A Religious Experience

or, Flashmob in Paris the 18th of February.

At my high school reunion a couple months back, an old "friend," after learning that my boyfriend is Muslim, asked me in the most judgmental way, "So what religion are YOU?" It took me a few seconds to respond, for a few reasons... And when I came up with "Literature is my religion," apparently my time to respond had run out and I was thought a heathen. Now I know it's true... at least the religion part! And I don't think S/He will hold it against me ;) This is why.

You see, I went to this Flashmob thing. I had nothing better to do, not until three anyway. So I took my favorite book off the shelf--Jeanette Winterson's Art Objects and chose which passage I wanted to read--pretty much the whole book is worthy and I could never have anticipated how very perfect her voice would be for the occasion. I had no idea what I was in store for.

When I arrived, the Place St Michel was more crowded than usual... more like a Saturday night than a Wednesday at noon. Riot police had lined up their paddy wagons, clearly preparing for the worst. Who knows what can happen when you get a bunch of readers together, right?! I had a few minutes to wait for the whistle and was hoping to run into someone I knew, but alas, I stood alone and smoked a festive clove cigarette while the people came. I wished I had invited that group of students that I passed in front of Sainte Chappelle. I wished I had brought Filou. I wished I had enough courage to walk up to the Addonizio'esque French mom and her daughter with the oh-so-French embroidered beret and to tell them, "Comme vous êtes belles !" Each with her book in hand.

And then the whistle blew. At first it got quiet and I felt self-conscious. This is what I read:

“To begin with the reader. The ordinary reader is not primarily concerned with questions of structure and style. He or she decides on a book, enjoys it or doesn’t, finishes it or doesn’t, and is, perhaps affected by it.”

Second by second the din of dissonant voices rose and within just a few lines I was crying, yes crying... happy to have worn my dark sunglasses despite the ever-present rain clouds.

“When the fiction or the poem has a powerful effect likely to be lasting, the reader feels personally attached to both the work and the writer. Everyone has their favourite books to be read and re-read. Such things become talismans and love-tokens, even personality indicators, the truly bookish will mate on the strength of a spine… The world of the book is a total world and in a total world we fall in love.”

By this time, I was no longer sure if it was the mob or the book that was making me so emotional. I assure you, I could barely hear my own voice and my mouth was trembling and falling all over the words…

“Falling for a book is not the nymph Echo falling for the sound of her own voice nor is it the boy Narcissus falling for his own reflection. Those Greek myths warn us of the dangers of recognizing no reality but our own. Art is a way into other realities, other personalities. When I let myself be affected by a book, I let into myself new customs and new desires. The book does not reproduce me, it re-defines me, pushes at my boundaries, shatters the palings that guard my heart. Strong texts work along the borders of our minds and alter what already exists. They could not do this if they merely reflected what already exists. Of course, strong texts tend to become so familiar, even to people who have never read them, that they become part of what exists, at least a distort of them does. It is very strange to read something supposedly familiar, The Gospels, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, and to find that it is quite unlike our mental version of it. Without exception, the original will be as unsettling, as edgy as it ever was, we have learned a little and sentimentalised the rest….”

I read on through tears… and simultaneous laughter! Giddy does not begin to describe it. I felt much like I did almost twenty years ago coming out from under the anesthesia used by my oral surgeon when he pulled all four of my wisdom teeth! I looked around me and others were giddy, too. Probably not crying, but I didn’t want to stop reading long enough to look so closely. Instead, I pushed through the rush.

“… I do not mean to say that any of this is conscious; mostly it is not, and therein lies a difficulty. Art is conscious and its effect on the audience is to stimulate consciousness. This is sexy…” [and at this moment, I KNOW the older gentleman next to me was listening! I began to calm down.] “… this is exciting, it is also tiring, and even those who welcome art-excitement have an ordinary human longing for sleep. Nothing wrong with that but we cannot use the book as a pillow. The comfort and the rest to be got out of art is not of the passive forgetting kind, it is inner quiet of a high order, and it follows the intensity, the excitement we feel when exposed to something new. Or does it? Only if we are prepared to stay the course, not give up and doze off, not leap from rock to rock after new thrills. Books need to be deeply read which is one reason why it is wise never to trust a paid hack.”

In the unyielding din, I found myself wondering what others were reading, if they had chosen their books as appropriately as I. In the moment, I had given up understanding exactly what I was reading. Everything related to that moment. Every word was about that moment. We were making art… many without even knowing it.

“Our unconscious attitude to art is complex. We want it and we don’t want it, often simultaneously, and at the same time as a book is working intravenously we are working to immunise ourselves against it. Our best antidote to art as a powerful force independently affecting us is to say that it is only the image of ourselves that is affecting us. The doctrine of Realism saves us from a bad attack of Otherness and it is a doctrine that has been bolstered by the late-twentieth-century vogue for literary biography; tying the writer’s life with the writer’s work so that the work becomes a diary; small, private, explainable and explained away, much as Freud tried to explain art away.”

Just as I reached the white space, the second whistle blew and the crowd gave up the joyful noise of a Flashmob well executed, myself included, hooting, hollering and clapping—the muffled clapping of hundreds of hands on the books they were holding, and then the crowd began to disperse.

I’ll post a link to the video once I find it. Or if you find it first, please send it along. I’m just left of the fountain in a red coat and camel colored hat… with dark glasses, of course. Not hard to find in a crowd of black-clad Parisians! In the meantime, here is a quickie video of a Flash-freeze mob at Trocadero.

Short story long, if you have a chance to be a part of a flashmob, do it. Just do it!

The Important Things

It’s Election Day in the states and I’m watching Barack Obama and Michelle vote, live on Euronews—where I can choose to listen to English instead of the ever-annoying French voice over. There are looped segments explaining the Electoral College. Reporters connect the election dots in all directions—foreclosures, health care, and the recession. (We are calling it that now, aren’t we?) Sharply edited interviews with Iraqi citizens reveal mixed opinions, a nation currently overwhelmed with change. The “no comment” segment shows the long line of Kenyans in Kisumu waiting to cast their hand-written votes into a cardboard box. Notice there are two boxes and only one line.

Though we have plans to keep track via the continuing coverage—over couscous and Scrabble—I’ve just gotten word of an all-night election party to watch the results come in and to celebrate Obama’s victory. “Barack Obagels and cream cheese beginning at 3 AM… a Sarah Palin pinata which will be filled, naturally, with hot air. This event is open to non-Americans and even Republicans (we can hope that they see the error of their ways).”

I do hope the results are as positive as anticipated. It would be nice to have a president that “most” of us want… “for a change!” (Sorry. Had to say it ;)

Don’t worry! I did send off my vote-by-mail ballot before I left. Meanwhile, the biggest change I’m experiencing is the weather. One week back in town and I'm finally not aching at the mere thought of the cold. Morning temperatures were near freezing just after I arrived, but then the rains came—and they were lovely—and now the sun, fallen leaves, intermittent clouds. Two days of UV rays and comfortable evenings is sooooo good for this Californian fresh off the latest heatwave!

Whatever the supposedly unusual weather, no matter the home I’m in, it’s awe inspiring how fall flies by. As a student, I became aware of the slow awakening that happens in the first few weeks of the fall, then the downhill spiral to Christmas before winter really sinks in her teeth. This year I’m learning that fall is also a pretty busy time in the publishing industry.

I have officially sent out several copies of two manuscripts to contests of various scope and prize, and though many of the poems—especially those in the longer collection—need some tweaking, it feels really good to just get them bundled and sent away. I always wait until the last minute thinking that I’ll finally get around to those final revisions! And there are plenty of poetry contests in the fall.

The most recent batch of submission was postmarked not long after midnight on October 31st… at the only 24 hour post office in Paris. We took the dog. It was only slightly raining.

Bring on the rejection letters!

Anniversary

a wish for tranquility


He bought me this beautiful bouquet as a peace offering after last weekend’s fight—something about my snapping at him when he was trying to teach me some auto-formatting tricks on Word—which went from an insignificant quibble to “it’s over” in record time. He spares no expense in making each bouquet full and dense, perfectly balanced in color and fragrance, and consequently has a good relationship with the flower vendor in the Metro here at Châtelet. Usually, the flowers are just because. I remember the days when he brought me more modest arrangements, single roses before simple dinners at my place in the fifteenth.




Our first date was up there in the clouds… He said he could make my television receive more than one channel, and he did. He loves the idea that I might have used my TV as a ploy to get him to my apartment. Now we have too many channels, most with nothing worth watching, but we do anyway. The apartment we share is twice the size of either one of our studios was back then, but some days it feels just too close, especially now that he’s been diagnosed with pet allergies… a big problem with two cats, a Shih Tzu and only 250 square feet. They haven't been allowed on the bed in months.



Tomorrow marks one year since I left California to pursue life and love in the City of Light, and I have to admit: The year is coming to a rather disappointing close. Let my try to sum up its lessons: French red tape is endless and incredibly sticky; Long distance friendships are tricky and new ones are hard to come by—especially in my small circle of writers and expats who are forever coming… and going; And love is elusive, especially, to put it bluntly, when you’re someone’s bitch—at turns and in all senses of the word.

Next week, Filou, the cats and I are headed for Los Angeles. I will attend my twenty-year class reunion and spend a lot of time with family and friends. I do have a return ticket and fully intend to use it, but having been shut down yet one more time by French government clerks, I don’t know quite how I'll go forward in this inhospitable land of far-fetched dreams and close quarters. Something's got to give, and I may very well end up back in California teaching for the spring semester. This season of turning leaves is bittersweet, to say the least.



For now, I have a few months of reflection and reminiscing to look forward to, so I will try to be more religious about my blogging. For the past year, I’ve had nothing but time. Not needing or wanting to chase down under-the-table tutoring gigs left me free to do so many things, but it always felt like there would be another endless lot of days to use wisely. Now, pondering the potentially numbered days I may have left here, I can only hope that the old “emotion recollected in tranquility” will lead to some fruitful writing, if not on this blog, then on some page somewhere.

Grace Kelly

at the Hotel de Ville

I think it was the hottest day (so far) this summer, and I was feeling anything but graceful... all sweaty and exhausted from Wednesday's running around. But I had been meaning for weeks to visit the much publicized Grace Kelly exhibit at the Hotel de Ville, so I took a break from my errands and joined the cue in the afternoon shadow of the impressive building. The wait was about 45 minutes followed by a quick pass though the metal detector, my small purse through the x-ray machine.



Now I don't pretend to be a great fan... Until Wednesday, all I knew about the princess was that she was one--and that Madonna names her in "Vogue." Since visiting the exhibit, I know only a little more, but enough... for now. These photos come from the Taschen book I bought on my way out. Admission to the exhibit is free, so the book seemed requisite, especially since no photos are allowed.



As an American film star, she made 10 movies in the 3 1/2 years (before she met His Serene Highness Prince Albert Rainier III of Monaco in 1956,) three of which were Alfred Hitchcock films. The exhibit had letters and telegrams on display spanning the length of her whirlwind career, many from Hitchcock himself who seems to have been one of her biggest fans. These photos come from her work on Dial M for Murder in which her character's husband hires someone to kill her.



What I find most fascinating about these photos is Francois Truffaut's observation that "Hitchcock filmed scenes of love as if they were scenes of murder and scenes of murder as if they were scenes of love." Though fascinating, this is not exactly groundbreaking art... I observed the same thing at the Musee D'Orsay and wrote a poem about it, "An Hour with Madame Sabatier:" "How death can look like pleasure/on a woman..."



Film footage projected on the walls of the salon shows segments from her movies and her life. But my favorite aspect of the exhibit was the generous spattering of costumes and dresses placed around the rooms. This one is platinum colored satin with a matching shawl. She wore it to the Oscars in 1955 where she won Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for her roll in The Country Girl. Of course, there's nothing country girl about the dress!



She wore another gorgeous dress on screen in a film I might have seen while channel surfing back in California--Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. I love to see the designers' sketches... what a production to dress such an icon!



At the far end of the salon is her royal wedding dress, silk, I think. I have no pictures of her in that lovely gown, but I love this pre-wedding photo of her with Louis Armstrong, taken more to show off her giant rock-of-a-ring than to prove her interest in jazz!



After seeing her invitations, seating plans, and photographs from the big event, you climb a few steps to a long corridor lined with some of the ball gowns she wore as Her Serene Highness, Princess of Monaco. I wonder if my mother and grandmother thought of Princess Grace as I did/do Princess Di... My grandma even shared her name, though she always used her middle name instead.

The couple were married twenty-six years before she died after a car crash due to a stroke. She was almost fifty-three. She lived a charmed life which ended tragically as do so many charmed lives... Reportedly, Princess Di was the only funeral attendee from the English Royal Palace.

Grace Kelly once said that her success came too easily for her to truly appreciate it. Isn't this the case for so many beauties? She has been remembered as a vixen dressed as an angel... at once expressive and repressed... but these easy juxtapositions are too typically feminine.

In any case, I think that her legacy is her passionate spirit outfitted in pure grace.

Paris Plages

The last time I wrote, the spring leaves were just opening, waxy and bright green. Now they are beginning to fall. But the gay mayor of gay Paris has a grand way to celebrate these dog days of summer... From July 21 to August 21 the city of Paris closes the right-bank access road stretching the length of the two isles and installs beach style amusements. It's (not quite) like we have a beachfront apartment! This is a little recount of my morning walk...

Pss) I will have to look into formatting options for future posts as the quality of this one leaves a lot to be desired.



I love Pink Martini's affinity for parody... despite the festive tone of this song, it's about a woman burnt out on her scene: "My bedroom is like a cage... the sun reaches in the windows... I've known the smell of love... now, a single flower among my entourage makes me sick." And the repeated chorus translates to, "I don't want to work, I don't want to lunch, I only want to forget... so I smoke..."

You might also like to check out their crazy rendition of "Que Sera, Sera!" It should make a girl think twice about that old adage!