Accouche!

Coucou mes lecteurs!

My recent purchase of a used book full of day trips in the outskirts of Paris has proved a rich source of escapades, none of which I have yet shared with you. Hundreds of pictures document these excursions, as well as sojourns closer to home and, most recently, a weekend trip to Bordeaux. I even thought of you, dear readers, as I sketched in my mental notes and framed my photographs.

As I contemplate the task ahead, I am reminded of an expression in French: Alors, t'accouches! Roughly the equivalent of "spit it out," it literally tells the listener to give birth.

Which in turn reminds me of a conversation I had a few weeks ago with my thesis advisor. A beautiful, passionate Frenchwoman with whom my classmates and I all have devastating crushes, she is always telling us ne vous inquiétez pas, don't worry. She had just finished forbidding me to worry (again) a few weeks ago, when I'd only drafted a page, but I wanted to assure her quand même that I'd done plenty of research, that I just hadn't yet gotten the chance to transform what I'd gathered into written pages.

C'est comme si j'étais enceinte (It's as if I were pregnant), I tried to explain. In marked contrast to our first dogged communications, we can now converse fluently and spontaneously, which leads to debates about the feminization of French métiers and the etymological evolution of spelling. But now and then I still make weird mistakes, and the flicker of confusion in her brow told me she suspected this was one of those times.

Enceinte? she repeated. Vous ne voulez pas dire... enceinte (You don't mean, pregnant)? She made a hand motion to indicate the shape of a pregnant belly.

Si, I insisted. Je me suis remplie de pensées, et maintenant il ne faut qu'accoucher (I've filled myself with thoughts, and now I just need to give birth).

Ah, je comprends, she laughed. And after I sent her several pages with translations four days later, she remarked that I'd fulfilled my promise.

Today I found out that Proust used the same metaphor when discussing his novel. A metaphor that's good enough for Proust is certainly good enough for me.

So I promise to you, mes tulipes, very soon, an accouchement. The labor will be intensive, but I hope the results will be worth all of our trouble.

Meanwhile, here are a few miscellanous Paris pictures to tide you over, with flighty, springtime-appropriate commentary, possessing neither continuity nor cohesion.

Paris is full of weird and wonderful places. This is a several-story building that houses a number of artists' ateliers, where visitors can walk through, watch the artists at work, and pick up some original art at reasonable prices.

This is how the sausage gets made.

Chaotic and claustrophobic. In the good way.

The Georges Pompidou center, our modern art museum, also boasts some of the prettiest views of Paris from the giant window that forms one of its sides. One can watch the city shrinking from the escalators that zig-zag in tubes up the side of the building. I snapped this while visiting with Amy, just before sunset.

Look closely near the left, where the gate is, and you can just see Sacré Coeur in Montmartre.

I'm a sucker for a cool window display. Of which I take many, many pictures in Paris. 

Somewhere around the 2e, if memory serves me correctly.

 One good reason to walk everywhere is that sometimes you stumble upon pretty photos like this.

I love Paris in the springtime.

Recently, I visited the Musée du Vin, of which the coolest part is the building itself: the former cave of a monastery. It displays viticultural tools, barrels, bottles, and pretty much everything you can imagine about the winemaking process across several centuries. There's a free wine tasting at the end, but the quality of the wine is surprisingly mediocre.

On the left, presses; on the right, agricultural implements dating from several centuries.

I've forgotten the exact utility of the bottles on the back wall, but aren't they cool?

 I'm usually a sucker for Art Nouveau architecture around the city, but this location of Paul (a bakery chain) near the Opéra Garnier was too cute and kitsch not to document.

Elephants and bread: a natural combination.

 I've learned not to save pretty shops for "sometime later." If I have the time, I go in. Such was the case of this Hermès store near Le Bon Marché on the border of the 6e and the 15e.

Next goal: to make enough money to actually buy something from this store. Preferably a foulard.

 Speaking of Le Bon Marché, I was perusing their epic grocery store, La Grande Epicerie, which features expensive and delicious goodies from all over the world, when I came across the enormous jars of Nutella that would put Costco to shame. I swear to you that those lids are the diameter of dessert plates.

The only proper way to eat Nutella is with a spoon.

 As previously discussed, there's plenty of English to be seen in Paris: both planned and, well, spontaneous.

Down by Les Halles, spring is peeking through.

This day was sinfully gorgeous.

 When you're cooking for one, it's not really practical to buy a whole chicken. But when I pass them on the street, I do love to smell them, to watch them turn and glisten and drip fat onto the potatoes at the base of the rotisserie.

Smells like heaven.

 The American Church of Paris in the 7e has a reputation of having one of the best bulletin boards for the Paris anglophone community, with jobs and housing offers updating daily. What no one tells you is how pretty it is. 

The courtyard.

 Some days you walk out your door knowing exactly where you're going. On the flâner days, it's a different story. On a Saturday afternoon, I was heading to the Métro to go nowhere in particular when instead, upon arriving at my usual station, I saw a brocante (flea market) stretching up several blocks of rue Felix Faure. It swallowed up a good hour and some change. My only purchase: a conservatory music theory primer from the XIXe siècle. Cost: 1 euro.

This was my favorite booth. I was reminded of the David Sedaris essays in which he talks about buying taxidermied kittens and the like. Snapped this picture quickly, figuring the napping proprietor might wake up at any minute and get annoyed at my furtive photographic exploitation.

 I'm no big fan of seafood, but for some strange reason, I love the fishmongers. The sidewalk is always dark with oozing water in front of the shops, and when you walk by, you can smell the ocean. Besides, the shellfish outside are always so interesting to look at (and, when the attendants aren't paying attention, to take pictures of).

I wonder what the differences are between these variously sourced oysters. I like foods with a large taxonomic variety, like wines and cheeses and chocolates. Makes me wish I liked oysters.

 I'll finish this post with a few pictures from a park I only found out last week, about a ten minute walk from my house: the Parc Georges Brassens. There's a theater, a little vegetable garden for neighborhood schoolchildren, a central pond, and plenty of winding paths. The sun, the locals and the springtime were out in full force.

And with that, I leave you for the moment. A bientôt, faithful readers of an inconstant blogger.