Beth Kaplan's Blog, page 213
April 4, 2015
my spoon and I take a walk
This is the first of my recent trips in which I have been haunted by bad weather. Today was so cold and drizzly with a bitter wind, I was wearing all my layers, but the Brits were wearing almost nothing - impervious. I walked and walked - with my spoon. My British mother collected old British silver spoons, and her most valuable dates from 1661. My brother and I could not figure out what to do with a valuable old spoon so I offered to try to sell it in London. Today I found an antique market and went in, to find that all the silver vendors were closed today. So my spoon and I kept going.
A bit of advice - avoid Easter weekend in London. I have never seen so many people on the street as I did today - mind-boggling - everyone gawking and shopping, endless shopping. We are doomed as a species. However, for me, some pleasure - going back near here to Chilton Street, the specialty street for women with big feet, yes, it's true, a street for the big-footed woman. If only my poor big-footed mother were alive to see this. I, however, am in a strange quandary: I discovered today that my feet are too small for the big-footed stores, which don't stock quite as small as my feet. But yet mine are too big for ordinary stores, which do not quite go up to my size. Ah, the major dilemmas of life.
I had lunch in a place on Piccadilly that I'd lunched in before, very pleasant, our own Michel Bublé on the sound system. At the table next to me was a French family talking about their adventures in London; I remembered listening to an American family at the Gare du Nord, as I waited for the Eurostar, talking about being in Paris - getting lost! New kinds of food! The same for them all. My waiter was Rumanian, as are many waiters here - or Polish. There are a million kids from other countries in London trying to make good. I had a long talk with a young Israeli who wanted to sell me anti-aging creams and told me he wants to become a psychiatrist. Heard an American say, "Let's go back to Ly-sester Square." Asshole, I wanted to shout - can't you hear how it's pronounced?
I was making my way toward the Thames to see a matinee of "Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown" which I'd bought a ticket for in Toronto. And it was superb - one of my favourite musicals ever. It's based on the Almadovar film, but transformed - still very Spanish, but with wonderful actors and music, full of heart, making me cry. Loved every minute. Oh London.
Emerged at 5.30 into madness - Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly impassible, millions of people. Luckily found a bus that took me straight back to my friend's, and with a cheery bus driver too, who blew me a kiss when I got off, and I to him. It's a wonderful city. Better when the sun shines, which I've heard it occasionally does, and the entire planet isn't here too.
Got home to a note from my daughter, she's sick and wants her mama. If I could go to her, I would.
A bit of advice - avoid Easter weekend in London. I have never seen so many people on the street as I did today - mind-boggling - everyone gawking and shopping, endless shopping. We are doomed as a species. However, for me, some pleasure - going back near here to Chilton Street, the specialty street for women with big feet, yes, it's true, a street for the big-footed woman. If only my poor big-footed mother were alive to see this. I, however, am in a strange quandary: I discovered today that my feet are too small for the big-footed stores, which don't stock quite as small as my feet. But yet mine are too big for ordinary stores, which do not quite go up to my size. Ah, the major dilemmas of life.
I had lunch in a place on Piccadilly that I'd lunched in before, very pleasant, our own Michel Bublé on the sound system. At the table next to me was a French family talking about their adventures in London; I remembered listening to an American family at the Gare du Nord, as I waited for the Eurostar, talking about being in Paris - getting lost! New kinds of food! The same for them all. My waiter was Rumanian, as are many waiters here - or Polish. There are a million kids from other countries in London trying to make good. I had a long talk with a young Israeli who wanted to sell me anti-aging creams and told me he wants to become a psychiatrist. Heard an American say, "Let's go back to Ly-sester Square." Asshole, I wanted to shout - can't you hear how it's pronounced?
I was making my way toward the Thames to see a matinee of "Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown" which I'd bought a ticket for in Toronto. And it was superb - one of my favourite musicals ever. It's based on the Almadovar film, but transformed - still very Spanish, but with wonderful actors and music, full of heart, making me cry. Loved every minute. Oh London.
Emerged at 5.30 into madness - Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly impassible, millions of people. Luckily found a bus that took me straight back to my friend's, and with a cheery bus driver too, who blew me a kiss when I got off, and I to him. It's a wonderful city. Better when the sun shines, which I've heard it occasionally does, and the entire planet isn't here too.
Got home to a note from my daughter, she's sick and wants her mama. If I could go to her, I would.
Easter Saturday in London
click to enlarge
Pub. One of millions.
Loved this: the historic plaque on the right commemorates George Freidrich Handel, who lived in this house from 1723 until his death in 1759. The plaque on the left for Jimi Hendrix, who lived there between 1968 and 1969. Cultural heroes, both.
One of the many elegant arcades.
Gentlemen's Hairdresser and Perfumer
Said hello to my mother at Canada House in Trafalgar Square - I scattered a few of her ashes here last year.
Big Ben bonging - an evocative sound. And those busses, behemoths traversing the city.
A plaque on the Thames commemorates the Battle of Britain, which defeated the Nazis and saved the world from Fascism. Every young man who gave his life for the cause is noted, and there are many Canadians. We thank you, with everything we have, for what you gave for us.
London from the Millenial Bridge - the amazing Eye, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, the memory of a great sea power.
Pub. One of millions.
Loved this: the historic plaque on the right commemorates George Freidrich Handel, who lived in this house from 1723 until his death in 1759. The plaque on the left for Jimi Hendrix, who lived there between 1968 and 1969. Cultural heroes, both.
One of the many elegant arcades.
Gentlemen's Hairdresser and Perfumer
Said hello to my mother at Canada House in Trafalgar Square - I scattered a few of her ashes here last year. 
Big Ben bonging - an evocative sound. And those busses, behemoths traversing the city.
A plaque on the Thames commemorates the Battle of Britain, which defeated the Nazis and saved the world from Fascism. Every young man who gave his life for the cause is noted, and there are many Canadians. We thank you, with everything we have, for what you gave for us.
London from the Millenial Bridge - the amazing Eye, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, the memory of a great sea power.
Hawks in London
And now for something completely different: Londres. Just emerging from the Tube feels, after Paris, like an entry into anarchy. There is so much more freedom and looseness here. Wonderful madness.
I am staying, for the last time, with patient young friends who have a two-year old daughter Marina with whom I madly in love. One day she will speak French like her father, Spanish like her mother and English because she lives in London.
It is cold and wet. No surprise. Out into the day - to the theatre, to walk.
On the Eurostar yesterday, I finished "Hawk" by Helen Macdonald - a beautiful book, very intense. At times, I got sick of hearing about hawking and the ripping apart of small animals. But now I see hawks everywhere in old paintings and understand much more about what they mean. Went yesterday to the fantastic Wallace Collection near my friends here - and it's FULL of paintings of hawks and dead animals. (It's also full of the most incredible treasure - a Velasquez, a ton of Rembrandts, a Poussin and a Claude, Titians - incredible, free, casual, just there...)
Wanted to share with you a few passages from Macdonald's book to give you the flavour - her intensity, the flow of her prose, the force of her details, as she deals with the sudden death of her beloved father by taking on a goshawk. Gos is the goshawk trained and lost by the writer T. H. White, whose life she explores, and Mabel is her own goshawk. Exquisite.
H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald
213 So I sat in the stubble, woozily glorying at the beauty of it all. The mist rising in the hollows. Flocks of golden plover pouring over in sheaves. The way the bluish new rapeseed leaves contrasted with the vertical straw of the stubble at my feet. The glow of the lost sun beneath the ridge. Crickets beginning to sing. Rooks on their way to roost passing over us in moving constellations of small black stars.
220 Gos was still out there in the forest, the dark forest to which all things lost must go. I’d wanted to slip across the borders of this world into that wood and bring back the hawk White lost. Some part of me that was very small and old had known this, some part of me that didn’t work according to the everyday rules of the world but with the logic of myths and dreams. And that part of me had hoped, too, that somewhere in that other world was my father. His death had been so sudden. There had been no time to prepare for it, no sense in it happening at all. He could only be lost. He was out there, still, somewhere out there in that tangled wood with all the rest of the lost and dead. I know now what those dreams in spring had meant, the ones of a hawk slipping through a rent in the air into another world. I’d wanted to fly with the hawk to find my father; find him and bring him home.
242 It’s turned cold: cold so that saucers of ice lie in the mud, blank and crazed as antique porcelain. Cold so that hedges are alive with Baltic blackbirds; so cold that each breath hangs like parcelled seafog in the air. The blue sky rings with it, and the bell on Mabel’s tail is dimmed with condensation. Cold, cold, cold. My feet crack the ice in the mud as I trudge uphill. And because the squeaks and grinding harmonics of fracturing ice sound to Mabel like a wounded animal, every step I take is met with a convulsive clench of her toes. Where the world isn’t white with frost, it’s striped green and brown in strong sunlight, so that land is particoloured and snapping backwards to dawn and forwards to dusk. The days, now, are a bare six hours long.
I am staying, for the last time, with patient young friends who have a two-year old daughter Marina with whom I madly in love. One day she will speak French like her father, Spanish like her mother and English because she lives in London.
It is cold and wet. No surprise. Out into the day - to the theatre, to walk.
On the Eurostar yesterday, I finished "Hawk" by Helen Macdonald - a beautiful book, very intense. At times, I got sick of hearing about hawking and the ripping apart of small animals. But now I see hawks everywhere in old paintings and understand much more about what they mean. Went yesterday to the fantastic Wallace Collection near my friends here - and it's FULL of paintings of hawks and dead animals. (It's also full of the most incredible treasure - a Velasquez, a ton of Rembrandts, a Poussin and a Claude, Titians - incredible, free, casual, just there...)
Wanted to share with you a few passages from Macdonald's book to give you the flavour - her intensity, the flow of her prose, the force of her details, as she deals with the sudden death of her beloved father by taking on a goshawk. Gos is the goshawk trained and lost by the writer T. H. White, whose life she explores, and Mabel is her own goshawk. Exquisite.
H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald
213 So I sat in the stubble, woozily glorying at the beauty of it all. The mist rising in the hollows. Flocks of golden plover pouring over in sheaves. The way the bluish new rapeseed leaves contrasted with the vertical straw of the stubble at my feet. The glow of the lost sun beneath the ridge. Crickets beginning to sing. Rooks on their way to roost passing over us in moving constellations of small black stars.
220 Gos was still out there in the forest, the dark forest to which all things lost must go. I’d wanted to slip across the borders of this world into that wood and bring back the hawk White lost. Some part of me that was very small and old had known this, some part of me that didn’t work according to the everyday rules of the world but with the logic of myths and dreams. And that part of me had hoped, too, that somewhere in that other world was my father. His death had been so sudden. There had been no time to prepare for it, no sense in it happening at all. He could only be lost. He was out there, still, somewhere out there in that tangled wood with all the rest of the lost and dead. I know now what those dreams in spring had meant, the ones of a hawk slipping through a rent in the air into another world. I’d wanted to fly with the hawk to find my father; find him and bring him home.
242 It’s turned cold: cold so that saucers of ice lie in the mud, blank and crazed as antique porcelain. Cold so that hedges are alive with Baltic blackbirds; so cold that each breath hangs like parcelled seafog in the air. The blue sky rings with it, and the bell on Mabel’s tail is dimmed with condensation. Cold, cold, cold. My feet crack the ice in the mud as I trudge uphill. And because the squeaks and grinding harmonics of fracturing ice sound to Mabel like a wounded animal, every step I take is met with a convulsive clench of her toes. Where the world isn’t white with frost, it’s striped green and brown in strong sunlight, so that land is particoloured and snapping backwards to dawn and forwards to dusk. The days, now, are a bare six hours long.
April 3, 2015
fame on Juliet's blog and David Burke's Paris
Juliet, with her usual thoroughness, has photographed our delicious meal at Au Bon Coin and described it in vivid detail. I'm sure, after wine and food, that I wasn't as articulate as she describes. A wonderful memory. See her blog on the left.
Yesterday, as I walked in the rain down the rue Mouffetard for the last time this trip, I saw a familiar face. It was David Burke, an American writer and, with his wife Joanne, documentary filmmaker, whom I knew when I lived here for some months in 2009. Kind, interesting people, they have lived in Paris for decades, and David has written a book about writers in Paris. Now he does literary walking tours, taking people around the city showing them where writers lived and worked and telling stories of their lives.
If you're coming to Paris and interested in writers' lives - and we all have extremely interesting lives, no question about that, LOL - you should meet David Burke. His has been named one of the top ten literary tours in the world.
David Burke's Writers in Paris Walking Tourswritersinpariswalkingtours.blogspot.com/
And now, off to the Gare du Nord and on to Angleterre. It is not, as I've said most mornings, actually raining yet, which is good news - but rain's forecast, of course, for London. En avant! Which I think is French for Onward.
Yesterday, as I walked in the rain down the rue Mouffetard for the last time this trip, I saw a familiar face. It was David Burke, an American writer and, with his wife Joanne, documentary filmmaker, whom I knew when I lived here for some months in 2009. Kind, interesting people, they have lived in Paris for decades, and David has written a book about writers in Paris. Now he does literary walking tours, taking people around the city showing them where writers lived and worked and telling stories of their lives.
If you're coming to Paris and interested in writers' lives - and we all have extremely interesting lives, no question about that, LOL - you should meet David Burke. His has been named one of the top ten literary tours in the world.
David Burke's Writers in Paris Walking Tourswritersinpariswalkingtours.blogspot.com/
And now, off to the Gare du Nord and on to Angleterre. It is not, as I've said most mornings, actually raining yet, which is good news - but rain's forecast, of course, for London. En avant! Which I think is French for Onward.
April 2, 2015
au revoir, Paris
I said to Juliet, as we left the restaurant last night, "If I could write as simply and well as they cooked that pork chop, I'd be happy." Juliet, whose interesting blog to the left always has great photos, and I had dinner at a wonderful bistro in the 5th, Au Bon Coin, which is of course recommended in my Guide du Routard. A simple room, and since my stomach was still settling, I had a simple meal - a chop, peas, mashed potatoes. So delicious. The chop crusty on the outside but tender in a fantastic sauce. With a great wine.
There were only French people in the place, always a good sign, except at the table next to ours, where sat two American woman who were regulars. (And who were there nearly as early as we were; the French arrived an hour or two later.) Elisabeth is a non-fiction writer with a book out about lobsters, and Frances has a blog. Much talk of the joys of Paris - Frances has bought an apartment here and comes from the States as often as possible. A warm encounter and a great dinner too. Juliet took many pictures and will blog about it in detail at some point. The whole world is blogging.
My last day in Paris and it's very wet. I have not done so many things. I did not see the Bonnard exhibit at the Orsay or the Poussin opening today at the Louvre and so much else. And - miracle - I have bought very little. I discovered one of the wheels on my suitcase was destroyed on the way over - no wonder it was so much work getting in from CDG! I had to buy a new case and would only get the one on sale, which turned out to be quite a bit smaller than the one I was leaving. So I can't buy stuff, because there's absolutely no room. A hint for shopaholics: small suitcase.
Winding down. I will drink a little glass of wine in my room, do some more work, take myself out to dinner at another Routard place nearby. The best part of the trip: seeing old friends, Michele and Daniel, the Daudiers. Chartres and visiting Dad at the Jardin des Plantes and leaving my book at the Abbey Bookshop. Walking walking walking. Eating eating eating. Today, munching a croissant, so flaky, rich and light, as I walked in the rain. I may never eat another piece of bread again. Ha ha.
Most importantly - getting a fresh start on the 1979 memoir. I have a new first chapter and have done extensive editing on the rest - so I'm about 100 pages in to the second draft.
Tomorrow, London. Not sure about the internet there. Onward.
There were only French people in the place, always a good sign, except at the table next to ours, where sat two American woman who were regulars. (And who were there nearly as early as we were; the French arrived an hour or two later.) Elisabeth is a non-fiction writer with a book out about lobsters, and Frances has a blog. Much talk of the joys of Paris - Frances has bought an apartment here and comes from the States as often as possible. A warm encounter and a great dinner too. Juliet took many pictures and will blog about it in detail at some point. The whole world is blogging.
My last day in Paris and it's very wet. I have not done so many things. I did not see the Bonnard exhibit at the Orsay or the Poussin opening today at the Louvre and so much else. And - miracle - I have bought very little. I discovered one of the wheels on my suitcase was destroyed on the way over - no wonder it was so much work getting in from CDG! I had to buy a new case and would only get the one on sale, which turned out to be quite a bit smaller than the one I was leaving. So I can't buy stuff, because there's absolutely no room. A hint for shopaholics: small suitcase.
Winding down. I will drink a little glass of wine in my room, do some more work, take myself out to dinner at another Routard place nearby. The best part of the trip: seeing old friends, Michele and Daniel, the Daudiers. Chartres and visiting Dad at the Jardin des Plantes and leaving my book at the Abbey Bookshop. Walking walking walking. Eating eating eating. Today, munching a croissant, so flaky, rich and light, as I walked in the rain. I may never eat another piece of bread again. Ha ha.
Most importantly - getting a fresh start on the 1979 memoir. I have a new first chapter and have done extensive editing on the rest - so I'm about 100 pages in to the second draft.
Tomorrow, London. Not sure about the internet there. Onward.
last day in Paris
Click to enlarge
Both my books at the Abbey Bookshop! The owner Brian Spence is a very nice man from Toronto who's been running this wonderful shop for decades. It's a treasure trove of every book ever written, now including yours truly, and it's also a centre for writers. Brian has these now but has also ordered another copy of the memoir. See that Eiffel Tower on the cover, Paris visitors? Buy this book!
At the Cluny Museum of the Medieval World, medieval children sheltering from the rain. The Cluny is another of my favourite museums in Paris, full of artifacts from Roman Paris - pre J.C. - to about 1500. So much beauty.
The museum itself is in a glorious building.
Darn - I was hoping to leave my voluminous luggages at the cloakroom. Glad to know they're keeping us safe.
Head of the kings of France, originally on Notre Dame. 1220 - 1230.
One of the exquisite Lady with the Unicorn tapestries. A whole room, six vast works of art made around 1500. Breathtaking.
The tapestries have a background of hundreds of plants and animals. Detail.
Bracelet from the fifth to the third century B.C. Could buy one almost like it in any jewellery shop in Paris today.
Paris sous la pluie - the Boulevard St. Michel, where I used to walk in 1964, looking at the sophisticated French teenagers and wanting to be like them. Now they're all staring at their phones.
The Pantheon dome is still being renovated. This is my 'hood - five minutes from where I used to live. Oh I do love this city.
Both my books at the Abbey Bookshop! The owner Brian Spence is a very nice man from Toronto who's been running this wonderful shop for decades. It's a treasure trove of every book ever written, now including yours truly, and it's also a centre for writers. Brian has these now but has also ordered another copy of the memoir. See that Eiffel Tower on the cover, Paris visitors? Buy this book!
At the Cluny Museum of the Medieval World, medieval children sheltering from the rain. The Cluny is another of my favourite museums in Paris, full of artifacts from Roman Paris - pre J.C. - to about 1500. So much beauty.
The museum itself is in a glorious building.
Darn - I was hoping to leave my voluminous luggages at the cloakroom. Glad to know they're keeping us safe.
Head of the kings of France, originally on Notre Dame. 1220 - 1230. 
One of the exquisite Lady with the Unicorn tapestries. A whole room, six vast works of art made around 1500. Breathtaking.
The tapestries have a background of hundreds of plants and animals. Detail.
Bracelet from the fifth to the third century B.C. Could buy one almost like it in any jewellery shop in Paris today.
Paris sous la pluie - the Boulevard St. Michel, where I used to walk in 1964, looking at the sophisticated French teenagers and wanting to be like them. Now they're all staring at their phones. 
The Pantheon dome is still being renovated. This is my 'hood - five minutes from where I used to live. Oh I do love this city.
April 1, 2015
flowering
Taken last year in April - Dad's magnificent tree. (Explanation further down.)
Taken today. Paris flower shops are fabulous, and this one featured my very favourite flowers - ranunculus, like a hybrid of roses and poppies. Such colours.
walking on Wednesday
If Bacchus Were a Woman: a feminist wine shop. Only in France!
The arenas of Lutece - dating from the Romans in the 2nd century, gladiators and wild animals and all. Now there's free wifi and kids playing soccer. 
What a welcome sight - a Canadian flag in front of a bookstore.
Inside. Be still my beating heart.
As it says on the right: Librairie Canadienne. YES! 
Renting boats to sail on the pond in the Jardins du Luxembourg. My brother looked just like this in 1964. 
And as we passed by this stand, we wanted all of it.
A familiar face. He ascended the throne at the age of 17, much admired, and became something else. The Justin Bieber of his time.
She really was magnificent. Ice white, and covered with jewels - with, as she said, both the heart and the stomach of a king. I love that she included her stomach. in a cold wind in the 5th
Click to enlarge
Dad's tree at the Jardin des Plantes - a few years ago I scattered some of his ashes at its base, so every time I'm here I visit him and have a little cry. I'll find a picture to show you what this tree will look like in a few weeks...
Plane tree trunks at the Jardin des Plantes. Why are they mottled like that? Fascinating.
On the rue Mouffetard - a famous Canadian ...
...and the famous Place de la Contrescarpe, where Hemingway drank.
Dad's tree at the Jardin des Plantes - a few years ago I scattered some of his ashes at its base, so every time I'm here I visit him and have a little cry. I'll find a picture to show you what this tree will look like in a few weeks... 
Plane tree trunks at the Jardin des Plantes. Why are they mottled like that? Fascinating.
On the rue Mouffetard - a famous Canadian ...
...and the famous Place de la Contrescarpe, where Hemingway drank.
Velasquez, the Tudors, the Abbey Bookshop
It’s Wednesday afternoon, and I’m playing catch up with the blog – pictures are one thing but my priceless prose is another. (As my kids say - LOL.)
So – on Monday, Velasquez at the Grand Palais, a gorgeous exhibition though very crowded. Today I went to an exhibit about the Tudors and saw portraits of Henry VIII and the Virgin Queen painted at the same time Velasquez, in Italy and Spain, was painting dwarves, hideous Bourbon kings, little Infantas in their absurdly ornate clothes, and the most beautiful back in art. Talk about absurdly ornate clothes, though – those British royals were something. Weighed down with massive jewels. Wonder what that feels like.
Velasquez, who started painting at the age of 12, captures the soul so perfectly, with understanding and depth – especially clear when you compare his work to that of his son-in-law del Mazo, who worked with him all his life. The younger painter was really good, until you see his work next to the master’s, so much richer, livelier, subtler yet stronger. There’s a beautiful quote about Velasquez by the painter de Stael, which I’ll translate badly: Solid, calm, unswervingly rooted, the painter of painters, an equal distance from kings and dwarves, an equal distance from himself and from others. Something for a writer to aspire to, too.
Out into the day – not raining, always good news – wandering again around St. Germain, home to the 14th and out for dinner with Jean-Louis. When I dined with his family on Sunday, I accidentally took his phone when I left; we met Monday so I could give it back. We had a great talk, 51 years after we first met, about his crazy family and mine.
Tuesday was cleaning the apartment thoroughly and moving to the Hotel Port Royal in the 5th. My hood. I am very happy to be back. The 14th felt like real Paris, few tourists, mostly working families coming home after work with their groceries and baguettes. The apartment was big and bright, and my landlady reduced my rent considerably because of the noise. I almost considered staying. But this is the part of Paris I know well. Took my hosts Paolo and Annie for coffee on the rue Mouffetard, one of my favourite streets in all Paris. Watched a man with waist-length dreadlocks push a toddler in a stroller beside an older child; I remember him from my stay a few years ago, though he didn’t have children then. Spent the rest of the day walking, walking, revisiting my old stomping grounds, and emailing from my room. Was not feeling well so took it easy, which was welcome. It was so windy a storekeeper told me a woman was blown right off her bicycle.
Today, walking again – there’s sun though it’s cold, and tomorrow will be rain. I walked to my favourite Monge market and all the same merchants were there, then down to find the Abbey Bookshop. A Canadian flag outside – the owner is from Toronto. It’s heaven, packed with books old and new, a wonderful place I'd never been to before. I wanted to talk to the owner Brian about my book but he was busy – I’ll probably go back tomorrow. Found by chance, as I looked around entranced, exactly the book I need right now: “Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction,” by Tracy Kidder and his editor. Later I sat in the Jardins du Luxembourg reading it. A guide on my own writing journey.
Lunch in a great student place off the Boulevard St. Michel with a soundtrack by the Shirelles, the Stones and B. B. King – heaven. Then to Luxembourg to see the Tudors. On the way, I did something I’ve always wanted to do – stop in the famous little umbrella shop on the Boul Mich. Hundreds of umbrellas. I treated myself to one that’s strong and very light, for tomorrow’s storm. Tonight dinner at a nearby bistro with my friend Juliet, a fellow blogger.
Tomorrow, my last day in this sublime city, in the rain. On Friday, off to London, where luckily it never rains.
So – on Monday, Velasquez at the Grand Palais, a gorgeous exhibition though very crowded. Today I went to an exhibit about the Tudors and saw portraits of Henry VIII and the Virgin Queen painted at the same time Velasquez, in Italy and Spain, was painting dwarves, hideous Bourbon kings, little Infantas in their absurdly ornate clothes, and the most beautiful back in art. Talk about absurdly ornate clothes, though – those British royals were something. Weighed down with massive jewels. Wonder what that feels like.
Velasquez, who started painting at the age of 12, captures the soul so perfectly, with understanding and depth – especially clear when you compare his work to that of his son-in-law del Mazo, who worked with him all his life. The younger painter was really good, until you see his work next to the master’s, so much richer, livelier, subtler yet stronger. There’s a beautiful quote about Velasquez by the painter de Stael, which I’ll translate badly: Solid, calm, unswervingly rooted, the painter of painters, an equal distance from kings and dwarves, an equal distance from himself and from others. Something for a writer to aspire to, too.
Out into the day – not raining, always good news – wandering again around St. Germain, home to the 14th and out for dinner with Jean-Louis. When I dined with his family on Sunday, I accidentally took his phone when I left; we met Monday so I could give it back. We had a great talk, 51 years after we first met, about his crazy family and mine.
Tuesday was cleaning the apartment thoroughly and moving to the Hotel Port Royal in the 5th. My hood. I am very happy to be back. The 14th felt like real Paris, few tourists, mostly working families coming home after work with their groceries and baguettes. The apartment was big and bright, and my landlady reduced my rent considerably because of the noise. I almost considered staying. But this is the part of Paris I know well. Took my hosts Paolo and Annie for coffee on the rue Mouffetard, one of my favourite streets in all Paris. Watched a man with waist-length dreadlocks push a toddler in a stroller beside an older child; I remember him from my stay a few years ago, though he didn’t have children then. Spent the rest of the day walking, walking, revisiting my old stomping grounds, and emailing from my room. Was not feeling well so took it easy, which was welcome. It was so windy a storekeeper told me a woman was blown right off her bicycle.
Today, walking again – there’s sun though it’s cold, and tomorrow will be rain. I walked to my favourite Monge market and all the same merchants were there, then down to find the Abbey Bookshop. A Canadian flag outside – the owner is from Toronto. It’s heaven, packed with books old and new, a wonderful place I'd never been to before. I wanted to talk to the owner Brian about my book but he was busy – I’ll probably go back tomorrow. Found by chance, as I looked around entranced, exactly the book I need right now: “Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction,” by Tracy Kidder and his editor. Later I sat in the Jardins du Luxembourg reading it. A guide on my own writing journey.
Lunch in a great student place off the Boulevard St. Michel with a soundtrack by the Shirelles, the Stones and B. B. King – heaven. Then to Luxembourg to see the Tudors. On the way, I did something I’ve always wanted to do – stop in the famous little umbrella shop on the Boul Mich. Hundreds of umbrellas. I treated myself to one that’s strong and very light, for tomorrow’s storm. Tonight dinner at a nearby bistro with my friend Juliet, a fellow blogger.
Tomorrow, my last day in this sublime city, in the rain. On Friday, off to London, where luckily it never rains.
