Hidden In France

Clooney and I, as kids.

 

I would not have given him the time of day.  

Ahem... Actually, maybe I would have:

 

It would have been 'Clooney and the Clown' 

This was my favorite shirt. Paired with the turtleneck it seemed like a good idea at the time (and to my defense, those were the seventies. Look, George is wearing a turtleneck too.)

For the record, that haircut ruined my life. I was 11 and my hair was my only exterior sign of femininity. Idiots asked of I was a boy or a girl.  I haven't dared cut my hair since. And look at those chicklet teeth :)

When I first started blogging there was a fun meme going around where bloggers posted pictures of themselves as kids.  Now that i've shown you my worst, who wants to play?  You post a picture of yourself as a kid on your blog (and tell us a bit about you then) and tag new bloggers. I tag:

Passage Paradis

Visual Vamp

Red Thread

Sparky Fizz

Feng Shui by Fishgirl

Eat, Pray, Yawn?

I went to see the movie with a sarcasm filled heart.  A woman who doesn't know who she is, how to love or how to feel spends 6 months discovering herself in glamour filled destinations? And i'm, like, girlfriend, those are not real problems.

And then they bring on the plate of spaghettis and I start drooling. Yep, I started drooling long before Javier Bardem literally and figuratively came into the picture.

Eat Pray Love is a movie without the traditional Hollywood requirements of a terribly bad guy (the bad-er the bad guy the higher the stakes) and roller coaster, nail-biting story arc.  It is a slow story. Were it not for the book being a huge success and for Julia's green light, the movie would not have been made in a million year. It's a boring story frankly.  But I found myself smiling when Julia Roberts smiled, and crying when she (or pretty much any of the characters) cried. What more do you want from a movie, really?

Maybe a story does not need to be pushing extremes in order to be touching. In fact, this story,(and let me copiously quote myself here) of  'A woman who doesn't know who she is, how to love and how to feel spends 6 months discovering herself" reminds me of another story, one I wrote, as a matter of fact.  One I'm trying to get published.

As I was writing the novel, I was interested in changes that don't come through gigantic breakthroughs, but thanks to life's almost imperceptible lessons, all of which my character resists.  I was interested in this because it felt real to me. Perceptions of the world, perception of the self are old habits that take a lifetime to ingrain in the subconscious and change is excruciatingly slow.  In Eat, Pray, Love, the main character is open to change and actively seeks it.  In my book my main character is not and does not, which I think is even closer to how real life works.

What I personally retained from Eat Pray Love, are three things: 

1- You must smile with the liver (it's hard to do but I totally get it.) 

2-I think women are hungry for stories that cling to the way real life takes place. It is not boring because real life, (when it happens to you,) is not boring.  Small things of real life, a child's fever, the beak up of a marriage, a move, not fitting in your jeans, a fall out with a friend, aging, are earth shattering in fact. 

3- Javier Bardem is a total hottie.

early bird

Just came across the work of an artist who goes by the name Mincing Mockingbird.  It's really lovely so I thought I'd share. 

 

The funny things these days is that I find myself blogging... in my head!  As i take my daily butt-reducing walks, and fueled as i am by my morning double esspresso without which there is no walk, no writing, and no day to speak of, i am full of clever ideas about what to blog about.  Entire posts are redacted in cerebrum and I can't wait to get home to type it all up.

 

But then I arrive home and life assails me and i go a quoi bon. The need to express myself to communicate has passed.  It feels quite futile suddenly.  I'm only writing this today because my kids had friends over for a sleep over so I can't go on my walk.

 

So here is the choice ladies:  the butt or the blog?  Maybe i could find a way to do both at once.  I could then put that skill in a bottle and get rich.

 

NouilleYork (as we say in French)

The internet is working at last! I was starting to feel panicky and had to eat a lot of coffee eclairs to cope. I found amazing ones at Patisserie Claude.

Because I live in L.A. very little walking is asked of me, so the 106 degree heat only offends me briefly as I step from my air-conditioned car into the air-conditioned mall.  But here in New York City, the words walking and heat recover all their meaning. I'm full of energy first thing in the morning but by noon it feels as though my soles are stuck to giant wads of bubble gum which I have to drag up with every new step. 

But today, the heat broke! Or at least that's what everyone in the streets and the subways of New York is calling the sudden drop in temperature.  And a good thing too as I has I was starting to wonder how I was going to peel my melted body off the sidewalk. 

The big excitement this week was that my 18 year old was accepted into an internship at Amnesty International.  I could not be more proud.  I'm all in favor of his fighting for Human Rights, I just hope he doesn't learn too much about his own, because in a few weeks i'm counting on him waking up at 6 a.m. in order to be at school at 7. (after having served me breakfast in bed, hehe.)

Now I must be off to visit yet another skateboarding shop with my 11 year old.  I've learned everything I needed to learn about skateboarding on this trip, namely that i have no intention of buying him one. Also, I'm going to get myself a smallish éclair to celebrate the return of my internet connection.

Postcard from New York

No pictures because my camera is too heavy for my smallish-newish purse, sorry.

So I'm in Manhattan again, happy as a clam.  We're staying on Bleecker Street in an apartment, yes on Bleecker! My younger one is at camp, my older one (18 in a few days) has little use for me, and my husband is working around the clock on a production. Happy i'm telling ya.

Watching people in the street I get the impression that i'm not the only one who feels privileged to be be in New York City.  Everywhere is a palpable sense of giddiness, of excitement. Isn't this the city where anything can happen?  And if not here, then where?  In New York as in Paris, the possibility of a chance encounter hangs in every gaze exchange. People dress accordingly.  As my husband pointed out, in Los Angeles there is the Right way to dress and the Wrong way, and i think that's pretty true of most of the country. In New York, everything goes.  And when you get to look exactly like yourself, you look better, more interesting, more alive. The result is so interesting that you could sit on a bench for hours just watching people and you would be perfectly entertained.

Nowhere I've ever been do older people look more stylish and full or life than here.  They have stars in their eyes, they are not bored with the city and never will be.  I see them and make a secret wish to be just like them one day: old, stylish, happy in and in New York (I'm of course speaking of those with money, i know this is crass, but fantasies usually are.)

I'm flabbergasted by the number of French people in the streets of NY.  The French might hate america (or so i'm told, usually by Americans,) but they sure as hell love Manhattan. It's an uncomfortable number of French people for me, as I prefer to be the rarity than the norm.  Apparently, France was not hit by the recession, because the French are here to shop. Mostly they're here for the sales, and Broadway in August is one massive sale.  The French must have a sixth sense, like those baby turtles that scramble awkwardly toward the ocean, they are single-minded and decisive, and when they get what they want, ahhh... climax! 

I thought it must be funny for French people to see huge "SALE" signs displayed everywhere, because in French it means 'dirty'.  Just a thought.

Speaking of dirt: everything in New York is dirty and/or fabulous.  The juxtaposition of piles of trash and models in high heels would never happen in Paris. Paris hides its trash with the greatest of care. New York loves to joyously hang its trash for all to see.  It piles up over the course of the day in gigantic mounds, platic bags, crates etc. in front of stores and apartment buildings.  In the morning, everything is just washed fresh, hosed down by the myriads of men in wife beaters who come in and out of doors and trap doors, gates and manholes and whose life purpose it seems is to act as trash Facilitators. 'i'm wOrking here." they seem to say, but you can tell they too rather be here than anywhere else.

I'm off to buy a bit of foie gras at Chelsea's market. It being impossible to find (illegal I think) in LA, i better gorge myself before i get home.