So much to tell!

Friday 6/1

On Friday, I went to the Musee D'Orsay, which used to be an old train station. According to Rick Steves, it “barely escaped the wrecking ball in the 1970s.” It is so hard to believe that they were going to tear it down, considering that it is so beautiful. The ceiling of the main gallery is made of arched windows, so the main gallery is flooded with light. The main gallery has conservative art from the 19^th century, which includes Greek-looking statues and paintings in the classical style. My Rick Steves guidebook directed me toward the Jean-Auguste-Dominque Ingres’ “The Source” and Alexandre Cabanel’s “The Birth of Venus.” Both of these paintings have very fleshy, nude women—Ingres’ woman is standing up and Cabanel’s Venus is lying down. The best part of the Ingres’ painting was the way he painted the water flowing down from the jug on the woman’s shoulder.

Then, I moved into the Realism section. My favorite part of this was Honore Daumier’s collection of busts “Celebrities of the Happy Medium.” Since he was trained as a political cartoonist, these are essentially political cartoons turned into statues, and meant to mock members of Parliament. They were hilarious…they had exaggerated features and crossed eyes, and their faces were usually twisted and screwed up into ridiculous expressions.

I wandered into the section of paintings with Eastern themes. This was actually my favorite section, which was not even mentioned in the guidebook. One of my favorite paintings was “Esclave d’Amour et Lumiere des Yeux” (“Slave of Love and Light of the Eyes”—my translation) by Etienne Dinet. It is a painting of a man in a turban with his arms around a woman with a blue sari, a red veil and lots of bracelets. Their backdrop is a bush of pink flowers and a starry night sky. Apparently Dinet painted this after visiting Algeria for the first time; he would later convert to Islam.

Then I went up to the Impressionist floor. Without question, my favorite painting was Monet’s “Cathedrale de Rouen.”  He spent an entire day observing the Rouen Cathedral from across the street and would do a new painting of it every time the light changed. There are 18 of these paintings, but the Musee D’Orsay only has one five or six of them. That is unfortunate, because he intended them to go all together. Here’s one description of it:

Changeant de canevas selon la lumière, Monet suivait les heures de la journée, depuis le petit matin avec la façade en bleu ombré de brouillard, à l'après-midi , quand le soleil disparaissant derrière les constructions de la ville, transformait l'oeuvre de pierre érodée par le temps en une étrange fabrique d'orange et de bleu. 

Here's what it means: “Changing his canvas according to the light, Monet followed the day’s hours, from the wee hours when the façade was in a shadowy blue of fog, to the afternoon, when the sun, disappearing behind the buildings of the city, transformed this work of stone eroded by time into a strange mix of orange and blue.”

That evening, I was getting ready for bed after what had been a busy week. But when Tiphaine arrived home around 11:00 pm, she asked if I wanted to go out, and I suddenly felt awake again. We were not just going out to any old bar, but to the Roland Garros VIP Players Party at a club literally right underneath the Arc de Triomphe. There was a catch, however: it was a club “tres classe” and she did not think I could get in without high heels, but that I was welcome to try. I showed her the dress I planned to wear, a halter-top, deep v-neck black dress that I had worn for a bridesmaid's dress in a wedding. When I tried it on for her, she pronounced it “assez classe” (classy enough). I can thank Kristen Highum and JC Penney for having that dress!

We had to hurry, so I did not have time to put much makeup on. When we got to the club, Tiphaine realized that in our rush to get there, she had forgotten her own heels. At this point we were not sure either of us would get in, even with her Roland Garros ID. I was at a double disadvantage, with no Roland Garros ID and no heels either! However, when she showed the bouncer her Roland Garros ID and said I was with her, they must have overlooked our lack of high heels, because they let us in.

I have never seen so many tall, beautiful people in one room before. Even journalists were beautiful… At 5’6 with my black flats on, I felt tiny…but Tiphaine is at least a couple inches shorter than I am and was in flats too, so at least I was not technically the shortest person in the room.

The women behind the bar serving the drinks looked like models as well. Tiphaine managed to get me a ribbon to tie around my wrist that said “Roland Garros VIP Players Party,” which then meant that I could sip Cristal champagne for free all night.

The club was underground, and opened up into an area with no roof, where the Arc de Triomphe towered over us. This was the area where people would go if they wanted to dance and smoke at the same time. My mom remarked that it was too bad I did not have my camera with me, but then commented that “people probably were not taking photos anyway.” But I corrected her: “Actually, Mom, everybody in the room had a cigarette and a drink in one hand, and their iphone in the other…they would take pictures with their iphones.”

We spent the night hanging out with Tiphaine’s journalist friends and even saw some tennis players. The ones she pointed out to me were low-ranked so she couldn’t remember their names…but I did brush elbows with them a few times when it got crowded.

People danced the night away, mostly to American songs and singers, such as Rihanna, Jay-Z and Gotye. I only remember one French song being played. At about 3:00 am, they set off what looked like sparklers on the perimeter of the open-air area beneath the Arc.

It was so surreal...all I could think was "Me, Kirsten Griffin, five-foot six, from St. Paul, Minnesota...I'm at the Roland Garros VIP Players Party in Paris under the Arc de Triomphe! Is this a dream? Did I just step into Woody Allen's 'Midnight in Paris'? Did I just get transported into a 2012 version of a Great Gatsby novel?"

We arrived home at 4:00 am; it was a night to remember.

Sun. 6/1

At 11:00 am, I went to Mass at La Chapelle de Sainte Rita with Yseult. This chapel is actually an extension of Trinity Church where Yseult works, but it is located in a different neighborhood, the Pigalle area. This area is full of tourists, seedy nightclubs and prostitution. The Chapel is not in a building that looks like a chapel, but rather on the first floor of a building full of apartments and shops. It was built in 1956 and then reworked several years ago by architect Jean Jolivel. It is actually located underneath Henri Matisse’s old studio! Yseult said that not a lot of people are aware of that. She showed me the back staircase leading up to his old studio, which has a large serpent carved at the bottom of the banister. I am not sure what the studio has been transformed into now.

On our way to Saint Rita’s, we rode the Metro sitting next to an Imam. One of those musicians making their living by playing music in the metro cars was playing a Jazz song that sounded like it was from the 1940s, and reminded me of my Grandpa Harley. Yseult was telling me that it is not uncommon for people to make a living playing their instruments in the metro. She said that in the opposite direction of that line, there is a British man who plays all Beatles music.

Saint Rita’s chapel had a mix of people from all over the world. The woman sitting next to me figured out I was not French, so when it came time to pass the peace, she reached over to shake my hand, while I leaned over to kiss her on the cheeks, as the French do. So we ended up doing both, clasping hands while kissing on the cheeks.

Yseult and I returned home to eat Sunday dinner: salad, and steak and onions cooked in wine, and of course, wine to drink! I spent the rest of the day finishing a translation project that I had started on Saturday and was due on Monday. In the evening, I told Yseult that I wanted to go for a walk or a run and asked what she thought of the Bois de Boulogne, which is relatively nearby. She said she thought there were too many prostitutes there and it would not be a safe enough place and suggested the Parc Monceau. It is a gated park, but free to enter and has people sitting on benches, walking, running, rollerblading, etc. And of course, there are couples making out on the benches…it is summertime in Paris, after all.

Mon. 6/4

After a day of translating, I went with Tiphaine to another Roland Garros party, but this one was not as “classe” so I did not have to worry about wearing heels. Actually, this party seemed a lot seedier than the last one…more like a rave (although I have never actually been to a rave, but I imagine that is what it would be like). People packed in tighter than sardines and lights flashing to the point that it could even give a non-epileptic a seizure. We returned home at 3:00 am from this one.

Tues. 6/5

I awoke after three hours of sleep, because I had a translation project to turn in at noon. After I finished, I headed out to Roland Garros, where I was supposed to meet up with Tiphaine and her friends. As it turned out, Tiphaine couldn’t get away long enough to join us, and it was just her friend Gregoire who was there. 

Greg is a lobbyist for the UMP party (Jacque Chirac’s party, center-right). He lobbied on behalf of business interests, both large and small. He studied economics and has lived in both Morocco and Spain. His grandparents were from Italy, but he was born in France. He has a lot of family in Morocco, which is why he ended up working there. He wanted to practice his English, so we had fun speaking both English and French.

Tiphaine and I get along really well as roommates. Even though she gets back late from Roland Garros every night (between 11:00 pm and midnight), if I’m awake she comes in, says hi and we talk a little bit about what happened in our days.

Our rooms used to be one big room, so there is just a thin wall with a window between us. Thus, we can have a conversation and even pass things through the window. The other night, she asked me “Tu veux des bonbons?” (“Want some candy?”) She passed me some kind of gummy bear candy through the window.

The other night, I was just telling her how different this experience feels from the last time I was in France. I was here from January to May 2004, not long after the Iraq war had started, and only three years after the 9/11 and the Afghanistan invasion. When I could get away with it, I would say I was Canadian. I was relieved when people would place my foreign accent as Norwegian or Swiss rather than American so I could avoid that whole discussion. I remember being in Switzerland and after a protest seeing the ground littered with pieces of paper comparing Bush and Hitler. When I was recounting this with Tiphaine, we had a good laugh over the term “freedom fries” that came into being at that time. She said she was actually disappointed by Hollande’s election and wanted Sarkozy. According to her, the wealthy are leaving France for Canada and Monaco. She said that like everyone, she loves her mandatory five weeks of vacation per year, but that she does not think that it is necessarily good for the economy.

Yseult said as much regarding retirement—Hollande wants to keep the retirement age at sixty or lower. She thinks if people are living longer and healthier lives, they should be working longer.

Other interesting things about Yseult..she was telling me that she was born in the Central African Republic and lived there until she was three years old. Her parents had some kind of business there—I think it had to do with printing. Either her husband’s family or her family or both were originally from Belgium, which is why their last name, Desmedt, does not sound French (I originally thought it was German.) She was wearing a ring on her finger with an interesting symbol on it, and I asked her about it. She said it was her “blazon” (means something like insignia or crest), which changes form when you marry.

Last night, when we were eating dinner, we were talking about her father, who lives in the building and is 90 years old (I mentioned him in a previous entry). She said he is forgetting everything recent, but can still tell you all about World War II. His brother (Yseult’s uncle) had blond hair, blue eyes, spoke German fluently and was an engineer, so he actually spent time posing as a German engineer but actually making their planes crash. He was caught near the end of the war and imprisoned in a concentration camp. For years, Yseult’s father tried to find his brother, with the glimmer of hope that he might be alive somewhere. Finally, five or six years ago, he got in touch with an author of a book on World War II and concentration camps, and through this author found a record that his brother had been gassed there. Imagine that—to spend over sixty years not knowing if your sibling was alive or dead. The brother was only 23 when he was imprisoned.

Yseult told me that if I ask him about the war, he will spend the whole day talking about it. So, I might actually go to his apartment sometime and ask him about it, and if it’s okay with him, write out what he’s saying, because there are so few WWII vets left. Besides, I love older people, and I find their French very easy to understand because they talk slower and don’t use “argot” (slang).

After we finished talking about her father’s experience in WWII, Yseult said “The only war I remember was 1968 [1968 was a year of a lot of student riots and protests across Europe.]…that was my war. I was fifteen years old, and even high schools were closed. I remember reading Margaret Mitchell’s ‘Gone with the Wind’…some things did need to change, but I think that some things changed for the worse, for example, children’s respect for adults.”

Other interesting tidbits:

•     Marina (21 years old), was a “ramasseuse” (ballgirl) about ten years ago at the French Open, so there’s a picture of her with one of the Williams sisters in the living room.
•    Tiphaine has a few days off after Roland Garros (which she definitely deserves!), so we might go up to Normandy for a few days to stay with one of her friends. The Desmedts actually have a house there, next door to the house where Marcel Proust lived! However, a few years ago, it burned down, but luckily, they all escaped unharmed. It is now in the process of being rebuilt (so we can’t stay there).
•       I am living on the same street as one of the Ministers who drafted the constitution for the Fifth French Republic. I am also in close proximity to the residence of former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Yseult said that she was once at a daily mass at a German church in this neighborhood and saw him there.
•     I just finished eating dinner with Aurore and Marina (Tiphaine was at a meeting for Roland Garros). Aurore stopped by after work and made dinner. Those two are so entertaining together—they should have a show. They are so animated and I feel very comfortable talking with them. They are obsessed with this Canadian serial killer who recently escaped to Paris, was seen in Aurore’s neighborhood, and thankfully just got arrested in Berlin. So that was the topic of discussion tonight. Marina is studying film at the Sorbonne, and I asked her if she knew about the Cohen brothers. She knew about them, but has never seen “The Big Lebowski (a favorite of mine), so maybe I’ll have to see if I can find a version of it here!
•    Yesterday I finished a translation for the Department of Defense in the Kingdom of Morocco. It was actually incredibly boring, but it sounds cool to say, doesn’t it?
•     Tomorrow I am meeting Elisabeth at a Metro stop to pick up my camera charger and cord, which I left at her place in Antony…so I should be able to upload photos soon!