Terrasse

Home (Paris) Again, Again

Just returned from two amazing weeks in North Carolina.  Already missing it.  While I didn’t grow up there, my sister and her fiance went to grad school at Duke, so I’ve spent quite a bit of time visiting and it feels comfortable enough that I even sort of think of it as a second home.  Durham specifically has all my key ingredients: good food, heat, informal, great music and art, small town vibe.  I like it.  I could wear a tube top and flip flops down to buy a popcicle.  Unlike this town where I live, where I need to be fully clothed and made up to purchase a Berthillon ice cream cone.  In short, a trip to the states did nothing to appease my chronic homesickness.

BUT, that’s besides the point as the purpose of my visit was the marriage of two incredible people: my sister and her mister.  And they put on quite an event.  For all the stress and anxiety they faced the final days before hand, the wedding sure paid off. AMAZING.  I cried until the dancing started.  Cried from joy and, of course, also loss - missing the mama something fierce.  Hard to believe how life keeps moving without the one who seemed to move it before.

After all the beautiful celebration (culminating in my husband, my sister, her husband and me drunkenly awaiting a cab at 3 am in downtown Durham - last ones standing) we all headed out to the outer banks for a week on the beach, where my sister and her mister procured us a HUGE beachside castle to share.  Though constant social interaction can wear me down (particularly when I’m feeling a tad emotional and having a mild mama freakout), the week was truly wonderful.  Favorite moments: swimming with sister+mister, my dad, my man, riding bikes with my 75-year-old dad and my own mister cooper, beautiful dinners on screened-in porch, quiet time with my sister all to myself.

Loving the beach and heat and tan skin and my people, it has been a rough 24-hour welcome back to Paris.  I am missing family fiercely, missing convenience and familiarity, missing the burritos.  And I’m coming back to a Paris where the small community I built up over the last year has entirely dissipated, everyone having returned to their own respective corners of the world.  So in some ways I feel again as if i were starting all over, though I now have regular activities to occupy me.  But, I continue to take on this project of trying to establish life here in Paris, determined as ever to embrace its alienation, its blessed anonymity, its quirks, charms, and luscious vices.

La Rentree approaches, and all the Parisians return from vacation.  And with them the art wakes up from its own month-long nap.

come on and raise up

hey - in north carolina for a few weeks (sister’s wedding) - be back soon!

The Vonnie Chronicles

My dearest siobhan (vonnie to me) came for a visit to Paris.  Hijinx ensued.  pictures will come later (i do not have the energy to upload right now)  but here are some highlights:

vonnie’s orangina got stuck in a metro-side vending machine.  so she kicked it, and hit it, and pouted at it until an older french man came over to see what all the fuss was about.  Then he hit it.  and likewise frowned at it (silently willing his disapproval to dislodge the over-priced bottle).  then vonnie yelled “beat the CRAAAAP out of it!!!”   he simply smiled and nodded in agreement, having no idea what the fuck she just said, but really wanting to help such a distressed damsel.  i can’t exactly explain why, but this episode was hysterical.

on the metro one day (as most days), people were packing in like sardines, pressed tight up against the sliding doors.  we were sitting in those flip-up seats reserved for the elderly and the pregnant.  so i said, we should stand up, make room for more people.  she stood on the seat.

getting late-night half-drunk “grecques” (kind of like extra greasy shawermas) and vonnie asking me to translate the word “dick head” to a man who refused to throw away his own trash.

dancing to mc hammer on an illuminated dancefloor painted with the face of a panther.

drinking hobo beers at the parc des buttes chaumont.

vonnie painting her toenails to match the color of the eiffel tower.

on the metro (again) vonnie deciding to ask tired, wary parisians to sing songs for her video camera.  we had one taker.  and one person decided to tell her that everyone thought she was weird, but maybe she’d have better luck somewhere else.  so we sang songs for her camera instead.

dancing on a boat in the murky, black seine.

endearing and adventurous, vonnie is a force to be reckoned with.  and paris loved her.  we love her.