Breasts to the sky, feet on the ground
Paris seems like a very maternal city. This is good for me, here in search of a connection to a mother-space. I like to see those two old islands girded in the middle of the Seine in front of my room, sitting like breast in the heart of Paris. This city’s hearth and birthplace are still food for an endless flow of tourists. One warm, afternoon, soon after my arrival, I stopped to let a woman cross my path. Her slim, high-heeled steps held her whole body up and forward and with a gentle urgency, her dress carried her breasts […]
Nothing is certain
They have still not come to take away the other single bed. A part of me likes it here. In the past month, Paul and I have hardly been more than an arm’s length away from each other. I am sleeping in his part of the bed and that comforts me somehow. I guess if I can’t rub up against his skin, the next best is to sleep in the place where his skin was, or something like that. I have not actually felt like doing a whole lot these past few days. I tell myself that I am missing […]
Dinner
There it is, dinner, or what will be dinner. I have invited fellow resident, Nadja Sabbioni from Switzerland to join me for dinner. A modest beginning for a small feast. My kitchen is equiped with a small fridge, a two-burner hotplate and a two-temperature (hot or cold) miniature oven. So I won’t be doing any elaborate gourmet cooking. I can’t get over the cost of food here. I didn’t have enough room in my photo for the lettuce, a beautiful head of green leaf lettuce which cost around 1.60 $. The prices indicated in the photo are in euros € […]
The Right Word
ES, I now realize means, “entresol.” What an interesting name, “between the ground and ….what? So, now I know, I don’t live on the second floor, I live one floor above Entresol. Words seem to be so important in French. I feel this pressure to have the right word, which like the sesame door, will only open with its right name and here the key that opens that door is intonation. The familiar accent that will give it the exact shape. I remember my amazement in Mirebeau, exploring the countryside on our bicycles and noticing every pile of stones, or […]
Zero point:how long does it take to be here?
How can one get lost in a city that calls the ground floor of its buildings, 0? My apartment is near the end of a long dark corridor on the second (but called the first) floor of La Cité intérnationale des Arts. There is a mystery floor between me and 0 and it is called ES. The corridors of all the floors are dark because of electricity saving mechanisms, which automatically switch off the lights after a few minutes. I like the dark so, I rarely bother to hit the light switch as I come around the corner from the […]
The first week of August
Paul took the early train this morning to Berlin. I helped him drag his four big and bigger pieces of luggage to the station. This is my first day alone; no I will strike that out. But I don’t. My first day for nothing but whatever I want. All the writing I want, or, none at all. So far, I have been circumventing. I went to the Cluny Museum. That was good. It instantly quelled the inner banging. Lots of sculptures of women, all saint someone of course,* holding up empty books, or half-opened books with nothing written on the […]
Karen in the Loire
Velo on the Loire
Biking is an amazing way to travel this part of the country and probably lots of other places as well. From Austerlitz station in Paris, we took the train to Tours arriving in late afternoon. With our bicycle map, purchased in Paris we were able to find our way to the edge of Tours and at last set free – the Loire River winding with us through a valley of gold and green. A kind of biking heaven. We travelled some 25 km in just a few hours and found a hotel in a tiny place called Villandry. I have […]
Pillows
I have travelled to many places and slept in many different beds, but only here in France have I become aware of there being so many different types and sizes of pillows. Each night for the past week or so, we have had a different shape to put under our dreams. Their interiors all seem to be of a similar no-feather, synthetic stuffing, but the shapes and sizes are so varied. In the Cité intérnational des arts, where I am lodged for the next five months, the pillow is a sausage shape as wide as one single bed and here, […]
Monday
This morning we bought train tickets for us and our bicycles to Tours for tomorrow afternoon. It was so easy; we’ll see if it is as easy actually getting our bicycles on the train. The past two days we have been busy helping Jocelyne Alloucherie set up her installation ‘Occidents’ at Le Grand Palais. Hers and two other works accompany the three-week long performance of Les Grand Ballets Canadiens de Montreal. Le Grand Palais is an elegant iron and glass structure with an open light-filled interior, built around the same time as the Eiffel Tower, for the 1900 World Fair. All weekend it […]