Before I Die...Paris Play #100

 

To celebrate our one-hundredth edition of Paris Play, we've created our third Surrealist Café, our virtual gathering place where readers/friends contribute, and we curate.

Last week, we asked you to fill in the blank: Before I die I want to ______________.

This week, your heartfelt, soul-deep replies; we tried to honor them each with the best illustration that we could create.

Thank you, everyone who played. You make our lives so much richer with your depth, and your willingness to participate in community. When we first arrived in Paris, we worried about isolation from our loved ones. Hah! Not a chance.

May all your dreams come true before you die.

Love,

Kaaren and Richard

Ted Tokio Tanaka

 

Before I die I want to feel comfort to move on to after life.

Porter Scott

Painting by Ku Gao (c) 2012

Before I die, I want to tie the ribbon on my life (or come full circle) by signing all of the paintings of my youth and selecting all of the best photos I’ve taken over the years; thereby leaving my small visual mark on the world as my most satisfying accomplishment!

Gayle

 

Before I die I want to marry someone rich to take care of me.

Anna Waterhouse

  

Before I die I want to see God, preferably in Italy.

Ann Denk

 

Before I die I want to welcome more grandchildren into our family.

Malika Moore

 

Before I die I want to be ready, as in Hamlet's saying, "All is readiness."

Polly Frizzell

 

Before I die I want to see my beloved sisters Kaaren and Jane in the flesh many more times.

Jon Hess

 

Before I die I want to be free to trust in love.

Aline Soules 

 

Before I die, I want to know that I've lived completely.

Suki Edwards

Before I die, I want to explore Scandinavia and New Zealand.

Hope Alvarado

 

Before I die I want to go on an African photo safari.

Sojourner Kincaid Rolle

 

Before I die, I would like to have a poem that I have written acknowledged for its timeless perfection and, as its composer, be recognized in the history of our time as a Poet.

Marguerite Baca

 

Before I die I'd like to develop a green thumb, if that's possible, and grow an abundance of vegetables and herbs to share with friends and loved ones.

Joanne Warfield

 

Before I die, I want to love as I've never loved before with every cell of my being until I turn back into stardust.

Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

Street art by Jérôme Mesnager 

Before I die, I want to breathe eternity's air, die before I die in the sweetest sense, and swim in its light.

Larry Colker

Street art by Pole Ka

Before I die, I want to hold my great-grandchild.

Vivian Beban

 

Before I die, I'd just like to host a fantastic party for loved ones and friends, especially those I haven't seen in years, with a live band (my son-in-law Jeff being the leader, of course) and the best caterer money could buy, in a natural setting or a beautiful winery, and I'd want it to go on for a whole day and evening just like in the old movies.

Bayu Laprade

Street art by ME Paris 

Before I die, I want to achieve great joy, success and mastery in a creative realm.

Sab Will

 

Before I die I want to know I made a difference.

Carol Cellucci

 

Before I die I want to stop working and travel.

Craig Fleming

 

Before I die I want to whirl like a dervish on the razor's edge, entranced yet all the while fully awake.

Ebba Brooks

 

Before I die I want to get my novel published.

Kari Denk

 

Before I die, I want to know that my daughter is and will be strong, independent, happy, loyal, charismatic, loving, and an all-around good person.

Bruce Moody

 

Before I die, I want to bring my work before folks on line and clean out my basement so my daughter doesn't have to do it then.

Anonymous

 

Before I die, I want to...document every last piece of urban art in Paris.

John Brunski

 

Before I die, I want to go surfing as much as I did as a kid, or at least as much as my son does now!

Eric Schafer

 

Before I die, I want to have my book published.

Ren Powell

 

Before I die I want to grow very, very old slowly; to pass through my days like an outward-bound trip, seeing the new every moment.

Anne Reese

 

Before I die, I want to walk as I used to, or I want to walk well.

Connie Josefs

Create to create

Before I die, I want to finish and publish my work.

Nancy Zafris

 

Before I die I want to spend an afternoon with the Loch Ness Monster.

Dawna Kemper

Street art by Fred Le Chevalier

Before I die, I want to see a smart, soulful, progressive woman in the White House (as President, not First Lady; we thankfully already have the latter).

Kaaren Kitchell

Before I die I want to bring forth what is in me,
to transpose vision and memory
into literary works of art.

Betty Kitchell

Street art by Sardine Animal

Before I die, I want to do…nothing!  I've done it all!

Our Friend Daniel, in the Lions' Den

Our good friend, the poet Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, is a frequent contributor to the Paris Play dialogues that accompany each post. I've known him since we lived in Berkeley in the late sixties, and am sorry to hear news of his health worries. At the time of this post, Daniel just entered the hospital for the first of three chemo and 35 radiation therapy sessions. The prognosis is good, and his family and friends are hopeful.

This post, which contains his recent poem, is a prayer for Daniel, a thank-you for his contributions, and request for our friends all over the world to offer up prayers to him, whatever your religion, or lack of same. Atheists, agnostics, pagans, all can play.

THE LIONS' ARENA

The lions' arena

is full of medical equipment

The roar of the lions is the

great radiation ring whirring

The crowd leaning forward with

thumbs at the ready

wears chemotherapy gowns

It’s a hot day

and a restless hum is in the air

The masks of everyone’s faces

are beginning to slip

As we enter naked and

shackled the

crowd is hushed

The outcome is anyone’s guess

and God’s to toss into the

arena’s dust we’ve

been since birth

waiting for this moment’s

test

There’s no signal to start

all is already closing in

A star glimmers overhead

for each of us

wanting the best

Our hearts have already

entered paradise

and come to

rest

_____________________

5/28/12 (from Down at the Deep End, in progress)

Photo (c) 2012 Malika Moore

Dinner: One Cricket, One Kir

I followed the thread of the labyrinth for years, until I knew its winding loops and pattern as if they were my own soul.

I still trace its pattern and colors daily, a record, a map of my days.

Out of the labyrinth now, I’m fascinated by the threads that link me to others, to kindred spirits, other worlds.

Kindred spirit: Susan. Met in Berkeley at a screening of my cousin Mark’s film about the ecology movement, “A Fierce Green Fire.” Instant love.

Kindred spirit: Edith. Met in Paris at Connie’s house when she told us stories of artists she’s known that kept us all spell-bound. Instant love.

Kindred spirit: Judithe, a friend of Susan’s and Edith’s and Connie’s, who also lives in Paris. Judithe invited me to a gathering of writers and bande dessinée (comic strip) artists who write for and illustrate a French magazine called Soldes. It was inspired by a countercultural magazine Actuel, that Judithe and her ex-husband created in the late ‘60s.

I am to meet her at her home. She comes to the door in goat leather jacket, serpent pants, with a Jeanne Moreau mouth.

Rez de chaussée (the ground floor), a large living-dining room that opens onto a deep garden, rare in Paris and enchanting. Persian rugs. Fine paintings on the walls. A photograph of an African king.

A chunky Welsh corgi on the floor.

A tricycle in the foyer.

Judithe is learning how to make an e-book. She’s a diver who photographs underwater worlds. She’s modest about her photography skills, but a friend in NYC insists that she must make an e-book with her photos of underwater creatures, and he will help with text and publication.

She shows me how she plugs in text and photos in the e-book program on her MacBook. It looks so easy!

Her black Smart car is parked on the curve of the boulevard. It’s impossibly small, like a toy car. But it carries us comfortably and smoothly through Paris to the Canal St. Martin. We cover deep-sea diving, American politics, whether Obama will be re-elected (yes, I think he will), French politics (the choice between Sarkozy and Hollande, and who should win), UNESCO, the counterculture, children, people we know and love in common, Berkeley, the Berkeley Barb, R. Crumb, who was friends with Judithe and her husband and did cartoons for Actuel.

We park just off the Quai de Valmy in a tiny space that no other car could maneuver into.

It’s not at all clear where this warehouse is. Judithe pops into the post office, and asks a group of Arab men. The entrance is around the corner, says one. She is gay and charming, and he is happy to help.

Canal St. Martin is lined with young picnickers and drinkers, a hip and happening part of town. The warehouse is marked by familiar graffiti—I’ve seen it before in a photo of Richard’s.

The high-ceilinged room is filled with artsy-looking youngsters in their 20s through 60s. (Artists and revolutionaries are closer to their childhood selves, and while not always the most mature of citizens, carry youthful spirits well into old age.) The first thing that strikes the eye is a giant cartoon on the wall.

“Richard would love this!” I exclaim.

“Call him and tell him to join us,” says Judithe. But he is at a photography event.

Judithe introduces me to a man about our age, an elegant French artist, who is one of the founders of Soldes. I can’t make out his words above the rock music, and ask him to speak more slowly, thinking I might read his lips. But he and Judithe think I mean I don’t understand French, and switch to English. But I do! Chat, chat.

We make our way through the crowd in front of the bar. Judithe orders a serious drink. I settle for Kir.

Back into the main room. An array of insects is artfully arranged in mandala form on plates. The hors d'oeuvres.

I am mesmerized. Scorpions, bees, grasshoppers, crickets and worms. We’re supposed to eat them. They’re certainly beautiful, but no one is rushing up for a sample. I take a few photos to show Richard.

Two young men with microphones are seated on the lip of a stage. On a big screen behind them are photos and diagrams of places in Africa and Asia where insects are a primary source of protein in the diets of humans.

One of the men discourses in that serious French fashion, as if this is a lecture at the Sorbonne. Now he is deconstructing cultural attitudes towards eating insects.

Insects were once eaten in Europe, the lecturer tells us. The only thing that prevents us from eating them today is disgust. (Disgust! That little piffle.) I was raised in a state where scorpions abound, and avoiding them always seemed like a good idea.

Judithe and I take seats on folding chairs near the projector. We glance over at the hors d’oeuvres table. No one has touched the snacks. In spite of the cogent analysis, cultural disgust is intact.

“Why are there no spiders?” asks a young woman.

“Spiders aren’t insects,” the speaker says.

Oh good. No black widows. No rattlesnakes.

“But aren’t some insects poisonous?” someone asks.

“Insects are just like mushrooms. You have to know which ones are edible, which are toxic,” the lecturer says.

Judithe asks another question. But this is one too many interruptions for the lecturer. They will take questions at the end.

“This is so French,” Judithe mumbles,“the serious sermon.”

We meander around. I strike up a conversation with a man who is drawing bright beautiful cartoon figures in the front of the latest edition of Soldes. He introduces me to his wife, Ariane.

She is Swiss. He is French. They lived in NYC for a while and now are back in Paris. I ask her if she knows the myth about her namesake, Ariadne.

No, she doesn’t. What is it?

I tell the story of the Cretan princess and the labyrinth and the Minotaur.

“Oh!” she says, “The goddess with the thread? That’s funny. My husband’s name is Phil and you know the French word for thread is fil. And he’s a Taurus, a bull.”

“So is mine!” I say. “And our myth is Ariadne and the Minotaur. In the later part of the story, Ariadne marries Dionysus. One of the shapes he takes is a bull.”

We talk about the Native American custom of going on a vision quest, which is a variation on the descent into the labyrinth.

I join Judithe outside on the bank of the Canal St. Martin. All around us people stand talking, drinking, smoking, cell phoning.

Back inside Judithe introduces me to a cartoonist who reminds me just a bit of Robert Crumb. A young Asian man extends a tray of insects to me.

“Why thank you. I believe I’ll try this cricket on his little wheat-colored bed,” I say. “Oh crispy! Delicious!”

Judithe and I are ready to go at the same moment. I buy a Soldes and ask Phil (Fil) to sign it to Richard and me. It’s as beautiful as an art book, and costs 17 euros.

We return in Judithe’s Smart car, and talk of Amin Maalouf’s book, The Crusades through Arab Eyes, the Lebanese, my cousin Mark’s “Fierce Green Fire,” Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, Cannes, diving in the Mediterranean sea, sky diving, a friend who killed herself in spite of great brilliance and beauty, French lessons.

A pleasurable evening of many threads. Dinner: one cricket, one kir. And a new friend, with many links between us.

What a Wonderful Way to Die

Our friend George Whitman died Wednesday.

The legendary, incredibly hospitable, and sometimes famously irascible proprietor of the latest incarnation of the Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company was 98. We've shared our love of the bookstore here on Paris Play twice before.

In these latter years, George had turned over the operations of the store to his supremely competent, beautiful, and equally hospitable daughter, Sylvia Beach Whitman, who expands on her father's gifts by running the bookstore as a business, too, which wasn't really in George's nature.

Here's what we mean: Richard had the pleasure of being George's guest at his "Tumbleweed Hotel," a few times during the eighties, which sometimes entailed running the cash box while George stepped out. George was a wonderful, trusting soul, but Richard suspects that many of the other vagabonds who also found themselves in the position of watching the store may not have been as scrupulously honest.

George estimated that he put up more than 40,000 travelers at the bookstore over the years. In exchange for a bed, George asked them to work an hour or two a day, write a short autobiography and read a book a day.

In a video made by Book TV C-Span 2 in 2002 (when George was 90 years old and Sylvia was 21), the interviewer asked him about Sylvia:

Is she the only child you have?

George: In a way she's the only one. In another way, I have thousands of children all over the world.

Interviewer: She came a little late for you, didn't she?

George: Not for me. I'm just beginning to live. When I'm 100 years old, come and interview me again, I'll tell you some more interesting stories.

His friends recalled that George also had the habit of slipping large denomination franc notes into books as bookmarks, then reshelving them and forgetting where he put them. Since George ran Shakespeare as a lending library, too, people would report finding 50,000 franc bills, which George would pocket, saying, "Oh, I wondered where that went." He was a great lover and patron of literature, and counted among his friends many of the greatest writers of the 20th Century, among them Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, James Baldwin, Lawrence Durrell, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg and Wiliam Burroughs.

Willis Barnstone read at Shakespeare in August

I met George in the nineties when Richard and I began traveling to Paris together. In his mid-eighties, he was lean and raffishly bohemian, and had the aura of a Merlin. As Sylvia said about her father in the 2005 video, Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man, "For me, he's more of a very eccentric wizard."

There are many fine obituaries out there with all of the pertinent "facts," how George was given the mantle and bookstore name by Sylvia Beach, who began the store in November 1919 (and closed it in December 1941 after threats from the occupying Nazis), and who first published James Joyce's Ulysses; how George and his friend Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights in San Francisco began their "sister stores" in the early 1950's, etc.; but what moved me was the way his death so beautifully mirrored his life. Sylvia was quoted in the 2002 Book TV interview, "People ask me what is his secret. I think it's that he's surrounded by books, which is his passion. And also surrounded by young people, so it kind of keeps him alive. He's got a buzz for life and so he's--I find him quite inspiring that way."

George Whitman died as he lived, above the bookstore in his tiny apartment facing the Seine and Notre Dame, in a 17th Century building that had once housed the monks of Notre Dame. He died surrounded by books, with his daughter, friends and his dog and cat by his side.

We walked by Thursday to bring Sylvia Whitman a bouquet of roses, and found the store closed, and dozens of people with the same impulse, creating a shrine of flowers, candles, and notes that we all hoped would withstand the near-freezing Paris wind.

George will be buried at Pere-Lachaise, our favorite cemetery, where Balzac, Proust, Oscar Wilde and Apollinaire rest, so we will visit him there, and will continue to greet his spirit at least weekly at Shakespeare, the fiercely independent and magical bookstore where we buy our books. 

 

Peaches and Cheese

 

 If you were to travel to the Loire Valley town of Chinon, here is what you would see:

      A low white train station with an elevated clock tower.

      A fruit and vegetable store, the Marché Rabelais, across the street.

      Many houses for sale, Tudor-style and stone, lining the cobbled-stone streets.

      A histrionic-looking Joan of Arc astride her horse, straining against the reins.

      A wide river with wooden skiffs moored along the banks.

     Many young people whipping along the sidewalks in state-of-the-art wheelchairs.

      A statue of the French novelist Rabelais (who was born here) with a square cap on his head, at the end of a street that ends at the river Vienne. 

     A fortress high up on the town's highest hill.

 If you were to stay at the hotel, Lion d’Or, here is what you would notice: 

     A hot color scheme: not just the bright red Indian bedspread, but also pink walls, and burgundy carpet. You might think you’d been trapped in a box of Valentine’s Day candy.

     But then, when you opened the window, you’d feel as if you’d opened the box and bit into the tastiest little chocolate.

     Geraniums (more red!) in the window boxes.

     Plane trees arching above your room and the street. 

     A breeze of precisely the right temperature.

We had traveled by Métro to Paris’ Montparnasse train station.

We’d taken the high-speed TGV for just over an hour to Tours. 

We’d disembarked with our suitcases, and boarded a bus for a ride of equal length to Chinon, past rural villages and bright fields of sunflowers.

Friends were getting married. They got married each time they had a child, and the second one was now on its way. We’d missed the first wedding, but were glad to be here for this one.

The celebrations would begin the next day. Now we wanted to rest after our travel.

But first we needed to stock up on water and snacks. We unpacked, then wheeled our empty suitcases back along the cobbled street to the Marché Rabelais.

How can I convey to you the dearness of this market? It was so simple, mostly fruit and vegetables, with some nuts and beans and olives. Nothing fancy. Nothing slick. Neither a supermarket nor a farmer’s market. But the owners clearly had the most personal relationship with their vegetables and fruit.

They treated heads of lettuce like little people, friends of theirs.  A sign said, Touchez moi avec délicatesse.... Je tiens à mes feuilles. 

The shelves were stepped, with no refrigeration, each step containing just a few bouquets of broccoli or carrots, with plenty of breathing room. As if each were being displayed as a discrete offering, an individual life calling out, Pick me! No, me!

The peaches were fairly screaming, Adopt us! Take us home!

The figs were humming in low voices. I couldn’t resist picking up a container, though I hadn’t had a yen for figs in years. Richard was seduced by the trail mix.

The farmer-merchant stood among the potatoes, giving them his full attention. He called out a few gruff words to his stout wife at the cash register. She barked back, but was friendly, though shy, with us.

“Ahh!” she said, as Richard loaded the six packs of large water bottles evenly into our carry-ons. “That’s why you come with suitcases.”

We rolled our suitcases back to the Lion d’Or, and unpacked them onto the desk in our room.

I bit into a peach which dripped so that I had to lean out the window and "water" the geraniums.

Richard opened a container of trail mix so fresh that it seemed as if the nuts had been cracked that day.

We stretched out and listened: to the doves calling, “Amour, amour,” the crows engaged in a strenuous quarrel, the murmur of French and English in the sidewalk café below.

A breeze. A nap.

At 6, we went out to find dinner. In the section of town west of the hotel, we found cobblestone streets closed to traffic. We scanned the menus along the way. None served dinner before 7:30 p.m. Mais non! It’s France.

We were too hungry to wait. Meandering down a side street, I saw a wine bar, La Cave Voltaire. Inside was a big butcher block, with a freshly-baked loaf of bread on top. To tide us over till dinner, we’d have a bit of bread and cheese.

We settled at a table outside with a view of the fortress.

After a while, a young woman with abundant curly blond hair and a wholesome manner brought us a plate of cheese.

“Now I will explain the cheeses,” she said delicately in French.

They were arranged in an artful circle around the edge of the plate—five made from vache, five from chèvre. The waitress lovingly named each one.

  

By the time she had finished her litany (it was a song!), we were enchanted. Richard neatly divided the plate in half. “La vache pour moi; le chèvre pour toi.”

But on his third cheese with bread, he began to mew, and said (though he knows I prefer goat cheese), “You have to try this one.”

Obedient wife, I spread it on bread.

The taste began as mild, then turned slightly disgusting, then lingered, a delicate taste. It was the best cheese either of us had ever tasted.

We scoured the plate.

The girl came back and asked us brightly if we had enjoyed our cheese.

“What is the name of the cheese which has a slight aroma of garlic and onion?” Richard asked.

“Ca n’existe pas,” she said. (Really? It doesn’t exist?) “Only our fromager makes it. It’s called a Coulouvier mascarpone ciboulette.” (Only their personal cheese-maker makes this particular cheese? Ooh la la.)

I took out my small Moleskin, and asked her to list the cheeses in the notebook. She carefully wrote down each one, with a “(v)” for vache, or a “(c)” for chèvre beside each.

The sidewalk café had filled, perhaps with people who’d smelled our ecstatic food trail pheromones. We heard German, English, Dutch, Spanish, French all around us.

The restaurants were open now.

“Do we want to eat any more?” Richard asked.

“I need an omelette,” I said.

We returned to At’ Able, an inviting restaurant we’d passed on rue Rabelais. 

The hostess brought us menus. Cold. A brusque waitress came to take our order. Cold. She had all the humanity of a rock. Opaque, not a trace of kindness about her.

The omelette had local mushrooms, tiny buds. It’s a simple dish—how could you ruin it? But they did. “It was almost inedible,” I said, as we walked back to our room. “Runny in the middle, tasteless, and gray.”

“My pasta sucked, too,” said Richard.

Back at the Lion d’Or, I tried a fig. It was exquisite. I began to sing.

All day, the food had matched the spirits of the people serving it. Cold and lousy at one restaurant. Warm and astonishingly good from the Marché Rabelais and La Cave Voltaire.

Maybe it was the spirits of the writers hovering over their namesake food purveyors. Perhaps it brings good luck to name a restaurant or market, Le Café de Beauvoir, or Le Marché Baudelaire. What do we really know about the magical links between the material world and the spirits, anyway?