The City of Light, pre­miere partie

We are back from the unfor­get­table delights of Paris, and I’m even now find­ing it a bit dif­fi­cult to adjust to nor­mal life!  Seem­ing­ly dozens of loads of laun­dry have, how­ev­er, helped me come down to earth.

There is no way to con­vey the mag­ic of Paris in pho­tos, or words.  Even the sim­plest things are rather oth­er world­ly, like this view from our rent­ed apart­ment, near to the Louvre.

It’s tempt­ing to try to describe the extra­or­di­nary charms of every­thing about Paris: the archi­tec­tur­al details around every cor­ner, the charm­ing blue street signs, the styl­ish girls and boys on mind-bog­gling­ly speedy scoot­ers, the per­fect­ly fash­ion­able small French chil­dren speak­ing in high pip­ing voic­es, “Papa!  Maman!  Je voudrais du pain au choco­lat!”  Even the florist dis­plays have a for­eign, glossy poetry.

We arrived in the ear­ly after­noon, dropped off our bags at the love­ly apart­ment with its spi­ral staircase.

And there began the pat­tern of our hol­i­day in Paris, each of us going along with the pas­sions of the oth­ers!  We walked and walked and walked, first pass­ing an unex­pect­ed land­mark in my life — Dehil­lerin, the world-famous kitchen sup­ply shop, made famous by Julia Child in her memoirs.

No pho­tographs were allowed inside, so I can­not show you the unbe­liev­able sight of an entire WALL of wire whisks!  Hun­dreds of choic­es!  Every sort of cast-iron and cop­per and porce­lain imple­ment you can imag­ine, rows upon rows of knife sets, fish molds, madeleine trays, bright­ly-col­ored cut­ting boards, stock pots of every size in the world.  Heav­en.  I did­n’t buy any­thing, though.  Self-denial is my mot­to, as you know.

From there we hap­pened upon a very sat­is­fy­ing vin­tage cloth­ing shop called “Hip­py Mar­ket,” where Avery tried on thou­sands of gar­ments, look­ing espe­cial­ly for a new win­ter coat.  If only her arms were shorter.

She did suc­cumb, how­ev­er, to this evoca­tive and adorable pair of Con­verse sneak­ers upon which some past own­er had writ­ten the words for “love” in many lan­guages, includ­ing Russian!

From there we trooped toward the Pom­pi­dou Cen­tre, pass­ing along the way this incred­i­ble art instal­la­tion.  A wall of words, quite simply.

The gen­er­al mes­sage of the wall is a sort of pan-mod­ern sup­port of peace, green­ness, tol­er­ance and love.  Quite beau­ti­ful, as Avery’s detailed pho­to shows (she is becom­ing a more gift­ed pho­tog­ra­ph­er all the time).

We arrived at the Pom­pi­dou and Avery and John decid­ed to take a break, sit on a wall and take pho­tos of the new Con­verse.  So it was but the work of a moment for me to cross the square to “DOD,” or “Dish of the Day,” one of the most charm­ing and deli­cious del­i­catessens you will ever encounter.  I can­not seem to find a ref­er­ence to this place on the web, but trust me, it’s oppo­site the entrance to the Pom­pi­dou.  Fresh breads, fruit and veg, wine, pre­pared foods, sal­ads, and cheeses.  Oh, les fro­mages fran­cais­es!  I could not resist this dar­ling pack­et of three dif­fer­ent laits, milks, with its label, “Would you know which is which?  Sheep, goat and ewe.”

I also could not begin to resist two dif­fer­ent sorts of ril­lettes, which are ter­rines of shred­ded pre­served meats, con­fit in fact, sus­pend­ed in… fat.  I bought goose, AND duck.  Spread on a piece of baguette… heaven!

We put aside our acquis­i­tive­ness and went into the Pom­pi­dou, mar­vel­ling at the views from the glass esca­la­tors.  Mem­o­ries of my long-ago days doing dis­ser­ta­tion research came back to me, twen­ty years ago, a stu­dent, alone.  So much hap­pi­er to wan­der through the muse­um with my dar­ling fam­i­ly!  We each chose our favorite pieces.  Avery real­ly liked the con­cep­tu­al instal­la­tions of Fluxus artist George Brecht.

John absolute­ly fell in love with a bril­liant Japan­ese instal­la­tion of a length of cas­sette tape being per­pet­u­al­ly blown in a wav­ing oval by an over­head fan!  Sil­ly me not to write down the name of the artist…

I myself fell des­per­ate­ly in love with a text instal­la­tion — always text with me! — of metal­lic words, telling a sto­ry of two men in a bar, sus­pend­ed around three of the four walls of one room.  Again, I stu­pid­ly did not take any notes of the artist!  I wel­come any intel­li­gence from any­one who finds her­self at the Pom­pi­dou any time soon.

I find it very intrigu­ing that all three of us eschewed tra­di­tion­al paint­ing, draw­ing or sculp­ture, even pho­tog­ra­phy was pushed aside in our enthu­si­asm for irony, humor and a decep­tive sim­plic­i­ty, in these installations.

Hav­ing slaked John’s thirst for archi­tec­ture and salved our cul­tur­al con­sciences, we turned to the more mun­dane sub­ject of what on earth to eat for din­ner, and where to buy the ingre­di­ents!  And here we came upon a slight dis­ad­van­tage of tak­ing an apart­ment in a very pop­u­lar tourist area: while there is every cafe under the sun, find­ing fresh ingre­di­ents is rather more dif­fi­cult.  But final­ly we came upon Super­marche G20 in the rue Eti­enne Mar­cel.  And here John uttered one of the sen­tences we col­lect in our game, “I don’t think any­one has ever said this before.”

“Kris­ten, stop fondling the kumquats.”

But who can resist their dim­pled skin?  I did­n’t buy any, how­ev­er, restrict­ing myself to ingre­di­ents I actu­al­ly need­ed for din­ner, since we had to car­ry it all home.  We decid­ed upon a dish of veal sauteed with mush­rooms and gar­lic, the sauce fin­ished with brandy and creme fraiche.  Heav­en­ly.  Home laden, feet aching, all of us com­plete­ly worn out, but reviv­ing enough after din­ner to go out for a lit­tle explore in darkness.

We came upon this menu, at the fan­tas­tic — and I mean that lit­er­al­ly, sure­ly it is a fan­ta­sy — Restau­rant Le Grand Vefour.

Could any menu priced at 282 Euros — about $380 — pos­si­bly be described as “a plea­sure menu”?  We were gob­s­macked.  What on earth were they serv­ing?  Avery suc­cinct­ly said, “It would be like eat­ing coins.”  We enlarged upon this theme, imag­in­ing our con­ver­sa­tion with the gar­con.  “Yes, could I have my change in notes, please?  These coins are SO hard to chew.”

Up in the morn­ing com­plete­ly refreshed to ven­ture out of the apart­ment, find­ing that Sat­ur­days in our neigh­bor­hood are VERY qui­et indeed.  “The peo­ple must real­ly respect week­ends here,” John observed, with some wish­ful think­ing, remem­ber­ing the sev­en-day work weeks of his career.  Look what inter­est­ing graf­fi­ti we came upon at a build­ing site.

We all won­dered if the sen­ti­ments expressed here are approval, or disapproval?

We saun­tered toward the shop­ping street of the rue de Riv­o­li in order to fur­ther our search for Avery’s coat, wan­der­ing into Zara, no luck there, then send­ing Avery off down the enor­mous escalier roulant, esca­la­tor, into the depths of Sepho­ra, her beloved cos­met­ics shop.  Her capac­i­ty to shop there always amazes her par­ents, as we can­not under­stand how she can look in one more city at anoth­er set of shelves con­tain­ing make­up!  But it’s just as I am with cheese and bread, and John with the win­dows of estate agents!

John and I could­n’t quite take 45 min­utes in Avery’s mec­ca, how­ev­er, so we agreed to meet lat­er and mean­dered toward the riv­er, for a spot of sight­see­ing.  And there, poor John, I came upon a French… pet store.  Just look at the cha­tons, the pre­cious French kit­tens for sale.  And I mean SALE.  These kit­tens were expen­sive, com­ing in at 820 Euros each!

Poor John.  We had to go back with Avery, and there­upon for the rest of the day she and I imag­ined all the oth­er pur­chas­es we would give up in order to have a Parisian kitten.

It was time for lunch, and we found our­selves out­side the gor­geous soar­ing Cafe Marly at the Lou­vre where we had seen peo­ple din­ing in lux­u­ry the night before.  “Let’s just do it,” we all decid­ed rash­ly (after all, it would take a lot of declined lunch­es to buy a kit­ten).  And there we were, seat­ed in the sun out­side, with gor­geous views of I.M. Pei’s glass dome.  It was a total DELIGHT.  Just look at my Salade Nicoise, Ver­sion 2011, with a mys­te­ri­ous sauce made of whipped tuna, avo­ca­do and creme fraiche.

Avery ate every snip­pet of her clas­sic Croque Mon­sieur, a com­plete­ly deli­cious toast­ed ham and cheese sand­wich.  If you want an egg added, ask for a Croque Madame!

It was hard to get up and agree to walk again!

But off we went, to the Jeu de Paume for the Diane Arbus show.

And it was WELL worth the walk, the enor­mous­ly long queue.  Her pho­tographs are sim­ply divine­ly evoca­tive, trou­bling, unique.

This show led to very provoca­tive dis­cus­sions about, for one thing, how impor­tant is it to know the life sto­ry of the artist — or any details about the cre­ator what­so­ev­er — before you see the work?  Avery’s con­sid­ered opin­ion, and I agree, is that knowl­edge of the artist’s wish­es, inten­tions, bio­graph­i­cal details CAN add to our appre­ci­a­tion of art­work which with­out that knowl­edge might be mere pic­tures.  But there can be an over-reliance on such details (cer­tain­ly many the­o­rists want to call them “extra­ne­ous”) that can cloud our imme­di­ate reac­tion to art­work.  I must admit that when we came to the end of the show, and read the time­line of her life — inter­est­ing­ly at the END of the show, not the begin­ning! — that she com­mit­ted sui­cide… I was not sur­prised.  An awe-inspir­ing col­lec­tion of images, and what a life.

And so from there home, stop­ping to buy ingre­di­ents for Avery’s beloved “Steak frites.”  What a joy to cook at “home.”  And to col­lapse once more, to refresh our­selves in sleep… and onto Day Three in the morning!