The Cosmological Domain of Infinite Extension & Fearful Portent

i didn't end up going to any of my destinations of interest except new york. i have fond memories of eating burgers in midtown.

Destinations for Summer '07 (in descending order of interest):
New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Boston, Vermont, Montreal, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Baltimore

If you have any suggestions (for cities, hills, streets), let me know!

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS
(continually evolving, never-ending, not until a self-decreed deadline of 2010)


i'm going to be less of an apologist, both more and less self-permissive where it counts, less lazy-hearted (meaning no passive bridge-burning allowed, no more mentality of an eccentric isolationist), dramatically less self-effacing but also less self-absorbed, more demanding, more diplomatic, sweeter and gentler overall but cunning too.

i'd also like to get into the practice of rounding out my thoughts completely rather than letting them lay dormant in loamy brain stew because i'm too lazy to articulate them to a crisp, clean T.

i will continue being thankful and hopeful, which necessitates not emotional divestment (my typical response) but trust--wholehearted trust--in the decisions of friends and family.

absolutely no more heart-attack-inducing craigslist-style procrastination

yes to the wondrous, ambitious, substantive, and gorgeous.

Sat 09 Sept - Mon 11 Sept

asuka and i met for tartines at a small and sunny, wood-paneled restaurant, walked around st. germain on a failed quest for shoes, then went to ladurée for cakes and tea. chilled à la maison with jean-sébastian where we read trash mags, did laundry, and drank pear juice; we then traipsed through rue mouffetard and place monge to go to place d'italie for pho.

the next day, i cleaned the crevices and back alleys of my kitchen stove, refrigerator and cabinets; then met with max and asuka for eggs benedict at joe allen at etienne marcel. we walked to galeries lafayette, to the marais, then chilled with a diabolo pêche at a cafe near hôtel de ville. afterwards we met up with chris at my apartment and sat in a pow-wow style circle on my red rug to discuss heady things until the depths of the night.

slept at six; woke up at eight to frenetically finish packing and cleaning; scooted to the cavernous charles de gaulle, and flew to detroit for my layover. met a man (a non-lech) with whom conversation was sweet and easy if unexciting; he generously paid for my dinner, then we boarded our flight together to la-land. at baggage claim, he gave me his business card (in front of my parents) but i really don't think he was trying to pick me up because i have a horrible rash around my mouth. it's brown-pink and from far away looks like an extension of my lips, as though i have abnormally long lips that begin at my nostrils and end at the tip of my chin. i tried putting on a band-aid in the airport bathroom, but then i looked too much like a person with a chin band-aid. so i caked on ineffectual concealer and bravely withstood my mother's freak-out.

***

my sister screamed when she saw me and ceremoniously handed me her plastic rainbow lei from seaworld. she's sleeping beside me on my bed, and now paris almost seems a dream. which reminds me: last night during my deliciously heavy two-hour nap, i dreamt for the first time since i was a child that i could fly. i flew lightly and sweetly in tandem with a tender man who held my left breast; we smiled at each other as we flew over the city streets -our faces very close- and then i woke up and it was time to finish packing.

Fri 25 Aug - Fri 08 Sept

these past two weeks have been a maelstrom of Holly's seminar, intense archiving sessions, and 'hasard' excursions to the flea market, the mosque, our porch.

pretensions to vegetarianism thrown out the window, hence: rare duck in honey sauce in giverny; rare duck in currant sauce at camille in the marais; curry, gluey rice in coconut milk with mango in chinatown at place d'italie. in the gardens of the terra foundation home in giverny, we had salmon quiche, vegetable quiche, and fruit salad and citrus tart for dessert. and at the orsay, rare something or other with creamy potato gratin. tibetan food -- lamb marmite -- on reunion night with asuka and js.

and most wonderful of all, discovery of a dissertation field that feels right to the fingers, right to the toes.

Wed 09 August - Thurs 24 August:

I've taken up weboggle these past two weeks. In my spare time, katie and i hosted a dinner party that our neighbors kindly tolerated even though the freewheeling foolishness lasted until five in the morning. a few nights later we carted ourselves to chris' friends' aunt's and uncle's gorgeous apartment at etienne marcel where talking ceased and power-napping commenced at 6am. (For a week thereafter, my sleeping schedule was absolutely ruined, and i regularly went to bed around 4 or 5am to wake up at noon.) We also went to THE steakhouse of paris near st. germain des près -- i ordered mine rare; three cheers for healthy french boeuf -- then went to mithat's favorite jazz cafe in an underground, womb-like stone enclave.

The next day we walked all over Paris, the goal of our walk being the institute du monde arabe whose repetitive, integer-like wall decor resembles clamps and guillotines for the arm. The following few days consisted of even more walking, from the apartment to nation, down didot to gare de lyon, past jardin des plantes down the quai, then to a number of bookstores in search of the perpetually elusive "glass state," to madeleine for a quick stop at fauchon, past chateau d'eau (now i know where to get the best weave in paris, should i ever want one), east to republique and then back home.

There was also walking to and around the 7th for a film at La Pagode, then around the marais to visit the musée d'art et d'histoire du judaisme, the maison européen de la photographie, and the shoah memorial. The next day I went to the archives to complete registration and get my ID card (finally!!), and then to jardin des plantes and the mosque for mint tea and succulent sweets with matthew. (ps i think i left my heart at the mosque: i'm going back for tea, food, and the hammam this weekend, and now all of the many months i've lived in paris this summer and a few years ago without having gone to the mosque seems impoverished.)

that evening, i packed quickly and lightly, fitting everything in a little corduroy bookbag: my toilettries, my french book, undergarments, passport and planner. i metro'd at the speed of sound to la defense to catch the night bus to amsterdam, an 8-hour bus ride that i slept most of the way through. my first day in the city, i went to nine museums. my second day, i went to six. (all of this frenetic museum-going was motivated by both financial reasons -- i bought a museumcard -- and the simple necessity of seeing all of the art in the city, especially all of the JEWISH things; i'm thinking of doing my dissertation on charlotte salomon) the third day was my day of rest, my sabbath: i walked around aimlessly, visited the Anne Frank Huis and treated myself to food that was not from a hot dog cart, such as herring in a bun and spicy Turkish pizza. in the late afternoon, i went to sauna deco for a massage and the sauna. all of the facilities -- the sauna, the pool, the relaxing areas and dressing room -- are mixed sex and, since bathing suits are not allowed, modesty must be flung out the window. i surprised myself -- i wasn't chicken! but i was still more modest than others; i walked around with my body wrapped in my towel while most of the others left their towels at the door. it's absolutely gorgeous inside, stunningly fitted with 20s art deco interior from Paris' Au Bon Marché. the entire experience was deeply restorative.

Here are some final remarks about Amsterdam/TheDutch/Dutch:

1. rimpels = wrinkles

2. a man who looks UNCANNILY (!!!) like eminen lives there

3. a lot of people leave their blinds and curtains open at night, so i had the pleasure of gazing into a lot of apartment interiors as i walked down the canals in the evening. EVERYONE is masterful at interior decoration, i think because they're forced to be creative with the peculiar floorplans of their narrow amsterdam apartments, and also because the dutch aesthetic has always been edgy and fresh.

4. instead of saying "hip hip hooray", the dutch say, "beep beep beep beep hoorah!"

5. the dutch also say a variant of s'il vous plait and use the same s.v.p. abbreviation as the french.

6. coffeeshops will occasionally have more upfront names or mottos like "amnesia," "dutch flowers rules" (sic), or even "the bushman's cafe".

7. the slab of slimy herring tasted better and better the longer i ate it. perhaps i enjoyed it so much because i bought it from a truck called 'jonk'.

8. dutch graphic design in museums (or perhaps the amsterdam aesthetic in general) is absolutely astonishing; too bad the wall texts are occasionally illogical, wrong, and oftentimes only superficially informative and entirely void of scholarly rigor.


***

what a fascinating city. it's sort of like san francisco's venerable grandaddy, or more like san francisco on the moon: seedier and more stunning, so old yet endlessly fresh. furthermore, it's suffused with this relaxed european sensibility: calm and centered, no vicious race with one's last eye on the prize. perhaps because this and liberalism suffuses amsterdam so naturally, so absolutely, there's none of sf's youthful angst or rebellious drama, no flashing its politics like a diamond ring.

but i do miss the bay area, SO MUCH, and my heart still bleeds when i think of san francisco.

tuesday:
after a little breakfast, we bicycled another shortcut (to save time) down a highway to the chevery chateau, the castle that inspired tintin. the grounds were unbelievably vast, and the grass looked like spongy green foam. we then bicycled down a beautiful windy road to beauregard, a small, run-down chateau that was katie's favorite. we bicycled back to blois, ate a lorraine quiche and a blueberry tartelette in front of the blois chateau while watching silver plastic dragons crane their necks out of the magic museum windows. we then walked to the train station where we made a personalized-photo-postcard (the backdrop shows three polar bears and the words, "happy to live"), then hopped on the train back home to paris.

monday:
took the train for an hour and a half to blois! walked around town, through the chateau, checked into our hotel, rented our bicycles, and sped down the bike path to the chambord chateau. it took two hours through windy countryside roads through ugly suburbs, picturesque villages and dead wheat fields to get to the chateau, which we finally saw in the distance behind fields of cream-colored cows. it was stunning, and the interior was cold and vast. after two ice creams, i devised a dramatic shortcut through the loire valley that would shave an hour off our ride back to blois. we bicycled against the traffic, down unmarked roads, past brown sunflower fields, fallow fields, and made it to back in time for the nighttime son et lumière show at the blois chateau. it was very dramatic in standard french style.

sunday:
went to the orsay for first-sunday-of-the-month-free-day, walked to Gare St. Lazare to check train prices, then to Etienne Marcel for a drink. came home and watched The Big Lebowski and In the Mood for Love.

saturday:
researched the Orsay for several hours, then had max, the twins, and chris over at our place where had dinner, played pick-up stix and tested the tsunami power of our waterbed.

friday:
sat in the luxembourg gardens with one of my conversation partners, a sugar chemist who learns english at "wall street english". (the motto on their metro poster advertisements is "i speak english! wall street english!") then we met up with matthew at his apartment, had sri lankan food, then walked back to and all around the 18th, down narrow and windy cobblestone roads, to little deserted squares, up and down hills, at the steps of the sacre coeur, past the good salad place and the merry-go-round. cafe-hopped and ate a dessert of warm chocolate cake with a molten caramel center sitting in a pool of cool vanilla sauce.

thursday:
worked on papers and letters, walked around my little neighborhood, and met katie at the grand palais for the machine spectacle expo where, among other things, there was a giant cymbal machine (the cymbals were six feet in diameter), a nutella-spreading toast machine, and an angel-wings flying machine.

wednesday:
ben left this morning, and later that evening, ate moroccan food near parmentier with max and his friends, the twins and chris.

tuesday:
as it was ben's last night in paris, we walked around the marais and landed in Red, a gay bar with showers. i felt like i was walking in someone else's yard, so i talked with ben and other men instead of watching the showering model. later, the model walked around with a big bowl of gummies, of which katie and i grabbed handfuls. afterwards, we saved ben from an inebriated sleaze, had a milkshake and took a cab home.

monday:
resourceful ben (jack from three's company) shared with me (janet) allostop.net and covoiturage.fr. after class (i bought little cream puff cakes of caramel and grand marnier for our in-class picnic), i bussed to asuka and js' in the marais, where js showed me 'dirty rotten scoundrels.' (or, as he pronounces it, duhty rotten skonl.) after orit came over, we all walked to a nearby restaurant, where i had one of the most amazing culinary experiences of my life. c'était super-bon!! after a short walk around the quartier, i bid them farewell and walked home.

sunday:
ate brunch with max, ben, asuka, orit, and katie near le bon marché, then journeyed to asuka's new apartment (a virtual video rental place) to pick out dvds. we came home and rolled around in bed, talking and reading a lonely planet "italian phrasebook" that lily left behind. learned how to say in italian, "where can i find ecstasy/weed/meth/cocaine?" afterwards, we watched "a fish named wanda." genial!

saturday:
ate thai food, got ice cream, then sat on the quai at sunset with asuka, ben, and max.

friday:
as it was nearing sunset, i walked miles and miles through the city (i began at champs-elysées clemenceau) until i reached st. paul, where i met a couple friends for a farewell dinner. we went to mai thai near place des vosges, then walked to bastille for ice cream. after bidding them farewell and a safe journey to hungary, katie and i sat on the steps of opera bastille while we finished the last licks of our ice cream. we then walked to the hôtel-de-ville to wait for mithad and his sister, from whence we walked to a bar and talked turkish and new york things.

thursday:
after a slow walk through the jardin luxembourg, i went with katie, majiker and his friends to "les couleurs divas" show at the parc de la villette's cabernet sauvage, a large red circus tent that dramatically gathers at a central point and whose interior is plastered with fractured mirrors that remind me of manet's aux folies-bergère. we primarily went to see maya barsony, who strutted onto stage in a baggy silk boxing robe and high heels, then busted out in sweeping diva-chorus and threw off her robe to reveal a red tube-top dress that began at her breasts and ended at the bottom of her butt. she whipped the crowd into a frenzy; they danced up a storm, jumped off the speakers, and little children screamed for more. who says frenchmen are humorless? they loved maya's slick, cheesy pop that resembles gypsy music and britney spears at her peak. after maya was an actual folk/gypsy band to whom the drunken crowd danced the jewish wedding dance (what is it called?), and following this group was a fake reggae singer from colombia. she was very beautiful but sang about "the people of ja-land" in spanish.

wednesday:
walked from school in the south of the 6th to the marais to help js and asuka complete a letter of complaint in english, then gorged on indian food around the corner. the heat finally lifted as rain suddenly began to pour, soaking us as we scampered to the metro. sickness has immobilized ben, so he's resting in our home for the time being. poor guy. sick people left and right, and i'm the only one who hasn't yet caught this vicious cold. knock on wood. found out my ta assignments for the following academic year and feel surprised, suspicious, and happy.

tuesday:
took care of miscellaneous items -- wrote a letter in french to the archives! -- then helped asuka pack, unpack, and move. afterwards, asuka made her famous creme fraiche spaghetti-thing for me and orit, and as i was waiting for the night bus, met a man at 3am who kindly helped me practice my french.

monday:
went to the louvre with lily and katie, then had dinner at place gambetta with rina, tom, and kt. d-rama!

sunday:
helped asuka pack, move, and unpack all day; then came home to d-rama!

saturday:
asuka, js, orit, katie, ben and max and lily and i went to eat cold noodles at a japanese restaurant near opera, then went vintage shopping, and then vintage shopping again at etienne marcel. i wanted to faint from the humidity (if only swoons could be induced like turning on a light switch) so asuka, lily, ben and i went to drink iced tea and cola while the others went to the park at javel for sous la plage. lily and i eventually made our way over to the park, then ate at a vegetarian restaurant near rambuteau with ben and elder for dinner. we walked to le troisième, a lesbian bar, near the pompidou, then to pop-in near republique. lily and i were very sleepy from the boisterous night before, so we all finally went home to take a very long nap.

friday:
katie and i met up with po sim and her friend clementine to meet matthew and ben at an outdoor show by the pascals at a park in belleville. the pascals are an amaaazing japanese band of 20 members led by a very brown, 50-something, overweight man who wears a bright red hula skirt and a cotton brown bra (it's supposed to resemble coconut halves). the pascals are into noises of all kinds, so throughout their set they used such instruments as windpipes, electronic caterpillar toys, children's gadgets, slapping their own naked beer bellies, or clinking iron chains. at one point, the cellist ran around, scraping his cello on the asphault floor and hitting the endpin against the building walls and flying cloth pendants. afterwards, he took a power-saw and began sawing away at the endpin to create sparks and a steady grating noise of biting metal. it was incredible. afterwards, we all went with matthew the majiker to drink drinks and eat food at a chinese restaurant in belleville. ben came home with us to greet lily, who had just arrived from italy, and after katie retired, lily and i traveled to the marais to go to some sort of fashion atelier to meet asuka, orit, js, and js' friends. after a few hours of bizarre banter, we all wandered over to asuka's, where the bizarre banter escalated into something more disturbing, but still highly entertaining.

thursday:
we metro'd to pigalle to meet po sim and her boyfriend. she's tiny and has long black hair like a curtain, and she sways and scampers a lot. found rina and mithad and we all went to a bar where i had un diabolo grenadine. discussed, among other things, tropical insects and olive oil. we caught the very last train of the night, then fell peacefully asleep on the swells of our king-size waterbed.

wednesday:
met up with ben in the marais. he accompanied us to space salon, which according to a number of people is the gayest hair salon in paris. it really was very gay (this augmented by the very consistent outer-space theme throughout the blue and silver salon) and katie and i were thereby introduced to gay parisian fashion: muscle-t's, wife-beaters, shaved heads and, of course, muscle. it's like being in gay nazi germany. i got my bangs (la frange) trimmed (coupée), and katie got her head shaved (la tete rasée). not really, but she did get a short, lesbian-attracting haircut. we felt oh so hot. we then sat on a bench in the marais with refreshing drinks, while ben did his elephant dance and he and katie ogled men on scooters and girls in skimpy dresses.

tuesday:
after class, i went to the bookstore, then to the gardens near place de la concorde to read. when i got home, a party at my apartment had already commenced: katie, tom, mithad, ben, and max were making heaps of food and noise. i dove in, yelling and laying out the plates on our marble table which, at the height of our mayhem, snapped in half. it didn't detach completely, however, so we decided to support the large dangling fragment with a chicken pot and a rice cooker sitting on two chairs. that worked better than tying empty bottles of water together with a telephone cord or superglue, which i worked on for several minutes before abandoning katie's half-baked idea. then more youtube videos of courtney love and "dark-sided"!!

monday:
watched mr. t on youtube.

sunday:
another sweet homebody day with katie, tom, and ben. in the evening walked slightly south of republique to go to "pop in" (clever!) for a gathering with max and rina. pop in was hipster heaven; i felt like i ought to be in san francisco, except everyone spoke.. french. weird. afterwards i got ice cream and jam, then walked to another bar on rue st. maur. manically power-walked home. (katie was scared of the neighborhood and it was too late to take the metro.)

saturday:
spent a luxurious day at home: ben came over in the afternoon, asuka in the evening, and we ate pizza and snapped flashy american-apparel-esque pictures: i wore red lipstick and a canary yellow waitress outfit while ben, with his curly mopped afro, wore teensy running shorts from the 70s and aviator sunglasses. we took levitating photos, and asshole pictures, photos in front of the copacabana (our banana tree), our retro robot clock, and on our teensy winding staircase that leads to a locked hatch.

friday:
walked from gambetta to canal st. martin to have lunch with max and ben: lebanese snacks and more mandolin. afterwards, katie was googly-eyed, shopping, and i bought several ribbons from brazil in pink, white, green, light green, and yellow, all inscribed with a phrase in brazilian portuguese that roughly translates to "a remembrance from a church in brazil." tied them to my keychain, which now resembles an explosion of rainbow streamers. walked almost all the way back home, met ben at apartment, waited for katie's friend tom to arrive. after dinner we met asuka, jean-sebastian and orrit on their friend's rooftop for a bastille day shindig. the fireworks were pretty feeble but paris from the rooftops looked mythic with its sweep of gray turrets and chimneys. bizarre encounter with the other: i was propositioned to ditch friends for private rendez-vous. (french men seem to be either very forward or very shy.) declined and ate creme brulée and a salad of smoked salmon at a nearby cafe where i learned french colloquialisms such as: fric (money), tune (money), hyper-chiant (very annoying), and "shui" which is a condensation of "je suis". walked all the way home, literally one radius of paris (from the city center to the east edge of gambetta) with katie and tom, and we finally slept at the wee hours of morn.

thursday:
"la dame aux camelias" at the palais garnier was awful: clunky choreography, clumsy costuming, movements too fast and loose, puerile displays of sexuality. the music, in contrast, was arrestingly beautiful. i had a difficult time deciding whether to watch the pianist, so effortlessly masterful, or the car wreck on stage. but the palais garnier, as ever, was resplendent.

wednesday:
vintage shopping and lunch with asuka at a moroccan restaurant, then two expos at the pompidou center: los angeles and le mouvement des images. everything about the pompidou is hard-core: each floor of the the museum is seriously the size of costco, and the intestinal glass structure that houses its six-story escalator is a virtual greenhouse. asuka and i scampered up the escalators as fast as we could to escape the stifling heat and sun. after the expos, we took a much-needed coffee break, then watched jean-sebastian play ping-pong with his friends in a children's play area in the marais. i then brought him and asuka home with me to eat, smoke, and discuss at length various things such as chinese men named harvey and native spaniards named keith.

tuesday:
rushed to the palais garnier with katie to catch rush student tickets for la dame aux camelias, but they only had 6 euro tickets left for seats with limited visibility. i said no way, but katie said yay, so we went our separate ways: she off into the elaborate guts of Garnier's empathetic theater and red velvet loges, and i off to stroll the wild streets of paris. i ended up walking for two hours, astounded by little alleys, random churches, Haussmannian boulevards, squares, plazas, fountains, circles, monuments, statues, parks, embassies, and restaurant interiors: i completely rediscovered a city i had branded as dirty, noisy, run-down, over-exposed and pretty unspectacular. much of the city still is all of that, but yesterday's spontaneous excursion left me breathless and starry-eyed. paris je t'aime. i'm ready for more.

monday:
had un coca-cola with asuka, jean-sebastian and orrit, then watched "paris je t'aime" at a bastille theater with red velvet seats. a couple of the shorts were hilarious -- the coen brothers' in particular and that of the aged couple in a pigalle sex shop. a few others -- one with juliette binoche and another depicting an african immigrant -- were crushing. while the movie is completely un-revelatory it's certainly enjoyable and pleasant, largely because i always love seeing on screen cities and streets i know intimately well. afterwards, went to dinner at a gorgeous italian restaurant whose interior resembled the living room of a warm, vibrant academic: dark rafters, ancient stone walls, books and photographs from floor to ceiling, plush velvet sofa chairs, and a pianist drinking water from an evian bottle placed next to a vase of sweet peas.

also: that italian mf deserved zidane's awesome head-butt. people need to get over their disbelief and anger at zidane. if my parents were algerian immigrants and someone called me a dirty terrorist, i'd lose it too. (i know this hasn't been confirmed.) furthermore, it wasn't zidane's fault that the french lost the world cup: it was that idiot who MISSED the second penalty kick!
zizou forever.

sunday:
went to porte de clignancourt, the world's most magnificent flea market. in the late afternoon, petted cats in the latin quarter and bought a gyro to eat in the garden behind notre dame. met up with min and walked to the marais to grab seats at a pub to watch the world cup final. talked with asuka at her apartment for a while aftewards.
oh zizou.

saturday:
had lunch in the luxembourg gardens, and in the afternoon went shopping in the marais. studied french in the place des vosges while waiting for katie; finally met her in front of the pompidou center. we then travelled to max's apartment near canal st. martin where max and his roommate played guitar and mandolin.

friday:
my heart was broken twice today, once in the morning as i read a new yorker article that made me weep, and once in the evening, by a person i like very much.
despite that, the evening was astonishingly hilarious: we went to the small club la boule noire in montmartre to see their unbelievable house band who played a truly unclassifiable melange of conga, big band, disco, kenny g, pink panther detective notes, and more: basically a wedding band on acid. there were at least ten people in the band, a number of whom bore striking resemblances to: devendra banhart, don johnson from miami vice, katie's fat cousin who likes to sing opera, and my AP Statistics teacher Mr. Turrett (his handlebar mustache and greasy countenance). Mr. Turrett (in the band) -- the STAR -- performed absolutely riveting dance moves, all of which were done simultaneously: running frenetically in place, waving his arms like octopi, doing the breaststroke kick with his legs, slamming the mic stand into the dance floor, and more and more and more. he had a deep, operatic voice that he wielded like a sledgehammer and that often freely ascended into yelling and high-pitched moaning. he sang lyrics like: (and a bit of it doesn't really make sense, which makes me think that i wasn't hearing it right):
henri le trois!!
henri le trois!!
toi!!
moi!!
c'est comme çaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

during several songs, a shopping cart filled with balloons would be rolled out onto the dance floor. a woman wearing either a neon orange or green jumpsuit would slowly emerge from beneath the hill of balloons to somersault out of the shopping cart. with balloons taped to her ankles, she performed interpretive dances to the wedding-band-acid music, sometimes "throwing" the balloons at the audience like a flower girl would throw rose petals. during another song, her body was endlessly encircled by rainbow-colored twinkling christmas light as she twirled around the floor.

it was all an unforgettable spectacle, but as i was returning home late at night with katie, "therein began my sadness."

thursday:
after class, checked out butte-aux-cailles neighborhood in the south of the city, then metro'd to the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain to watch a performance. a woman taped her ankle to the back of her thigh (so that she had the silhouette of a one-legged amputee) and danced silently as well as with a vocalized body -- but her voice was stifled by the square of paper onto which she had drawn her face and then cut out and chewed. the following dance was by a man who indiscriminately wrapped rubberbands around his face (so that he looked like the michelin man) and strung rubberbands into leashes extending the length of the gallery. he occasionally sang traditional turkish dirges while standing on his head or cutting off his rubberbands. it's difficult to describe the choreography without making it sound silly and vapid. but the performance was tremendously beautiful, so substantive and gorgeous, and it reaffirmed everything i love about modern and contemporary dance.

sunday, monday, tuesday, and wednesday:
started classes. wandered through palais de tokyo. electricity in the apartment went out = we freaked out. realized the next day after stumbling through conversation with electrician (i had no idea how to say "converter" or "socket" in french) that all we had to do was fix the breakers. how inept i am. met a friend of katie's, a 19-year old boy, very carefree. he is from the isle of lesbos, and says things like, "she was so beautiful that flowers bloomed on my face." he is basically royalty, as his family is very wealthy and can trace their lineage back 1000 years. likes to talk about wrinkled grandpa asses. i feel much sisterly affection towards him. after buying gyros from la maison des gyros, katie and i ate and shared secrets in the garden behind the notre dame. after shopping at my favorite vintage store in the marais, we went home and from our balcony i watched beautiful fireworks lit to celebrate france's football victory over portugal. fierce nationalism: what a sight to see.

saturday:
bought cell phone in front of st. sulpice from girl on craigslist. met renee for lunch, then joined by rachel and their cousins; we visited the gardens at musée rodin (so peaceful and warm) and then the sacre coeur and place du tertre, where one of renee's cousins got her portrait done. it was all very touristy but also enjoyable! renee and rachel are gems. surprisingly, france won the game against brazil: hence, unbelievable noise outside!

friday:
after diagnostic exam at la sorbonne, friend and i had lunch near st. sulpice -- raw salmon, potatoes, carrots and onions -- then met asuka, jean-sebastian and orrit for asuka's birthday! dinner at mai thai -- duck curry, lychee, tomatoes, lemongrass in coconut soup -- then UNO and ice cream on the banks of the seine. learned the french rules of the game. whoever heard of "contreuno" in the states?? slight breeze. after quiet, deeply pleasurable evening, they waited with me for the nightbus, then waited to leave until the bus pulled away. they're so sweet.

thursday:
because of massive sales, shopped with friend at galeries lafayette and printemps. it was NUTS! bought the most beautiful item in the store: a pencil skirt of very stiff silk, high-waisted and shiny white. slightly ruched to form deep creases across the hips, and tightened by lovely kimono-like sash.