N I C E P A R I S blog

Art Programme

Whew, 10 days chaperoning 5 International School kids for their week in the countryside. Their parents pay for them NOT to be in Paris. Arriving at DeGaulle airport in sky blue trousers and 50s purses, these androgynous & polished creatures changed clothes just to go out the feed the ducks. Very, very polite kids, but... not exactly what the people in the region are used to seeing at all. Our plan is to walk all the way into the village, visit the church and study the art. There will be one art history question to answer at the end of the day. Then we are to have a picnic. Last night I put out the idea of having a costume picnic… An idea EVERYONE liked! So, at the last minute I’m freaking out; there is nothing to take to eat, just old bread, a few sausages..all of which I’m about to put into plastic bags, but At the last minute I find the old, old picnic basket from the 1920s, lay a white linen napkin on it and put the food. I tell the kids I’m ready, and they say “Vincent, it’s not really fair, that you came up with the idea and you’re not even dressed.” As we walked in the heat down deserted country lanes to the deserted village with our proper picnic baskets draped in white linen, it was as if we existed in a time warp. We studied the rennaisance terre cuite sculptures in the village church and enjoyed one Coca-Cola each.

Then we marched to a lake in our starched shirts, straw hats and smoking jackets only to be greeted by a clique of local teenagers dressed in jogging suits, drinking beer and fishing while 5 year old Britney Spears songs blared from their car stereo... We were a bit more precious lot with no boom box, but many, many charcuteries, grilled eggplant & chicken (that had once walked the courtyard).... A nice memory.

Lots of fun, really. It's nice to re-connect with Bay Area style. They had a night in Le Mans. We had lots of night barbeques. We went to the Loire River and did the peddle boats, where the object was to 'capsize!'

I learned all sorts of slang 'cutty', 'spooj', etc, and also, 'hella', which is still in use (in California).

All-in-all a wonderful time.

that wonderful time when the sun turns gold:

Paris Wheels

I have liberated myself from ever having to ride the Metro again. I went to the flea market and bought a used bike. Wow, has this changed my outlook on life. Good for my legs, and more interesting. Neighborhoods fly by and you get to see all the details, the spots you'd miss stuck in a rattling sweat box underground trying not to stare at the the person 2 inches in front of you. Good news, this and more anon.

A Day Along the Quai

I'm sick of the Right Bank and the teeming poverty, so I spent a day at St. Germain and along the Quais of the Seine, quite pleasant.

Paris Plage is a fake beach... sand and parasols... built on the stone lower drive of the right bank of the river to give people the illusion they are on a beach. Here's a pic of the spray mist.

Here's a picture or two of Paris Plage (Beach), people walk through it like cars going through a car wash, from what I observed:

After a long long treck to Bastille, went to Virginie the designer's house to dine with her and a British novelist. Cucumber soup with bay peppers, salad and ... beef carpaccio: All scrum-dilly-icious, as is the candy decor of her house.

Here I am hiding my bald head:

A day in Provence

A Day in Provence

It was hot in the bedroom last night and about 4am I opened the window and the thick shutters. Oxygenated night air gushed in, yet sleep was fitful, and I see dawn creeping over the blue mountain.

I woke at 9am. It is still cool, but I had a queasy stomach. When I went downstairs. Everyone was already gathered around the table. I forego the proffered bread and jam. I had tea. Nathalie, Pilou, Francois and I go in the car and drive to the market.

This is the quaintest, most delicate open-air food market I’ve seen.

You can tell these are theater people, arts people; not your normal type of people at all, and nothing is gaudy, nothing is chi-chi. There is a rarified air as people gather to buy the freshest ingredients Provence has to offer: the white eggplant, the flowering artichoke and of course, garlic, either red or purple. Everyone (ok, many) carries straw baskets for their groceries as if we were in a timewarp. How wonderful! Being the height of the summer season and the middle of the Avignon Theatre Festival, there are all sorts of French, English, Americans and what have you.

the FLOWERING ARTICHOKE:

It’s like a market in Paris except there are NO TACKY people, everything is pleasant, tasteful. You buy your bouquet of lavender here. Nathalie, is buying for her table d’hote tomorrow (a private restaurant). I buy a load of garlic and the last basket of tiny wild strawberries.

NATHALIE AND PILOU:

It is hot but only still 10:30. We take a coffee in a café under an arch with a stage built in the back, but there are lots of baby toys. It’s hard to describe the atmosphere down here. It is all very subtle, sort of an upmarket rusticity glorying in the wonders mother earth offers. There are no malls to be seen, no Carrefours, no big supermarket chains. It’s like going back in time to when people appreciate the small pleasure, to when people appreciate the arts. In the health food shop a lady declares “is there not one storeowner who is not also a painter, writer or dancer!”

Next we go to a nursery to buy the Cyprus trees we’ve been hunting down for weeks. By now it is certifiably broiling outside, hot and arid and unmerciful. The proprietess walks us out across her plants and trees and there are trees small enough to fit in the car. But the talk on and on, about trees, about soils, whether the Cyprus will survive in the drive to Nice, whether it will survive winters in the North. Next we learn she is an artist. She takes us back to her house, to her art gallery. I’m really hot and dusty by now, trying not to act bored. Plans are hatched, visits promised.

Finally we leave. You praise god when the car starts up a breeze. We go home and take the ‘siesta,’ for it is too hot to do anything else at all. Lunch! Perfect: romaine lettuce dressed in olive oil, balsamic and yeast; next canteloupe; then, la piece de la resistance, a vegetable tart! Oh pastry dough with white egglplants, fresh cherry tomatoes from Nathalie’s potager, sundried tomatoes (she dried & soaked in olive oil and herbs 6 months herself), onions, rosemary and plenty of thyme. Went well with white wine (I am not an oenophile here, sorry, folks). This is provencale cooking at its best, simple, fresh ingredients. Dessert was the tiny strawberries and homemade macarons Nathalie learned how to make in a cooking class 2 days ago that was filled with Americans.

At 4:30 we took a long hike down a road and up a mountainside to the Abbey St. Hilaire. There was lots of discussion of all the plants we passed on the way, the oaks, the wild arugula. The abbey is 4 houses down the road and has been lived in, but is open to the public. What views! It’s earliest sections date from the 11th century, but there is evidence it was built on a previous temple of sorts. On the way down we attack a fig tree simply laden with low-hanging ripe, warm figues. I have not eaten more food fresh from the ground/tree than I have this weekend in my life.

THE ABBEY ST. HILAIRE:

Next we drive to Menherbes the village up on butte, famed, of course for the book One Year in Provence. I can see why. It has curvy, ancient streets hanging off the mountainside and looks over the entire valley. It’s still sweltering. We go to the tabac/ café with such astounding views. The lady who sells us the cigarettes and the panache, comes over and is chatty. Friendly. Wants to know the rents i California.

Now it’s before dinner. I am tired. It’s been a full day, really

Gray Paris

Paris is gray.  I like the gray, the concrete, the stone.  It is rather hot today, so one walks on the shady side of the street, the reverse of San Francisco where one walks on the sunny side of the street.  To the left is the Canal by the Metro Juares, the North of Paris.  Not too many tourists around but me.  I saw a lady? with a poodle chien dyed magenta.  It's easy to get overheated.  Paris is not as glamourous as you may think.  There are lots of harried people and everything, but everything, life itself, is dear.  It seems as soon as you leave your door a 20 euro note is snatched out of your hand in 5 minutes. 
I don't buy pastries, but I look at them.  These are normal level, not high-end.  The only pastry I buy is croissant beurres or pain au chocolat le matin.  Other advice: do not buy a Coca-Cola on a terrace!  I did last week and it was 4.80 Euros ($5). 

Your best bet is to consume the 'cafe' or a 'noisette' (coffee with a bit of milk); they are both the same price, about 1.40 Euro if you stand at the
counter, or 2 if you sit, which you can, without time limit. 

Well ,tomorrow is Basitlle Day, ce que j'ai entendu ici etait assez pluc, boeuf, a bit like going to Times Square on New Years Eve, and who'd do that but people from Dubuque?

Country-Paris

Tea breakfast with leftover birthday cake.  We leave the country by noon through the fields of maize and little towns along the road to Le Mans. 

Nice to be back in Paris.  I go to the Feedback Festival to see the Fall, from the 1980s.  Nice to see the French... kids or whatever the hip children are here. I have not got them yet.  I swear, i have seen nothing very fashionable or innovative or shocking.  I could barely understand Mark E. Smith's lyrics and I speak English. I like the way he stares out into the audience with all the hubris of a king.  But this is a seasoned pro.   All ages attended.  Then to dinner to a Moroccan restaurant.  I won't go into that, but my tagine was eggg-cellent.  It was lamb-prune-almond.. and had... half a boiled egg.  I swear I'll get pictures on this blog soon, somehow....

Vallee de la Loire

Jules is less terror-stricken and happy to get food. Jules now climbs on his perch. Jules is becoming tame in a matter of days.  handfeed your wild bird lest he stay wild forever. I have taken a walk back behind the park to the walnut tree groves. How they have grown!  There are thickets between. It's nice to be tucked away from the fray of modern life:  Here it's all about the chickens and the ducks, which I feed at night.  The ducks are ferocious and bully the black chickens.  When they eat the grain the ducks sound like woodpeckers or jackhammers.

This house is a special, ancient place

Vallee de la Loire

I am dusty.  I am hauling out tons of old furniture, dolls from the 1920s, toy cars, hunting suits from 1890, all the bric-a-brac from an old attic in order to turn it into a new room.  There is tons of dust.  We throw things out the tower to the gardens below.  meanwhile, others are doing the same with another attic room, turning it into a bedroom. Work work.  A little hawk fell out of its nest under the eaves and we've bought it a cage.  It is a church tower hawk full of down. We are hand feeding it like it's mother.  You dangle the meat above and it squeeks and bites and claws.  We have named it Jules. 

July 6

It's Fall weather.  It feels like Fall with the gray sky except it still stays light until about 10:45pm.  I like being in a big world capital.  I like the gray.  I like the concrete and brick. 

I'm tired and still jet-lagged.  I spent today at home like someone with sense.  Apart from a foray to the grocery store for brown rice, I enjoyed the interior life.  A day without riding the Metro is a good day.  Watched TV3 show on starvation in Mauritanius. It makes me so sad to see the thin scarecrow people when I have so much food on my plate.  These people don't even get meat. 

So London has the  Olympics, not Paris, not New York.  This is big news here. Apparently Paris wanted it badly and doesnt' think the decision is just. 

July 3

Rehearsed at home some songs for a show, then leisurely made it into Paris dressed casual and passe-partout:  khakis and tee shirt… can we get more innocuous than that?  Place de l'Opera first, but it costs 4 Euros, and galleries Lafayette is closed on Sundays, strolled to Starbucks (FOR SHAME),  but can I tell you how delicious a Frappacino is in 80 degree weather?  The price is obscene, but includes A.C.  How cold it was!  Then down by the Louvre, went in under the pyramid to the gallery.  Good post office there and gift shops.  Then on to the Marais, which on a Sunday is jam-packed with good people.  Very much eye candy.  San Francisco, this is not.  Paris simply teems with souls.  This is a dense population point.  I agree with Edmund White's definition of a big city as "A place with tall buildings, lots of blacks and where you can buy cigarettes all night." 

How I lasted so long in boring San Francisco I do not know.  I like the fact I’ll not run into anyone I know.  All the stores have sales now. Then on rue de something between Marais and Bastille, I found a restaurant with entrecote for only Euros 7.50: a deal.  Nice to sit and eat. Didn’t feel uncomfortable doing it alone, next to group of English 50-somethings who spoke with strange accents talking of Torquey.  Then wandered down to th rue de Lappe, how this is such a meat market filled with youngsters not waiting for booty calls.  So many restaurants, so little time (or money).  Didn’t want to take subway so walked down Richard le Noire to Oberkampf then all the way to République.  Finally made it home around 11pm.  It is nice to return to the outskirt neighborhood and the Parc de la Villette.  It is less densely populated and it may be my imagination, but I think it may also be less hot.  Although where I stay –the Prés St. Gervais - is not technically Paris, it might as well be.  I looked at it on the map. It is a very very small ‘town’ which was once a meadow obviously aeons ago because today it is as crowded as the Lower East Side.