Hello everyone,
I'm sure I walked about 20 miles in Paris this weekend, and though I was doing it in recovery from a little cold, and big limits on my food expenditures, and sleeping against the hardest carpet I've ever known one night and a fold-out couch with a bar about mid-back. Still, about an hour after waking up each day, I was able to convince myself to hit the streets again, walk with a half-aim towards someplace I only vaguely remembered the name of, hoping to stumble upon it or something else, since I've found that this is a city that foils prudence, remembering the lines 'vaut le détour!' Anyways, I spent the evenings mostly wandering around with friends. We found that it is both cheaper and (unlike in the states) legal to drink wine in the streets, in crowds of young people doing likewise near monuments or in areas near museums. In fact, one bottle of wine in the convienience store is cheaper than one glass of wine in a restaurant or a bar, so if you are with a group and feeling thrifty, I highly recommend the slightly-more-trashy, but very widely accepted, alternative. Saturday night was called Nuit Blanche, which I mentioned in my last post. Officially, it was an event organized around a set of all-night contemporary art exhibits, though the lines were way too long at all of the locations to justify waiting around. So we ended up just walking around, watching street performers in front of the Centre Pompidou and the Pantheon, meeting strange French people who insisted on speaking English to us instead of us speaking French with them...I've really enjoyed the friends I've met here so far have; we are all more or less like minded, and, what's better, we can share endless conversation.
During the day on Saturday, I made my way back to the town I'm living in to open a bank account and eat a cheap lunch (tomatoes, cheese, bread, orange juice). After that I went back to Pontoise, where I repayed my couch-surfing weekend up there by helping the woman repaint her bathroom. We then went out for sushi, I being willing to break my eating tendency if only for once, spending 11 euros on a tuna roll, some teriyaki duck-kabob, and shrimp sashimi. It was delicious.
Sunday was free museum day, and luckily, probably because of the long Saturday night, lines at the two big museums I visited were fairly short. The first was the Centre Pompidou, one of the strangest looking structures I've ever seen (Chris described it as a huge air-conditioning unit), but which gives an amazing view of Paris. The surrealist film and photography exhibit was sadly not free, and so the list of things to see was kind of limited. But the modernism section was pretty amazing. My two favorites were CoBrA-affiliated painter
Asger Jorn, whose work turn expressionism into a kind of landscape or even geographical art, and
Simon Hantaï, whose work was kind of a revelation for me.
You probably can't see with this image, but apparently he created the 'background' or 'negative space' around the symbols and splashes of color by copying down things that he had thought or read over the course of a year, though the writing is so layered that you cannot see anything but intersecting scribbles. After more than two semesters of work on my failed honors thesis in school, I found myself moved by the way in which a years worth of intellectual activity isn't represented as a group of coherent thoughts per se, or a final, organized thesis, but as the pattern and texture the multitude of that activity gives rise to. The crude shapes and concentrations of color, like pleats in the background, then become something like a key map to the indecipherable writing of the past itself, as well as the promise for the persistence of a vision...
As a testament to my idea that it's better to travel obliquely and with vague intention than according to a hard schedule, I then stumbled upon the Museum of Hunting and Nature, which was more like a sordid natural history museum than an educational tour through the history of French
chasse. I was kind of shocked by the irony of the place, the blunt, totally decontextualized arrangement of ornate guns and knives, taxidermied animals, grotesque paintings. And mixed in at random with all of this were weird pieces of art, with at most a vague connection to (and sometimes an outright negation of) hunting and nature: a metal laptop sculpture with a coffee-bean screen surrounded by a dining set, situated between two 13th century hunting rifles; a silly rock and roll song and music video accompanying the tour through a bourgeois lodge with an elk-antler table; the unicorn display; the small corner room with a ceiling made out of owl feathers and obviously synthetic and oversized owl faces poking out randomly; the abstract painting of an elephant slaughter on the ceiling in the taxidermy and ivory room (I forgot to bring my camera, but it's better if you just use your imagination). Clearly this place was designed by someone with a sense of humor–who didn't care much about hunting, for an audience who cares less. But for anyone with a taste for the grotesque and absurd, this was a wonderland.
The only other thing that I won't soon forget is my misadventure in the cold rain on the way to observe an English lesson. I was on foot, and got lost mistaking the road to Argenteuil for Route Argenteuil (roads in France are generally unmarked, so you kind of have to guess). I realized I had made the wrong turn about 20 minutes later, soaking wet despite my umbrella, when I saw the signs letting me know that I was leaving the town in which the school was located, and entering Argenteuil itself. But by the goodwill of some imperial spirit, I saw that big oasis of French Americana, Buffalo Grill, right next to, what else, the outlet mall.
When I entered to ask for directions, I felt like I had walked into some culture warp. First this made me dizzy and nauseous, then warm and pillowy like a pair of wool socks: I was greeted by pictures of shiny meat and potatoes, cowboy regalia, buffalo kitsch, squishy booths, and country music. I almost said, 'Howdy! Y'all have the all-you-can-eat buffet on Mondays?' But once I saw the board with the daily specials, recommendations of
Le Sheriff, I remember my predicament–still only half-way, though, almost asking 'Where abouts is this place?' I was able finally to get directions to the school, and was moseyed along, surer of my bearings (I had misread the class schedule anyways, and was an hour early). I'll have to return someday to repay my debts, enjoy a chicken fried steak, and maybe sing along to the tunes.
I have just finished my teacher-training, and I will start working officially on Thursday. I am also in the process of looking for a new place to live, having realized, after being urged by people at the schools I'm working for and by almost everyone else I've talked to, to move to a place a little more well-connected. In the end, I think that traveling around in this area is a lot harder than I had first expected, and I get the feeling that after a few months, I will find myself a little too isolated for my own good. Plus, I think the mother is a little resentful that I have taken down the tweety-bird poster. Wish me luck!
It is always so startling how an organism like London can be reduced to a texture of lights from this high up.
These next couple are from my weekend in Pontoise, a town Northwest of Paris, in the old town at the top of 12th century (I think) ramparts.
Who would advertise psychoanalysis like this in the U.S.?
This is the view from where I stayed.
And finally, here are some shots of my new place, beginning with the cute shower curtain, which, because of my small hot water heater, I can only stay on the other side of for about 7 minutes.
This doubles as a kitchen and bathroom sink.
Here you can see almost the width of the apartment.
The building is very old, and I think these tiles have been preserved from the original construction.
That's about it for now, folks. I am starting a 1.5 week vacation (do I deserve this already?) and I will be taking my camera everywhere from now on. Tomorrow I'm going out of town a little ways to see an Le Corbusier house, so look for those pictures soon.
