Vendredi (Friday) is day two at l’apartment de Paris. Jet lag persists and we spend the morning in lounge mode, particularly Griffin who, having stayed awake most of the night, finally crashes hard so that, around noon, he is none too happy with me forcing him awake to join us on the expotition.
We grab sandwiches at our boulangerie. I should know the name because it’s emblazoned on our baguette wrappers, but it escapes me now and if I get up to look, I’ll break this incredible typing momentum I’ve already achieved, and you don’t want that. Nobody wants that.
With boulangerie sandwiches and kiosk waters in hand, we take our seats on the ground that slopes to the entrance of the Georges Pompidou Centre (Centre Pompidou), the huge, contemporary art museum in Paris that I have been most excited about visiting which happens to be a 10 minute walk from our apartment and the best 14 euros one could possibly spend. The architecture itself is captivating as the building was designed “inside out,” with the tubes for conveying plumbing, climate control, electricity and people all color-coded and exposed on the outside of the building. Dayenu.
So upon entering and getting tickets, we take back to the outside to catch the escalator up to the sixth floor. It seemed like the thing to do at the time, or at the very least it seemed like what everyone else was doing. In retrospect, however, it was a mistake to spend our best energies at the top - on the sixth and fifth floors - when, for me anyway, the fourth floor contained the exhibits I most enjoyed - immersive installations and what I’ll call “crazy modern” art, because I lack the education to express it more intelligently. But you know what I mean. On the other hand, the galleries in the sixth and fifth floors contained a jillion paintings the likes of which I’ve seen before. I’m not deriding Picasso or the impressionists, but it pretty much convinced me that I don’t particularly need to take the kids to the Musee D’Orsay to see more of this. I’m shrinking from typing these words a little and would choose to self-edit more heavily had I not already decided that writing whatever pops into my fool head is my best path forward, minuscule audience of this blog post be damned, to find my writing style. Apologies, dear reader, but all of a sudden (at this late stage in the game of life) it’s time to spread my wings, commit fully to my voice, no matter how much it betrays my ignorance.
Four hours looking art is too long. This occurred to me late in the literal day, or rather one that was incubated early on the sixth or fifth floor when I started breezing through rooms of large important art in which I had no interest. It’s too much; it’s overwhelming, and I’d rather spend time with pieces and artists who captivate me. I found a couple of these. One was Frederick Kiesler, whose pen and ink drawings of “Magic Architecture” reminded me of Rowan’s drawings.
Another was Danish artist Sonja Ferlov, who I’ve never heard of but who evidently became well known for her sculptural work. There was quite a bit of this on display, and I didn’t care for it, but amidst it all were displayed these small crayon, colored pencil and fountain pen drawings and slightly larger collage work - little things that she did during a few short years in the 1930s and the 1960s, respectively, both of which spoke to me.
For four hours we had carved our own paths through three floors of art, so it was great to rendezvous with my people at the cloakroom and find them engaged with one ofanother, excitedly discussing art. We took the conversation outside to the nearby Starbucks, where the kids could consume the more milkshakey coffee drinks to which they are accustomed and where we continued to enjoy conversation. A two-euro coin dropped from Griffin’s pocket onto the bricks beneath, and as I was trying to tell him so, a pretty young French girl approached saying “ Monsieur… (you’ve dropped this),” picked up the coin and handed it to him. “Merci,” said Griffin, as she walked away.
Refueled, we headed down a pedestrian street mall that resembled nothing so much as Pearl Street in Boulder but which doubtlessly existed long before Boulder hippies conceived of the thing. Our destination now was Muji, a Japanese department store that sells well-designed, minimalistic goods. I’ve been fascinated with Muji since discovering the store on London’s Portobello Road in 2013, and Berit’s developed an affinity for their pens over the years. The problem with this particular Paris Muji (we believe there are three here) is that it is located inside of a ridiculously large indoor mall called Forum des Halles, and, what’s more, its location within the mall is a bizarrely complex matter unless, I suppose, you happen to be a Parisian denizen of this mall. Still, we managed to acquire the target and, while Bennett, Berit and I bonded over pens with a Muji sales clerk, Griffin found with a group of French people singing American songs at a piano in another part of the mall.
It was late and everyone was hungry when we ventured home so, no surprise, there was some strife at that grocery store. Still, the kids came together to make dinner - pasta in red sauce and potatoes and onions in olive oil. Dinner at 9 pm was entirely too late for us, but it was delicious and appropriately European.
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