Red shoes

Dancing shoes

Spring has me looking toward bright things...green, of course, for new shoots to plant, admire and serve up, and red, for shoes to step out in, hereabouts and abroad.

Planning menus and trips is my fun these days.  First, menus to sort out and invitations to send. Wherever I've lived, it's been sort of a hobby to invite people over for brunch or dinner or tea or something...holidays, birthdays, anytime...why not?  Though I'm glad for the company and its always illuminating conversation, I enjoy as much the strategy.

Here's how it happens.  Hmmm, I think while a new season entices me.  I grab a white square of leftover art paper (the thick kind, 60#cardstock or better) and begin to scribble, heading the paper with some upcoming or imagined theme, like "Thanksgiving" or "Brunch for Newcomers".  Headings next: APPS, MAIN, DESS, DRKS.  Lots of crossouts, lots of rewriting. ("Or" is a frequent caret.)  I have little pieces of such tucked all over the house, ready to be revised, ready for who's company and a date.  (The one above hasn't been tied down yet...want to come for dinner?)

In Spring, the greener the ingredients, the better.  And so many to choose from:  fresh peas, spinach and chard, butter lettuce, arugula.  In the pots outside the kitchen door herbs are showing their bright sides...parsley, mint, rosemary, a speck of thyme...still too cold for basil.   

These days are ripe with possibilities:  Besides Friday night dinners (last week, we had a great crowd), there's a few which had me happily flipping through cookbooks. First, Joseph's birthday in a few days, for which company and menu danced in tandem.  Then, needing another excuse, I thought that PORCH, our local hunger relief organization, could use a fundraiser, so I'm trying to arrange that, I hope, at the Dead Mule.  Even more fun:  the other day my friend Jim and I put our heads together to do a small New Spring/New Friends dinner for later in the month, because we are always saying, "You need to meet...", so we are inviting people who can invite people they know whom they want us to know, and vice versa.  

Nope!  Sorry, I'm not disclosing any of those menus, as two are a surprise and one has still to be negotiated.  But I will give you a list of dishes I'm imagining and you can set your imaginations on those:

   Beet hummus.  Orange and saffron rice with fresh peas and pistachios (I've been using pistachios a lot lately).    Breast of duck (organic) with citrus and chinese five-spice.  Avocado and mango salsa.  Blueberry shortcake with lemon cream and mint sprig. Ricotta and spinach puff bites.  Spiced shrimp on arugula. Asparagus roasted with lemon zest.  Lemon pudding. Halibut with persillade. Peruvian chicken drumsticks (and other parts) with green sauce on the side.  Cole slaw, the green fresh kind with carrot.  Baked beans with zucchini (a recipe I concocted in a pinch long ago and, being successful, stayed around).  Ina Garten's easy chocolate mousse with macerated strawberries..

 Enough for now.  Anyway, this post is entitled "Red Shoes", isn't it?  So on to that.

I'm planning for trips, too, but this year domestic.  The first will be to see Aunt Sadie in Hershey in a few weeks, and the next soon after to revisit South Texas, where friends and a little business await.  As usual, I woke up one morning with that idea, and in an hour or two confirmed arrangements.   A little more thought (but not much) went into the third trip, in June, to a photography workshop in Santa Fe.  It's called the Haiku of Photography,  teaching a different way to focus when I'm pointing my camera phone.  (You, readers, will be glad of that.)

Oh, San Antonio in April...and Santa Fe in June, I thought.  How lovely it will be, wearing light clothes and sandals again.  But a glance up the shoe rack made me order a new pair.  Red ones, called something more exotic (I forget what, now).  They arrived yesterday; I walked around awhile on the bedroom carpet, and liked the feel.  So, whatever the lower closet comes up with in the way of spring garments, I'm set.

The thing about red shoes began last September, when packing for that "get out of town" adventure...you remember.  I needed a pair of walking shoes that les rues de l'automne in Paris would tolerate, so Mary Ellen and I stepped into SAS in the mall (I'm not a mall-shopper, but we were close by), and there in front of me were these slipons on the right...comfortable, pretty sturdy, and easy to wear.  They came in tan and black, too, but why would one go to London and Paris in those dullards?  I chose the red.

I'm not much of a clothes horse or shoe fanatic.  Or a shopper.  I race through stores (or online) as fast and infrequently as possible.  Necessity calls the shots.  But a few lucky times, I've run in and found not only the necessary, but the enticing..  Some years ago, I came across a pair of back-strapped Riekers in orange (or apricot, or desert sienna, if you paint); I have worn them to a scuff, but will not part with them.  Later, when I saw a pair of Campers in the same color, I knew they were fate. Clearly that orange experience got me from safe neutral to high color.

It may actually have started in my subconscious, this red-shoe thing.  I'm calling up a memory of me at four or so, at the shore, leaning into the rails of the stairwell while a movie, The Red Shoes, is playing.  My aunt has to take me back up to bed, because, quite frankly, something in the frenetic, despairing dance has frightened me.  I didn't remember the story itself, only the emotion; but watching it as an adult, I found the premise scary enough.  Nonetheless, here I am, 75 years later, ordering red shoes that take me off somewhere.

In fact, I'm wondering why, in London last fall, I didn't buy those black Clark's in red, instead.  Though the shoes fit and fit well...they are my everyday staple now...they could use a little pizzazz.  Maybe I should buy them a pair of red shoelaces. 

Happy Spring, my dear readers. May all your colors be bright and new.

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*Ah!  Here's a sobering turn of mind:  On my way to order those shoelaces just now, I discovered that there is another, quite serious, side to Red Shoes, which needs mentioning.  One artist, Elina Chauvet, does large international installations of painted red shoes to bring light to violence against women. Can we hope that her work helps the world recognize that abuse and begin firmly to intervene against it?   

Elena Chauvet, Red Shoes

In this installation in a Mexico City Square, the women who have been harmed by the abuse against them and their children are represented by all these shoes, painted like blood...life and death together.

    

    

A Change in the Weather

This spring-like February has had me out in the garden, raking leaves from around  whatever plants have survived January's chill, and watching (with cheer and a bit of  trepidation) the daffodils blooming here and there around the yard. Just in the last days the quince blossoms, their passionate pink budding on as-yet darkened stems, join them.   Earlier this week, I removed some old wooden frames from a once-raised garden, gotten some help transplanting gardenias and other plants with the rich dirt it once girdled, and, after an eager visit to the ag center, seeded wildflowers in the now-flattened site. 

When I woke this morning, however, all the energy this spring weather gave me in the past few days seemed only a dream.  It took me a while to gather my wits to figure out the day.  I dressed in whatever hung nearby, sat for a while, nothing doing or coming to mind, then went out with a broom to clear away some leaves.  (It reminded me of my mother, who, when upset or distracted, would take to sweeping.) My sweeping was lackadaisical, at best.

Some broken pots in the ivy, though, reminded me that, rather than throw them away, I'd had an idea to plant a few succulents in them.  Okay...now I had something to do:  return to the nursery to get what I needed.  A destination, a plan.

Choosing was easy and quick...three in hand, I headed to the register, where a sweet young woman whose accent marked her as an Australian transplant admired my favorite, one funnily called Hen and Chicks.  Yesterday being Valentine's Day, it seemed a perfect reminder of a happy, if harried occasion of children, parents, a meal together, too much chocolate and lots of red cards, some entertaining, some dear.

On the way out of the nursery, I found myself in front of the UNC Horizons program for child development and maternal support.  Theirs is one of the food banks our PORCH community supports, so on a whim, I went in.  I found a woman in the front room sorting books on a table in front of a colorful and well-stocked library for children.  A few words with her, and another direction opened:  I could interview her, and other PORCH banks, and send photos to our neighborhood each month showing how much-needed their monthly bags of donated food and checks are...pictures, as the saying goes, being often more useful than words.

I drove home wrapped up in these two objectives which had sprung like Athena out of a moody, mind-clouded morning, and then went to work planting the succulents, and making a list of food banks I could contact.  I called a friend I hadn't heard from in a while. But slowly, the pale of morning returned, and though usually I'd be in my workroom, pulling together paper, paint, glue, wood, metal...anything in reach...I took a book out to the porch to read instead.

I'd barely opened it, when a new wind pushed through, changing the temperment of the afternoon. Clouds had drifted across the sun since early morning, but this breeze, shaking the last few holding-on leaves across the yard, brought with it a thickening  cover of gray, east to west, north to south.  My desultory mood returned for real.  The book seemed beside the point, and the clouds weren't even bringing any useful rain.  I could have taken a walk in the 67 degree F weather, but nothing spurred that on, either.  On my phone, I watched, passive, a movie about a young woman forced to return to China to learn to support herself.

It appears that this change in the weather, as well as my cloudiness of mind, is going to last the rest of the day.  Over my long years, though, I've learned, that today's blankness prefaces tomorrow's sharper focus.  It isn't unusual to need a day of nothing to support the somethings of more energetic life.  Great inventions more often begin in boredom or silence...as it happens, something a group of tech-obsessed middle-schoolers are trying to wrap their heads around this week in their critical thinking class.

As for me and my ennui, I know enough just to wait it out.

Postscript:

After I closed this, Mary Ellen, emerging from her work upstairs, declared, 

"I need a walk!"

Given all this epistolary grousing, I had to admit that I did, too.  So off we went. I took this photo just before the entrance to the Community Park...it reminded me of me, today.

somebody lived here once

The Real Emily in Paris

When Emily arrives, we go to Pierre Herme, a few blocks away in Beaupassage, a little enclave between les boulevards, for coffee and something sweet to begin my sweet time here.  Emily has recently found that she's gluten-sensitive (all those buttery croissants pour petite dejeuner out of range...and she a pastry maker...merde!) , so we have macarons, which Herme is famous for, having once begun his career in the realm of that other famous macaron maker.

I like Emily right away...she is open, and funny, and great company...very knowledgeable about her adopted country and life, which she clearly enjoys, but isn't afraid to mention the downsides of (no beach, for one). We exchange stories, and though I know a lot about her life from her entertaining blogs and instagram photos, there is so much more in person.  The coffee is good and most welcome, and my favorite macaron turns out to be pistache.  Mmmm.

Soon, we taxi over to the brocante, since early is best.  She remarks on everything we pass on the way, a few I recognize, but mostly I am busy learning its history.  She's made herself quite at home here during her native Australian and London school days, not only settling in to rear a family of her own, in a language and country she's had to learn from scratch, but now with her new citizenship, calling la ville her own, as well. (If you don't know her blog, find that pleasure at [therealemilyinparis.substack.com]...she's on Instagram, too.)

The brocante goes on for blocks, and Emily is a market devotee, my kind of companion. Street to street, tent to tent, we dawdle, and pick up a few treasures along the way.  For better or worse, I have brought on this trip only a small suitcase (I pack light) and so there is no way I can buy up the beautiful French dinnerware, ceramics, and linens I am eager to exchange, or more likely add to, the sets I already own.  (I'm afraid those are my weakness...I love setting a fine table with stuff that absolutely no one else in my own or the younger generation wants to fool with any more.)  But I find a lovely botanical print that looks exactly like my sister Ann's spirit, a blue ceramic vase (small, which sadly breaks on the way home), and a wonderful metal bracelet...I know whose gift this last will be.  There are some old wooden tools and sculptures we also admire.  

One of the things Emily is looking for is a handsome barometer, preferably from the 18th century, we joke (later, I email her a photo of one from the Carnavalet, but alas they don't sell them in the gift shop).  Then, nearing the end, we find a rug that she has seen in a market before; she loved it, but once again has to leave it behind...it's way more than a mortgage payment, and her husband (who works in finance) shouldn't know about even the wish for it.

Then, too soon, the adventure comes to an end.  "I'm sorry we have to part just now!" she tells me, ruefully.  But she needs to get home to gather her children and head out of the city to her inlaw's, where Emily's two oldest will stay with their grandparents for a week; the littlest one will be home...she's just barely a toddler...and work will happen around her.  (Do you remember those shuffling work days?) All that because...

...did I mention that, unawares, I had scheduled my trip during school holidays in Europe and the UK?  

We ride back to Ste. Germaine, our neighborhood-in-common, and I face the rest of the day first by heading to the my Parc Luxembourg, where I begin my eleven days of walking and walking...and sitting for a while, coffee or tea in hand, sometimes my knitting.  It's Paris, and everyone and their children, out of school, out of country, are strolling, talking, running, playing, standing in line for the Louvre and other sites popular, populus, poplar (the word takes on multitudes of meaning this week).  There is plenty to see and listen to.  I breathe it all in and find other places to see and enjoy that most ignore.

At the Museum of Modern Art, there is not only the high, room-rounding Dufy mural of the birth and history of Paris, but the Albers (Josef and Anni, the latter I am meeting for the first time, to my delight) and a long film of their lives which is captivating. Their contemporary collection in that wide white set of rooms dazzles me.

 Now that it's open again, I rush to the Carnavalet to their fascinating exhibits on the city and its historical treasures, including some stories.  I go on to the Picassos and his fille at the Picasso Museum National, and twice at least I relax in the lovely gardens of the Rodin, when most people are inside the museum (I've seen those exhibits already, at least twice), because to me it's just another introverted park I seem always to be on my way past.   One day, inattention where I'm turning brings me to a Museum of Latin American Art, quite a find for both photography and three-dimensional art of the sort I like...copper twisted on canvas and twirled into figures.

Les Invalides, just up from the Rodin, draws me, too, with a few roses still in bloom and the military clipped shrubs and trees upright as those who once manned the lines of cannon in its courtyard, now so silent and still, in contrast to the Navy guards in their makeshift tent checking us at the entry.  I am surprised that I understand so much. 

 

From there, as I do often, I walk out over the Pont Alexandre III, its gold flagrantly regal in all weathers.  I send my Alexander a postcard.

Sadly the Palaces, Petit and Grand, are closed for renovation...there's a lot of that going on here...

...I find myself at the foot of the Champs Elysees, where usually I have absolutely no interest in walking; it's lined with shops and restaurants you can find in any large city, for once thing, and is crowded with those who a) like shopping and b) like being seen to be shopping.  But there is plenty of people-comedy.  The line to Louis Vuitton curls around the shop with the most unlikely "buyers".

Around the Vuitton corner and back toward the river past the George V, a woman glides from the door of the hotel, dressed in the shoes, slacks and pony tale of everyone in her chic set, and passes without blinking at the shiny restored coupes parked at the doors.  I follow her, amused; I am going the same way, anyway.

Pistache, oh tempting "deli", corners me.  Fortunately, it's closed.

And so it goes, each day a different or a same direction, each morning an intention which may or may not be abandoned for a better one after my cafe and...

Though the Varenne and the Deux Madames are my favorite morning spots,

I mostly try a new restaurant or cafe wherever I find myself. I return to my first, the Botaniste, for dinner a second night, where fortuitously I meet two women, friends, from Mobile, Alabama and England respectively, and spend a lingering time in conversation (enjoying more wine). The British woman gives me her card for "next time you visit London".

 I show up twice also at Les Fous de L'ile for brunch, where the fish and egg dishes are superb and the interior pleasant.  And so is the wine, which is a light but flavorful white from the Loire Valley, as annotated by my server who is also the manager and who remembers me from the last visit. (Will took me there on my first trip to Paris, and I haven't forgotten them, either.) It's also an easy restaurant for the middle of the day...walking in from or out into any direction, there always a new way, intended or not, to go.  

One night I walk from the hotel, the Eiffel Tower lit and growing higher and more grand the closer I come to the American Library in Paris, to hear a talk on women and economics. 

Alas, France's version of the finacial resources for women are quite different than ours...theirs being better in everyday ways for women and families...child care, parental leave, schools, personal career advancement...but not so in the echelons of the economic heirarchy, where because there are few women at the tables where men  forecast and manage the theories of economy, perspectives and actions don't consider us who buy groceries, struggle with day care, and try to make a reasonable living, still invisible to their charts.

The library itself, however entrances me.  I vow to go back, just to stay and read or look at the exhibits of what that institution was and how it has survived (and, no mean feat, helped others survive).  There are novels about that, but being here is much more educational and inspirational.   

What, I ask myself as I browse, does it take to keep a community literate and welcome in a homey, bookish environment, no matter where in the world it is, for three-quarters of a century?  This photograph, of 1950's children's reading groups, answers it for me.

I attend concerts in the chapels, my favorite the ones at the Orthodox St. Julien le Pauvre, tucked into its tiny corner in the shadows of the brilliantly lit (but still damaged) Notre Dame across the river.  It's a few steps shorter, too, from the famous Shakespeare and Company, which, though I enjoyed a late afternoon snack there, I couldn't enter...almost like the Vuitton, the lines to get into that crowded, narrow, winding book store were formidable. 

 Each concert evening, as the music plays, I look up beyond the old carvings into the church's windows above and see the wounds of the World Wars patching the walls.  

Fame brings in millions for the restoration of the Cathedral; concerts bring in pittances for the less known, though historically significant.  But how haunting the strains of voice, strings and piano in this intimate space.  I wonder what music it plays to itself when we are not listening.

And on and on my Paris days go, cafe by museum by park by concert by wander.  Wandering, as my friend Jim reminded me only yesterday, gets you pretty far and pretty entertained.

You may recognize that I've compressed a lot of this.  The farther I get from those halcyon days, the less I want to blog about them.  Paris instead stays with me, in mind and psyche, as last fall's path back to being a flaneuse, an admirable trait I mean to (and some days struggle to) keep even at home.

There is so much more to show you and say, but you will just have to come here and read it for yourself.  It's on to the present for me.

Mais, attends!  One more adventure to relate.  I am not two days in the city before I look in the mirror one morning and discover that my hair is getting a bit ragged.  This is Paris!...mon dieu...this won't do.  Before leaving the US, I'd gone into my wonderful Mia complaining about the mess my mop had become. "It certainly is," she agreed, and began to cut this way and that...soon I walked out happy, with an easier and much spiffier style.

Short hair grows, though.  Now in Paris, precisely on the morning of October 23, I research some salons and find one nearby with busy, welcoming hairdressers who wash and fuss and begin to cut and shape, and cut and shape, and cut even more, strand by strand, holding left strands against right strands and back strands and top strands for evenness.  Dominique, my cheerful, eager attendant, turns often to change scissors...clearly she is a woman who knows the value of the right tool...and call in others to consult.  Also it is clear that I haven't learned the French for "a little trim". 

So, this morning leaves me with less than half a head of what I had.  But the result is very French, and everyone...even I...am pleased.  (The whole procedure reminds me of the hour and some I spent getting a haircut in Rome years ago, not only the look, but the fun of the barber there.)  

I wish I had a selfie, but I don't...the best I can show you is this one of Isabella Rossellini...you'll have to imagine that on me, a bit shorter.  I'm in good company.

Post-script

Finally, this past Saturday, I went back to Mia for my first trim since that October day.  It had taken three months to grow, but done so remarkably well...even Mia was impressed.  Eileen tells me I should keep that hairdresser in Paris...and perhaps, after I have learned the French for "just a trim, s'il vous plait", I will.