"Merde!"

As I left work yesterday, my last day of work before my Master's exam, I was treated to a heartfelt cries of "merde!" by all of my co-workers. When it comes to luck, the French are as superstitious as theater people, so the only words of encouragement they permit themselves is this (rather vulgar but amusing) variation on the "break a leg" idea. (My supervisor, however, followed her exclamation with a look of fear--"you do know that we say that right? Ok, good. I just realized how confusing that could be to a foreigner...") So in the spirit of Merde...

During my reviewing this month, I have permitted myself brief pilgrimages to the burial sites/monuments of some of the writers whose work I admire. I saved the photos for now, to offer as a last-minute tribute to their ghosts, who I hope will provide me with inspiration (not to mention hand endurance and cramp resistance!) in my furious writings tomorrow.

In the Latin Quarter's Saint-Etienne du Mont church, in the shadow of the Pantheon, I found Racine:
And Pascal:
And outside the same church, their compatriot Corneille:
Diderot, beneath the Pantheon's dome:
In the Pantheon's catacombs, Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas on the left, and Emile Zola on the right:
Also in the catacombs: Rousseau...
...and Voltaire:
The entrance to the Pantheon's catacombs bears an inscription in honor of the "writers who died for France"
Flaubert, in his family vacation spot of Trouville:
Moving on now to the Montparnasse cemetary, the shared grave of kindred spirits and love and philosophy, Sartre and De Beauvoir:
Close up of their grave, bearing Oscar Wilde-like kisses:
And of the metro ticket and centime tributes left by visitors:
Marguerite Duras:
Baudelaire (who, unfortunately, was forced to share a tomb with a stepfather he hated):
Beaudelaire's tributes:
My favorite absurdist, Eugene Ionesco:
And his anglophone contemporary, Beckett:
And, last but not least, Guy de Maupassant...
...and a hand-written note of appreciation, shoved into a crevice in the stone:

Over the rainbow

Last Saturday was Paris' "Marche des Fiertés", or Gay Pride walk. In spite of the heat, it was a joyful, colorful celebration:
Anyone who wants to fight discrimination and intolerance was invited to join the walk, so it was hard to tell at any given point who was gay and who was just accepting. Which is a pretty cool blurring of boundaries. In any case, there were many, MANY marchers (I later read estimates of tens of thousands). The crowd was definitely skewed young, too--I'm not sure if that speaks to my generation's tolerance or just our eagerness to take part in demonstrations, but I'd like to think it's the first one.

(Okay, so I might have overgeneralized...it wasn't ALWAYS difficult to tell who was gay...)

The walk's drag queens were, of course, balanced out by a political presence. This is also where the older walkers tended to congregate--around Amnesty International or other activist groups marching to make a statement.

This group is walking "in memory of deported homosexuals":
Sign translation: "Preacher, imam, rabbi--don't block my way" (note the Scissors Sisters shirt on the right):
Activist bumper stickers abounded. My favorites were stickers modeled after the very prominent labels that come on packs of cigarettes here, although instead of saying "Tobacco tue" (tobacco kills) they said "Homophobie tue" and gave various statistics about suicides, hate crimes and legal inequality.

This was a Uganda political sticker:


One of the groups had a really effective float tactic of using hangmen silhouettes to represent every country where homosexuality is still punishable by death:

Chilling close-up:
Sign translation: "My brother is GAY and I'm proud of it"
Nice shoes:
A group of lesbians that were chanting "Xena! Xena!" and drumming up support for their heroine from the bystanders:
There were a surprising number of women with naught but taped Xs on their chests. (there were also a lot of men with "blow me" or "I'm single" written on their chests, and "entry" written, with a down-pointing arrow, on their backs).
At one point, everyone stopped (and the pumping techno turned off) for three minutes of silence
One of a continual series of gladiator angels on stilts, bearing Mentos banners
Cruella deFabulous
Gothic angels seemed to be the theme of the day.
Translations of the signs: "Love doesn't discriminate: not by gender or by race!" "My liberty ensures yours!"
Wavin' the flag with pride:
I kid you not, the gay motorcycle club of Paris:
Aww. Slash I was totally too afraid to take a picture of this tough and muscled couple from the front:
This roller blade-r was distributing fliers for a gay club--but only to attractive young men:

What would a Pride parade be without a giant inflatable condom? (surrounded by
volunteers passing out lube and condoms of a slightly more manageable size)
After the four epic hours of parade were finally over, the streets were a wreck. The cleaning crews were on the scene immediately, in order to speed up the reopening of the many major roads along the parade route. What a weird and wonderful afternoon in gay ol' Paree!

Fondue Friday

Yesterday was a perfect Parisian day and delightfully sunnier and warmer than it has been—about 65 degrees. My weekends start on Friday, so I took advantage of a grasse matinee (“fat morning”—or, sleeping-in) before heading to the NYU center to take advantage of for a free graduate lunch—a catered couscous affair with all the appropriate accoutrements (harissa, veggies and broth, lamb, meatballs, chicken, chickpeas, sweet dried raisins). Dessert was my first ever taste of the famous macaron cookies. Verdict: good, but 99% sugar; I’ll stick to my tarts and pastries. It was a fun chance to see a few of the students from other tracks that I rarely see, as well as an opportunity to talk a bit with our women-powered administrative team about how things are going and possible graduate excursions to use up our limited budget. We decided on a performance of a Beckett play (absurd theatre…yes!) in November.

Lindsay and I followed lunch with an impromptu tour of the Marais, a cute little area known for its gay and Jewish populations, and, apparently, “fripperies” (thrift shops). Thrifting here is more like thrifting in the UK than in the US meaning that stores tend to carry nicer, “vintage” items of a higher quality and price than what you’d find at a salvation army. I didn’t end up buying anything (almost got a tan newsies hat until a rude salesman put me off) but I had a lot of fun trying stuff on and mingling with Paris hipsters rooting through bins and racks in search of their next great find. My favorite of the day was this 59 euro ridiculous/fabulous pink dress that I love to death and would totally wear to prom if I had to do high school over again (God forbid). I couldn’t decide if it made me more like Marla from Fight Club or just like one of those Barbie cakes that were all the rage in the early 90s, but I loved it either way.

I met up with Phinn in Montparnasse afterwards to search for an authentic Breton crêperie. Our mission ended in failure but we did get a good walking tour of the area, at least, (and I bought some gloves and a pair of black skinny jeans from Mango) before we became too hungry to delay dinner any longer. We treated ourselves to a nice fondue dinner on rue Mouffetard in the 5^th, enjoyed with a pitcher of house white and a delicious mousse-custard dessert over several hours à la française. The huge amount of melted cheese I consumed not only cancelled out all of the walking I did earlier in the day but also threatened my ability to wear my new skinny jeans. And you know what? Totally worth it.

Art Insomia

Saturday night was an annual event in Paris called “Nuit Blanche.” In French, to have this “white night” is to pull an all-nighter, and the idea of the event is to utilize public space to celebrate modern art (read: film and light installations) from 9pm until 7am the next morning. Across the city, parks, universities, religious buildings and even pools opened their doors to a crazy band of glowstick-adorned art-lovers, insomniacs, street musicians and more.

I met up with Pascal and Thibaut (the French guys from the bar last week) and a few other random friends (Antoine, from Toulouse, Daniel, and American film student, and a girl from Greece) at Luxembourg. The streets were packed with a cheerful, chattering young crowd and dotted with equally jovial policemen who had pretty much given up on trying to clear a path for cars. It was really surreal to have so many people out and about at midnight, and there was a real sense of life and electricity in the air. The line to actually enter the Luxembourg gardens wrapped all the way around the block, although you didn’t have to be inside it to see the main attraction: a huge disco ball, suspended from a crane. Strategically placed searchlights refracted off of the ball’s many faces onto the eerie purple clouds and full moon, giving the impression that tonight, Paris itself was our nightclub.

With Pascal as our guide, we trekked around Paris to see what we could see, speaking French all the while. My favorite destination was the Grande Mosquée, whose central garden hosted an x-ray video installation (one of the only ones I enjoyed…I really need someone with some film background to teach me how to appreciate those because right now I just think most of them are stupid) and a laser installation piece that combined the visuals of the moving lasers with audio voiceovers of the history of the earth and a strong scent of roses. (More art should be scented. It’s like that adult version of those scented markers that were really cool in the early 90s…fun!). The exhibits were cool, the locale was beautiful, and the calm reverence of the crowd in response to our surroundings presented a strange contrast to the delightful chaos around Luxembourg.

Around 4am, my blisters from the previous night’s boat adventures were starting to hurt and my fatigue was beginning to interfere with my French. The boys and I walked up to Chatelet to catch the night buses home…only to find that French bureaucracy, in its infinite wisdom, had decided to suspend almost all of the night bus lines on the one night that they were really needed, opting instead to keep the 11 and 14 lines running (which both lead away from where I live). The result was that I took the metro and then a bus to Pascal’s apartment in Levallois (a cute, upscale Parisian suburb), where we stayed up for another hour or so discussing Sarah Palin (did anyone else know she got punk'd by a a couple of Quebecois radio DJs?), Ségolène Royale and South Park before I gratefully crashed on an air mattress.

T'was the night before grad school...

Since last I wrote I have gotten closer to my bankcard, the federal aid from the CAF and figuring out my class schedule, but thanks to the snail’s pace of French bureaucracy I have few concrete accomplishments on all fronts. Life in France is a lesson in patience. I DID manage, with relative ease and little expense, to get a doctor’s appointment and fill prescriptions for meds I’ve wanted to be on for some time that were “tier one” and inaccessible to me in the States even with insurance—here they cost pocket change without any insurance. France could stand to learn from America’s work ethic, efficiency and customer service, but we need to take note of their health care. I wish Obama Godspeed with his reform plans.

This week, I: attended an interview session with Russian/French author Andreï Makine at the National library (seen below). Held my own at the Sorbonne (seen above) trying (unsuccessfully, so far) to force my way into an Arabic class. Got an impromptu afternoon beer with a French Canadian named Philipe. Ate out at a cute café in the Latin Quarter (seen below) with Phinn and her visiting friend Kara, who is on her way to a language assistantship in Pau near the Spanish border (someone to visit later, maybe?). Went out to a bar in the 20th with a group of mostly strangers and spoke French most of the time, taking the last metro of the night to get home. I have also been researching reading nooks for when my work kicks in. My favorite locales so far are the cosy, crooked reading rooms upstairs in the Blackwells-esque Shakespeare and Co. bookstore and pretty much any park as long as the weather holds out. I still need to find a café with cheap coffee and a calm atmosphere to claim as my own, but my search is an organic process and can’t be rushed.

I have an intimate relationship with music and I often have this feeling that the music that will speak to me at a particular point in my life always seems to find me. I can’t figure out if that is due to some sort of providence, or if the spiritual side of me just molds itself to the music I happen to be listening to anyway to create this impression. At any rate, it turns out that Indigo Girls and Rufus, who were my two go-to groups last year, don’t fit city life so well (although I must admit that I never noticed the “Paris was such a lonely town” line in IG’s “Heartbreak for Everyone”) until it seemed prophetic), and as I stroll briskly along the boulevards and jog up metro stairs I’m instead listening The Smiths, St. Vincent, Radiohead, Fleet Foxes, Phoenix and Rilo Kiley. St Vincent in particular is rather amazing—a female vocalist with some very edgy arrangements. Highly recommended.

In fact, St. Vincent was my soundtrack as I used my sunny Sunday to make my first
venture into the really touristy heart of Paris, taking the 1 line up to Place de la Concorde to stroll through the Jardin Tuileries and browse the Musée de l’Orangérie, where all of the Monets that were lacking at Giverney last weekend are apparently kept. Thanks to a new Parisian policy that makes all national museums free for residents under 25 (woohoo! I’m a bonafide resident!), my gaping at the three rooms of wall-length water lily pieces plus a good number of Cezannes, Renoirs and Matisses from Monet’s private collection came free of charge. They had a little model of Monet’s salon set up to show how saturated it was with the work of his contemporaries, all of which are now invaluable museum items. I love knowing that the impressionists (and really all waves of French artists/intellectuals…Sartre and de Beauvoir…Cixous and Derrida…) were all buds, exchanging ideas and paintings over digestifs and cigars. It gives me hope for what now seems like my lonely future with my head in the clouds; hopefully I’ll find some kindred spirits somewhere along the way to float up there with me.

I’m thankful to have had these few weeks of cushion to adjust to city rhythm and recharge after a stressful last semester and a draining summer. I’ve found that weird creative parts of my brain that I thought had died out are starting to glow again—I’m getting back in the pondering state of mind that leads to painting or writing, but I probably won’t have time to do to much of either. Classes start in full force tomorrow. I’m grateful but still a little mystified as to why I was awarded the fellowship that made this all possible, and I can’t help but feel like something grand is expected of me. I’m not sure I’m up to the challenge, but I’m ready to give it my all. Allons-y…