I had this whole witty schpeal about theatre and Marie Antoinette and how much I love both and how I squealed when I saw the little village for the first time (which had become a pilgrimage of sorts for me) and about how Marie had this thing about playing pretend and escapism and Rousseau. . .but the internet here at the Nice studio is less than reliable. It was all lost and now I must jet to catch the train that will take me to Paris that will take me home. So enjoy.

And just know how charming it is.

And how much I want to help it be a better museum space.

And just come on, it's darling and nuts. What a fantastic combination.

She used porcelain milk buckets. People lived here and worked the farm . . .she just would come and play the part of milkmaid whenever she felt like it (here, in the original post was a rather good joke about method acting. . . but it is lost). I just wanted to share this: the best bit of Versailles.

I find there are certain places in the world that a body can be totally comfortable and at home in and one such place for me is a book shop. I feel very at ease and happy as a little clam when I'm surrounded by books and especially books that beg me to discover them. And when it happens to be one of the nine anglo bookshops in Paris, one that originally started as a library in the 1920s, where Hemingway often went to borrow books and money. Shakespeare and Company. How do I love thee? No but really. I could sit and read and write and read some more in this place. I'm thinking of creating a special Shakespeare and Company room in my future maison.
I mean come on people. Stop it. Words allude. I think when I saw this study area I might have sighed audibly, the sigh of a thousand short stories and maybe a novel to be written and hundreds of leatherbounds to be smelt and soaked in.

A hideout of books. A hide out of books! Oh heaven help me, a hideout of books.

And then there was this cranny made of cupboard doors. It was a little shelter a petit croin for writing hopes and poetries and sillinesses on a typrewriter. I sat down on the creaky little seat and grazed my fingers on the keys. I wonder how long it had been there, who had typed and then I knew my writer's heart wanted this petit croin de la monde pour toute ma vie.
Other people felt inspired by the faded persian carpet hanging on the back wall of the croin and the twinkle lights above and they left messages. French, English, German, Arabic.

So I couldn't resist.

For my favorite Company always.

Signed C. Cotten.

Pere Lachaise is the largest cemetery in Paris. All sorts of famous, rich and not so famous nor quite so rich (but there has to be at least a little money put by because word on the street is it's not cheap to keep a place in this chez) people and whole families have come here for a final repose as it were. The result is a rather peaceful and strangely charming (maybe not the right mot, but it alludes me in both French and English) sort of neighborhood (all of the tombs are the above ground variety. Vous savez, the kind that look like houses/Grecian temples/Gothic Cathedrals). But as I strolled the cobblestone paths and climbed the hills of this neighborhood, I wondered at all the ways the living try to immortalize and honor the dead. I found a few:
Sometimes a man's life's work becomes sculpting the most comforting and beautiful image he can think of, to remind himself after his wife has died that he and she are not alone as they face the uncertainties that lay beyond.

Sometimes we show the essence of a person by immortalizing what they loved or did best.

Or we may give our favorite or even the writer we're just mildly attached to a kiss with a shade of lipstick called "Earnestly Read".
Perhaps we place a stone at the base of a memorial for something that cannot bear remembering but can never be forgotten. A beautiful symbol of experience and eternity.
Or you can be like me and after you've paid respects, you do the very natural, very human thing. You have a tranche de mailleoux among the memorials and graves. Here's to me and here's to you, you might say, raising the cake to those around you. Then enjoy the taste of chocolate, I'm sure they did.

There are some places in the world that you can feel have been loved. Loved in a real and tangible way, so much so that they take on a life of their own. They have a distinct and rather giving personality. Or at least this was the case with Giverny, Monet's home and inspiration just about an hour's train ride from Paris. The moment you walk into the gardens, you can see why he wanted to paint this place over and over and over again. It was so easy to imagine him with his easel and paints working early in the morning and then walking up to the house to eat breakfast with his family in his yellow dining room or blue and white tiled kitchen. This was the perfect long weekend day trip.This was one of my favorite trees there. I sat on a bench under it's sprawling, flowering branches and soaked in the creative energy (maybe this sort of attitude came from being practically intoxicated by the sunshine and the fact that I didn't have to go to class for three whole days)
Although it may seem incongruous, the more I thought about these ladies in their kimonos the more I thought Monet would approve. It was like they were honoring the fact that he loved their culture so much that he filled his home with Japanese artwork and used it as inspiration for his compositions. Plus, they were just fun to watch from under my flowering tree, they'd shuffle about and talk to each other about flowers and whatnot.
What can I even say? I was walking a little shaded path towards le jardin d'eau and was given this enchanted view.
I'm not concerned, I'm just taking in the general perfection of the water lily pond. And I may have had a bit of star struckedness going on too. I mean this is a famous pond that I love without ever have actually seen it.
The. Pond. Makes you want to paint it, huh? But having little or no painterly ability, I stuck to writing and daydreaming about reading poetry (probably Walk Whitman's Leaves of Grass, mostly because it's one of the earthiest poems I know . . .that I enjoy too) on a quilt in the grass. The poetry is possible and the quilt is a bit difficult but doable, but the grass. . .the grass is an impossibility seeing as all the pelouse est interdit at Giverny.

Paris is wonderful at many things and one is being attractive to artists and art. As a consequence of said attractiveness (which believe me is magnetic) Paris is absolutely brimming with art, it's everywhere. It's in the parks, on the metros, on buildings, shop windows, even the Parisians walk and act and dress like their lives and they themselves are works of art. But the art can also be found in museums. J'adore museums. I can't help it. When other people around me say they'll pull their hairs out one hair at a time if they have to go to another one, I'm ready to go hole up in some gallery or exhibit somewhere and just get lost. So let me just introduce you to one of my favorite museums. Can you guess (look at the picture)



You guessed right. The Rodin Museum (near Invalides and Napoleon's tomb, it's easiest to get there on line 1, just get off at Invalides). It is one of the most perfect museums: it's intimate and gives you a wonderful feeling of the artist (mostly because it's in this fabulous Rococo house that Rodin lived/worked in for a while) and the works are displayed in a wonderfully studio-esque sort of way. Besides, it has a beautiful garden, where some of his bronzes are displayed, or rather placed in a way that you feel like you've come upon a revelation as you walk down a path and look behind a tree.
Isn't the way the green light shines on this magical? And Rodin, dear man whom I love. The guy knew how to sculpt such raw and real emotion. And I became a believer from seeing these works face to face that Rodin could put all that emotion and story into his sculptures' hands. I became darn near obsessed. Sculpture might very well be one of the most engaging and mystical of the visual art forms for me. Isn't it lovely how the manmade bronze juxtaposes yet works in a strange but pleasing harmony with the organic leaves of the trees? Let me tell you that as I walked in this particular grove of trees studded with sculpture, I felt like I was in the best of enchanted forests, where I uncovered long forgotten and beautiful secrets.

Heaven help me, the hands oh the hands. Rodin. Bless. Just go ans see for yourself whether or not I exaggerate. I think you'll find I'm a reliable source (oh and after you've gone there, hop over to see how pretentious Napoleon is and then walk towards Ecole Militaire, grab some Amorino near Tribeca Italian and Cafe Marche and walk over to see the sun set behind the Tour Eiffel, you won't regret it).

One day, we climbed on to a bus. 2 letters, 1 prince cookie (these brilliant sandwhich cookies that come in a tube) and 45 minutes later we were there. The clouds parted and the sun shown on the grand horseshoe staircase and it was . . . .
Fontainebleau yall!
Fontainebleau is a chateau not far from Paris that was mainly used as a hunting lodge for kings all the way starting from Francois 1e (he's the one that brought Davinci to France from Italy) all the way to the time Napoleon kept the pope prisoner here for not signing some document or other the diminutive despot wanted him to sign.

(ps. I have no idea why the text is deciding to do this weirdy underline thing) The best part was the mini lake with its faux ruin in the back of the chateau. You could rent little rowboats, called funyaks (I kid you not) A life of leisure, darling, is what I lead. Can't you tell? Daydreaming of grandness is not difficult on the back of a rowboat. So picturesque . . .even though the boat reminded me of playskool sandboxes. (ok this text thing is too weird, now it's decided to be normal). Isn't it an impressive yet somehow still charming as well as an oh so pleasing prospect? I almost like the back better than the front, perhaps it was because I saw the back from the perspective of a rowboat.

More people who don't know I'm photographing them. A fun fact about Fontainebleau is that people in the surrounding city like to have wedding photos taken there. Here's one such couple in the Jardin de Diane. Ah to be in love in the garden of the goddess of the hunt.