In the months since my last missive, I’ve been settling into the new apartment and the new neighborhood, getting everything set up, figuring out my favorite shops, cafes, my metro routes. My cat Gertrude loves to perch on one of the five mantels or on the balcony overlooking the street or go galloping down the long hallway connecting the front of the apartment to the bedrooms that my friend Joey had dubbed The Bowling Alley.
And it turns out the new neighborhood is quite a bit more lively than the old one. I discovered one morning at 4 am (don’t ask why was up that early) that the cafe across the square from my apartment was not just open but buzzing. I checked their hours on Google Maps, and it turns out they’re open 24/7/365. Good to know in a pinch. Fortunately my bedroom is in the back, away from the hubbub.
In between all of that, there have been, um, a few trips — to the Dordogne for a queer writing retreat, to London to see theater and art, to the French Basque country for a spiritual retreat, to Sete on the Mediterranean coast, to the US to see family and friends, and to Denmark with friends because it’s almost legally required to vacate Paris in August.
(Photo credits for the last five photos: Kris Martin, Sara Gorr, Randy Schwartz-Diaz, Randy Schwartz-Diaz, and Dawn Niederhauser. Oh yeah, and the rainbow bagel photo is courtesy Dani DiPietro.)
And in between all of that, more hikes outside of Paris and more art exhibitions. Speaking of which, this past Saturday, Dani and I went to one at the Musee du Jeu de Paume called “The World According to AI.” Which was very cool. Everything from AI-generated portraits to AI-generated poetry to AI-generated films to AI-generated botanicals photos of plants that don’t exist.
One of the things about art exhibitions in Paris — they don’t exist in a vacuum, they are talking to exhibitions past and possibly also exhibitions future.
Because the Jeu de Paume exhibition made me think of other exhibitions I’ve seen in Paris, such as one at the Grand Palais from 2018 titled “Artists and Robots,” about robots designed to create art and artworks that incorporated robots.
The first two photos below are drawings by a robot of (if I remember correctly) a taxidermied fox and a bird of some sort. It was fascinating to watch the thing work — I wish I’d gotten a photo of the whole apparatus. Then Dwain going deep into the Matrix. And finally virtual flies buzzing around to replicate the image of me and Dwain being captured by a video camera.
And then it also reminded me of another from 2019 called “Computer Grrrls,” a feminist exploration of art and technology, at the Gaîté Lyrique. Ranging from the history of women in computing (going back to its earliest beginnings), to digital artwork by women artists, to women artists using technology to imagine more positive futures, to women artists’ critiques of technology. Quite a range and often quite funny and surprising as well.
And then there was another exhibition around art and technology at the Gaité Lyrique before that. And now Dani and I are planning to check out a new exhibition at the Centquatre next month called “Illusions Found: New Utopias in the Digital Era” (https://www.104.fr/fiche-evenement/les-illusions-retrouvees.html). Looks amazing and can’t wait to see it!
Okay, I think I knew from the time I accepted my current apartment in the 14th arrondissement that this was just going to be temporary. I took it because it was the first apartment I was offered, and I had to be out of my Airbnb place within a few weeks, and it was fine. I hoped that maybe I would come to love it, but no, in the end, I didn’t.
So at the beginning of the year, I started looking for a new apartment. This time, I had time. I was very specific about what I was looking for. I wanted it to be in the 11th arrondissement. That was the neighborhood I had originally wanted to find an apartment in. It’s more vibrant, more counter-cultural, more queer, and okay, more classically Parisian. It turns out everyone else wants to live there too. So landing an apartment there is a bit of a challenge.
I started out by updating my dossier, the pile of documents you have to send to the real estate agent or the owner when you submit your application. It can feel a bit intrusive, especially as an American where it feels like I have to provide much more documentation than usual since I don’t have the most critical things French landlords are typically looking for — French income and French assets.
Initially I didn’t have much luck getting appointments for showings. Then my French friend Linh told me her apartment-hunting strategy. Sign up for alerts with all the apartment listing sites. As soon as an alert comes through, if it interests you, send a message through the app to request a showing, and then, more importantly, and not more than an hour after the listing was first published, call the agent to schedule a showing.
I have to admit that I’m not big on phone calls with strangers in general, and in French it’s even worse. But I was like, if that’s what I have to do, that’s just what I’ve got to do. And after a few calls, I got used to the questions they usually ask, so it got easier.
With the new strategy, I started getting showings. Initially I was a little indiscriminate. Meaning that I would go for viewings at apartments that were maybe not quite perfect but close. Just to get a feel for the market.
After that, I started getting a little more picky. I mean, my current apartment is fine, so if I’m going to move, I really want it to be perfect. Unfortunately, my definition of perfect is very similar to a lot of other people’s. So for some of the showings, I’d show up, and there would be twenty other people waiting to get in. Ugh! And that was just for one of several showings. I knew that they would never pick me over dozens of French people with French incomes and French assets.
And then, a few weeks ago, there was a listing that really looked wonderful. Everything looked great — exactly the neighborhood I wanted, classic Parisian style, good size, balcony, everything I wanted. So I reached out to the realtor to schedule a showing.
The address was 77 avenue Parmentier. Now I have to admit that I have a soft spot for double numbers like 77. I was born on 11/11, so elevensies are kind of my lucky number. But I was like, it’s way too much to hope for. Just being in the 11th arrondissement would be enough. I told myself, just focus on the apartment itself, don’t worry about the elevens. I probably won’t actually like the apartment, and it probably won’t work out anyway.
But it turns out I really liked the apartment. And then, the day after I submitted my dossier, I found out that they liked me too. They accepted my application. The first time my application had been accepted on this round. What the f***!?!?!
And then there was a bit of nail-biting because the rent was toward the upper end of my budget and the stock market had just been, let’s say, tumultuous. But I re-ran the numbers and came to the conclusion that I could do this. So I accepted the offer.
Even so, I had twinges of guilt. Toward my current landlord, who was kind enough to provide a place for me in my hour of need. Toward the people in the neighborhood who I’ve gotten to know a bit and who I’ll now be leaving.
And at the same time I’m also very excited about the move. Every time I go to the 11th arrondissement, I just feel a bit more alive. When I tell French people I live in the 14th, people say, oh yes, it’s very “calme” which I take to mean “sleepy.” And I’m also very excited about being able to really create my own space in an unfurnished apartment, since my current one is furnished.
So for the last couple weeks I’ve been madly shopping for furniture. Which is one of the things I was really looking forward to when I moved over here — shopping for furniture in Paris! But it turns out that’s one of the things about living in a new country, you don’t necessarily know where to shop for things. And Paris has a LOT of furniture stores. Fortunately I’d gotten to know a few of the furniture stores from when I moved into this place, and then I’ve been able to lean on my expat friends for recommendations.
So the furniture search has been fun and exhausting. There was one day when I visited ten different stores. In some ways I’m glad I’m doing it now rather than a year ago. I think a year ago I would have just replicated the decor I’d had back in Seattle — even if a few things are exactly what I had in Seattle, like the dining room chairs I’ve ordered. Now I’m feeling maybe a bit more French, a little more bold. And also like I have more of a sense of who I’m creating a space for — now that I’ve developed some friendships here, I can picture who I’ll be having over for dinner.
And for the wild parties my friend Joey has already started planning for my new place. How did that happen?!?!? Although, I will admit, I am looking forward to them…
As I mentioned in my last post, when I first arrived in Paris, I was a little freaked out by how inadequate my French was. Even after five years of high school French classes and a bachelor’s degree in French literature (with honors, even). I mean, surely that should be enough!
After I arrived in Paris, I thought it might be interesting to take classes in French (rather than on French) on topics that interested me. So last spring I enrolled in a class on illustration offered in the adult education curriculum of the City of Paris.
Many years before, I had read David Sedaris’s “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” I think I had dismissed his horror stories of the French education system as him being a neophyte. I mean, I had a degree in French literature, so surely my experience would be better!
Um, well, maybe not so much. What I had failed to factor in was that all of my high school and college classes had been geared toward people who had learned French as a foreign language.
So even though the lectures in my Paris classes were in more or less proper French, the professors were still speaking (in their heads at least) to a native French-speaking audience.
And then I probably should have paid more attention to the fact that, during the first class I took this past spring, the illustration professor lost her sh*t when another professor seemed to be scheduled for the same classroom and started yelling at him.
Or when she made one of the other students cry, also in the first class, I don’t really remember for what, but you can imagine. Apparently there were a bunch of complaints from the other students following that incident, and a survey was sent out, and there was a monitor at the next class. But for whatever reason, I’m not sure why, I decided to tough it out.
I had thought than in an academic setting, I would be able to understand pretty much everything. And I did understand a good chunk of what the professor said (though definitely not all), but then when the other students would pipe up, I understood practically nothing.
Compared to the other students in the class, I was competent but definitely not inspired. I did manage to make a decent drawing of a pigeon during one of our excursions to a park a block away from the school. The assignment was to draw in INK (I was used to sketching in pencil, so this gave me the willies) by first watching and then drawing from memory with our LEFT HAND and to capture its MOVEMENT. This one turn out fairly good, I think. The other ones, not so much.
In the end, though, I decided that illustration was maybe not my forte.
So this past fall, I decided to enroll in a class that was a bit more along the lines of what I’m reasonably good at, a class on the History of Contemporary Photography. I had taken a number of photography classes in the University of Washington’s adult education program and at the Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle, and I thought it would be good to get a better understanding of contemporary photography and that it would be interesting to see that from a French perspective.
Which it was. After all, the French actually invented photography, and two of the streets in my neighborhood are actually named after earlier pioneers in photography (rue Niepce and rue Daguerre). The class was an interesting mix of French (Eugène Atget, Marcel Duchamp), Franco-American (Man Ray, Berenice Abbott), American (Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, Barbara Kruger, Gregory Crewdson), Canadian (Jeff Wall), and German (August Sander, Hilla and Bernd Becher, Otto Steinart, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff).
This is Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray’s “Élevage de poussière” (“Dust breeding”) from 1920, an early use of photography to capture an ephemeral work of art…
Nevertheless, the class was oddly dry and was heavy on “talking points” about the various photographers and schools. Each class would begin with the professor prompting students to provide a recap of the previous lesson. The discussions on the photographers were focused on biography and didn’t provide much illumination on their philosophy and technique.
At one point, the professor made a point that one photographer’s framing was exceptional. One of the students asked what made their framing exceptional. The response was, “Well, you just have to look at the photographs!” Buzz. Wrong answer. I wanted to understand their motivations, their process, their techniques. This was not helpful.
For this spring, I looked at the options for classes to take, but nothing really grabbed my eye. And then after a moment I realized, the class I really needed to focus on was my driving class. Not sexy or even very interesting, but necessary. My Washington driver’s license was no longer valid in France as of September, so if I wanted to be able to drive in France, it was a must.
There’s kind of a weird thing with French driver’s licenses, though. There are a bunch of US states that have reciprocal agreements with France that they can exchange driver’s licenses. Meaning, that if, for example, you have a Pennsylvania driver’s license, you can exchange that for a French driver’s license with no fuss.
Washington is not one of those states. So in order for me to get a French driver’s license — mind you, that’s only so that every once in a while I can rent a car and drive off into the French countryside where the trains don’t go — I have to go through the whole French driver’s license process as if I’ve never driven a car in my life, like I’m a sixteen-year-old. Ugh!
In France, to get a driver’s license, you first have to pass the written test, and then you take a minimum of twenty hours of driving lessons, and then you take the behind-the-wheel test.
I took practice written tests, and even after reading the codebook from cover to cover, never managed to pass. Yikes! I will say that the French written test is considerably harder than the American one, with questions like, if you’re traveling at 50 kilometers per hour, how many meters does it take you to stop? (The answer is 25 meters — you take your speed, lop off the zero, and square it. Like that particular tidbit of information actually does you any good.)
And then there are all the French road signs, which in many cases can be quite different from American ones. Like this “no pedestrians” sign…
Or “no parking”…
Or the fact that at an unmarked intersection, you have to yield to cars coming in from the right. Which can also be marked this way…
Or the signs that indicate you can park on one side of the street during the first half of the month, and then on the 15th between 8 pm and 9 pm, you have to move your car to the other side of the street, and then move it back between 8 pm and 9 pm on the last day of the month — a whole concept that does not exist in the US…
And they expect you to know all these things. None of which were covered in my nine years of French classes.
And then lastly, I probably mentioned at some point that at the beginning of 2023, I joined a book club at the Paris LGBTQI+ Center. For the first six months or so, we met at the Center, and then shifted to meeting at the apartment of two of the members, Linh and Robyn. All the other members are folks in their twenties from across the LGBTQI+ spectrum and from a variety of backgrounds. And in the past few months we’ve expanded our scope to also watch and discuss films together.
Typically an evening will run like this… We show up at Linh and Robyn’s carrying supplies for l’apéro, basically snacks, wine and other beverages. Their apartment is, I imagine, fairly typical for French twenty-somethings with its somewhat crowded mismatched furniture, bookshelves overflowing with books and manga, posters plastering the walls, a tiny kitchen.
We settle in on the sofa or cushions set on the floor or on the mismatched chairs, trying to avoid knocking things over. We talk about everything and nothing while setting out the snacks, which usually include various types of chips, several baguettes, things to smear on the baguettes like soft cheeses, hummus, guacamole, etc. A bit of wine, soda, fruit nectar, that sort of thing.
Once everyone arrives, we eventually get around to discussing the book, things that we liked or didn’t, passages that spoke to us or that maybe we didn’t quite get. This goes on for quite a while of course.
And eventually Linh hauls out her laptop and we select our next book and/or film from the ones that people have proposed and that she tracks on her Excel spreadsheet. And clean up and exchange hugs and bisous and head out. Usually the whole thing lasts around four or five hours, maybe six.
This past weekend we had one where we discussed a memoire by Catherine Patris, a doctor who led the AIDS Division at France’s Ministry of Health from 1993-1995 , called “Ma planète SIDA” (“My Planet AIDS”). Linh had met Catherine at the LGBTQI+ Center and had invited her to join our group for the discussion.
The book speaks of her struggles, her moments of fierce pride for what she was able to accomplish, the human connections she formed with people also engaged in the fight against the disease. It talks of her efforts to stay on top of the rapidly evolving medicine and the state of the epidemic, to transform the division from a cold bureaucracy into a one where human emotion and passion had a place.
She recounts the difficult negotiations with the Ministry of Health’s leaders to act more quickly and more boldly, with activist organizations like ACT UP, who stridently criticized the AIDS Division for not acting more quickly and more boldly. Of the frustrations with being caught in the middle.
She tells of meetings where, as she looked across the room, it struck her that most of the people sitting there would not be alive within in a year or two.
So after reading all this, it was amazing to be able to meet Catherine herself that afternoon, nestled into Linh and Robyn’s sofa. Catherine and I were the only ones in the room to have experienced the AIDS crisis firsthand, even if from different vantage points.
There were points during the discussion when everyone was laughing together, others when everyone’s eyes were wet, hers included.
She talked about how the real problem is shame, and the reason discrimination is so problematic is because it induces shame. And that the only cure for shame is kindness (“Le seul traitement pour la honte, c’est la tendresse”).
On the way home, I ended up taking the same métro train as Lu (far right in the photo). He/they said it had felt like a family dinner, which the French traditionally consecrate their Sunday afternoons to. And I certainly felt a bit like, here and elsewhere, I’m starting to find my family here.
I know it’s been a little while since I’ve posted. Last spring ended up being a little much, and then I got out of the the habit of posting and, well, you know how it goes.
When I arrived here a year and a half ago, I found myself being very self-conscious about my French. The mind-warp between being pretty freaking good at speaking French for an American and being pretty sh*tty at speaking French compared to actual French people was a bit difficult for a long time. I really struggled.
But then somehow magically, a few months ago it seemed to get better. I was reading a lot of books in French, my vocabulary was definitely growing, I was talking more with French people, like actual conversations and not just « Bonjour, madame ! I’d like a croissant. » And I think somehow some of the anxiety I’d had seemed to lessen, so I could just dive into the slightly chilly water of speaking French and start swimming.
So that’s been very nice. It used to be that after I’d been speaking French for a few hours, I’d get a headache, partly because it just requires more mental effort to speak and to understand, but also because my cheeks and jaw muscles would ache because speaking French simply requires more muscular strength to pronounce.
So I’m feeling like I’m a bit over the hump. I can have a fairly normal conversation in French without having to think about it too much, without having to formulate a sentence three times before figuring out something I know how to say in French, though that still happens once in a while.
I mean, don’t get me wrong — when a bunch of French people start jabbering to each other, I’m still pretty lost. But not quite as much as I used to be.
***
On another note, I try to go to an art exhibition about once a week. Which, believe me, does not come anywhere close to exhausting the options. Recent outings have ranged from the Surrealists and impressionist painter Suzanne Valadon (no, I’d never heard of her either, but after seeing her work, I was like, why haven’t I?!?)…
… to PopArt painter Tom Wesselmann to Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, whose signature works involve room-sized webs of yarn…
… to the street art of Paris…
I’ve also been reading about mid-century photographers like George Platt Lynes and the PaJaMa trio (Paul Cadmus, Jared French and Margaret French). One thing that has struck me — particularly with the Surrealists and the mid-century photographers, but also with other groups of artists like the cubists — is how much collaboration and interplay you see among them. I guess I’d had the idea that the great artists spent their time holed up in their studios creating ART. But at least for a lot of them, they were actually spending a good deal of time hanging out with their other artist friends, whether that was discussing avant-garde concepts or just the latest gossip at a cafe over coffee or wine, going out to soirées, engaging in torrid romances or else pining for one or another, or actually collaborating on one work of art or another. It seems like there’s a spark that can happen in circles of artists, even if we often tend to focus on the individuals.
***
In the last couples months I’ve also started going on hikes outside of Paris on the weekends. I may have mentioned that I have a book of hiking trails that you can get to from the metro or (more likely) the RER, the light rail train system that serves the Paris region. I’ll pack the fixings for a classic ham and cheese on baguette sandwich, some nuts and lemonade in my knapsack, and off I go.
It’s been wonderful to get outside the city for a few hours, breath in some fresh air, wander through a forest, and often pass by a chateau or some other very French building, listen to some birdsongs, maybe see a random pony or two.
Okay, these are real hikes, some of them up to 10 miles, but sometimes it doesn’t always feel like a « hike » when there are chateaux to be seen and you can grab a glass of wine or a pain au chocolat along the way.
A few photos…
And yes, one of those hikes did take me from the edge of Paris to Versailles. It would take the king and queen two days by carriage to travel from the Palais du Louvre to the Palais de Versailles back in the day because they’d stop off at the Chateau de Saint-Cloud (since burned down). It was fun to in a way retrace their steps (or carriage wheels) over the course of an afternoon.
Hoping your spring is getting off to a good start! A bientôt!
Got back yesterday from the road trip to Normandy with Dani. Really lovely! Even if it was a little cold and rainy.
We started out by going to Mont Saint Michel, which is right on the border between Brittany and Normandy. It’s one of those sites that you’ve seen so many photos of, almost as many as the Eiffel Tower it feels like. And yet to see it in person was still just awe-inspiring.
We took the guided tour of the abbey, which was fascinating. I think the biggest thing I took away was that, even though the Mont Saint Michel seems kind of eternal, it’s actually a constant work in progress. Several sections have collapsed over the centuries and have been rebuilt… or not. In the center of the cloister, what is now lawn used to be a lovely garden, but it was leaking into the library below, so they had to tear it out a few years ago.
From there, we went up to Bayeux to visit the Normandy landing beaches. Amazing to get a glimpse of what was involved in D-Day. If I’m remembering correctly, over 2 million Allied soldiers were involved in retaking Normandy from the Nazis. For the D-Day operation, the Allies decided to create an artificial harbor at Arromanches using a flotilla of old ships and by sinking a bunch of hollow concrete structures to surround the bay and make it possible to land ships with troops, machinery and supplies. Troops scaled cliffs towering over landing beaches to reach German positions and take them out. And all this for an ideal, of freedom and equality and democracy.
And while we were in Bayeux, we went to the cathedral and also to see the Bayeux tapestry. No photos of the tapestry as they don’t let you do that, but the thing is like 75 yards long and tells the tale of William the Conqueror’s invasion of England from Normandy. Kind of like an old school graphic novel. Pretty amazing as it even includes Haley’s comet! But here are a few photos of the Bayeux cathedral…
From there we drove up to Honfleur. I have to admit that part of the draw was that two of my cousins grew up on Honfleur Drive in Sunnyvale, California. Probably kind of a silly reason. But it also looked like a very cute seaside town. Which it was.
From Honfleur, Dani and I took a daytrip up to Etretat, which is famous for its cliffs, which were painted by Monet and other Impressionists. They even had signboards from some of the spots where Monet had painted.
And then on Friday, on the way back to Paris, we stopped at Giverny to see Monet’s house and gardens where he painted the waterlilies. Again, one of those things where I’d seen the paintings so many times, at the Musee d’Orsay and the Musee de l’Orangerie and the Musee Marmottan Monet in Paris, and still so lovely to see the house and garden that inspired it all.
And then we got back to Paris. Good to be home!
The first thing I did, after petting Gertrude of course, was to go to the produce markets to restock the kitchen. And to my surprise, there were all sorts of new veggies! Peas and radishes and cucumbers!
So for lunch today I made a salad with a poached egg, goat cheese, radishes and cucumbers. And for dinner I sauteed peas and carrots and fennel and green onions, and had that with Ossau Iraty cheese (I think) and mashed potatoes with creme fraiche and chopped chives scattered over it all. Gotta love chives!
The first clue was that, when my friend Kyle was here a couple weeks ago, we were able to have a few picnics. Three to be exact. In the space of a week. I forgot to take photos of the first one along the Seine, but here are the second (in a park near the Marche Beauvau) and third (along the Canal Saint Martin)…
The second clue was that Gertrude has been shedding like a MF. Had a buy a cat brush and two vacuums to keep up with all the fur. And my eyes are still itching.
The third clue arrived this evening. All the bars on my square have set out tables onto the square, expanding their little fiefdoms from the space under their awnings as they’ve done all winter. One of the bars (the sports bar that I hardly ever go to) has a live band playing rock music (even American, like “A horse with no name,” Cyndi Lauper’s “Time after time” and other favorites).
This week has also been filled with the notorious French red tape, including figuring out how to get a notarized translation of my Washington driver’s license and figuring out how to get an apostille for my California birth certificate so I can get health coverage. But it seems to be working itself out. Fingers crossed!
And tomorrow Dani and I head out for our Normandy road trip adventure! (Which was why I needed the notarized translation of my Washington driver’s license, ofc.) Even though I’ve been to a number of regions of France, I haven’t been to Normandy. Yet. And the trouble with Normandy is that there are a shit-ton of things to do and see there.
The days are getting warmer and longer, thankfully. Last week I woke up to sunshine streaming through the window and decided I wanted to take my bike out for a spin. It had been a couple months…
So I hopped on my bike and headed out toward the Bois de Boulogne, a massive park on the western edge of the city. Google Maps recommended a route that would take me along the boulevard that circles the city, but I opted instead for the route that would take me by the Eiffel Tower. Because really you can never get too much Eiffel Tower.
From there I biked across the Seine and headed west toward the park. Just as I entered, there was a lovely lake with an island with some kind of 19thcentury ruin on it. Then I biked by the Louis Vuitton Foundation with its Frank Gehry arcs of glass. But much of the park was just slumbering woods, the trails muddy and the trees not yet leafed out with their springtime greenery. So a bit dreary on the whole.
I was just despairing a bit when I happened upon the Parc Bagatelle on the western edge of the Bois de Boulogne, which bills itself as a botanical garden. I cautiously ventured in through the gates, not sure what to expect.
It was so lovely with the dappled sunlight and peacocks promenading randomly around the gardens and luxuriant fields of narcissus and daffodils. It felt like a portal to Spring, in such a French way.
A few days later, Dani and I and our friend Lara went to a stage performance that was very not French. We had tickets to the Rocky Horror Show in version originale (meaning English) and were super excited! Dani and I had both been huge fans of the movie back in the day — I first saw the movie in tenth grade at a church youth conference, which you might be dubious about until I tell you we’re talking about the Unitarians here — and were curious to see the original theater version that the movie was based on. When we showed up that the theatre on the Champs-Elysees, we were blown away by the very modern entrance…
Then we made our way into the actual theater. It felt like we’d stepped into the 1920s, with the colorful art deco decor, the arcs of booth seats nestled around tables, and the massive chandeliers overhead.
We had a blast! Dani and I were both singing along — I couldn’t believe I still remembered (almost) all the words! Can never get too much of the Time Warp! Such a fun night!
And then the other thing I’ve done recently to to sign up from some classes — a French class with the Alliance Francaise and an illustration class with the City of Paris — both to learn some stuff and to improve my French, since both classes are taught in French. With the illustration class, I was a little concerned I’d gotten myself in a little over my head, but it seems to be working out.
Yesterday we had an interesting exercise to go to a park next to the school and observe something in the park for two minutes and then do a contour drawing of it for two minutes using our non-dominant (for me, left) hand while trying to capture a sense of motion. I like how this pigeon turned out…
I hope Spring is starting to pop for all of you, too!
I’d begun to think things were getting a bit stale. Maybe it was just that it was winter. I mean January and February are always a bit rough, even if you’re in Paris. I don’t think I quite realized it, but I needed to mix things up.
The first thing that happened was that at Le Salon, the expat happy hour on Wednesdays, I met a wonderful woman named Susan Herrmann Loomis, who happens to be a cookbook author who specializes in what the French actually cook in their homes rather than the stuff you see on restaurant menus. She’s been living in Normandy for two or three decades, doing on-the-ground research, and is now in the midst of moving to Paris.
So after our conversation, I ordered a couple of her cookbooks and dove into them with relish. In one (“In a French Kitchen”), she actually documents their kitchen layouts and what they keep in their pantries and refrigerators. You have to understand — the French are very private, they don’t do the whole house tour when you come over for dinner, you’ll never see their kitchen or what’s in their pantry or, god forbid, their refrigerator. But somehow she managed.
And so what’s been lovely about reading through those books is that it’s broadened my repertoire of French home cooking. Earlier this week I made merlan (a mild white fish) with beurre blanc (a creamy sauce of white wine vinegar, shallots, and butter), served with potatoes, celery root and sunchokes all mashed together. Accompanied of course by a sauvignon blanc from the Loire Valley. A very pale dinner, and delicious!
Tonight I made a one-egg omelet with crème fraîche and chives folded into it as an appetizer, and then scallops sauteed with garlic, parsley and lemon, served over a mache salad in vinaigrette. Also delicious!
And then a couple weeks ago, my friends Libby and Carm came for a lovely visit. Aside from having an excuse to go see the Mark Rothko exhibit again, listen to live jazz at 38Riv, and go see a contemporary dance performance by Georges Labbat, we also went out to some wonderful restaurants like Le Pinardier (wine bar), Sur Mer (seafood bar), and Les Bistrotters (modern French restaurant). All the delicious food made me realize that I need to eat out a bit more often. Especially if it involves French toast served with salted butter caramel for dessert. Heavenly!
And then last week I made a quick trip back to the U.S. to visit my family in California and retrieve my books and artwork in Seattle (and see a couple friends of course). Leading up to the visit, I shopped for gifts for my family at La Grande Epicerie de Paris, and I was like, okay, I think I need to shop here every once in a while for myself. The apricot preserves with beautiful quartered apricots floating delicately in syrup are, I think, definitely something that I’ll need to start stocking at the apartment.
And then the other thing I’ve been thinking about, as I’m feeling a bit more settled in Paris and as we edge closer to spring, is travel. I mean, it’s a bit odd, because in my head at least, Paris is the place I travel TO, I mean, why would I leave to travel someplace else?
But like any large city, you do want to get out of it for a bit. So in thinking about doing some traveling this spring and summer, at first I was feeling a bit daunted by the options (I mean seriously there are a million places to go), but for the moment I’m thinking maybe some trips to Normandy and the French Alps and Genoa. Along with a quick trip to the Champagne region when Dwain comes to visit in May. Because, you know, Champagne.
So a few new things to keep things fresh as we work our way toward spring!
And then yesterday I went to go see some more art, because, you know, Art. This was an exhibition called “A partir d’elle: Des artistes et leur mère” (“Starting from her: Artists and their mothers”). A really varied body of work on artists’ relationships with their mothers, really touching and also at times hilarious.
And then to end on a silly note, I thought I’d include this, which was sent to me by my friend Kyle…
Before I moved to this neighborhood, I knew exactly two things about Montparnasse:
(1) that it has what some consider to be the ugliest building in Paris, the Montparnasse Tower, which caused nearly as much of an uproar when it was built as the Eiffel Tower did (which was described back in the day as “this belfry skeleton” by poet Paul Verlaine, “this truly tragic street lamp” by writer Léon Bloy, and “this mast of iron gymnasium apparatus” by writer François Coppée), and though the Eiffel’s reputation seems to have improved somewhat since then, the Montparnasse Tower’s has not (last year Architectural Digest ran a story on it titled “Paris’s Only Skyscraper Turns 50–And the French Still Hate It“).
(2) that it has a rather large train station, the Gare Montparnasse, which happens to be located right next to the Tower. Dwain and I passed through there on the way from Toulouse to our vacation rental in Paris, which, if I remember correctly, ended up being just downstairs from David Sedaris’s apartment near Odéon where he struggled to learn French in “Me Talk Pretty One Day.”
Montparnasse is what I think the French would call a “quartier populaire” — a neighborhood of the people — definitely not one of the chic quarters, but it’s not without its charms.
For a couple months, Dani and I had planned to check out the Agnes Varda exhibition at the Cinémathèque Française. I had first become enamored of Varda after watching what turned out to be her last film “Faces Places” (“Visages Villages” in French). She had such a playful quality, a sense of humor, and came across as also deeply caring. It turns out she lived for most of her life just a few blocks from my apartment on the Rue Daguerre. I mean, look at her at almost ninety years old…
Anticipating our visit, I streamed a couple of her films — “TheGleaners and I” (“Les Glaneurs (et la Glaneuse)” in French, because she considered herself a gleaner) and “Cleo from 5 to 7” (“Cléo de 5 à 7″ in French). She really anticipated the French New Wave of cinematography and more well-known directors like Jean-Luc Godard.
So it was fascinating to learn more about her and her work. She in particular loved (a) cats, and (b) heart-shaped potatoes. Never seen a heart-shaped potato? I hadn’t either. That’s because they’re systematically plucked out and tossed in rubbish heaps, so you’ll never see one in a store even though they’re perfectly edible.
It’s a weird thing. As I wander about the neighborhood, sometimes I spot these older women with kind of a pageboy haircut, and in my head I’m like, Is it Agnes? I mean, of course I know it can’t possibly be, she died a few years ago, but even so, there’s this little spark of hope that she’s still kicking around the neighborhood.
A few days ago, the local district put up a new sign in the square I live on, highlighting the history of the Montparnasse neighborhood, “cosmopolitan and fraternal,” welcoming people of all nationalities and cultures, “mixing and working together in the cafes and workshops of the neighborhood.”
The people pictured at the bottom of the poster include some people you may have heard of — Agnes Varda, of course (yes, that’s her, fourth from the left), and also Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Josephine Baker, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Amedeo Modigliani, Man Ray, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Cocteau.
And then a few days ago I went to the Petit Palais to see their exhibition on “Le Paris de la Modernité,” focusing on Paris’s transformation from 1905 to 1925.
One aspect of that was that the artists who had set up shop in the Montmartre neighborhood at the north end of Paris found themselves the victims of their own success as rents rose and they were forced out. Right around the same time, a new Metro line opened, connecting Montmartre in the north with Montparnasse in the south, so many of the artists simply hopped the Metro and relocated to Montparnasse. And hence Montparnasse, hip and trendy neighborhood of artists, was born.
Happy new year, everyone! Hope you’re having a wonderful start to the year! Today was the beginning of a cold snap here in Paris — the high was 32 degrees. It’s been trying to snow through the day, and this evening it started getting heavier and sticking. They’re predicting an inch. I suspect Paris is about as savvy about snow as Seattle is, which means not very. Fortunately, Paris is fairly flat, which Seattle is not.
One of my projects since I moved here is to see what it’s like to eat locally and seasonally. As you may recall, when I first got here in September, the markets were overflowing with just a huge variety of produce — luscious tomatoes and grapes and chanterelles and just everything you can imagine.
I can still get a lot of that variety, but since I’m trying to eat locally/seasonally, the options are somewhat reduced. So we’re talking of course the alliums — onions, garlic, shallots, leeks — and roots — potatoes, carrots, parsnips, celery root, beets — and the cabbage family — cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, romanesco broccoli, brussel sprouts, kohlrabi — and winter squashes and a few random leafy things — chard, belgian endives, escarole. Oh, and how could I forget the mushrooms! And then there are also a whole variety of apples and pears.
I’ve been mainly shopping at Les Saisonniers, a little food market a couple blocks from my apartment. In addition to produce, they also stock meat, dairy, cheeses, a bit of fish, wine, cider and bread, and it’s all mainly local and organic.
The map on the right shows where everything comes from. Note that it is not a map of France — it’s actually just the region around Paris. For some sense of scale, the northern bit of the map is pretty much the northern tip of France, and the northwest border on the map is the English Channel. Paris is the tiny circle toward the bottom center. So everything is pretty much coming from less than three hours from Paris.
It’s funny — with the carrots you have the choice of clean carrots and carrots caked in dirt, with the dirty carrots actually being a bit more expensive. I haven’t asked what that’s all about. Belgian endives also come in two varieties — grown in dirt and not grown in dirt — with the grown in dirt ones being a bit pricier (though not too much). And then there are the yellow onions. They are about a quarter the size of American onions — about one-and-a-half to two inches across — they’re just so cute, I’ve fallen in love with them!
A few days ago, I went to the Edgar Quinet market to get some meat to make Carbonnade, a beef stew with lots of onions and Belgian beer. And while I was there, I picked up the most beautiful cauliflower and cabbage at a local farm stand. Last night I boiled some of the cauliflower florets with a bunch of the leaves and just put some butter and salt and pepper on it and ate it with a merguez sausage. It was probably the freshest cauliflower I’ve ever had. So delicious!
I’ve been keeping a log of what I’ve been making out of all this lovely produce, in part to keep track of what is in season when. My go-to’s have been quiche, cream soups, omelettes, stews, sauteed meat or sausages with shallot or mushroom sauce, boiled vegetables with butter, potatoes mashed with parsnip and/or celery root, endive and shallot salad. One night I made crepes and stuffed them with chicken and mushrooms and baked them in a cream sauce topped with gruyere. That was lovely!
One thing I’m learning is also that the French are very specific in their food terms. As was checking out at Les Saisonniers one evening, I noticed that they had a few loaves of bread on a shelf behind the counter. So I asked for one, “et aussi un pain, s’il vous plait.” The woman apologized, saying they were all out of “pain.” I pointed to the ring-shaped loaves on the shelf. “Oh, those aren’t bread, they’re brioches.” So I got a brioche. It was delicious!
And then just before Christmas, I went to the Bastille Market to get a chicken to roast, along with a bunch of vegetables. At one farm stand, I saw they had a rather large chicken, nearly the size of a small turkey, sitting in a display case, so I asked for “un poulet.” The response was, “Oh sorry, we don’t have any more chicken.” I pointed to the chicken in the display. “Oh, that isn’t a chicken, it’s a capon. Would you like that instead?” (Capon, “chapon” in French, is a type of rooster.) I said I would, so they wrapped it up and weighed it and let me know it would be 89 euros. Was I sure I wanted it? I politely declined and ended up going to another stand where I bought a lovely farm-raised chicken for a much more reasonable 18 euros. It even came with the head!
A Simple Life in Paris 