last, and delayed.

so this is practically an afterthought now, but it seemed a good idea to post some last photos and thoughts.  I've been stateside for a few weeks now, and just easing into summer mode after a brief but now-calmed panic.

Now that I have experienced many times over the "How was it?!" or "Paris! I'm so jealous!" interaction, I will admit the conversation is not as strange as originally anticipated.  There's definitely a gradient of truth, but I try to be sincere.  It was difficult, and for a long time I was pretty damn unhappy.  But I learned a lot of things that I didn't expect to learn, and truly disliking school gave me more time to learn to love the city.  I think it was important that I stayed.  Important somehow really does seem to be the most fitting word.  stories, life lessons, friends, individualism, etc etc etc. in the end we laughed a lot and found ourselves strangely comfortable in a foreign place. and on my last night in paris when i missed the last metro and has to walk from concorde to chatelet while susannah and grace thought i was maybe dead because i was so late, it struck me that i would miss the city.

so that is my brief spiel about paris.

and here are some travel photos for those of you who didn't subject yourselves to seeing all.... 400? of them. not counting the ones that sarah and madeleine took..

we went swimming in this lovelllly place, outside of marseille. it's the mediterranean, and it's cold.  for the sake of madeleine's dignity, i'm not including the pictures of our ensuing sunburns.

i'm not sure how i wound up with such adorable friends.  as a generally land-locked midwesterner, i was caught off guard by the saltiness of the water.

beautiful, right?  this was on our bus ride between marseille and barcelona, i think pretty close to the border and verdant verdant verdant. (i have a special appreciation for french/english words these days.)

barcelona.  here it is! gaudi, my love! this picture is really not enough.. you can't see the turtles and turkeys and chameleons and all the other inspired insanity.

the discovery of fresh wonderful juices #1.  delicious and extensive markets. strawberry coconut. kiwi. dragonfruit. americans need to catch on. 

 in the enormous mosque in casablanca before taking the train out.  sarah is a master photographer.

of course there were donuts. moroccan street donuts part 1 of 2. (emily has a good photo of the other ones on her blog.)  i'm pretty sure everyone else buying/selling them (aka the crowd of moroccan men) were all laughing at us. but they were delicious. and we braved much street food without a shadow of upset stomachs.

the moroccan landscape, viewed from a very sweaty train.  yes, we were in africa.

the main square in marrakech (still not sure how to pronounce that..), it was crazy and huge and full of a confusion of real and tourist-fueled disneyland. juice stands and mint sellers, "snake charmers," sad looking monkeys, henna, dried-out lizards, and constant sensory overload.

the souk just off the main square.  essentially full of a million things to sell to tourists, but an insane MAZE with at least three levels and no easy way out.  down the rabbit hole?

coffee. or milk with coffee. and mtv. and no water in the city. and a man in a baseball cap continuously turning around to stare at us.

oh yeah. we're cheesy, but adorable. yes they match, go us.

that is all. hope you enjoyed.

mes cheres tartes aubergines

full full full belly of rose bakery goods, and une tranche de cake aux pistache still waiting. mmm.

today the sunshine came back to paris, and soon i will re-kickstart my productivity into writing driveling essays. hopefully not quite.  

the end is so near i almost can't think about it. because it makes my thoughts start spinning around and sends me on endless summer tangents. 

I've been thinking alot about what I've learned here, and it's still formulating.  Because I know almost everyone I see when I get back will ask me how it was, I'm trying to figure out the right answer, because it's really not a simple thing.  i guess in the end it all comes down to life experience.  there are cheating, easy answers that you give to the dentist, and there are ones that are more sincere.  I'm definitely becoming more able to laugh at things instead of being annoyed at them though, and filling out class evaluations will be absurdly satisfying.  

i think this is all for now, but here are some things i've been thinking about:

federico garcia lorca, gift economy, reacting against, and life philosophies.

"Exert stress on unyielding conventions.  ask questions that shouldn't be asked.  sustain the rigorous process of asking difficult questions.  disrupt fixed discourse.  practice ideological disruption through aesthetic, dialogic, critical, sculptural, and many other tactics.  question dogma and practice irreverent iconoclasms." (the tract house)

please turn off the bollywood music.

(thanks to angela for our power animals! they're seeing the world...)

today is bea-utiful. beautiful.

after a couple days of grey drizzle, things seem to be shaping up weather-wise for a sunny 17C, or 71F for all you at home.  it makes it hard to concentrate of work instead of simply spending everyday going for walks and eating croissants. very difficult indeed.

(this is the little park closest to our apartment)

besides school, however, things seem to be going well.  when i'm in the sunshine, i do like this city quite a bit, the little streets, the canal and river, thousands of boulangeries, and the language too.  this is somewhat of a relief.  however, it's difficult to explain how much i'm looking forward to the end of school.  travel plans are solidifying and it looks like i'll be train-tripping through france to barcelona (gaudi!) then flying to morocco and doing who knows what. i am so so so excited.  and finally, summer is turning into something real, filling with plans and maybe a few pipe-dreams. elaboration on this would take pages and pages.

here, recently we haven't done too many crazy things, but annie's looking fierce with a new hair color and new glasses.  when we're not pretending to try to do work, we've eaten ice cream and seen an amazing show of William Blake. good art and good food.

(William Blake = great)

(Annie Stephens = foxy)

(Berthillon ice cream = delicious)

That's pretty much the summary (i almost wrote "summery." this probably indicates something.)  

i keep wanting to do cartwheels

We have been hit by the spring jitters lately. The sun is shining, flowers have popped up everywhere and l'herbe n'est plus au repos. which means there are most likely some french babies playing on it, and some open-air pda from the jeunes.  ah, par-ee.

but it's that feeling in my stomach that makes us not able to keep still, a build-up of slowly accumulating momentum so now we can't stop moving. (except to watch more seasons of sex and the city..)  I am finally feeling in a good place with thoughts correlating to making, and am excited to transfer that back home.  there are some projects being thought out, and a few just starting, and I love the feeling of the last projects of the semester, because when they're done, you are too.  and hooray for that. i welcome summer and the end of professors who suggest you put band-aids and zippers on drawings.

recent happenings:

-we went to a talk with Jenny Holzer at the Louvre and saw her projections on the buildings in the courtyard

-i went to the Buttes de Chaumont, which made me breathe a sigh of relief with all the grass to walk on and trees to sit under

-we celebrated easter in our secular way with Flexifizz, Twix, and Rochers de chocolat noir

it's probably seasonal, but optimism comes with the sunshine.

and now i have about as many weeks of school as i have postcards left to write. which is... not a lot. but in the mean time, i'm going to go play outside.

wisdom gleaned via Michel de Certeau

"...we can divert the time owed to the institution; we can make textual objects that signify an art and solidarities; we can play the game of free exchange... we can create networks of connivances and slights of hand; we can exchange gifts; and in these ways we can subvert the law that, in the scientific factory, puts work at the service of the machine and, by a similar logic, progressively destroys the requirement of creation and the 'obligation to give.'"

he's talking about specifics, but i like to think of it generally.

also:

ice cream, wine, and bats on the seine.

18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11

I'm just emerging from my first week back in classes after break and the family visit, and i can't lie, motivation is flagging.  there is much more to be done than earlier in the semester, but i think i'm still in the mindset that there isn't much i have to do.

Concerning classes, which i don't mention much i guess, they vary.  I generally find my studio courses frustrating, often due to the astoundingly unhelpful feedback from professors.  In sculpture, however, we spend about half our time going out to see shows at galleries, which is nice.  I am also in two critical studies courses, one about modern aesthetics (kant and hegel) and the other on "theatre of the everyday" (lots of kaprow, recently blanchot and de certeau also).  Those two classes I've become fairly interested in recently, because of some interesting readings and our long-term substitute, who is more engaging than our usual (and sick) professor.  As a printmaking sidenote, on a whim, I've just started working on a mezzotint. However, I'm still in the process of rocking the plate.

so, there are some rewarding parts, but largely school is still... well, not what i wish it was.

on the upside, things are getting much sunnier here, and very slowly warmer.  I keep thinking that's it's nearly april.  every month is a relief.  

and i'm reallly reallllly excited to reach the end of parsons paris and spend a few weeks with emily/madeleine/sarah traveling to exciting, but currently undecided, places.  I project that it will be like the sisterhood of the traveling pants, but better. but that's just a guess because I've never seen/read it.  So maybe I'll compare it to "Now and Then" instead. plus Europe.

I'm losing interest in this post so here are some rapid-fire facts to finish:

1.  I am integrating espresso into my functioning routine.  and I like it.  I never thought I'd see the day.

2.  I think i found my favorite baguette.

3.  Everytime I see the beautiful things being made by friends at home, it makes me a little achy.

4.  I'm getting more sleep than ever before.

5.  My favorite museum so far is probably still the Grande Galerie d'Evolution.  All art considered.

6.  This experienced has reversed my attitude toward my telephone

7.  Yesterday I had a french conversation with a sweet museum guard about art nouveau and art deco.  Another museum guard gave us Ricola that tasted like lychee.

8.  I still can't pull my mind off the summer, no matter how vague it is currently.

9.  I take the amount of galleries in this city for granted.

(p.s. for dad: I love the book you left me!  I feel like a little bit of a dork for finding biogeography so interesting.)

i live with the temperature

our building is full of instruments.  across one courtyard and up a floor today there was a man playing a guitar and singing along.  somewhere downstairs there are some classical strings. above us is a woman who's singing is more like wailing. and once, we thought we heard a didgeridoo, although it might have just been serious guitar distortion.  so that's where we live. sometimes it's nice, but often just vaguely noisy.

i feel like i owe some photos, but i haven't taken any new ones in a while.  I mean to take some photos of projects i've been working on and post those, but these will have to do for now, just some updates form the pompidou. 

oh pi-ca-sso. you fiend.

hello francis picabia.

de l'atelier d'Andre Breton... i want it all.

of course.

it's been an ice cream and brownies kind of week, and it's just begun.  but soon annie gets to leave for a break and my family arrives to love and distract me for a while.  i will soak up all their energy.

also, i don't think i've mentioned it, but this is the first period of my life where i have discovered a love of avocados. i'm not sure how it happened, but it has revolutionized salads.

other things that are in my head right now: paper mache, tents, rooftop garden possibilities, costumes, baking bread, and "meanwhile, let's battle the alligators." (thank you allen kaprow)

Detournement

it's always a strange back and forth here.  recently especially so, but today the sun and the temperature met up and decided to give spring a try, so their joint powers are making my insides feel a little more sunny than average.

the past few days, actually, have felt maybe more calm than usual. i don't mean uneventful, but rather more settled.  we went to see Fleet Foxes play up in the 18th and i was reminded once again how comfortable it feels to see good shows.  we went to a little dinner party with new friends and it was the first time in so long that i laughed until i was about to cry. i've been walking all over the place and locating myself in geographical terms, finding secret good things and realizing that this place is much smaller than you want to think.

it's silly but true, and i'm realizing it more, that dealing with things, getting through difficult and unhappy experiences does little by little lead to growth. maybe it's just a centimeter or two (oh, a metric metaphor?) but realizing that we are here, on the last day of february, i'm kind of proud of myself.

so right now my head is filled with spring expectations and trying to convince myself to art projects that need attention.  but soon it will be may and warmth and summertime. and i'll have accumulated a pile of stories with the theme of "I went to parsons and hilarity ensued." that's the plan at least. it's still strange and ridiculous.

(mood-determining music: Fleet Foxes, Animal Collective, Loudon Wainwright's "Swimming Song")

Narwal #2

today i decided to journey to the "jardin des plantes," home of the national natural history museum here in france. there are posters for it all over the subway and eventually they got to me... and in the process i saw my second narwal tooth (they're really long) since being here in paris. 

It occured to me that when i was little, i loved going to the natural history museum at KU, and this might be compared to that (in terms of amazement/fascination) but times 100,000,000.

so i get off the subway and think:

"trees!! grass!! garden plots!! children!!"

all of the above in abundance, and despite the lack of leaves, a relief from the winter cold make me feel a bit optimistic that those leaves will be growing before i know it..

this is another look, it's pretty big, and the building at the end houses the "grande galerie d'evolution" ... which will come soon...

unexplained but cheerful whale sculpture. it might have to do with the special whale exhibit there right now. he's smiling though.

the museum itself is overwhelming and SO amazing. those are all taxidermy animals.

bugs too. so many.

(sorry this is a confusing picture. glass plus dramatic lighting)

just a couple animal pictures.... i'm sure i was more enthralled with these than they merited. i'm not sure why. but they had all sorts of interesting things. alot of info about endangered and extinct animals, a whole section on human influence on evolution, etc etc.

(this guy just looks like he's trying to sniff you)

this croc? gator? looked like he had a knot of wood on the end of his snout.

And a baleen whale skeleton, super enormous.  I'm not entirely sure why i found the whole place so exciting, but it was. Dad, i think you would really like it (nature boy). i think annie and i will probably be going back, and i plan on going to the park some more when the weather welcomes me.

so that was my new experience of the day. good discoveries.

ALSO, i started making a map of places i've liked here. it's posted on the right hand side of the page under "my paris map" or something like that, if you're interested.

hello hello hello hello hello

oh dear, so i'm not very good at keeping this thing updated, even as much as i'm on the internet here. sorrrry. so the most obvious thing to post photos of is... annie and i went to check out versailles today. and in case anyone was wondering, it is still extremely fancy and gilded.  visiting palaces usually makes me want to roller skate through them, but i'm not sure where this thought comes from.

(concerning the photo, there are so many vaguely strange paintings at versailles. e.g. sleeping babies)
annie, too, is rather fancy. this picture proves it. this room would be great for roller skating.
of course, the hall of mirrors. shiniest room of them all.  windows, mirrors, and chandeliers. the whole thing made me pretty disappointed that we could have seen the jeff koons work there if it had just stuck around another month.  shiny and kitsch surrounded by shiny and baroque, yes please.
(a koons lobster at versailles, which left before we came to paris.)

so that was what we did today, mostly.  unfortunately it was rather foggy and snowy outside, so we skipped wandering around outside, which is kind of the best part of versailles when the weather is up to it.  but the train did go through some cute paris outskirts, which made me realize that i miss trees and grass i'm allowed to walk on.  hopefully soon i'll find a sunny day and find somewhere to ride around on a bike for fun (aka not the busy streets, i'm not sure i'm ready for that here). 

I'm really tearing through books here, so i might go try to acquire a library card at the american library, even though you have to pay for them.  right now I'm in the middle of "the wind up bird chronicle" and somewhat baffled but intrigued.

happy valentine's day everyone. my plans are to... go to the library. and try to make some progress on drawings.  there is quite a lot of paper to be filled. but i'm sending bunches of love to everyone i miss stateside.  

OH and please, if you're into letter-writing or package-sending in the least, don't forget this address:

43 rue Notre Dame de Nazareth

75003 Paris France

love love love

eating, breathing, sleeping

right now i think anyone reading this would chastise me for it being almost 5:30 and me not having left the apartment all day. but those days happen too.  i've been building a model for my sculpture class, and am pretty sure it will end up looking something like a middle school diorama.  

anyways, i thought i'd post a few random photos of recent events:
This is at the Pantheon, which is a basilica I think for St Genevieve, the patron saint of paris.  The thing in the middle is Foucault's Pendulum, which tells the time as the pendulum swings according to the rotation of the earth.  I still don't fully understand it, but it's pretty neat.
These guys are just visible in the background of that last picture.  I'm not sure who they're supposed to be, but I admire their mustaches.
Also, Annie and I have been trying to break out of our cheese and bread/ pasta with pesto habits and last night whipped up some delicious asparagus mushroom risotto and banana fried tofu (oh the comforts of home).  Good food seems to make everything better.

oh, things keep going.  i have to admit there are multiple countdowns that we're keeping track of here. weeks until class is over. until parents visit. until we're halfway.  it's good to set goals, but difficult to think of the long term.  we have also learned that if you want to fly to iceland for the weekend, you really need to plan it more than a week in advance.

i am speeding through reading books, so if anyone has suggestions for me to track down, they'd be appreciated. 

it is somewhat frightening to have so much extra time and not quite the equivalent amount of motivation to utilize it.  starting new projects and plans and explorations are difficult to self-instigate, but i know that's it's something i have to learn.  lots and lots of drawings that should be made, since that seems to be the main opportunity here.  a little bit every day.  My thoughts are deteriorating right now, so I'll just leave off with one last thing: 

glitter banana stalagmites.

indian vs. indiana

Il agrandit l'esprit humain et lui apprit qu'il devoit etre libre.

-on Voltaire's grave (what everyone should hope to have written on their coffin)

It is not the moment for elaborate blog posting, but since my mom suggested that I give an update, I suppose I'll concede.

I'm in the process of reorganizing my brain's priorities to push aside dwelling classes that are... so far ultimately a huge disappointment (you should really see annie's blog for some ridiculous recounts of happenings in that department).  but like i said, changing priorities.  It's a new thing for me to not like school, but i hope to use it to make time and mental space for:

1. zine creation, regularly and wonderfully

2. working on art explorations not related to class. no limits.

3. reading all the books i can

4. hunting up some bike riding opportunities, maybe on Velib

5. going to concerts and dancing like crazy (when fitting)

6. traveling and finding the best of europe!

so although it's been a roller coaster ride of three weeks (already? only?), there are some simple highlights that are worth mentioning.  The metro system is amazingly efficient, even though the closeness of the city is surprising and convenient to walk too.  Also, apparently the drivers here are absolutely used to and accepting of bikers, even though the drivers seem kind of nuts to me.  As far as French food goes, they have bread and dairy products figured out.  cheese, yogurt, baguettes, pastries. yum. we are eating other food groups too, but are lamenting the absence of black beans. oh, and macarons, they beat out the american macaroons hands down. 

i'm wishing for warmth and sunshine, but have to face the fact that it'll be a few months unless we search it out elsewhere. 

parents! sorry it's so hard to be an independent adult sometimes. i'm working on it.

professors and friends! you are all utterly fantastic and nurturing and inspiring. thanks for creating such a wonderful open and imaginative atmosphere to work in and inhabit.  this experience makes me remember that. 

everyone!  thanks for dealing with my laments/sending me love and distractions.  send me news of your adventures.

p.s. annie and i are already forgetting how the united states work. don't make fun.

caves of all kinds

so finally i've sucked it up, come around to posting some pictures and let you know what's going on across the ocean. - warning - no scenic photos, yet.

so we went to Mad Vicky's, a supposed tea house, but really just a teensy little gallery owned by the girls from Coco Rosie.  some little art of the wall, a crocheted wolf-head mount, and a rainbow tent that made us feel like little kids.

this was at the centre pompidou.  I can't remember who it was by. i want to say dubuffet, but that seems wrong, even at the time the artist seemed like a strange person for the piece.  but it was great.  like a drawing of an abstract ice cave, but all around you.

and, of course, bones. lots and lots of bones. we went to the catacombs which was interesting/strange/oddly fascinating. seriously, more bones than you've probably ever imagined. meticulously piled.

oh, this is all kind of vague and boring so far, but it's mostly been seeing lots of art thus far (and my newfound love of Francis Alys), eating astoundingly yummy yogurt, and contemplating the limits of vegetarianism in France.  Everyone has been amazingly nice, although being here makes me feel completely language-incompetent every time i open my mouth. i feel like my tongue gets twisted around in the wrong ways so everything is garbled.

(p.s. skype wins my heart right now. sign up and talk to me.)