glass ornaments from Krakow: every tree should have some 

And in spite of the fact that New York department stores offer the most elaborate Christmas displays, I am drawn to the little ones in Paris. They are singularly different, each one attesting to the mood and predilection of the store owner.

a food shop with a traditional take on things (the little sheep move their heads) 

one of my favorites: a window in a small designer-clothes store 

In New York, what I find most evocative and holiday-ish are the trees propped against lampposts and parking meters. Nothing speaks so perfectly to the idea of a city Christmas.

Are New Yorkers rather 'last minute' about their tree buying?  

Ah well. Tomorrow marks the end of living out of a suitcase for a little while. I would say it’s full steam ahead in terms of holiday cheer except that I just got an email from a friend who is complaining about the traffic on streets leading to malls, and another email from someone who says it’s damn cold in Madison, and of course, my students have been “enjoying” themselves filling out bluebooks all week-end long – blue books that I’ll have to read with alacrity, so I can’t say that returning home will be one happy holiday indulgence. I’m thinking a snowstorm might be nicely evocative. Just hold the flakes until I’m done traveling, please.

City walks

The interesting thing about walking from one end of Central Park to the other is that it allows you to face prominent and not so prominent vistas. On the southern end (at 59th street) there is the Plaza Hotel. On the northern end (at 110th street) there is a little plot of land set aside for home gardens. Behind it are apartment buildings of the sort that, one hopes, would not be built anymore. But just inside the Park, on the northern end, there is a reservoir and at dusk it is stunning.

Suddenly, after 96th street, the nature of the neighborhood changes. 

The Plaza at one end, this at the other.

It is, nonetheless, worth investigating the northern corner of Central Park

Week-end in New York: from the noble and refined, to holiday crass commercialism

Yesterday was all about seeing good people and beautiful museums. Here, I even took a photo of the building that I lived in and the museum where I hung out for the better part of the afternoon.

Yesterday's run in with the past at 1010 Fifth Ave, and with culture at the Metropolitan. 

Today was entirely different. I spent the morning filling Big Brown Bags (aka shopped at Bloomingdale’s). Why did I do it? I am, after all, known for my hatred of malls. But I’m staying a mere four blocks away from the department store and it seems right to be holiday shopping a week before the holidays.

Oh, and guess whom I ran into there? Answer: no one known to me, but everyone else was making a fuss. So I went up, always eager to make a fool of myself with my camera and as a result, I was filmed chatting to this guy. I am certain that there will be the following commentary: Robert Verdi (that appears to be his name) meets a shopper in Bloomingdales while filming for his E! Fashion Police show and wonders, after looking her up and down, why people go out in public looking so… casual. I was very sorry I did not wear my new French rose-beige corduroys.

So take a look. Am I the only one who had no idea who this dude was? Btw, that’s me, the one with the gloppy cords, but cool enough jacket and scarf, standing next to him.

Hey, his scarf matches my shirt.  

Bloomingdale's shoppers with Big Brown Bags, reflected in the windows of the store 

So long as I am across the street from the Metropolitan, I may as well go in and see what’s new

I just have to say this: when I lived and worked across the street from the Museum (in the seventies), I would want to dash in for a moment on a fairly regular basis. It did not take me long then to figure out that you don’t *have* to ever pay the admission price. It is always only “recommended.” There were days when I would shamelessly go in for a nickel.

Today I upped that contribution considerably, to be more in line with the amount of time I intended to spend there. I was anxious to check out the special exhibit: “Wild: Fashion Untamed” (displaying fashion developments in the past fifty years). I can’t say that it was phenomenal, or even really worth the visit if you’re not otherwise Metropolitan-bound. Consider this photo (this was before the guard told me to hide the camera, in spite of signs saying “no” only to commercial and flash photography) and then run upstairs and indulge your senses in the wonderful art there. I can forgo the Egyptian mummies. It’s the European masters that dazzle.

Versace: think bold. Think boring.

I'm thinking my blogging colleague has a reproduction of this in her office.. 

A happy older face is worth ten sour younger ones

Many things (including all this nanny talk) conspired to make me pick up the phone and call an old friend today (he’s both old and I’ve known him for a long time). I suppose “friend” is not really the appropriate term. Technically he was my employer: he wrote the check that went into my pocket for my nanny work. And it was because he hired me that I traveled back to the States in the seventies, pretending that I knew how to care for his little girl. They had had several bad runs with American college kids acting as nannies in the summers (we’re talking the peak of pot-smoking years on campuses) and so they were stretching, thinking that perhaps Poland would offer up some talent in this area, or at least some sober not whacked-out alternatives.

This going back to people from the past can be so good for the soul! There I was today, in the same old Fifth Avenue apartment (obviously a person who hires nannies is going to have a nifty NY home), looking at the same old face of a man I knew when he was… my age. He has Parkinson’s disease now and it affects his speech. But not his mind and heart. So this would be good, I tell myself: to be as generous and warm thirty years from now, and to think crisply about matters of the world. Nor does he regard his age as an impediment to much of anything. Tomorrow he is heading out with his “brood” of kids and grandkids to Mexico. His sister, he tells me, has just finished writing her first novel. She’s eighty. He goes into the office each day, even though his son has completely taken over the family business. I can see going in just to open mail and respond to email. It takes me half the day to do that now.

I visited him because he asked me to come over, but surely I got more out of it than he did. I’m just the same old wild card. All I can do is amuse (if I’m having a good run of it). What he can do is act as a role model of how to age without putting the brakes on, even if you’re being pushed to do so by forces beyond your control. (It helps, I suppose, to have enough cash to fly to exotic places with your grown kids and their families during cold winter days.)

Everything you didn’t want to know about me and then some

Thank you, Norm, for featuring me today at normblog. Typically, I reveal few, if any of the personal details bloggers like to post in their profiles. But when Norm asked if I’d be willing to answer 30 questions about myself earlier this month, I caved (he’s persuasive and his blog features some mighty players in the blogging community).

It is so ironic that my profile appears on a European blog the first day that I am on this (American) side of the ocean. In fact, my most recent trip to Poland (described with posts and photos this past week) convinces me that I am both privileged and burdened by my absolute commitment to thinking and worrying (and therefore blogging) about both continents. Ocean remains true to its title, selected somewhat impulsively almost exactly a year ago.

And the “Most Friendly” awards go to… a Parisian and a New Yorker.

In an earlier post today, I mentioned the wonderful help bestowed upon me in the Paris metro system by an elderly Parisian. When I landed in JFK this afternoon I had a similar problem: two suitcases, a computer and the determination to avoid the steep cab fare. There is a new train link to Manhattan, but it’s not an obvious connection. As I leave the customs area, I encounter a scruffy guy with a sack and a backpack. We are clearly headed in the same direction. Within seconds, he is wheeling one of my suitcases, leading the way, explaining where you get on and off to catch the Long Island train, eventually helping me up Penn Station steps.

He is a writer – splitting his time between eating peanut butter sandwiches in Paris and living in a basement room in the East Village. He is working on his first novel (read his book when it comes out in a year or so -- the title is “Rode” and St. Martin’s Press is interested). But let me say this: he saved my skin at JFK and he told many a good story too. It was a nice transition from Europe to New York.

Return to the States: my time off from reading English language newspapers is up

Am I bound by my earlier promise of light posting today? That was made before I knew I would be sitting with a weather delay at CDG, and before my lengthy, complicated trip back to NY. So I'm posting again, with a quick look and a laugh at the International Herald Tribune (all stories from today’s edition):

Nannyish Britain indeed: if a key member of Blair’s cabinet resigned after acknowledging that his department sped up a visa application for his former lover’s nanny, does it mean that he is in trouble for the fact that it was a visa fast-track, or that he had a lover, or that his lover was in need of a nanny – perhaps maybe to care for his child?

Of course, in Italy, Berlusconi should be wishing that his friends only helped their lovers’ nannies. Berlusconi’s good pal and political ally has just been convicted to nine years in jail for colluding with the Mafia. It’s all politics, says Berlusconi: what else would motivate the 400 plus investigations launched against him since he first took office?

Oh, but wait: did I read this right? Do I take it Kerik’s withdrawal from the nominated position of homeland security secretary ostensibly also had nannyish overtones? You mean he hired an illegal immigrant for a nanny? And paid no taxes on her? Lovely. I’m thinking back to my college days in NY: I moved here from Poland as a nanny. I had no idea then that I occupied a position that would cause cabinet secretaries, judges and friends of prime ministers to fall.

One more: this is in the IHT via the NYTimes and so perhaps others will have blogged about it already, but I am reading here that men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses (compared to women, who are willing to date men professionally above or below them). I should imagine nannies would be satisfactory candidates as well. Though perhaps nannies of one’s lovers would stretch the political imagination.

BTW, here’s a way to travel: a woman rushes to catch my Paris – NY flight. She is with a little toddler. I empathize. Oh, she is in business class! With a nanny to look after the child. Nanny gets an upgrade. How nice. I wonder if it’s okay to drink champagne if you’re nannying your way across the Atlantic.

As a post scriptum, I am amused to read (also in the IHT) that men may produce inferior sperm if they rest their computers too much on their laps. Sperm function well in a temperature setting that is lower than the rest of the body. I am wondering if this is another instance of studying men before we get around to contemplating women -- you know, the ones who are serving as secretaries and nannies (and therefore wives!). Are their eggs better off under the heat? In the sunny-side-up fashion, you’d think so. Best to get the studies going though. I’m past caring about such matters, but I want to ensure that society reproduces itself. A shortfall of a sperm or two wont change the composition of the next generation, but eggs are a more precious commodity.

Destination: France (Thursday morning)

Light posting today (meaning: this is it!) as I am traveling back across the ocean -- to New York for the week-end.

A few pommes et oranges:

- I’ve not read a single page of an American newspaper since I left the States. It is interesting how easy it is to become engrossed in the news of your immediate surroundings, even though absolutely nothing prevents you from reaching into more distant sources. Thus I track with more than my usual curiosity stories about Blair and Berlusconi and Paris mayor Delanoe, and give only a passing glance to the cabinet musical chairs and various other DC shenanigans. This is not necessarily a good thing, but it is worth thinking about what encourages parochialism in our canvassing of the presses.

- The challenge ahead: to manipulate two suitcases and a computer through the Paris metro system during morning rush hour, knowing as well that the metro stop I need to get through has stairs rather than an escalator (but very courteous and helpful French men) and those lovely turnstiles that jam even one hefty suitcase let alone two. What would travel be without challenges!

UPDATE from the airport: Chance enounters... Struggling at the metro station, I am aided by an older gentleman (older than me, so that tells you something). He not only helps lift my bags onto the train, but rides the distance, clinging to them so they don't fall. Who is he, this savior of mine? A professor of mathematics at the Paris University, it turns out. He tells me stories of his brother the writer, of Christmases at the family home in Brittany, of the beautiful cemetery right there by the village church, of his father who remarried when his wife was proclaimed dead during World War II, only she wasn't dead, she was hiding... my 29 minutes fly. And the travel story only gets better as the ticket agent looks at my chipper (hopeful?) smile and tells me, with the most pleasing French accent: "I ev deecided to geeve you an upgrade. Bon voyage en business!" (It's not really about me; judging by the crowds, I'm sure the flight is oversold.) Surely I'll pay the price: suitcases will get lost, we'll not get there today, but let me not forget this moment, when travel is rewarding and people are kind.

- One tends to forget that northern Europe has a late sunrise in the winter. I mean really late. I’m ending my European blogging with a few shots from a brisk walk. Don’t let it mislead you. It’s not a night walk, it took place this morning, between 7 and 8 a.m. No hint of sunrise at that time. Empty chairs and empty benches. And a final croissant and café crème.

It's morning already, but who can tell... 

The dark morning forces a slow shutter speed, giving an Impressionistic feel to the river view. 

Empty, inside and out 

The b&w camera setting makes it appear lighter than it was. Bookstalls shut tight, Notre Dame barely visible, sidewalks wet from a morning spray. 

One last pause at a round table. 

Destination: France (Wednesday evening)

Very late eating again…I must have walked for no fewer than ten hours without stopping today. It is always like that here.

When I was a senior in my Polish high school, the slow dance to savor was Adamo’s “Quand les roses” (“When the roses..”). Oh that memory!…my high school crush and I, moving to the “rose” song. Life didn’t get any better!

I saw my high school crush this Sunday. Every person who has ever fought the devilish battle in their younger years against a dwindling relationship, should have the pleasure of meeting their crush 30 years later, just to recognize how small, in the scheme of things, the impact of it is on the rest of your life.

At the table next to mine right now they are singing happy birthday in French. The waiter brings a cake and a small gift from the restaurant. He pauses a long time to talk with the group. His stories are clever and long and they cause great hilarity. Indeed, every last person at the table appears terribly jovial. I’ve never seen a group so completely engaged in a moment of pure fun.

Florists sell bunches of roses in Paris year-round. Even in the coldest months I see these displays outside flower shops (we’re talking Paris, not Wisconsin).

color, fragrance, joy. 

La vie on rose – to see everything in the best possible light, with sweetness and hilarity and a fragrance that is pure rose. A much needed skill, one that oftentimes I lack. Hey, that is why I am in Paris, because it is easier to see things through those tinted glasses here than practically anywhere else on earth.

Destination: France (Wednesday)

Paris has been photographed and described in words by every aspiring author/writer, every person who has ever set foot here. What more could I possibly add? I am merely passing through. I have read no papers today, thus I know nothing of world news. I thought I’d stay in this post with the pick-me-ups that I indulged in today to give a kick to my morose state of mind. Here are some things that always work for me, even in December:

- Having a same old croissant and a same old café crème at the same old bar, pretending thus that I actually have a neighborhood in Paris. Since I have never lived here, that’s a bit of a laugh, but the image itself jumpstarts the morning for me.

I caught her reflection in this mirror behind a table: Madame is having a morning café with her friends. 

- A trek to the Orangerie to check on the renovation. Like MoMA, it has been undergoing a complete facelift and so its paintings (which actually do resemble the collection at MoMA) are buried somewhere where no tourist can see them. Unlike MoMA, it is nowhere near completion. Today it looked worse than ever. Whereas last time I predicted it would reopen at the end of 2004, now I am giving it 2007. Maybe.

- A walk through a park is a high for me always. I’m right there, by the Orangerie and so the Tuileries is the obvious choice. It is empty.

Empty chairs, dripping wet from the fountain, uninviting at this time of the year.  

No, wait, there are women doing the Chinese movements in slow-mo. And the statues are imitating them.

Mesdames of the Tuileries

The poses were nearly identical. 

- The small Marmottan Museum is perfect for a day like this. When in the dumps, revel in a circular room full of canvases of Monet’s waterlilies -- more than a dozen of them. Shockingly beautiful.

A personal favorite, but there are so many to choose from (forgive the washed-out tones of the photo). 

- And, as an added bonus, a special exhibition (only through January so GO!) of Jean Puy, the Fauvist, is currently in place. It alone is worth the trip. This is stated in the exhibition catalogue: “Pour Jean Puy –ses toiles en attestent – la femme est indissociable de la joie de vivre.” [For Jean Puy – his works attest to this – the woman cannot be separated from joie de vivre.]

Puy's paintings of nudes are so sensual that they are said to be never vulgar. This one dates back to 1910. 

"La Terrasse." Jean Puy, 1920 

- Finally, let me list a favorite little distraction: put away my camera and notebook and go shop. What the hell, it’s Christmas and I need to buy things. I mean, can anyone resist a pair of the beautiful French beige rose corduroys? I’m all about corduroys. Or, the cropped green pair? Yeah!

On my list of shops to visit is the tights store where Monsieur asked me a year ago what I thought of the war in Iraq. He had said then that he was willing to fight at the first sign that there were any WMDs. He didn’t remember our conversation when I went there today, but I nudged him to it. Afterwards, he sneaked a little toy doggie into the bag. What’s that? – I asked. Un petit cadeau. Hmm. Either a sign of “I don’t hold grudges toward Americans for the french fry thing,” or a sign of how much business I do in a Parisian tights store.

What was the last thing that I bought? Minutes ago, before all stores closed, I did what I seem to always have to do (fifth time this has happened): go out and buy another suitcase. It’s not the Paris shopping actually that puts me over the top, it’s the Polish gifts I take home. When family and friends load you with honey, candies, cakes, creams, jams, etc etc and when I want to take home the quintessential highland treasures because I think life is incomplete without them, well, it gets kind of crowded in my little Samsonite.