You're Drawing Beauty

Today I re-realized that I am in Paris. I was walking through the Louvre's courtyard with the glass pyramid and the re-realization welled up inside of me. I am in Paris. I am walking through the streets of Paris. I am sitting in the Jardin du Carrousel with some paints and paintbrushes and a clean piece of canvas.

Someday I will look back on these two months in Paris, and I will think to myself: "Ah yes. I lived in Paris for two months." And this thinking will be thought with a romantic sigh.

This afternoon when I was planted in the Jardin du Carrousel (as I just mentioned) a little girl, perhaps 7 or 8 years old scrambled over to to where I was lying on my stomach in the grass painting. My canvas was no longer clean. I had painted a woman in orange and yellow and her arms looked like elongated yams (not on purpose). It was not my best work, I was deciding, when the little girl plopped down in front of me, surveyed the painting and spoke: "You're drawing beauty."

I smiled and and said: "Oui!"

1.5 seconds later I realized that English was not her first language and what she was probably trying to say was: "You're drawing is beautiful," to which a more appropriate response would have been: "Why thank you very much, you are too kind." Instead of: "Yes. Yes indeed, I draw beauty. And I'm damn good at it too. I should charge you for looking at it."

But what she actually said--"You're drawing beauty"--those words mean so much more to me than a mere complement. For some reason I feel delightfully affirmed by this little tourist child (whose parents, incidentally, were just ten feet away buying Eiffel Tower key chains from one of the 12,954,643 street vendors that inhabit Paris--I think she and her family were from Spain or Italy). I feel affirmed as more than an artist. I feel affirmed as a person who communes with beauty. Beauty with yam-arms. Yam-armed beauty.

A Journal Entry

I wrote this in my journal yesterday, and I thought I'd share it with you all since it sort of encapsulates a moment in Paris...

"6:25am Tuestday June 15th 2010

"I couldn't sleep in this morning for some reason so I got up and came here to one of my favorite places along the Seine. It's the little end of the island just across from Notra Dame's island.. There is a tree that grows here and its leaves are a brighter shade of green than many of the other trees here in Paris.

"Just a minute ago there was a very fat pigeon trying to be stealthy--probably thought I was eating something. But I'm not (a rarity).

"Yesterday on my walk to school I saw a tall, thin, red haired man in jeans and a denim jacket walking a large Rottweiler. He was carrying in the hand not holding "Fluffy's" leash, a small, leather woman's high healed boot. Somehow, he managed to look totally cool and self-confident. Perhaps it was the dog. It certainly wasn't the boot.

"There was another time, walking to school, I saw a very, very, old, old French man carrying a plastic bag with a carton of strawberries.

"Kelsey and I have been using baking soda instead of shampoo. My hair is softer but I think the baking soda might be turning my hair dull grey. Or maybe it is just Paris turning me grey. This is not a very colorful city. In fact, I'm a little color starved. What I wouldn't give for the colorful clothes of the women of Pakistan. A whole herd of Pakistani women with their beautiful butterfly shalwar camishes would do this place some good.

"I'm hungry. I wonder if the boulangeries are open yet.

"The other day I had a brief, friendly and almost entirely incomprehensible conversation with two French garbage men about my mandolin (I've been taking Japhy Ryder--my mandolin--down here to the Seine to play). They were quite jolly. Moments like those made me wish I were better a learning French."

Okay. Now I have to go work on that French that I'm no good at. Siiiiiiigh. I think I'll do my homework in the Jardin de Luxembourg. Perhaps I can get one of the thousands of 90 year olds who do Tai Chi there to help me with my pronunciation.

Wet Rats at d'Orsay

Two American girls (one who pretends to be Canadian on a regular basis) running through the streets of Paris while the sky pours buckets, no—violent torrents of wind driven rain—onto them. They are not dressed for the occasion and they are soaked through. Like rats. Two American drowned rats.

Why were my cousin and I running through the rain, through the streets of Paris? Well, the first Sunday of every month the museums of Paris are open to the public… for free. Free happens to be within our price range. And we are not Parisian enough to heed the weather warnings of gathering clouds.

So we arrived at the d’Orsay (our museum of choice) soaking wet and ready for some art. Kelsey wanted to see the special exhibit: “Crime and Punishment,” featuring art pieces featuring, that’s right: crimes and their punishments.

It was horrifying. Some of it was more horrifying than others. Like the guillotine. And the paintings of severed heads. And some spiky torture instrument that I didn’t understand how it worked and I do not want to. And the paintings of women about to be attacked or raped. The fact that the exhibit featured one of my favorite artists, Goya, did not lessen how repelled I was by these pieces. And yet we—tourists, Parisians, people enjoying a free day at a museum—we filtered through the exhibit with expressions of morbid fascination.

Why are we fascinated by the most repellent things? Why do we watch violent movies? Why we do we get so excited whenever a fight breaks out? Why is the story more interesting when someone is trying to kill some someone else? When something blows up? And how can we be so fascinated and so desensitized at the same time? And why does the artist (say an artist like Goya) choose such grotesque subjects?

Beauty is truth. But truth is not beauty, at least not the truth about how much pain there is in the world, and how much of it is what we—tourists, Parisians, Joe-shmoes, humans—do to each other. And that is why (I suppose) the artist paints severed heads and abused women.

Francisco Goya painted many nightmares. And I when I look at his darker work (he also painted non-violent, peaceful, lovely things as well), I see the truth in it, and it breaks my heart. Art that depicts the pain of the world is true. And it does not desensitize us. At least it shouldn’t. It should make us hurt.

So I left the exhibit just a bit woozy from all the still-life-violence, and moved right along to Van Gogh.

It was an abrupt transition.

The pain Van Gogh painted comes out on canvas as beautiful. Bitter beauty, but beautiful nonetheless. Very different from the purely horrific.

I stood in front of “Portraid du docteur Paul Gachet” for a very long time. I even composed a poem while I stood there. Here it is:

He painted a pale sadness in your eyes.

An ocean drains behind you.

The flowers in your hand will soon die

Dry blue.

As we filter past, some of us are held,

By your gaze that turns in.

I hope to hold to hope

Despite the void’s depth.

It has been articulated

In dry blue.

Art must be true, and Van Gogh articulates the truth of sorrow, and of desperation. I am grateful to him for that. Especially after that “Crime and Punishment” exhibit. I was feeling a little morose afterwards. A little weak. A little desperate. Because when you are reminded of how much hurt there is, I do not think one should ignore it, but rather, move in it. Somehow. You can’t let hopelessness win. But you can’t pretend to have hope if you don’t either. There is no more denying the pain of the world than there is denying its beauty. True art denies neither and articulates both.

Well this was a bit of an abstract update. As far as concrete occurrences, we eventually dried off and the following night I ate so much cheese, I’m sure that it was the equivalent of what a hefty goat could produce in a lifetime.

French Men

Here's where I left off: I was really excited about having made a friend in Paris, Dekan, of Dekan from mass-at-Notre-Dame. Well that Friday night my cousin and I went to a discotheque with him and he brought along a friend for Kelsey, thereby turning the evening into a double date. This made me uncomfortable, but I thought that I could just live in denial about the whole thing. Pretend it was something that it wasn't: a casual outing without ulterior (or as the evening progressed, overt) intentions.

I am unhappy to report that denial does not work. I spent the whole time telling Dekan in English, Spanish and French that I was not interested, but he didn't seem to care. Apparently Parisian men are hopeless romantics in the worst possible sense: there is no hope for romance, and yet they try to be romantic. And it is annoying.

We were never in any danger. Our "dates" were amorous, but not aggressive and Kelsey and I were able to laugh about it after the fact (and sometimes during it, when we realized that this was in fact an acute case of culture shock--Kelsey's fellow tried to kiss her hand. Strangers do not normally try to kiss your hand on my home planet--I mean continent). We also laughed about the fact that even though we were never in any danger, I had my Swiss army knife in my purse, "just in case." Just in case of what I have no idea. I never could, never would stab anyone. I'm pretty sure brandishing a blade would make any situation I find myself in go from bad to worse in every case, unless I take Bruce Lee knife fighting lessons or something of that sort.

By the end of the night I was so sick of testosterone (or Paristerone, the special brand of especially obnoxious hormones this city has too much of). We finally left the discotheque and on our way home there was another man, a perfect stranger who had had too much wine, and under the influence of his drink, jumped in front of Kelsey and I and laid at our feet. It was a most exasperating evening.

The next day we had a lunch date with a friend of Kelsey's godmother, whom we had never met and knew nothing about except that he was an American living in Paris. I was less than enthused at first, simply because I did not want to have to deal with any more men for a little while. But we went, Kelsey assuring me everything would be fine. And everything was. For starters, our friend was mercifully gay. He has been living in Paris for the last nine years and he knows where we can get ingredients for Vietnamese recipes; he invited us over for dinner with him and his boyfriend, and we have had such a fantastic time discussing music, film, art, politics, history, Paris, Parisians, drinking fine wine and eating fine foods.

So now I have another friend in Paris. This time I won't have to deal with his hormones. And I am grateful.

Some Places in Paris (including the half-attic flat)

Star Starved

Paris, one of the most romantic cities in the entire universe, is lacking in one of the universe's most romantic elements: starry skies. The other night I looked out my window and saw a star and I got really excited, but then I realized it was midnight and there was not a single other star in the sky. Just the one. It probably was not even a star. It was probably a planet. I went from excited to distraught. How will I live two months without being able to see the stars? How does anyone in the city live this way? How can you live without starry skies?

At least my love still has the moon. I saw the moon in a crescent last night walking home from Sacre Coeur, where I had watched dusk fall on the city. I am not saying that there is not beauty all around. There is, and breathtaking beauty at that. But I shall miss my stars.

"My Love"

I have taken to calling Paris "my love." I know this is vaguely reminiscent of Gollum, but I really cannot help it. She is so vibrant, so romantic, so magnificently distinct in her looks and attitudes, with her people running through her cafe cluttered streets like bloods cells in scarfs and berets. She is asking to be called "my love" and that is what I shall call her. In my head. I do not think I shall begin talking to myself out loud, or persistently refer to Paris as "my love" in this blog except when the muses demand it.

But I should begin at the beginning. The flight from LAX to Paris was ten hours long. I sat next to a lovely fellow named Akmal (who's name was misspelled as "Akmil" by the immigration people when he received his American citizenship--how annoying!), and we discussed Cairo and the artist's way of seeing things as opposed to the "normal" person's way of seeing things. Artists, he suggested, see beauty in things because they have the eye that goes looking for beauty. And Cairo, he told me, is a beautiful city. Perhaps if I am ever a good enough artist I will go there with my artist eye and see it. I will write a poem about it. I will also eat a lot of baclava.

We arrived in Paris at two o'clock in the afternoon. I was exhausted but Kelsey and I had to find our way to our (which I shall eventually post photos of because when I say "flat" what you really should be imagining is a half an attic). And it was during this journey through the airport and the metro and the streets of Paris that it occurred to me that I was not going to learn French very quickly at all. That I was in fact, going to have a very difficult time figuring out how to make my way in Paris for two months. I don't know what I was thinking before. I think I was in denial about how hard this is going to be. But stepping onto that metro and listening to the speaker system pronounce names that did NOT sound the way they looked spelled--I read French in Spanish; it's part of the whole mariachi band thing--I had a fair dose of reality along with a very subdued panic attack. The panic attack went something like this: "I can't speak or understand French. How the hell am I going to make friends?"

I make friends by talking and by listening. How do you make friends when you can't manage either?

This thought was in the back of my head for the past four days as my uncle, and cousins and I tromped all over Paris. In the restaurants I tried to smile a lot at the waiters and waitresses to make up for the fact that I could only say: "Uh umm, tiramisu? Un, um, ah see voo play?"

When we went to the Louvre yesterday I was by myself for the first time since we arrived and I began to especially feel the weight of lacking language. I enjoyed myself immensely (how can you not at the Louvre? It holds beauty incarnate on canvas and in stone) but it does not have a sense of solitude. No, it is the sense that you are surrounded by hundreds of people, non of whom are communicating with anyone outside of their party. Not a place to make friends. The only person besides my uncle and cousins who spoke to me while I was there was a tiny little security guard who bellowed piercingly at me: "NO FLASH!" She took her job very seriously. I would too if it were my task to prevent people from flashing Cupid and Psyche (with their camera). And I would eventually become very cranky because telling person after person to not do something for hours on end is a crank-inducing job. Perhaps we could have become friends in other circumstances but not that day.

Today was different though. Today I made a friend. I went to Notre Dame and sat there in one of the rows of chairs for a long, long time. It is the sort of place one can sit in for hours. Eventually they started mass. And I thought to myself: "I should stay for mass. I've never had mass at Notre Dame before." So I did. And it was in French. And I didn't understand a single word. But the man next to me seemed to understand what to do and when to sit and when to stand so I just followed his lead. And for the passing of the peace we shook hands, and when we went up for communion (which I did not take since I'm not Catholic but I did get a blessing) I was able to say: "Apre vous, si'l vous plait," which I have always wanted to say to someone in proper context and now I have! Anyhow, after mass we talked a bit in a broken French-English-Spanish mix; enough to learn that he was originally from Senegal but he has been living in Paris for the past ten years, he works as a receptionist in a hotel in Paris and he has been going to church since he was a little boy. His name is Dekan and he is my first friend in Paris.