Let me explain - no, there is too much, let me sum up. I had been trying to figure out what would be a good thing to take home when I leave France, because while I like souvenirs, I don't like useless ones. I like to have bigger, and more memorable souvenirs of places I've been, but only if they're something I use regularly. That way I can think, "Oh, I remember when I bought this [notebook/tea strainer/dress/pair of earrings]! It was when I was in [Rome/Disney World/Nairobi/PARIS]!
And then I'm all excited and reminiscent. It's great!
BUT the problem is that many of the things I would like to get here are things I would be able to buy in the US just as easily and probably more cheaply. This has led me to contemplate some interesting and possibly unwise purchases. Most recently, glassware.
Now I am aware that buying a set of wine glasses here, while cool and very French, is impractical in the extreme. How will I get 10 wineglasses in my suitcase - because of course I want extras - and haul them across the Atlantic without a) breaking them or b) ruining all my socks by inadvertently filling them with shards of glass?
It's a dilemna (I'm sorry, I have a deep-seated need to spell that with an n. I can't explain it) that I have yet to solve. And I think that the fact that I've spent so much time on it says less than flattering things about my current preoccupations.
So, lest you think I have been consumed by a mire of (irrelevant) pedestrian concerns (like: and once I get to the US, would I need to replace ALL my socks?), I would like to add that I spent my time this weekend in a much more intellectual frame of mind: I visited the Centre Pompidou.
For the unenlightened, the Centre Pompidou is a modern art museum in Paris. It has all it's pipes on the outside, and it caused a big brouhaha when it was built. Now it's pretty much accepted as a colorful and, well, pipe-covered feature of the city. I saw Duchamps' "Fountain," and several Calder sculptures (mobiles?), as well as a Picasso that I'd never seen and really loved. There was also an interesting room with a video projection called Echo, which was a violinist playing a violin at the edge of a massive cliff in the middle of the mountains - and he was harmonizing with himself by playing along with his echo. I loved it.
Unfortunately I then proceeded to disgrace myself in the eyes of quite of few of my fellow museum go-ers by laughing out loud when I came across an exhibit of a bookshelf covered in junk with trash strewn (artfully) around the floor in front of it. I couldn't help myself, though - someone was photographing the thing! And it was just so stereotypical of "modern art." Oh, and I giggled at the copy of a Mondrian block painting where the colored blocks were furry. I concluded that Modern Art is not my thing, although I am glad I went.
So the Musée d'Orsay remains my favorite art museum - but next week, if I can, I am going to the Rodin Sculpture museum - kind of VERY excited!
Let me explain - no, there is too much, let me sum up.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I adore you. Well, there are other reasons, but this is a main source of my love.
I know what you mean about finding souvenirs that mean something instead of having a random paperweight or some other whatsit that you never use. I like to get maps from every place I visit (mainly so I can use them in my theoretical classroom someday, but they're also things that I can hang up and remember when I saw that building or got lost down that street). Wine glasses, though, would definitely be tricksy things to transport.