black marble??
hmm,i had some tofu today. important stuff that.
um, write or i will think you choked on 'ummus.
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