Obviously, the best part of going back to school has always been shopping. Now that "going back to school" for me really means "moving to Paris for a year," I'm going to need some sturdy yet stylish shoes, a chic nail color (or five...), and my ever-loved paper planner. Lucky for me, pairing athletic footwear with pretty much anything is totally on trend at the moment, and dark polish is always good for fall. And with my visa finally being put into action (huge sigh of relief) I can actually start writing in that planner! Cheers to grad school.
february finds
February is a month of romance. Yes, there is one day in particular associated with love and lust. But the entire month is a sweet, tentative marriage between winter and spring, the first delicate blush of blooms and sun and fresh air amidst bursts of fiercely cold rain and snow. When I think of February, I think of pinks and reds and purples, of love and lust and romance and wintry sunrises. I think of lingerie, flickering candles, beautiful words, but also of a time to peer into spring from the last gasp of winter and prepare for what's ahead. This month I started (a little late, I suppose) planning for what is to come in 2014. I bought a beautiful planner from local San Francisco artist Julia Kostreva, where I've been setting my life in ink rather than digital words that disappear amidst a sea of apps on a little screen. For the romance portion of the month, I've given my sleeping attire a much-needed adult update and invested in a black silk nightgown, indulged in a rather large Voluspa cut glass jar candle from Anthropologie, and read the inspired love poems of Pablo Neruda. And then there are the shoes - the perfect pair of black booties, which drove me an hour out of the way on my recent trip to LA to pick up the last pair of 6 1/2s in all of California. February was a good month for some quality shopping.
sacré-coeur à la seine
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
{ 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.