résolutions

January 5, 2014 Stephanie Christofferson

I have always had mixed feelings on the "New Years Resolution." A couple years ago, people started asking me what my New Years resolution was. I hadn't really thought about it - I didn't know that was a real thing. I just thought it was something gyms used to seduce new members. To me, January 1st has sort of the same feeling as your birthday: you are technically a year older, but what big changes could 24 hours (or even 1 hour) bring? You never actually feel older or different (unless of course you're turning 21 and you've been awarded certain new and wonderful privileges). I never saw the point in making a New Years resolution because if I wanted to change something, I could do it any time I wanted. But I've slowly come around to them. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea that so many people are at least putting their minds in a place of betterment. I'm a huge believer in the law of attraction and the idea that the landscape of your thoughts holds an immeasurable power on the physical world around you. Not like Mathilda or anything, just that if you put your mind towards something in a positive way, the outcome will be positive. This is not some sort of magic, it's just that your determination to see something work out disallows you to view the results as anything but positive. So you view any outcome as the way it was meant to be. I think this is the thing that New Years resolutions, for me, should achieve. The vague, overarching, life-changing resolutions (work out more, eat healthier, cook more) don't exactly excite me. I would never be able to achieve something so lacking in structure. And how would I know when it's achieved? Even something like "work out every other day" or "learn a new recipe every week" wouldn't work for me, because I know myself well enough to know I would simply stop doing them. So for my resolutions, I've chosen ten tasks that I want to accomplish in 2014. All of these things are actionable, progress me towards an overall goal, and most importantly, are fun. So cheers to 2014, and doing more things you love. If I were making a vague, arbitrary, overarching resolution, that would be it, by the way.

1. Take a cooking class

2. Improve my French

3. Travel to a new country

4. Write a story

5. Go on a road trip

6. Learn how to garden

7. Find a yoga studio I like

8. Send more handwritten cards

9. Go camping

10. Check off some of the books on my to-read list

ça va!

instantanés

November 25, 2013 Stephanie Christofferson

Snapshots of my daily life in Paris. You know that saying about how the little things are what makes you happy, or some such variation of that? I have found it to be particularly relevant lately. From top to bottom: a Bordeaux as a candle holder in my room; the Asniéres-sur-Seine city hall; an impromptu flower market; duck confit searing in the pan; a cage of parakeets found near Notre Dame; baguette with caprese fillings; view from my French classroom window, Rue Poissonnière, 2nd arrondissement; hot chocolate and an almond croissant on a Sunday morning.

sacré-coeur à la seine

November 18, 2013 Stephanie Christofferson

Paris is known best as the city of light, La Ville-Lumière. But more intimately, it is a city of intricate layers and constant motion. Underneath the city snakes a complex web of metro lines, crossing each other and delving beneath the seine and emerging from the ground to skim the surface before tunneling below again. The flow of people ebbs and flows as they push their way in and out of crowded metros, brushing past each other in constant motion in and out of the mouths of metro stations. On the surface, cars and motorcycles and people weave in and out between rows of buildings wedged together like books and stacked like layer cakes. People working and living and eating and sleeping placed carefully on top of each other. And then there are the places that escape the trapped motion of the surface, and allow you to feel the movement of free air, close to the pink wisps of cloud sliding from one horizon to the other, and look down at the crazy expanse of city that glows back at you. You can follow the seine winding through the collage of buildings, each side connected by arched bridges, as pigeons rise from the gutters to the rooftops. Sacre Coeur on the hill of Montmartre is one of my favorite places to escape the surface and look down at it all. Ever since I was fourteen or fifteen, I wanted to visit Montmartre. I read a book about two lovers who painted their wall with a mural of Montmartre in its prime, when Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Renoir, Dalí and a host of other famed 19th century artists gathered at the top of the hill painting scenes from Paris. I listened to La Bohéme and wished that I could visit a Montmartre that no longer exists. For me sometimes the reality of a place does not make so much of a difference – I am so drawn by history and fantasy and romance that Montmartre was destined to be a place I loved, even if it was overrun by tourists and gypsies selling Eiffel tower trinkets and cheap purses. Like the rest of the city, Montmartre is layered, and you have to dig deeper to find the good layers. When I visited in the summer, I wandered the little alleyways and ended up eating a traditional Parisienne dinner of pigeonette and a whipped champagne dessert. This time, we stopped at a street vendor and bought a bag of candy to eat while we climbed the hill. It was a holiday weekend, so Sacre Coeur was packed with French tourists, and we decided to go straight to climb the dome. This is perhaps my absolute favorite thing to do in Paris. The church itself is over 100 years old, which by European standards is quite young, but the dome involves a climb up 300 stone steps in a cramped, dank staircase. When you finally break out into the open air, you are nearly traversing the roof of the Basilica. You climb a bit more onto the very top, and voila - 360 degree panoramic views of the city of Paris. It really does feel like the “sacred heart of Paris” (which is what Sacre Coeur means). Somehow the light is a different color as it reflects off the multifaceted layers of the city. You look as far as you can see and there is Paris, at your feet, at your fingertips, a breath away from you. If you lean forward over the carved stone ledge all you can see is Paris below you, like you are floating above it. After we climbed the dome, we took the metro to Notre Dame. There was a flower and animal market right across the seine from Notre Dame, with cages full of colorful birds, boxes of chinchillas and rabbits, and rows of colorful flowers and garden ornaments. This steadfast market culture is something I love about Paris – no matter how cold it is, the markets go on, and the people flock to them. We wandered through the crooked alleyways in Notre Dame’s shadow and bought a bottle of wine, which we drank with our legs dangling over the edge of the seine as the sun set and turned the water silver. The famed Parisian lights flickered on, saving us from the darkness and letting the city live all night long. After a cheap gyro and some happy hour beers, we descended back underground and let the metro carry us back to the darker edge of the city at the end of ligne 13.

château de versailles en automne

November 13, 2013 Stephanie Christofferson

{ bag / boots / shorts / top / blazer / sunglasses }

The phrase "consolidation of wealth" has never been more fitting than in 18th century France, and the Palace of Versailles is perhaps the best example of French monarchic wealth. There really is no describing it - words are too one-dimensional, and photographs cannot capture the immensity and depth of the palace, even in the darkest halls and smallest corners. It is truly one of the most ornate, vast, and breathtaking estates still standing. The palace is so grand that it, along with its most famous inhabitant Marie Antoinette, literally sparked the French Revolution. Since it is fall, the grounds are devoid of the famous blooms and fountains. Instead the statues stand bare and stark in the cold air, looking over disciplined topiaries and still fountains like they have for the past 200 years. I can't help but imagine how many have looked down the length of the gardens toward the horizon, what secret rendezvous have taken place in the topiary mazes, who has been born here and who has died here. I also can't help but wonder why we as a species are so drawn to wealth and power and possession and beauty: human greed, the most innate and unchanging historical truth. And of course, this innate tendency towards beauty is why I am traversing the grounds of Versailles pretending to be a princess who calls this her home.

bonjour à paris

November 4, 2013 Stephanie Christofferson

Until January 16, my home is in Asnières-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris at the end of the métro ligne 13. Coincidentally, my first stay in Paris was in the 14th arrondissement on Rue Didot, at the other end of the 13. These funny little coincidences happen to me quite frequently, and I always like to think of them as signs that have to mean something. If I were a religious person I suppose I would think of it as God's way of telling me I'm in the right place, but I'll swap "God" for "the universe" and then it makes more sense to me. I'm a big fan of equilibrium and symmetry, so realizing that my time in Paris has a fully symmetrical ring to it makes me fall even more in love with this beautiful, complicated city. Last time I was here it was summer, and the days stretched long and languished over stacks of apartments and flurries of people enjoying the pink skies. People sat with their feet dangling over the seine, sipping wine from the bottle and eating baguettes. The métro was packed to the doors, dank and moist with trapped heat intensified by human congestion. Now it is winter. The days are short and timid, emerging for a few crisp, biting hours until the clouds envelop the world and trap the lights beneath. Rain is frequent, pooling in the cracks between the cobblestones and washing filth into the sewers. People dressed in dark colors walk with scurried purpose towards glowing cafés, métro entrances, grocery stores, apartment buildings. It's the other half of the year in Paris, seen from the other side of Paris. How's that for symmetry?