Modernism's Heart Thumps

I studied Le Corbusier and his "purist" white houses floating on stilts. From the back of a darkened room, the slides of his designs seemed cold, rational, sterile. Even though for the Villa Savoye, he claimed to have designed with light, air, and nature in mind, it was the opposite of that to me: a white box that mitigated nature's effects through horizontal bands of windows. Really, a "machine for living", just as this cold, cold man wanted it. Had he no heart that swelled with the sunlight and singing birds and rainbows?

Today I went to the Villa Savoye in Poissy and realized that architectural photographs are lies. They don't give a sense of what it feels like to move and breathe in spaces. Now I feel that buildings are like Minimalist Art according to M. Fried: it must be experienced through and in relation to the human body. Being around and inside Villa Savoye was not at all cold or sterile, although many details certainly were rational. For example, the skylights' glass tops were tilted so as to better persuade precipitation to slide off. Similarly, the laundry room's wall-sized sink contained a ledge that sloped slightly to let the waste water run off. Many of the windows also had a built-in shelf underneath its ledges, as though to accommodate the very human urge to put things on window ledges. The skylights not only lit up the spaces underneath them dramatically like a spot light, but also had small side windows for ventilation that one could open by a pulley system from below. Many of the built-in storage functioned to also divide spaces, such as the closet that separated a bedroom from its mini-office. The kitchen was divided also by its storage, but this time, the storage communicated: one could access the shelves from both sides as well as the counter space.

Even better, light and air were really everywhere except for one intimate room in which I actually felt crowded. I could see into other spaces from almost every room, a density that made my body feel open yet sheltered. And the nature? The terraces were actually supposed to have been "hanging gardens", but they were too sparsely populated to be properly called gardens. Le Corbusier had planned for grass to grow in between the concrete tiles he used on the terraces. Functionally, they kept the concrete humid and expanded. And I think he liked the nature interwoven with the concrete. And the views from the horizontal bands are beautiful, framing the ex-orchard just so. I only wish that today it was sunny, as I could see from photos that shadows thrown onto the stark white would have made a non-negligible visual impact.

There is a guardian's house on the edge of the property, next to the gate. I asked if one could visit it, as it is built in the same design: house on stilts with a band of windows, but just smaller. It turns out that one of the museum workers LIVES there and no, we could not visit it. I peeked inside the gates and noticed that he has a huge garden with a scarecrow.

I settled for picking up twigs on the still wooded property while waiting for the bus to come. There were mushrooms also but my travel partner M told me not to pick them.

Le Rouleau de Printemps

Sunday in Paris is a consumer's nightmare. No stores are open. This fact makes it also a nightmare for those of us who buy food when hunger strikes and the question 'What am I having for dinner?' surfaces. So Sunday usually finds me walking to L'As du Falafel in the Marais or taking the metro to Chinatown/s. This past Sunday I decided to go buy frozen vegetable dumplings in one of the smaller Chinatowns in Paris, the one in Belleville. I went to about five different grocery stories, small little storefronts that open out into gigantic underground or upper-level emporiums with side rooms for the raw fish and meat. No vegetarian dumplings to be found after an hour of fighting to get through narrow aisles.

I called up my friend C in a panic. 'I'm hungry! Where can I find vegetarian dumplings in Belleville?!' Apparently, I should have gone to the other Chinatown, as even C who lives around Belleville goes to the other one for shopping.

I started to panic and wonder what I was going to eat that night, since it was around 6:30pm and the stores would close at 7pm. C, ever-so-helpful, decided to come find me with his friend G to have dinner in Belleville. They took me to this amazing hole-in-the-wall Chinese-Vietnamese-Thai restaurant off of the main street, with an entire vegetarian section on the menu! Most restaurants, even Asian, in Paris have barely one vegetarian option, so I was about to die of choice overload.

Eventually I decided on a summer roll that came with a sesame paste, an unusual touch. For my main dish, I ordered vegetable noodle soup, expecting a pho. But no, it was just noodle soup--a little bland. Next time I'm going to order C's dish, which was vermicelli with tofu that was like Taiwanese stinky tofu or what our neighbor had, which was vermicelli with curry samosas. YUM...YUM.

The only mishap was that they had forgotten about C, and only when G was done with his noodles did C ask about his dish which they must have left in a lonely corner somewhere.

5,50 euros for my sit-down meal! This is the cheapest and most satisfying meal I have ever had in Paris. I'm getting hungry again thinking about it...

It's easy to know where the expensive good food is. But when you know where the cheap good food in a city is, that is when you have arrived.

Four in the Morning

It is 3 in the morning, that magic time of night, and still no pages typed. There has got to be a name for this feeling in a language somewhere--love/hate comes close in the English language, but it is not about love or hate. A band I liked a long time ago wrote a song about this feeling and called it 'Stuttering.' That fits better, as frustration is connotated. I desire and am reluctant to fulfill this desire at the same time, emotions in a dialectic. This reluctance is not due to laziness or inability. From where does it come?

I want to write my thesis, at least sum up to what I have devoted a year's worth of study if not churn out a thesis worthy of French Art History (those capitalizations are in the name of the department itself, as it is 'l'histoire de l'art', not 'l'histoire d'art' or 'l'histoire des arts', as it very well could have been). And at the same time, my body betrays me. I don't do it, don't want to. This is not what I am here for, I know now.

What I wish I were doing instead:
-exploring the Catacombs of Paris
-making my apartment into my home, where everything has a place and everything works
-planning my vacation