Open Road

Follow me

I'm hitting the road. Actually, for now, just my blog is. So change your bookmarks, or whatever it is you cybersavvy readers do. Here's the new address for Open Road: http://blogs.northjersey.com/blogs/openroad

See you there -- unless you get lost, then leave a comment here.

I'm doing denial

I'm supposed to be getting ready to leave. To go home. I'm doing this. I'm a responsible adult. Sort of. I miss home. But the French poodle part of me can't even think about leaving. Night of the living dead, this has been, packing zombielike, straightening up the apartment. Avoiding looking out the window, at the view, at the everything, I'll be missing.
Already am.

Ham-burden

So when I come to Paris, I know it's nearly impossible to be a vegan. I assume I'll be having to eat cheese, goat cheese if possible (I'm hoping less in the way of factory-farming). So I've been going to a wonderful little bakery on Ile St. Louis most days and ordering a sandwich fromage, usually the same woman serves me every time. So today I arrive home with my sandwich fromage and it's a sandwich fromage et jambon -- ham. I swear, it doesn't even register there's ham in something. It seems to be everywhere.
When i came to Paris a long time ago with my dog Poncho, I'd give him the jambon and I'd take the fromage. Like Jack Sprat and his wife, I guess. I am here sans chien (without dog) now, however, but here, alas, is the jambon.
This meat thing has happened before when I've traveled. Usually, rather than throw it out, I'll package up the errant meat and find a little stray dog on the street who needs a meal. And my first thought today was to bring the ham down to my little friend Bobby (the dog I mentioned in an  earlier post;  I've learned his name since then and more, too). But then I think if he's not used to the rich ham snack, he might get sick.
I'll put the snack in the refrigerator for now. If anyone has any advice, send it along asap, thanks.

Still pensing about cela (Thinking encore de that)

So I was just at the post office and listened to quite a long, involved conversation between the postwoman and a man at the counter; she spoke every word in French, he spoke every word in English. Absolutely no attempt on either part to speak a word of the other's language.
The woman went in the back and got his mail, which is what he was asking for (no hand gestures needed, either). She returned dragging a sack that would have felled Santa. I said, "Fan mail?" The woman, who spoke only French, looked up at me with a laugh on her face; the man didn't even turn around.

Schlepper extraordinaire

FYI. The good news about renting an apartment, as I've mentioned, is your own little kitchen and refrigerator. The bad news is getting and keeping it stocked up. In Paris -- in a lot of big cities, I'm sure -- urbanites sans cars use portable wheels. Since  it'd be overkill for me to use my suitcase, I looked around to see if i could find some of those.
Going past one of my favorite stores, Pylones  -- actually, it's two separate stores on the Ile St. Louis -- I saw a cute little set of wheels in the window. Inside, I couldn't find any others, until the shop attendant showed me a whole display of small clutch-esque bags -- the portable schlepper, deconstructed. For 19 euros.
I shopped around just to make sure, but nowhere could i find anything as inexpensive and as well designed as this little model by Riesenthal. It might not last forever, but what does? It made my budget last a little longer, however, along with my oh-man-must-I-carry-bottles-again!?  back muscles.... 

La morte des musees?*

*The death of museums? Last night I went to the Luxembourg Museum-- which I had never been to --  to see an exhibit on Tiffany, and they had a drive/petition about keeping the museum open. Today I am getting ready to go to the Montmartre Museum (another first-time visit) only to be greeted, on the museum's splash page, by "la morte imminente du Musee de Montmartre" -- "the imminent death of the Museum of Montmartre."
Well, apparently, I'd better get over there immediately. More later....

Art all over

I love the Orangerie -- not only is it home to Monet's "Les Nymphees" (the Waterlilies), it's one of the few  museums I've ever found that has a collection of Marie Laurencins. In fact, it's where I first saw Marie Laurencin, who was in the herd of Impressionists, though not quite rising to any  sort of the top. It's a little bit of a pain to get there, marching, as one must, across the top of Les Tuileries, past the Jeu de Paume (where they're having an exhibit on Fellini, which I also may get to).
Anyway, on the way across, of course, you've still got Paris (you've always got Paris) to look at -- art in itself. And in winter, there's a kind of winter fun to the kiosks and merry go round (heureux-aller-rond?) to watch. Plus art, itself. ...

Victoire!

Last time I was in Paris, I stumbled upon one of the country's legends -- Serge Gainsbourg.  A chain-smoking chanteur with a voice to melt -- well, frozen Eiffel Towers and most of the country's heart. A poet with very seriously scoundrelous words and rhymes, who experimented in all manner of music, and other forms of art as well. I kind of cannot believe I'd spent my whole life not running into him.
Of course, anyone who smoked so many cigarettes and lived so fast and often is currently dead. Although, as I've been told, it doesn't really seem like he's dead. He's still kind of roaming Paris.
And most recently, he has been resurrected in a new dance performance, L'Homme a Tete de Chou -- yes, the Man with the Head of Cabbage. And so I dutifully dialed up looking for tickets, only to find they'd been totally sold out. Complet. as they say here.
But did I give up? Moi? After trying Fnac -- kind of like the Best Buy or the Ticketmaster of Paris -- and  CityRama, which offers tickets and tours to tourists, I'd struck out. But the folks at CityRama suggested I visit the Paris Tourism office nearby, at 25 rue des Pyramides, not far from rue de Rivoli. And there I found a very nice and beyond helpful woman who was able to call the Theatre du Rond-Point, where L'Homme is playing, and she actually found me a ticket. I'm going Thursday night. Setting my alarm now.
Who says the French hate us???

                The wonder-worker at the
Paris Tourism office. Mon ange!

Paris on the rocks

"Ice Magic"  looked cool the first time I noticed the ad for it. Paris' monuments, all done in ice! But it was 14 euros, and it needed to be tres cool to be worth that much. 
But I'd been set on visiting the Orangerie, and though I thought it was open late, it was closed by 7 p.m., so I wasn't that far from the Ice Magic exhibit at Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysees, so I wandered over. And at least the admission was, for some reason, at a special rate of 10 euros right then, so in I went.
And oui, it WAS cool. Like FREEZING.
 Besides being cool, that is. Really beautiful,  plus well done music in the background. I didn't take their warning about dressing warm  seriously.enough or I'd have stayed longer. Don't think I can afford to go back, even at discount prices....
  

The big deadline

The 12 artists in the exhibition "Deadline" all really were working toward the ultimate "turn in your papers, class, time's up." All off them knew their time was up soon -- due to one illness or another.
A terrific idea for a show, one that could get me out to the hinterlands (not really, it was near the Palais de Tokyo and the Tour Eiffel)  to the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. Among the artists  were a few I knew -- Mapplethorpe and de Koonig and others I was glad to have discovered -- Hans Hartung, Jorg Immendorff. Some of the artists worked double-time, staring death straight in the eye; others fought against their infirmities and their gradual inabilities to make real what they still had in their minds. All in all, though, it was an inspiring show, to see artists dealing with the deadline we all know is coming, and mostly like to forget about entirely.
There isn't always tomorrow.

Immendorff's monkeys were hommages to other artists, to remind the world that art goes on. At right, de Koonig's work got simpler as he began getting forgetful, but it was no less powerful.