there is a quiet moment when the bottles are calming our violent insides and the voices turn silent, tiptoeing towards the river, waiting for our feet to slip. it isn't a surprise that your second nature is to cast your fishing line and cut all ties to your throne, a cigarette ash like a pencil falling in your lap before you realize you haven't written a word. i swallowed my tongue in the bridge collapse. we'll go to the island and drink like we promised, though our patterns become obscured and we walk into ethereal bitterness, 4am, 7am, carousel, and i'm numb, like you, living like the humiliation doesn't come at a price - the bed on the sidewalk, the limbs in the trees, the flies in your ears. erase, repeat.

j'aime les greniers

top image: henry bourne
bottom: hortze elsma
(re/remodelista)

SO SAD

a horrible moment. i ALMOST had a tear.
sorry totoro...

lazy.

there is not much to say at the moment, except:
-i've been sleeping all day, recovering from a night picnic in belleville gone crazy party at my house...(card games, broken bottles, lost socks.)
-i was happy to have something to clean today; it's soothing.
-my birthday flower is still alive. evidently i am not a plant murderer as was previously thought.
-i sent about a million postcards and letters yesterday.
-i am going broke quickly. fun.

eventually, when i can move my limbs again, i will put up some pictures of a futuristic library we found on my street. a bientot...

i miss canadian trees
and annoying silence

labour and wait: london

i found this store a long time ago but their products are so cool (culinary seeds, radio kits, french candles, rope doorstops, swedish moose firelighters) ... i will be their #1 customer if i come back to europe in the new year!

visage, country tape, muji.

so i have decided to share little bits of my notebook
from my birthday

the strangest thing happened. i was walking through the marais and saw a folded up piece of paper on the sidewalk. i passed it, but something kept making me think about it and suddenly i ran back to it and picked it up. i know it sounds gross but it was definitely the most interesting thing that happened to me that day once i opened it (besides, of course, the VERY shocking thai massage...i won't go into detail)!

the letter reads:

il était une fois, au pays des Jeans, un Monsieur que s'appelait Jean-Martin voulait se marier avec Jean-Alphonse! Mais au pays des Jean, les Jean était homophobes alors ils ne pouvraient pas se marier!

il était une fois, au pays des Jeans, une Jean canon Jean-Margoux; une Jean a gros seins Jean-Estelle; une Jean amorescque avec yeux bleus; Jean-Lea; une Jean cochonne; Jean-Clara; une Jean roucoulante; Jean-Rebecca; une Jean maime; Jean-Lucie, une Jean en surpoids; Jean-Emma, une Jean moche; Jean-Aurélie. Et, dans ce pays des jeans

and it stops.

weird, isn't it?

i love it. i hope it doesn't say anything too vulgar. my french is horrible.

on another note, a great note, i got this postcard in the mail from jaime!!! i was so excited to recieve a postcard on my birthday!

thank you jaime, i love those gardens! :) yours is in the mail, though it's a bit big, so it may take some time to reach you...

so the rest of the bday-day was a bit of a blur, between the thai massage, the crazy vintage clothing stores, the letter, the horrible sushi restaurant (for those of you at home who know my birthday tradition- it failed miserably this year. it was like eating cardboard KFC.), the flowers we bought in a miniature bucket that smell like wet towels but are SO cute...

etc. etc.

it's time to cook some dinner and watch french tv.

a bientot...

les aventures avec sasha

i forgot to post about this earlier. it's raining today and i'm waiting for laundry, so here's what went down on the weekend!

on friday, sasha visited on his way back to canada from croatia... and brought a whole bag of chocolate with him.

(i didn't eat it all in two days. really, i didn't...)

we went to the louvre...

(a bathtub? that's what you think.)

and the rest, none of us remember in detail. stories were exchanged, bewilderment was felt, wine was consumed...

and i think it's safe to say i learned some things about life. and its tangiability.
i took from these conversations a lot of inspiration and consequently a lot of thought about my personal values. it only seemed to be fate that sasha arrived before my birthday, because it felt that as i realized that another year had gone past, i suddenly had some more important things to think about (for lack of better wording... i'm tired).
i may have had what some call... drum roll please... an epiphany!

some pictures for sim.

two photos of a stormy day on the balcony, and a funny picture for you.
(flunch? seriously?)

tomorrow i am celebrating my birthday in style: bottles of bordeaux and a picnic on the seine with tim and joel!
... a night picnic.

so if you don't hear from me for a while, it's because i've fallen into the river.

oxo

photos by lina scheynius

sleeper

[Miles gets to look at some pictures to identify the people on them]
Miles Monroe: This was Josef Stalin. He was a communist, I was not too crazy about him, had a bad mustache, lot of bad habits. This is Bela Lugosi. he was, he was the mayor of New York city for a while, you can see what it did to him there, you know. This is, uhm, this is, uh, Charles DeGaulle, he, he was a very famous French chef, had his own television show, showed you how to make souflets and omelettes and everything.

hiatus: finis!

had my first coffee today
in two months
and positively shivering and shaking

hung out around fontaine saint-michel

then took a walk along the seine (i saw the eiffel tower... it's about time!)

(this guy's my favorite of all the faces. isn't he ridiculous?)

i am enjoying what the french call "joie de vivre"!

tetra mocha

photo taking is on hiatus until a full recovery!
though i feel much better now.
(went to printemps and citadium yesterday...if anyone feels like making me rich, please, go ahead.)

i really want to check out ken claude and the other vintage shops, but they're really hard to find when you have no sense of direction (thanks mom & dad).

guess i'll be pulling out my tourisme books for the time being...

in other news, this girl has yet to see the eiffel tower. seriously. three weeks in, haven't seen it yet. but that's tonight (and tomorrow)'s adventure(s).

for you : check out cheri's latest post, sooooo pretty.

i found this image while browsing a while back and i love it! i don't know whos it is, but if you know, let ME know!

i'm really sick right now and barely have the energy to walk out of the apartment. i've been in bed for almost 4 days. it's hard to believe i'm in this beautiful city and haven't even seen most of it. what's keeping me busy is cleaning the apartment, over and over again, between naps.
i'm tired of bad tv and sitting around with my thoughts that seem to just get more and more complicated and analytical.

i'll come back to this world when i'm feeling better...

little places, big places

i want to share some of the cool things we found today.
(while doing touristy things!)

the ceiling at the galleries lafayette...

the downstairs level... aaaamazing.


the freaky spike pole at the opéra...

a secret passageway in the middle of a dead street...


the giant doorway to a park in a corner of the marais...


my name on a ledge... + duck.

the columbus cafe in the marais
(do you see myberry? it's the french version of the american pinkberry! go figure.)

today was rainy and cloudy but it didn't stop me this time!