breaking news

so i promise a legit update, with switz pics, david sedaris, and sartre, will be coming soon. but breaking news that cant wait: it snowed in paris today. 

that's right, they said it would never happen. but i caught a snowflake on my tongue, in paris. no. big. deal.

rockinnnnn

look! i made a pretty

it is on this page. right here ------------------------------------->

on the top right corner of the page! it is a collaborative project between myself and MLK, by which i mean i took an awesome quote of his and then wrote a little me after it. i really like it. i am calling it an art piece and a poetry and a philsophy. i hope you like it! but even if you don't, it's staying. this is because i feel it sums up my life philosophies well. and if i was a little bit of words on paper, these words would most definitely be in the running.

secrets and pennies and éclaircies

alright. i've been floating on clouds all day, and i'm going to try to keep this down to earth. i haven't been paying attention to school at all, i really really tried but i was just so happy. i woke up this morning, took a couple minutes to register where i was and what day it was (it had only been two hours since i went to bed, after all), and silently jumped up and down, dancing and punching and kicking the air, i was so happy. and there was music in my head allll day long. im still in shock, i still cant believe the results of the election last night. SO HAPPY. here are some visual representations of why, for those of you who are into propaganda:i thought this was just beautiful. also, my favorite online art piece, www.asofterworld.com, has a beautiful, eloquent piece up today. there are usually words, but this one doesn't need any. there is a picture, so maybe that counts as a thousand?

today is a day. and i am full of juice and pennies and giant thoughts like hot air balloons. in french the word for that is mongolfieres. which is my second-favorite french word. my first favorite is éclaircie. it means that thing when the sky is really dark and cloudy and then rays of sun shoot through a little clearing. if she wouldn't hate me so much for it, i would name my future daughter eclaircie. i think it's pretty. outside, the lights are bright tonight, and blurry, and the colors bobble up and around like fireflies. and my hat is warm, i wonder how my head plus some yarn creates so much heat. it is amazing. today is a day where i am easily amazed. it rained this morning; there was  a secret sunrise that only clouds could see. and i stood outside on the patio, barefoot, in just a dress, and spun around and let it rain on me. i was really glad it was raining; i would have been happy no matter what, but i think i was the happiest when it rained. and there was no one there- it was like when i used to wake up early (or stay up all night) and climb down the cliffs at sunrise and sing and walk and dance a little on the sand before anyone was awake. but this sunrise was a secret. all i could see of it was water splattering on my arms in little liquid-balls. and it sounded like a million little tapping, laughing kissing goldfish. and the secrets are still there, but now the rain is gone, and the headlights and bricks and gray air are back. it is 34 o clock for me, and i am here and i am happy and i am full of juice and pennies. and someday, i want to be a giant, yellow, glowing, flying mongolfiere.

post-election meanderings

it's 6am paris time. and my facebook status tells me that "laura judd is exhausted and in tears and so, so, so happy." and barack obama just made his acceptance speech, and he just told his daughters that they can get a new puppy for the white house, and he talked about that lady in atlanta, and oprah cried and jesse jackson cried and i cried. and i didn't know until this moment how sure i was that this would never happen. i was sure, absolutely sure, that the people who live in america would never elect someone like him, with brown skin and the middle name hussein and words about real, tangible equality. i always thought we liked our white men and our money too much to ever manage it. and i always, always hoped that it would happen, and i wanted it to happen, but mostly, i just dreaded the election party we had tonight in our apartment building. i just wanted to know, and i just wanted to hear that he'd lost, that the old white guy had won, as always, so that i could have enough time to get angry, put myself back together, and write off america for life. i've been trying all day to come up with a plan b, because i've always said that if we couldn't elect barack obama to be president, i didn't want to live there anymore. i didnt want to go home. not because i'm petty or bitter or anything, but if the country i was born in could hear the things that that man said and see him speak, and say "no, we don't want that", then it simply wouldn't have been my place. it wouldn't have been anywhere i belonged. and that was what i expected tonight, to know that i was going home in 2 months, and to find out now that i really, really didn't belong there anymore.

but... that didn't happen. and, after being up almost all night, after coming downstairs after my hour's nap and watching everything that happened on cnn between 5 and 7 am paris time (9 hours ahead of california time), i'm at a loss for words. i can't believe it happened. and i was so afraid it wouldn't happen, that i never thought about what it would mean to me if it did. i was totally unprepared for the emotional chords this struck with me. i kept saying i'd cry if he lost, i didn't even think about how much i'd cry if he won. and i was so happy, and so shocked, and so proud. i don't know if i've ever been proud of us this way before. i don't think i've even called america "us" in a very long time. and watching him walk offstage with his family was like watching a movie- it couldn't have been real because patriotic music was playing, and i liked it. and i cried for most of that speech, not even because of what he was saying, but because i couldn't believe we did it. and you can say what you will, maybe he won't be any different, maybe politics will water him down, maybe all those things. but right now, i'm just shocked that america elected someone who even looked like that.

and i need to get some sleep; im about to fail human rights class tomorrow because i have next to nothing done for this project i have due at 1pm. so i need to go to sleep so i can get up in 3 hours and do it, and i dont know really what im trying to say, but i hope that, whatever it is, i've said it. it's strange that i'll always remember being in paris when it happened, in a room full of french people smiling toasting and congratulating, and americans sitting quietly on the floor and staring at the screen with tears trickling down our faces.

and it's strange, and so surreal, and i hope i wake up tomorrow and it's still true. if it isn't, i'm skipping class.


maybe i'll skip class anyway.

idiot lines

so really, im a little bit angry right now.

that is a lie. i am seriously angry right now. and i want to go home. ok not really, i dont actually want to go home. but i am angry. and, just for this next hour tonight, i really wish i was back in california.

every monday, we go to a bar. it's called the long hop. it's an american bar, and on monday nights they do american music trivia contests. we discovered it around the 3rd week here, and we've gone almost every monday since, even with class at 930am the next day. because it's fun, and it's awesome, and we can hear music we like and buy overpriced drinks and have fun.

so tonight we made our way over there- mind you, it's a 40 minute trip there because there is no direct metro line, so we have to transfer twice. and we walk up, 5 of us, and we're laughing and talking to each other, and the bouncer stops us. this is not A bouncer, it is THE bouncer. he is there every week, we say hi every week, he knows us, and we know him well enough to know his name is buddy, or teddy, or something. pretty sure it's buddy. anyway. he knows we're there every week, and he knows we're american.

and tonight, he didn't let us in. which, i mean, it's a bar, that's not something im ready to get offended by, but as we walked up, the people at the table next to him made some disdainful comment about the "american girls", and he laughed and nodded, and then refused to let us in the bar. let 3 guys walk past us into the bar. let another girl walk past us into the bar. still wont let us in. so we leave, we walk away, and watch him laughing with the other people on the patio. and we just stood there, around the corner, without any idea what to say or do.

we were furious. i was furious. it makes me angry. i dont know that i've ever dealt with something like this on this level before. i mean to some extent i am constantly looked down upon here by people who can't stand to look at an american girl wearing colors, carrying a giraffe, and trying to practice her french. luckily, i am used to being looked down upon. maybe it was all those years of everyone thinking i was dumb. or maybe it's just all the practice i get from being a girl. but things like that dont even bother me. i mean it sounds silly, but i've never lived without the semi-constant harassment and objectification, not to mention danger of personal safety, that comes with being female. in the context of my life, that barely even gets me angry anymore. (which, byt the way, is awful). but i have never felt as if i was being discriminated against in this particular way. and it hit an interesting chord. i was really, really, really angry.

and i know it's ridiculous for me to be angry about it, because i know people deal with that kind of stuff every day on a way bigger scale than i may ever have to. but i am angry about it. and i think i should be angry about it. because what those people on that patio were doing, i can't think of a single time i have ever, ever ever done that. to anyone. and i dont understand it, maybe i never will, but please tell me, buddy, what gives you the right to look down on me because im not you? i've never understood it. i remember in high school, dr. burns took almost an entire class period trying to explain racism to me. he spent another trying to explain sexism to me. and every time, i just sat there deer-in-headlights, trying to understand, and feeling like an idiot. but where does it come from? i kept asking. the sense of entitlement, the supreme arrogance that is required in order to declare yourself superior to another, WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? and no one had an answer for me. i finally resigned myself to a total lack of understanding of the concept.

so i want to go home. and it's so selfish. because i know it's not about france, and it's not french people. americans are experts at declaring ourselves to be exceptional, above all others. i mean, look at the way we treat mexican immigrants. look at the way we treat even fellow americans whose families came from different places a long time ago. it's awful, it's so, so awful. and it really depresses me how good we are at deciding that other people aren't quite as important of people as we are. and im angry at those people tonight, and im angry at rude people in general, and im angry at myself because really, all i want to do is go home, where my racial/national/whatever group (i dont think american is a race, haha... even if i believed in races in the first place) is in the power position, so that i dont have to deal with things like this anymore. and that's selfish, and it's stupid, but it's true. that's what i want. and i hope (but actually i know) that tomorrow i will be less angry, and i wont want to leave, and i'll love paris again. because this isn't about americans, and it isn't about french people, it's about idiot lines in the sand.

just for the record, we decided that buddy's karma would eventually catch up to him (even if his only punishment was having to be buddy forever, that would be punishment enough) and we went and got mcdonalds. we weren't even hungry. but we waited in a 25 minute outdoor line for mcdonalds, because on principle, i wanted a cheeseburger and a coke tonight. funny how those things work.

beautiful things

chapter 2: i saw the water lilies, and they changed my life~

last thursday, snapdragon and i made the trip out to Giverny, the little town outside paris where Monet lived. it had been pouring all week, but we had to go this weekend because the house/gardens are only open until the end of october, and then they close for the winter. and, for those of you who don't know this, i am obsessed, capital o-b-s-e-s-s-e-d with monet. i am just awed by him, maybe the way other people feel about... god i don't know the way my friends used to feel about the backstreet boys in the 6th grade. or the way people are obsessed with justin timberlake and jennifer aniston and brad pitt and lauren whatever-her-name-is that's on mtv all the time. he's a rock star for me, like da vinci and marx and benazir bhutto and and sartre and judith butler and shakespeare and olympe de gouges and the beatles. so when we found out we could visit his house for as much money as it cost me to print my revolutions project (about 30euro, which yes is ridiculous for printing, i told you this city was crazy), i had to, had to do it.

we got up early-ish that morning and got to the train station more than an hour before our train was supposed to leave (probly like 10ish), our train left at 11:03. we decided in line that, as we were at a major train station in paris, i would just ask for our ticket in english and we wouldn't waste the cashier's time and ours by me stumbling through sentences trying to practice my french. but, when we got up to the desk, our plans were foiled, because when i asked for "2 (and held up 2 fingers) to Giverny", the man looked down his nose at me and said, with no accent whatsoever, "i don't speak english". so, i glared back at him, held my 2 fingers up again and said "2 å giverny". he smirked a little, pleased with himself, but i was happy because he was unable to fluster me, and i answered every question he asked.
once we successfully bought our tickets, we wandered around outside for a little, and noticed a bridal shop! very normal, except it had a giant stuffed tiger in the window. jamila (my stuffed giraffe who is travelling around paris with me. dont worry about it, the pictures will explain everything) really likes finding other stuffed animals besides herself, so we took a picture of it. however, the connection between wedding dresses and tigers i dont understand at all, maybe here tigers are a symbol of matrimonial love, but i was not informed. observe the ridiculous:

anyway, so we got on the train, and took it to Vernon, a little town near Giverny. then we took a bus to Giverny, which was not at all hard to find. it was a fun game of: follow the old people! seriously, if it had not been for a 2 year old along for the ride with grandma and grandpa, we would have been the youngest people there by far. too bad this wasn't an episode of the amazing race, we would've won for sure. we even sat by the exit of the bus! just in case.

um this is the bus stop in giverny? supercute.

when we got to giverny, i didn't even know what to do with myself. we were lucky, and it was an absolutely beautiful day. our bus arrived and pulled into a parking lot on a field, we could have been anywhere. the hills looked so much like home that i had to keep reminding myself that i was in france. we found our way to a roundabout-- and were nearly mowed over by about 4 minicoopers and a semi. again, we followed the old people (who by now we had discovered were americans) until we found this sign:

i took a picture of it for you, mom. <3>

we walked along the main street of this little town, which really, was the only street that wasnt a driveway (it was called rue claude monet). all the houses were covered in ivy, which was red because it was fall. it was absolutely gorgeous, and we both laughed about how stalkerish we felt taking pictures of random people's houses. i didn't feel too badly for them; they live in the french countryside within walking distance of monet's garden. we finally made our way there, and paid our 6 euros to get in as students (which is always an accomplishment for me; i no longer have a valid student id since it was stolen 3 weeks ago). but we finally got inside, and walked into the garden. it was breathtaking. honestly, there aren't words to describe it. we probably spent over an hour just in the first part of the garden, taking pictures of every flower we could find. normally, i have a hard time taking pictures, but this was different. i wasn't posing awkwardly in front of the eiffel tower,trying to smile as if caught, spontaneously, in a moment of actual life enjoyment, and not as if i'm exhausted and i have to pee and this is the 35th picture i've posed for today. it was art, and me making art, and art making itself, and i really, really liked it. i think i'd really like to be a photographer, really. i told snapdragon that with 3 hours and 3 nude models, i could make myself famous. my flower obsession was thoroughly satisfied; this garden was breathtaking. it had personality, and it was falling all over itself, too busy being beautiful to care. it was absolutely wild, as if someone had once, a long time ago, just mixed a thousand types of flower seeds in a big bowl and thrown them all over the place. and i remember asking out loud why anybody even goes to Versailles, and why there were only 30 people on our bus, and why young people don't go here. why was everyone in that garden 65? and why don't we consider this garden with the type of reverence we do with the kings' gardens? is it because they belonged to kings? is it because they remind us of an era we romanticize, and a time we imagine to be full of kings and princesses and chivalry, whatever chivalry means to us, and renaissance, whatever renaissance means to us? versailles was gorgeous, but i am not in love with versailles. i am in love with monet's garden. and if im in love with monet's garden, with its wildness and its poetry and its absolute refusal to be anything other than what it is, what is everyone else in love with? everything that versaillees represents- order, wealth, uniform extravagance, our supposed supremacy over the natural world? straight hedges, straight trees, straight roses, straight lines? i guess that explains our differences, then.

we continued through the garden, making art and begging the flowers' forgiveness for invading their privacy. but they insisted that they didn't mind. and we danced with them. it was nice.

here, as promised, is my giraffe, jamila noor. as you can see, she's very photogenic.

next we went "downstairs". we climbed down the stairs to the lower gardens, and came out of the tunnel into the sun. there was a field trip of maybe 4th graders to the gardens (thank god) and they were playing pooh sticks. for the unenlightenened, i will explain: pooh sticks is a game, played on winnie the pooh (hence the name) in which all the players find sticks (see really, this game is pretty self-explanatory) and stand on a bridge with running water under it. they each drop their sticks on one side of the bridge, then run to the other side to watch them come out from under the bridge. the player whose stick wins the race and come out first wins. i have been playing this game with my family at henry cowell woods since probably before i could remember. so, these 4th graders were playing pooh sticks, and i turned to snapdragon and- remembering that no one i have explained it to has ever heard of pooh sticks- asked if she had ever played "racing sticks under bridges". to which she replied "yeah, of course, it's called--": and i said "we call it--": "pooh sticks". at nearly the same time. first, i almost died. then, i just stood there and stared at her, and asked her where she'd been all my life, and shook my head a couple times, and finally managed to squeak out:"you play pooh sticks?!" "oh yeah, my family plays it all the time. of course i know pooh sticks". my brain exploded several hundred times, and i remembered why we're getting married.

but when we saw the pond, we got very quiet, as if there was nothing else there. it was the most beautiful thing i've ever seen. there were trees and flowers and wines everywhere, and you cou;dn't tell one from the other. the horizon had disappeared and there was no way to differentiate between the sky and the trees and the water. and the water, it was made of light. there were lily pads and a little boat and a man in another little boat scooping leaves out of the pond and collecting them. it's one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen. and when i saw the bridge, i stopped breathing. i've seen that bridge painted so many times, beautiful every time. i was sure that when i saw the real thing, i'd be disappointed, that nothing could be as beautiful as the image monet had painted in my head. but i was wrong. it was incredible. and it made me think about... everything. i always wondered why he painted, what made him wake up and decide that today it would be water lilies. but i saw that garden, and the way the reflection in the water made real life and colors and lines blend together i thought that if i saw this every morning, i would be nothing but a painter. i wouldn't be able to help myself.

it made me think about why im not a painter, which strangely is something i think about on a pretty regular basis. really, the things i want to do with my life are crazy, and i've come to terms with the fact that doing them will not make me happy. it will not be fun. my chosen career is certainly an unpleasant one. i mean, im not one of those people who is planning to do something they hate for 10 years until they're filthy rich and can live off it for the rest of their lives. obviously. i want to work for an NGO that does human rights work, and maybe someday have my own- basically, i want to make social rights happen. women's rights, children's rights, prisoners of conscience, labor rights, religious/ethnic/gender/everything-else equality. and really, what that means is that i'll be dealing every day with the things that scare me most, the things that make me the most angry. the events that we talk about in human rights class and i have to put my headphones in because i can't listen to it, even just in passing. that's what i want to do with my life. and it's not for love and it's not really rational- i mean, there are rational aspects to the decisions i make. i am aware that i live in a staggering level of luxury compared to the vast majority of the people on this planet. i am also aware that my standard of living is unsustainable if a greater level of world equality is to be achieved. i think that if people who had things just gave some of them away, we'd all probably be doing ok. but we're not giving anything away and we're not doing ok. it bothers me that some people have everything and other people have nothing, be it money or political power or social status or anything else. and i want women to be empowered and i want white people to stop prancing around like they own the place, and i want our children to grow up better than us. and i know that this is me being silly, and that it won't happen, and that no matter what i do, i won't won't won't in a million years fix what's been broken for as long as we've been writing things down, but i think that's precisely why i know that this is what i want to do. because it's illogical, and irrational, and impossible, and it won't be fun, and i can't tell you why, but i just have to. if i was going to do something for love, it would be poetry, or art, or maybe fashion (but whatever it was, it would be philosophy). and some days i really just want to change my major and go to art school and after that go live in an abandoned lighthouse in iceland and make a living by building fountains out of weird things like pots and pans and silverware, and collect books and drink coffee and write a lot and paint a lot. and i wonder what would happen if i did, and if id be able to be happy that way, doing everything that would in theory make me happy. anyway that probably seems way off topic, but i thought about it a lot, looking at the water lilies, and wondering if, had i lived here, i could have ever done anything but paint.

anyway, so we walked around the garden for a while, and took pictures and sat and meditated and stood on bridges and watched the man in the little boat scoop leaves out of the water. we wandered through a bamboo area, and across a little stream, and around several giant trees, and then back to the pond. it was really gorgeous. and i told snapdragon that this was one of the only places in the world where i would never even think to take a flower from. if you didn't know, this blog is named after my poetry journal, also entitled "the secret life of flowers". and, in the back of the journal, i collect flowers from places that inspire me. im accumulating quite a collection. but i would never, ever, ever in my life pick a flower from monet's garden. walking around his house was like being in a holy place for me; i wasn't sarcastic and i wasn't funny and i wasn't even thoughtful, i just was. in his kitchen, which was wholly covered in blue and white tile, and a little overwhelming, we talked about how it must have been to live there with him. i love imagining geniuses in their pajamas, eating cereal. it's a very pretty thought, i think.

just a snail at monet's house. i just though it was cool.

the house

we left the house, and afterwards, i did probably the coolest thing i will ever, ever, ever, ever, ever do in my life. again, if you didnt know i constantly carry little packs of seeds in my bag and plant them everywhere, in sidewalk cracks and cemeteries and other people's flowerboxes. it would make sense that i plant flowers to replace the ones i take, in some weird attempt to maintain sustainability of world happiness and also to ease my guilt about picking them in the first place. but it's not. i've been planting flowers far longer than i've been picking them, and i don't feel guilty at all. but this was probably the coolest moment of my life thus far.

the coolest thing i've ever done

afterwards, we wandered around giverny for a while, looking for some food. it was glorious. we saw the monet family grave at the church, where i planted a few more seeds on the grave. snapdragon asked if it was strange that monet somehow feels like santa claus. "well we always see him looking ancient in pictures," i said. "i feel like he was old for most of his life." "yeah, i agree," she replied, "i think maybe the country can do that to you. but i meant that i feel like he's omniscient. like he randomly knows your name, and that you just did that, and the wind whispered thank you... or something awkward like that." we laughed about it... but we weren't really kidding. it was strange. we finally found some food, which was weird and not that good and expensive as expected, and with the typical semi-rude service that isn't outwardly rude, but where the waitresses were obviously looking down their nose at the americans. we've really gotten used to it. unfortunately, this time we gave them too much money for the bill, and when we didn't bring back change, we had to awkwardly go ask for it... and watched the girl pick coins out of her tip jar. awk. afterwards, we wandered back to the meadow/parking lot, where we were to meet the bus, almost got run over by several more minicoopers, and talked about how much the hills and the air made it feel like home. really, if i ignored the cottages around me, i could've been holding a starbucks and walking to valley fair to go christmas shopping. it was ridiculous.

...the end? the parking lot/meadow

more pictures that were too pretty to leave out

jamila rockin out

me gettin in some flowers' space

can you find me? it's like where's waldo but with flowers