okay okay okay okay okay

sorry mother
I know you were just making a joke that I took to heart just because it takes a bit of time to write out these little posts and it takes a bit more to upload photos and and arrange them just so. So actually it is a bit of a time investment and that's why I was a little bit ticked. It reminded me of that one time after I got my ACT results and was ONE POINT away from having a full scholarship, and I only got a half scholarship, and you said, "you just lost yourself nineteen hundred dollars" because you thought it was hilarious! And I did not. And I thought writing that on the bottom of my post was hilarious. And you did not. So mother, I am sorry. Very sorry, and maybe the reason I get so upset about these things is because they are usually true. Yep, I did lose myself $1900, and yes, my blog really is not that important. So I am sorry for writing that because I love you so much and I know you were making a joke!

And I promise to write about you every post for this whole month of December even though my blog doesn't really matter. Which I know. And knew even before you told me :)

Starting today.

My mom (and dad) brought me here when I think I was six...? Maybe five, or maybe seven.

We spent a couple of days in the Loire Valley in our wood-paneled chrysler van, going from chateau to chateau. I even remember climbing out of the car to go to Chambord and telling my dad, "I don't like these kind of days when we drive in the car for a just a little bit and then get out and then have to get in and out again." I remember my dad looking at me so confusedly, like "you don't?" and all I could think was that it was obvious that I would rather either stay in the car most of the day and sleep/watch the landscape, or walk around most of the day. It was a hard transition to do that all day without getting exhausted. But give me a break. I was only six! And as soon as I got inside the chateau, I'm pretty sure I loved it. But this chateau, Chenonceau, was my favorite, and has been since.

I went to it on Saturday by myself. It took about eight hours of travel time total, but it was really fun, and I like riding trains, and I was trying to say goodbye to them. I wrote in my journal and read my book and listened to my ipod and I really loved it. I got to the chateau and it was rainy and cloudy. I went to the maze first, and I could see over the hedges this time. There was no reason I would hit a dead-end this time, and the obstacles happened to be trying to get around enormous puddles rather than trying to find my way to the middle. I remember it was actually difficult last time. Or maybe that was a different maze that we did that was actually hard, but my mom was nice and let me choose which way we would go, or would let one of my sisters choose while I followed, my long straight hair bouncing up and down while I probably chased after them giggling hysterically the way little kids do in that navy blue sweatshirt I had gotten in Switzerland. What ever happened to the sweatshirt, mother?

I do remember that after a while I was hungry and I was ready to go, so I came up to my mom and said something annoying like, "mommy can we PLEEEEASE gooo...." and mother was just looking at the chateau. I think Cami wasn't happy about something. I can't remember what. So Mother was waiting until Father was done talking to Cami. The sun was setting over the chateau and I looked at her looking at the chateau, and I could tell that she thought it was really really beautiful. So I looked at it too, looked at the beautiful arches over the water, and it's reflection, and I remembered to myself that this was the most beautiful chateau I had ever seen, with the yellow light on the wall of the chateau and the orange sky reflected in the water.

It was about fifteen years later when I came again. (Isn't that weird that I can say "fifteen years later" and it's legitimate? Old.) I couldn't spend very much time in the gardens, but I had given myself about five hours to be here, which was kind of a long time. And the entrance fee was eight euros. I ended up sitting in the hallway over the bridge and writing in my journal for a long time because it was so rainy.

I looked at the windows in the hallway and remembered how last time I was here I was not tall enough to look out and see out of the window without jumping, or I may have made that up as I sometimes do with my memory without realizing it.

And my mom came and picked me up when she saw me jumping and said things like, "look! there's the river, and you can see the gardens over there, and there's the island in the middle of the river," pointing out each of those things with her eyes at my eye level. And then our whole family, all seven of us walked down that black and white tiled hallway, or maybe we were running again, like I saw all of those little kids doing on saturday, or maybe we were hopping from black square to black square, but we were probably making the museum people nervous like we usually did, all five of us who were age eleven or younger, but we liked being in chateaux, because I think all of us could feel like princesses, looking out the windows imperiously and sauntering down the stones stairs with our arms outstretched like ballerinas.

marriage as it should be

good song that you could listen to while reading this if you want:

I was in the souvenir/gift shop of the Cluny Museum tonight looking over the postcards I've seen several times already, sliding my hand across glossy covers of books that whisper to me "you can't fit me in your suitcase." And I want to buy those books almost just to prove that yes, I will find a way to fit all of you, this whole store actually, into my suitcase and none of you can stop me. Actually, I was not feeling so hostile. I was just doing an assignment, happy to be back at one of my favorite museums in the city. I heard English everywhere. There were a lot of Americans in the museum today. I think it was "if you are an American, come to the Cluny Museum" day, but I don't know. I could be wrong. I kept hearing them and tried not to slip and fall into that deep puddle of warmth and comfort that is homesickness.

I had barely been in the shop for a second when I saw an American woman holding two books in her hand, and I caught the end of her conversation with her husband who was standing at the door. I recognized her pose, leaning across the book table, eyebrows raised and a hint of panic, trying not to inconvenience her husband who wanted to leave the store, but knowing that she would really really like having those books. She was a sweet-looking woman, with mid-length dark blond hair and a kind, middle-aged face and she wore comfortable walking shoes and a purse slung across her body and a little sweater to combat the constant but mild rain outside. "I just think it would be really interesting to read about" she said, looking to her husband.

He was taller than most french men with a collared shirt tucked into some belted levis. He wore some kind of tennis shoe and some glasses, and he was a middle-aged man with a short, american hair-cut and a face that I wouldn't really describe as attractive, but he wasn't unattractive. Maybe just like a dad, or a 25-years-of-marriage type of look. He was probably in his later-forties. But probably not late forties. He was edged near the door, waiting for whatever his wife needed to purchase before they were off again into the rainy streets of Paris. "Which ever you want dear," he said kindly, understandingly. But in a sympathizing understanding way, not an empathizing kind of understanding way. Because he doesn't buy those kinds of things, but he knows that she really likes to. She smiled, saying something about getting the bigger book, and she hopped over to the cash register where the woman behind the desk said, "bonjour!" boredly and took the book. The woman buying the book might have said bonjour back, but it would have been so quietly that I didn't hear. And I know all of this because I kept spying on them when I heard the husband say she could get which ever she wanted, and their entire married life spanned out before me as I filled in the details of where they were from, how long they've been planning this trip to Paris, and where else they would be going after this museum. They had just come from the Pantheon and they were making their way toward Notre Dame, where they would climb the tower together, and the map of Paris in the husband's head would fill out into reality as he looked at monuments and traffic and nodded his head with his hand to his chin, muttering to himself, and the wife would lean against the metal fence, breathing deeply while she looked at the Seine and the 19th century architecture and held her bag from the Cluny Museum in her cold, wet hand. And then when they would go to their hotel tonight, she would read about The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries after they planned their day for tomorrow, and when she closed her eyes she would think of the beautifully frozen 15th century woman in her beautiful dresses and shiny necklaces and silvery hair and they would weave in and out of her dreams while she deciphered the meaning. And so I kept watching them. And I watched the purchasing woman smile warmly but still a bit shyly at the woman working as she scanned the book and told her it was huit euro quatre-vingt quinze centimes, and the woman's eyes widened, asking the question with her eyes, and the working woman flipped the screen of the register around pointedly so she could see that the book was 8.95 euros. She handed the money to her, smiling again, and said "merci" before going back to her husband who was standing at the door in the most clear body language that said he was ready to go but he would wait, and they turned together and walked out of the bookshop, out of the museum, talking.

I fell in love with a new artist at the Musée d'Orsay today.

This was painted for the library of the Princess of Bassiano. I have no idea who she is, and google doesn't really either. But she was a princess. And this painting is enormous.

Isn't it beautiful? I'm going to be a nerd and say that I like the whole thing about Adam and Eve, about gaining knowledge, about the fact that they are in a library. The colors and texture of the paint are just really gorgeous.

And all of the figures that are so colorful in the background, those women with furs and expensive fabrics, and the man and his daughter talking, and the woman who has just finished her tea, and the little cute dog at the bottom and the newspapers that have spilled on to the floor. All of the things are so colorful, and then you realize that what your eye has been aching to go to after looking at the color and the shapes and the almost naked painting, is that one girl in the front, the girl that is black and somber and beautiful.



And you realize that that is you, that is you when you're watching, when you're learning, when you're reading, when you're thinking.

and you wish you had that beautiful profile of hers, and you know how she feels, and you know that really, you are actually her. And you feel like you need to sit down next to her, or you wish she had written a book so you could read what she was thinking, but you can't do any of these things, so you stand there for a while with your mouth open and just look at the flat canvas, and people walk behind you and to the side of you and look at the painting for a few seconds, and then look at you, and then back at the painting, and then of their maps and they keep walking. And then you pull out your camera and take pictures and fake swear in your head about the fact that the colors are totally off.

That painting that I'm going to have copied for my library when I grow up was painted by Edouard Vuillard, and so are these little beauties that I went rabidly searching for after falling in love with that first painting and needing more of Vuillard. I was pleasantly surprised:

The second one was painted after the chapel at Versailles. Isn't it lovely? If you get a chance if you visit the Musée D'Orsay, please see these. Or try to plan some time to spend looking at paintings and painters you have never heard of. I realize that not everyone has time to do that with limited visiting time in Paris. So, I am thankful for that. Very much so.

And that I didn't die when I almost got hit by a bus because I was an idiot. I am very grateful for that.

Fontainebleau and Vaux-le-Vicompte

Vaux-le-Vicompte
(true story: the man who owned this--someone working for Louis XIV, threw a better party than the king. The king got so jealous that he accused him of embezzlement, and threw him in jail for the rest of his life.)

Vaux-le-Vicompte

Whenever I go to really rich houses/palaces/chateaux, I always like to look in the mirrors in the huge rooms at myself. I try not to look like I'm staring at myself in the mirror, because there are always a lot of other people milling around, fixing their hair, listening to the audio guide--or not. But I look in the mirror, imagine my hair around my face is piled on top of my head, and I wonder if I look like I could live there.

At Fountainebleau, for some reason I couldn't see myself as part of that house. I could imagine myself as the maidservant, or a cook, or something, because in the bright, natural lighting of that room, and from winter's theft of warmth and my healthy complexion, I did not look like I could live there. My eyes looked sallow, and deep, and there were bags below my eyes. The gardens were beautiful, with a lot of dirt, which the french seem to do a lot when they conquer nature in their gardens. I fell asleep for the whole drive to Vaux-le-Vicompte. I woke up and it was in front of me, with a small moat and scaffolding on the right side of the chateau. I was surprised and half put-off/laughing so hard when I saw all of the wax figures inside of the chateau, endlessly writing letters, or presenting people, or dancing. It was in the ballroom where the lighting was lowered, and there was a mirror again, and I looked into my own eyes and imagined myself dancing, imagined all of the secrets I had, and the beautiful dresses I would wear. This is kind of embarrassing, but really the best part of visiting these places. When I was seven and my family went to a lot of castles in the Loire Valley, I was pretty sure I would return as a princess and live in these castles. Especially Chambord. And by pretty sure, I mean that I wondered how I could have fifteen whole years to figure out how to be a princess, so there was no need to think it wouldn't happen. But, this is second best. And then I turned around and saw to my surprise, and to the discredit of the room, not only wax figures enjoying fake macaroons and talking animatedly with their bodies but with no expression, but an enormous screen that was showing ridiculously dancing people in eighteenth century garb, and having a positively jovial time.

But the grounds were absolutely beautiful despite the smell of manure that pervaded the air because of the grounds crew's work. Ponds and fountains littered the garden, and I walked down to a canal,

down some stairs, and watched some other visitors driving in golf carts on the other side of the canal, where there was a forest and a green hill and a statue. All of the stone was old, discolored and worn-looking, with moss and lichen growing.

There was a whole row of fountains that were turned off, the kind with layers of shell-type shapes down and down, and I climbed on to the bottom shell, and looked across the canal before I got nervous someone would steal my new coat and my favorite purse. And I was mad that no one was there to take my picture. And it was a good thing I climbed down when I did because I heard my professor turning the corner, and remembered his story about his study abroad group years ago where they almost got thrown out of a chateau because they were chimneying up a spiral staircase. So I got down quickly and headed to the gift shop.

my picks for french interiors today:

all of the walls were painted like this. so beautiful. and this one on the right, never thought i would fall in love with a door frame.

beautiful beautiful chairs and couch.



of course, have to show some of the library. look at that ladder. look it.


aaaand...after much deliberation, and a coat bought before I bought this one (that i need to return)...here is the final choice. A black trench coat. Look at the second one to see how soft and silky and smooth it is. You want to hug me now, don't you? (photo credits for these go to Angela and Haidy)



look at this



yay! love love love.