Best Proposal Ever!

I just couldn’t resist posting this proposal. It made me so happy! (And cry tears of joy).

Have a great weekend and enjoy!

Allo Allo (A Rock ‘n Roll Paris)

Enough slow, elegant, black and white montages of Paris for the moment.

I’m still after adrenaline. I want to be shook up. Give me some rock and roll.

Well, voila! A quick cut Paris.

Enjoy!

Walk and Invent Your Life (Portes Ouvertes)

I saw this yesterday and thought, yes!

Walk and invent your life.

As it happened, that’s exactly what I was out doing.

I mentioned to you that my last trip home threw up a whole bunch of questions. I’m feeling my way and trying to figure out (yet again) just what the heck I’m doing with this “one wild and precious life” (Mary Oliver shout-out!)

Nope, I don’t have the answers yet (whoa, that would have been lightning fast!), but what I did say was that I was committing to making my life in Paris count, that I’d try to hold onto my newly refreshed New York sense of self here in the City of Light.

Part of that is just keeping my eyes (and ears and heart) open and finding inspiration wherever it may exist.

This week I haven’t had to look far. I’ve literally stumbled right into inspiration. On Monday I saw Deborah Levy speak at Shakespeare & Co. One word: Amazing. I have a new writer crush.

Then yesterday I saw a documentary film made by someone I hadn’t seen in a very long time. On the way home, I saw a small group of 4 people looking down at green pamphlets and looking questioningly at a door. Then they went in.

On the spur of the moment, I followed.

Turns out it was a “portes ouvertes” in my neighborhood. This is always one of my favorite events, and even better when discovered serendipitously. 56 artists in the ‘hood were opening their doors to their studios and showcasing their work.

Bye Bye Sarkozy; Hello Hollande

Well, if I’ve been complaining that I feel a certain lack of energy in France, a close presidential election serves at least as temporary cure.

Rue de la Roquette on Election Night

Tonight the French elected Socialist candidate Francois Hollande to the presidency, ousting incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.

Crowds congregated in celebration across the country; I headed to Bastille where the mood was boisterous.

At one point I was nearly crushed against a wall as a pack of people surged against me. Well, I wanted excitement, didn’t I?

I ducked into a bistro for a brief reprieve

There and Back with a Bang!

Sunny Central Park and Jumping Girl with Umbrella

Paris! I’ve returned!

Yes, after a month’s sojourn Stateside I’m back in the City of Light.

But just what was I doing away for so long?

Well, falling back in love with my American home, to be honest.

Late Night Mexican Street Food on the Lower East Side

The trip stirred up a lot of feelings for me. Just when I thought I was settled (and incredibly satisfied!) in Paris, New York had to go and work her old charm on me.

Oh, this. THIS.

That was my reaction as soon as I stepped back into the city. I was flooded with my overwhelming love for the place: the energy, diversity, the possibilities just teeming in the streets.

Never thought a bagpipe could be a viable “jam” instrument, but I was proven wrong in Union Square. I have video, too!

Happy 100th Birthday, Robert Doisneau!

Like a lot of wistful, dreamy girls, I used to have Robert Doisneau’s “Kiss by the Hotel de Ville” hanging over my bed.

While it’s perhaps the photographer’s most famous picture, I’m glad I eventually dug deeper into his work and discovered the wealth of moments he captured.

Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary has always been one of my fascinations – and I think it was one of his, too.

“I like people for their weaknesses and faults. I get on well with ordinary people,” he once said.

Here’s a lovely montage of some of his amazing photos. I love the song, too – and was surprised it was sung by Carla Bruni! (Sarkosy’s wife).

Happy 100th birthday, Robert Doisneau. You made life look so beautiful (it is!)

Dansons La Capucine (Or Cutest Cat Video Ever)

Greetings from New York!

Just a quick hello to say I’m having such a blast in NYC – book launches, power lunches, cookouts, cupcakes. Threw in a freelance assignment for good measure, too.

It just feels great to be here. And so the never-ending tug of sympathies continues – Paris, New York, Paris, New York.

Of course, I feel blessed to have both. On Monday I met up with someone who truly gets it. Amy Thomas (of “Paris, My Sweet” and God, I Love Paris) shares the Paris/New York love affair and it was great to see her in the Big City. We’ve always spent time together in Paree – this was our first New York date!

Tonight I’ll be going to hear her read at Posman Books in Chelsea Market along with Jeryl Brunner, author of “My City, My New York: Famous New Yorkers Share Their Favorite Places.” Doesn’t that sound like the perfect double bill? If you’re in New York, come on out! (Click here for details).

In the meantime, I leave you with this French video. For the past week I’ve been sharing a lovely Brooklyn apartment with a ginger-colored cat named Bernard. Here’s proof of a truth I’m happy to accept: the cute cat video is a worldwide phenomenon. Global understanding through adorable animal videos! Let’s do it!

Hope you’re well.

Weird News of the Week: Mimes and Paris Nightlife

At the behest of the Paris mayor’s office, squads of mimes will now be deployed in an effort to reduce the city’s nighttime noise pollution.

Um, come again?

Yes, “Pierrots de la Nuit” use street performance to encourage partiers to keep it down. Paris launched the project this past weekend.

Hmm. Here my love of quirkiness is in conflict with my discomfort/fear of clowns and mimes. I also wonder if having a mime trying to shh people might actually risk more rowdiness. I mean, it might be difficult to ignore the mime even though he or she is silent (ah, that’s power!), but might it not tap into some sort of rebellion, too?

It’s all done in good humor, of course. I’ll be interested to see how it plays out.

The following video is in French, but provides a few key visuals.

On that note, I’m off to the City that Never Sleeps for most of April. I might encounter mimes there (because you can encounter any and every thing in New York – one of the reasons I love it!), but I somehow feel safer in the knowledge that mimes aren’t yet an organized noise-reducing tactic in NYC.

Have a joyous month. If you don’t hear from me for awhile, know that it’s because I’m out exploring and enjoying my trip. (Or maybe a mime has stolen my voice!)

To read more about the “Pierrots de la Nuit” initiative, here’s the article from ARTINFO. There’s also a dedicated blog and Facebook page.

What do you think? Night mimes: good idea or childhood nightmare come true?

“The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris”

John Baxter is an acclaimed Australian-born writer, journalist, and filmmaker who has made his home in Paris since 1989. His career successfully spans several different genres and mediums from science fiction to screenwriting, documentaries to memoir.

Baxter is a bibliophile (the first of his memoirs written in Paris was A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict) and a serious movie buff. He’s authored several biographies of famed film luminaries including Federico Fellini, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, and Robert De Niro, just to name a few.

Baxter’s latest work, out this month from Short Books, is The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris. Composed of 37 chapters, each elegantly linked to the next, the book is a delightful stroll through the city, its history, and the author’s own observations about his adopted home.

What I particularly liked was Baxter’s seamless weaving of personal anecdotes with fascinating facts, a fluid prose that makes it one of the most pleasurable Paris books I’ve read in a long time. His love of the city comes through, as well as his wit and intelligence. A vignette might evoke Paris’ classic beauty (Luxembourg Gardens, for example), but is just as likely to veer into lesser known terrain (mass murderer Henri Désiré Landru who often met his victims in those very same gardens!) Hemingway haunts, opium dens, “political walks” (manifs) – Baxter covers wide ground. I also liked his asides (“Not great laughers, the French…Interestingly, there’s no French equivalent of the phrase ‘bedside manner.’” That one gave me a chuckle).

Explaining that my blog is called “paris (im)perfect” because I like the quirky and offbeat and because the imperfect is a verb tense used for recounting stories, I asked John Baxter if he’d be willing to write about one of his strolls off the beaten path. Happily he agreed! I’m so pleased to be able to share an original piece by him here. He also provided the photos.

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John Baxter

Plastered on the haunch of the butte of Montmartre, the 18^th arrondissement is off the beaten track, with an architecture and lifestyle all its own. Along rue Marcadet, diamond-shaped lots from the days when these were market gardens or guinguettes have dictated apartment blocks with parallelogram floor plans. What does it do to your brain, to live in a room with no right angles? Maybe it accounts for the pale faces that stare out from a few windows; shut-ins, with nothing to do but watch the world go by.

Caught in the gaps between these crooked habitations, like bits of gristle in a set of crooked teeth, businesses survive that you seldom see in more prosperous districts; plumbing supply shops, shoe repairers, furniture movers, moulders of false teeth.

And probably undertakers too, along with makers of funerary monuments. The Montmartrois joke that once you visit the dixhuitieme, you stay forever – because it’s the arrondissement with the largest number of graveyards.

Soaking up Sunshine; Stocking up on Books

Lazing around Le Square du Vert-Galant

Pont Neuf Bridge

Luxembourg Gardens

Spring. Is. Amazing.

It makes me want to dance!