Look at this CA-HUTE group of half-animals, half-whatevers! I can't identify the animals, except for the one on the far right: it's a toucan! And maybe that green one on the middle left: could it be an anteater? They advertise for a children's book fair this weekend in Seine-Saint-Denis. Imagine me, going about my daily business, stopped before their poster-sized cuteness, wishing for their actualization in plush so that I could give one a hug.

I, however, won't be going to the book fair--my French reading level has progressed beyond that, thank you very much. If I have any time outside of that 3-day conference, you'll find me at the food fair, Salon Saveurs. Look at what could be had there! Any gift requests, anyone?

Yoga Needs

A while ago, I made a list of things I need to have in my life. Yoga was one of them. So when I arrived in Paris, I was pleased to find that yoga alive and mushrooming all over Paris.

Unfortunately, I forgot to be specific on my wish list. I should have specified yoga that
- makes you sweat--I mean, you told me to bring a towel!
- builds on a specific movement or body area or theme for the class and is not just poses randomly cobbled together
- challenges me from start to end--I almost fell asleep once--in a pose, not during final relaxation!
- has a hands-on teacher
- is not routine--which I can tell just by seeing if students would anticipate the teacher's spoken instructions

I didn't think this would be hard to find, especially at 15-25 euros a class. But it is.

Is it only in New York where teachers belt out the chants as though they were on Broadway, make sweat drip down your face to collect in a pool on your mat, push you to do things you didn't think you could do, live yoga as a passion rather than some bland, neat philosophy?

Maybe I should start going to the 25 euro classes, just to see. Such as to the studio in the photo above, for one example, element in St-Germain-des-Pres, one of the poshest neighborhoods in Paris. Those funky dots on the ceiling? Lights designed by Philippe Cholet et Jean Luc Ledeun. They have designers for their lights. Is this why tuition will be so high?

Randomness, Again

Last night I met a mathematician from the Netherlands who works on randomness. He has used his math skills to gamble with two physicists, but I'm not sure if they made filthy money. The best place to gamble in Europe is Slovenia.

Chance/Coincidence, or, how Paris is becoming New York

Last Friday night I desperately wanted to meet a French banker, and the day after I met C-H, a French banker, at a party otherwise filled with crazy people : a blonde with a huge Afro wig, several guys in fur coats and gold chains doing vodka shots from a Sherlock Holmes pipe, a dear vegetarian friend with an oversized coke spoon hanging around his neck, a wig-wearing and lipstick-smeared boy who kept on trying to kiss my friend, and a girl from Texas.

Yesterday I met and chatted for a while with a photographer, and only when he handed me his card with a photo on it did I realize that I had seen him taking that very photo on rue Bonaparte on October 16! I distinctly remember checking out his camera after remarking on his model and location choice. But actually, now that I look in my agenda, it doesn't make sense. I had met F with D on October 16, and so I must have seen this photographer with his Hasselblad around rue Bonaparte another day. More like a week or two before that. I'll see him again soon and unravel this mystery. Of all things, the photographer ran into my friend C on rue Bonaparte during this shoot (too).

Another proof that Paris is becoming as small as New York: Last night I also met Caecilia Tripp, an artist whose interview I translated for Saskia's magazine. Coincidentally, I had met her on February 26 or 27 at a round table/film screening at the Forum des Images. Since she sported a Labyrinth bookbag (the ex-Columbia accessory) and looked familiar, I asked her if we had met before. At the time, of course, we had not. Last night, however, it was she who recognized me. And now she's invited me to a conference. Incidentally, the same C started talking to her by asking her if they had met before. When I called him out for using an abused pick-up line, he showed me how wrong I was...he was the one who called her to announce that she had won the AFA grant a few years ago.

And today my astrologist quoted an old friend of mine E, with whom I've lost touch.

Chance, coincidence, luck? Randomness. Wonder whom I'll meet tonight? Paris is an open city.

6 degrees

Connector
Originally uploaded by parislovesme.

Le peuple des connecteurs is the quiz version of Friendster. Despite my friends' assessments, I am NOT a connector, I am 'conservative', which means that I see the world as though it's perfect. Novelty scares me, and I doubt that it even exists! Is this the real me? Take this quiz (in French!) and see how you match up to me.

Notes on some instances of sound in Battle in Heaven (2005)

Carlos Reygadas' new movie has made many journalists waste lots of ink on its explicit sex scenes. What moved me was his explicit and considerate use of sound. The first sign of the film's unusually meaningful and thought-out use of music is during the second scene, when the main character Marcos waits for soldiers to put up a huge Mexican flag. In the middle of what I assume to be the Mexican national anthem, we hear a ringing--a cell phone--get louder and louder although remaining always faint in the background. Only when we start to wonder who left their phone on does the camera show Marcos speaking into his phone in the background, away from the flag-raising. Rather than making the ringing obviously central, the ringing interrupts the bombastic, patriotic song that we were supposed to focus on.



Next ingenious use of music: a close-up shot of Marcos and his wife from the middle of the chest up, against a neutral wall and basked in fluorescent light. We hear a constant dim ringing among ambient noise, so we know they are in a public space of some sort. Only when an off-screen character addresses Marcos' wife do we understand that she sells alarm clocks, which are the source of the ringing. Again, rather than making the setting--wife selling clocks in underground tunnel--obvious, Reygadas focused the camera on the their faces so that we concentrate on the relationship between them even while embedded in their social milieu. All the people in the tunnel are not typical physical types in Hollywood cinema: the camera follows a man wearing a bad toupee and a boy who looks as though he has Down's Syndrome. Upon panning back in the other direction, the camera follow an old man who carries his urine in a bag.



When Marcos drives Ana to the brothel, she asks him to put on the music. He is so distracted by the music (loud enough to make the car bounce), that he doesn't hear the honking of cars and angry screams of drivers behind him.



Later, Marcos fills up at a gas station. We hear Bach blasting, but in the middle of the scene we hear singing fade in and out. Just as before, we hear and then we see. The singing comes from a parade of pilgrims on their way to the Cathedral. Up until the moment another car pulls into the gas station, out of which comes a grandmother who complains about the music, we are not sure if this music is just in Marcos' head. Just as the film goes in- and out-of-focus because Marcos' glasses broke and we are supposedly then to see with his eyes, what we hear is what Marcos hears in his head as well as the real ambient sound that surrounds him.



Two of the last scenes of the movie show people desperately ringing huge church bells again and again. We, as the audience, hear nothing (the exact opposite of Arvo Part's Requieum for Cornelius Cardew!).



From Reygadas' interview with the Guardian :

"Real cinema is much closer to music. Music doesn't represent anything, it is just something that will convey feeling. It doesn't mean anything."

Diving into twelve lanes of traffic

Last night E described skinny-dipping in the Seine in June. Jumping off the bridge at six in the morning (when traffic was no longer permitted on the river, so she would not dive into a boat and die), she had closed her eyes to prevent her contact lenses from flying away. Not being able to see, she kept on wondering when she was going to land...and why hitting water was taking so long. Where was she exactly? Halfway there? Almost there? Right above the water? She flapped her arms in the air, eyes closed and laughing while sitting on my balance ball (which she claimed should belong in an SM dungeon, but I noticed she sat on it for a significant part of the late evening).

Today while on the platform roof of the Arc de Triomphe, I looked at Paris laid out before me. As much as I like playing Where's Waldo with Paris' monuments, the most pressing questions were what it would be like to flap my arms in the air and how long it would take to land in the roundabout with twelve lanes of traffic. Is this desire strong enough to make me learn how to swim so that I may one day dive?

NOT in Paris

A drop of nerve agent can kill within a minute. When released in the ocean, it lasts up to six weeks, killing every organism it touches before breaking down into its nonlethal chemical components.

Mustard gas can be fatal. When exposed to seawater, it forms a concentrated, encrusted gel that lasts for at least five years, rolling around on the ocean floor, killing or contaminating sea life.

Although the article from which I extracted these two images makes me worry for the state of the world, I imagine them as beautiful : mustard-colored blobs rolling around on the ocean floor, scored to Arvo Part's music.

Sunday I remarked to someone that I don't remember things. And
since I forget them, I just don't know how much I forget. A blast
from the past just emailed me something I don't recall at all:

 
je me rappelle le moment apres le bistro ungoir

tu ma embarsse.. et vraiment traite , to my surprise ,
comme si j'ai ete ton petit copin..

you almost pulle dme by force.. and I remember that
you stared the kiss. no me.. I was very impressed

I wonder what else I don't remember. Anyone?