curi·ous {Old French curios} Drawn to investigate, prick up the ears, ponder for the sake of pondering. Enticed by mysteriously labeled bottles.
vo·luptu·ary {Late Latin volupturius} A lass devoted to the pursuit of pleasure. An unabashed epicurean, hedonist, libertine, sensualist, lotus-eater.
Woke before dawn and watched the sun come up on a new decade, from a window I will soon sadly relinquish. Made coffee for my honey, who bravely accompanied me to Passy, a wealthy area of south-west Paris that was once a commune, as I begin to wrap up the research that brought me here. [...]
A nighttime pilgrimage to the Tour Eiffel, by which I mean a five+ mile, three hour stroll through le Marais, past Notre Dame, and along the Seine. Heaven.
When we arrived at the foot of the tower, it began to practice for the first ever rainbow-hued 400 LED light show on New Years Eve. Some things, [...]
Edit, edit, edit all day, then, a date night. Alfonso surprised me with a trip to tiny art house cinema Studio 28 on the Butte Montmartre. The theater opened in 1928 as Paris’ first avant-garde cinema, and showed Louis Bunel’s L’Age d’Or not long after. The lobby displays the foot prints (not shoes, like Graumans, [...]
A trip to Deyrolle, cabinet of curiosities which I am delighted to report has risen from the ashes of the 2008 fire that threatened it’s demise. Some of the rough-around-the-edges charm is gone, but in it’s place is a more polished, self-aware magnificence. Which I ’spose means Deyrolle grew up.
Began the day with a trip [...]
I’m guided by a signal in the heavens/I’m guided by those birthmarks on my skin/
I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons/First we take Manhattan then we take Berlin.
~ Leonard Cohen
cafe honoring Austrian playwright Joseph Roth, who lived next door. (click to expand)
Its utterly sock-knocking to be back in a proper international landscape after so [...]
Today while on the bike at the gym a German TV station presented a movie I had never seen: Bühne frei für Marika. A Yma Sumac/Lucille Ball type–by which I mean an actress attempting to convey a sort of “other” sensuality that argued with her inclination towards physical comedy–was dressed as a silver-clad, ponytailed space [...]
On Saturday we took an adventure by train to Aarberger, to the annual brocante (flea market). This is part of my Explore Your Own Country initiative, prompted by a general lack of traveling elsewhere. Next up is a journey to hike the Creux du Van.
Most of the pictures below are from the train or [...]
Our hosts in Andalusia were an old friend of Alfonso and his wife, who is native to Cadiz, of the town Sanlucar de Barrameda. Upon our arrival we were thus treated to a party of adults and kids, a reunion of sorts for the high school girlfriends of our host and their menfolk and children.
Much [...]
Le pâle squelette/De mes amourettes/Joue des castagnettes…
(The pale skeleton/Of my little loves/Plays castanets…)
[...]
The comparison was already floating through my mind, of Amsterdam with San Francisco. The cafes, the bohos, the acceptance of people as they are–and a certain air of self-acceptance that comes from living in a Mecca of so-called tolerance.
And, so I had read, Amsterdam even has it’s own refurbished Deco movie house, Pathé Tuschinski.
Then [...]