Beth Arnold

Letter From Paris: January in Photos

 

The holiday season lingered...

 

Letter From Paris: Graffiti No.2

Image via Wikipedia

What do we see when we open our eyes and mind?

Last fall, when my Lone Wolf husband and I moved from the stunning Place des Victoires to the 20th Arrondissement of Paris, it took us some time to adjust. We had been surrounded by the fairy tale Paris--the Paris that catches your breath and doesn't give it back until you exhale her beauty back to her. Until you reckon your relationship with her on an intellectually substantial plane as well as the one of pure delight.

Our first six months in the 20th compelled us to dig deeper in our views of Paris--and to see our new neighborhood in a fresh way. The mix of some handsome old but many more ugly block-ish new buildings (than we'd had in the center of Paris) and the lack of iconic monuments created a gap in our experience that needed to be filled with urban landscape appreciation of an alternative sort. In my opinion, the way one sees and experiences any place the most thoroughly and best is to walk through it.

Within a few weeks, we'd taken a promenade that spit us out on rue de Ménilmontant ...

This was one of the first street scenes that not only got my attention but excited me. I later discovered it is the work of a famous Parisian street artist name Jerôme MESNAGER.

 

Jours of Our Lives: 8) HERE COMES THE SUN

Illustration by Elizabeth Cannon

 

An ongoing series about uprooting our lives in America and moving to France. For what's happened before, see previous Jours of Our Lives entries here.

THE DIVA STEPPED into the light, her bearing regal, her posture erect. It was 2 o’clock on New Year’s Day, and we’d chosen to set a cultural tone for our 2003 start on this adventure to find the creative life, to see ourselves and the world in new ways, to shake and rattle the lethargy in our systems. We sat in folding chairs of the Eglise Saint-Julien-Le-Pauvre, the oldest sanctuary in Paris and one of two Greek Melkite Catholic parishes. The lighting was subdued as  Catherine Manandaza (Image above via YouTube) thrilled us through Mozart and Ave Maria, and the chamber orchestra of violin virtuosos flawlessly performed Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. 

The next day Jim began this new season of our lives by heading back to Galerie Daniel Besseiche and Pierre-Humbert’s painting. He’d hoped to meet and talk with Monsieur Pierre-Humbert, but the gallery representative, Alice Pennington-Mellor, told him the artist had died 10 years before. With good luck in timing, though, Jim met Pierre-Humbert’s widow—who just happened to have a rendezvous that day at the gallery!

Anne Pierre-Humbert

Letter From Paris: Isadora Duncan and Gertrude Stein--Two Mysteries Solved

Isadora Duncan Image via Wikipedia

Once upon a time, a lawyer friend of mine wanted me to go hang out in a small Arkansas town, pretend I was someone I wasn't, make friends with a few people, and do a little investigative work for a suit he was trying.  Should I have said, yes?  Well, I didn't.  Seemed a bit creepy to me not to mention the fact that the town was in south Arkansas (think a little north of True Blood), and who knew what could become of me.  What creatures lurk in those dark fields?

But I have solved a couple of my own mysteries in Paris.  As some of you will recall when I first wrote about Isadora Duncan on these pages (click here for a little refresher), I said that Ms. Duncan was supposed to be interred in Le Cimetière du Père-Lachaise next to her children who drowned in the Seine.  I fretted over the poor lost babes, because I hadn't found them in the columbarium.  Their whereabouts haunted me, and I recently went back to the famous cemetery to see if I could discover any clues as to where they might be.

 

Patrick and Deidre, the plates of Isadora Duncan's children

Letter From Paris: Learning to See Like Matisse

Image via Wikipedia

Every expatriate has a story of how and why he left his home and came to live in a foreign land. These accounts may be tales of romance. They may thrill or entertain. The expat may never have meant to stay, but somehow new roots burrowed into foreign soil.

I have been telling my own tale in a series on my blog called "Jours of Our Lives." But I will quickly explain now that my journey in France started because of the painter Henri Matisse, along with my desire to live here. My husband, James Morgan, and I came to follow the artistic life of Matisse and to learn to see, and we spent six months driving across France doing this and another 13 months living in the village of Collioure, where Matisse helped invent Fauvism. We considered the work of Matisse, his color and light, and the perspective in which he created his pieces everywhere we went. I can tell you that this journey for me was dreamy.

And so when a friend emailed us about the current show at the Mona Bismarck Foundation--Another Language: Matisse As Printmaker--we definitely were interested. If you're not familiar with this lovely cultural center in Paris, let me catch you up...

Jours of Our Lives: 7) A LIGHT IN THE WINDOW

Illustration by Elizabeth Cannon

An ongoing series about uprooting our lives in America and moving to France. For what's happened before, see previous Jours of Our Lives entries here.

 

THERE WAS AN underlying sadness during Christmas week because my chicks were flying home. When Jim and I left Little Rock for France in late November, we at least knew we’d see one another again in only two and a half weeks. Now we were parting with no meeting planned.

I have chosen to be a nomad, but Bret has been forced; at least Blair has an apartment that doesn’t shut for holidays. What Jim and I were doing was momentous—closing down 501 Holly in Little Rock, my daughters’ childhood home, the place where our lives came together as a family, the house where they could walk in the door and their mama would cook them a meal and their stepfather would act silly with them. They could sleep in their own beds. The dog and cat would greet them with affection. Their clothes hung in their closets.

They felt safe.

501 Holly in Little Rock

 

Letter From Paris presents...Paris Fashion Report

Image via Wikipedia

 

By Contributing Editor Philippe Perisse de Montchenu, Fashion Reporter and Consultant

 

THE BUNNY YEAR!

 

 

 

 

Composition by Philippe Perisse de Monchenu--Drawing by Belthablog

 

THE CHINESE NEW Year is coming up soon--February 3rd.

But what is it?  How does it work?

A long, long time ago...

Obamarifix: WAR OF THE WORDS

 

Jours of Our Lives: 6) GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST

 

Illustration by Elizabeth Cannon

An ongoing series about uprooting our lives in America and moving to France. For what's happened before, see previous Jours of Our Lives entries here. 

 

THERE WAS CHASING and hiding. Children and their mothers were being put in…something…and being told they were being sent…somewhere. I felt the fear of the mothers and their children, fear of my own.

Whoever it was shut the door and threw, pushed, dumped what turned out to be a submarine into the water with the women and children—and me—in it. It sank. It was meant to be a coffin. Someone (maybe me) cracked one of the windows with a high-heeled shoe. Water came rushing in, and we all knew we would die. The mothers wanted to protect their children, and they couldn’t.

 
Photo and Kites by George Peters of Airworks Studio Inc.

 

The dream stopped, and my eyes were open like I was looking out into the bedroom. There was a wispy ghost—not fashioned as a person, but whimsically created as a Japanese kite—sailing through the room. Then there were others floating by me. Many, many, many came and went, but I was not afraid. Suddenly, somehow I had the feeling these ghosts were Jewish children from the Marais whom the Nazis took and killed, and they wanted my attention. They wanted me to write about them. This dream that came from thin air, or somewhere in my head, was about the Nazis murdering these children.

Letter From Paris presents...The Sound Hunter

Image by mercuryvapour via Flickr

ACROSS THE MILES

by Contributing Editor Des Coulam. Recording the street sounds of Paris attempting to capture that gratuitous, never-ending show for which no ticket is needed.

EARLY JANUARY ALWAYS makes me think about the sounds of Paris that I recorded in the year that has passed--and the sounds that I might record in the year ahead. At the start of each New Year, I always look back on my previous year’s work and select a “Sound Of The Year.”  It’s always a difficult task.

After much consideration, this year I have selected a Parisian sound from 2010 which I would like to share with you.