That'd be 4 Euros a page.....

Be careful in Paris. Here I am with my treasured book draft on a flash drive, wanting to print it out so I can shift the pages around and have something to hold in my hands just now.....so I go to a shop that advertises 'imprimer' printing. I ask the lady how to do it and she says just insert the flash in this USB and then command print.

Wow. It prints and prints and prints - 9 copies of my first chapter! There is virtually a ream of paper in the printer. I asked her to stop it and she did, but only after all the copies are printed. I asked her to show me how to print and she pulls down the mouse menu and the default is set at 9 copies! I told her this is not fair, and that I should only pay for what I wanted to print. She said OK how many pages are on your flash? So I gave her the total for each chapter and she said 'that will be 50 Euros'. I paid her the money and then went to print out the other chapters, but no! I already have my prints, she says. And there I have about ten pages total, and a receipt for 50 Euros, 30 centimes.

Guess where I won't go again?

Quiche forestiere, moving harps, Russian churches.....walnut finish!

après que la poubelle s'arrête frapper le ventilateur

so I got C. wrong, just a bit, but not before creating this marvelous quiche....
My dad used to say "a little char never hurt anyone" when he burned the steaks....so shall we call this quiche a la forestiere?

This morning up drives Kamil in this tiny car to move the harp from l'Instrumentarium, and I am shaking my head - there is no way we are going to fit a full size Apollo in this car. But he was determined and check it out! There was even room for me and a set of wheels!



And Christoph picked out a walnut harp - how did he know???



Getting ready for tonight's concert in such a beautiful setting...

L'oiseau lunaire

Started with Andy, my British trainer. We met in a local park and wonderfully it is the park that houses the fabulous Miro sculpture, l'oiseau lunaire. I even did my pushups off the base! Of course it's not this green now since it is mid-winter.

The critic David Sylvester wrote of this 1968 sculpture: 'The bird moon rises with her unbridled libido and rises above the human race. At closer look, the figure may represent a matron.' He also says that both this sculpture and the partner, l'oiseau solaire, "carry an extremely dreamlike mantle. From whatever angle one looks, one can see an elephant trunk, a seal, a boat, a horse, a motorcycle, a turtle that swims, a beast of burden, etc."

Today was frigid....and my bank card issue seems to finally be resolved. Tomorrow night I will go to Patricia Laplante-Collins Paris Soirée at an Indian restaurant in the 5th.

How to Feel & Be Treated Like a Criminal, Part I

First, get a checking account at Barclay’s Bank in Paris. Then, make a huge deposit of cash into that account. Wait one week. Your ATM card will be cut off without any notice. Then, go to the branch where you opened your account (mine has been there for about 6 years now). Explain what happened. Sit calmly (if you can) and listen while they explain to you that for whatever reason there is a lock on your card. Your card is no longer functional. You have been ‘re-assigned’ to a new Account Manager who has no office and is only reachable online or by email. Said new account manager will call you ‘’as soon as possible’’. Ask when that is. You will be told ‘’as soon as possible’’ and that your card may work again in a few days, or it may not. Ask what the problem is. You will not be told. But you will be told that with even thousands of dollars cash in your account, you have what they consider to be a ‘lesser account’. They will offer to ‘give you money today’ – wow – isn’t that amazing? They are going to ‘’give’’ me my own money? Ask to speak to a manager. You will be told there are no managers at this branch (the main branch in Paris). Go home, call the “new account manager”. You will be told she is busy and will call you right back. Wait about an hour. She does not call.

Part II

I receive this letter today (mind you I have held this account for nearly 6 years, and never received a letter or a telephone call of any type from these people either in France or California).

Dear Mrs Allen,

I would like to welcome you as a new MyBarclays customer.


As mentioned in the letter recently sent to you, I have been designated to manage your account.


I've tried to reach you this morning on the telephone with no success, I confirm I have unlocked your card yesterday as I said to my colleague you saw in the branch, for your information, it takes 24 to 48 hours to be effective.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Burning question: Why was the card locked?

Eiffel and I Can't Hold the Camera Straight....

When I said that I could see the very tip of the Eiffel Tower from all the windows in my flat, nobody believed me. This is footage, albeit unsteady, taken from my kitchen at midnight when the champagne lights go on. You get two passes of the beacon. No, it doesn't keep me awake...French windows have shutters that get closed at night.

4 Leeks, a bunch of carrots, a turnip, an onion and gel insoles....

OK I had to do it.....here she is......in winter

But this guy says "Non vous ne devez pas faire une photo d'elle en hiver .... c'est un sacrilège!"


And these folks are duking it out nearby (look closely at the middle guy - Mon Dieu!)...


If I could have gotten there like this, I wouldn't need gel insoles.....


And, for that matter, none of us would be here at all if it weren't for these two...


On the way home, I shopped at 'Ed', where I found four leeks, a bunch of carrots, a turnip and an onion for the equivalent of $2. I have a burning question: Why do the leeks in France have white parts that are nearly a foot long? Ours sure don't. Answer: America needs to make more money off of our buying food, so they grow fatter, heavier leeks with short white ends and charge us by the pound, knowing 2/3 of what we paid for is going to be thrown away. Did I say Mon Dieu?

Sleeping, Laundromats and Salamander spit showers in Paris

So far, my jet lag and cold have gotten the better of me. I have been sleeping many hours a day. Today I ventured out to try to find UMCKA for my cold, but apparently the phenomenon has not yet hit Paris. So it is lemon, hot water and honey for me....plus EmergenC.

Learned the laundromat today - it takes forever. Wonder what the difference between French washers and American washers is? I noted that the French washers tend to be more intermittent....a minute of agitate, a minute of rest.....over and over. Wonder if it is better/worse than our beat-the-clothes-into-submission machines or just different?

Today was warm for this time of year - about 55 F. I opened the windows and slept another 14 hours. Still waiting for the landlord to remedy the salamander spit shower (as my student calls it) - and just settling in. À demain!

The Taxi Driver

My French pronunciation is pretty good - in fact, sometimes, superb. But this cab driver was incredible - I wonder if he was pulling my leg?

I live on rue Blomet. I told him I wanted to go to the Franprix market at the corner of rue Borromée and Rue de Vaugirard. He said there is no rue Borromée, it's rue Blomet. I said no, there is a rue Borromée that connects rue Blomet with Rue de Vaugirard; it is only a short street between the two. Then he said, oh you mean rue Cambronne? I said no rue de Vaugirard. He said non, il n'y a pas un rue Borromée. So I got out my Plan de Paris to show him. So he drove down rue Blomet, and then I said ok next left is rue Borromée, and sure enough there was the infamous name he was nay saying, but it was a one way street the wrong way. He said, look there is the Franprix down there at the end. I said yes, that's where I want to go, to the intersection of rue Borromée and rue de Vaugirard. He said, you want me to go around the block? I said yes, I cannot walk another step. He said, are you sure? I said YES. Mon Dieu.

Tati, large towels, foot blisters

Today I woke at 4:30 AM...and there was no going back to sleep. The beacon at the top of the Eiffel Tower had stopped swinging around and there were soft lights on it. I searched online for a branch for my bank in the area, and found one on Ave. Suffren, just about 8 blocks away. So after 9 AM, I set out to walk there and the building was empty. There were still shadows of the lettering on it - but no bank. Since I was near the Métro, I got on and proceeded to Opéra where the main bank is located. Along the way I found the wonderful 10-man klezmer band in the Concorde station tunnel. There was an accordion player on one car I rode, and a keyboard player at another station, and a french horn player at another - the underground is alive with music! I made the deposit at my bank and then got back on the Métro to go to Montparnasse and the Tati store, France's equivalent to WalMart. I am convinced that Tati stands for 'tacky as tacky is'. By now I was growing blisters on the soles of both feet. I found 100 x 150 cm towels at Tati for 10 Euros each, got two and took a taxi back to my quartier to save my aching feet. Here are some photos I took coming back: one of the landings in between floors where the shared toilets were originally located in the 1870s,the view of the front of my building from the courtyard before it (my apartment is in the back), and the view looking down rue Borromee where you can see the Eiffel Tower over the roofs.

Je suis ici....enfin

The sky was bleeding red as we landed this morning....just before sunrise. The airlines lost one of my bags but say it will come in tomorrow on the same flight from Chicago. I asked if they had ever irretrievably lost a bag and the lady said no.

Everyone in my shuttle was American - and the traffic was terrible. We left CDG aiport at about 9 AM and arrived at my apartment at 10:30. Didier was here to greet me and haul my bag up to the 3rd floor (4th American).

The building was completed in 1870 and originally there were no bathrooms but a shared toilet between floors. These little alcoves now house a potted plant and the doors to the toilets which have been sealed for years. The spiral staircase is precarious and Didier told me his 35 year old wife has fallen three times on it.

I went to Franprix to get some basic food supplies while Didier completed cleaning the place. My French bankcard didn't seem to work at the check out in the grocery and we finally deduced that I was moving too fast and entering my code too fast for the machine to process. LENTEMENT, Susie. We ran around the quartier doing errands of various sorts and then had lunch at a local brasserie.

My place is.....rustic, but the bed is excellent and has a huge down quilt on it. And I can see the very tip of the Eiffel Tower out of all three of my windows but cannot take a photo of it at night. The beacon comes around every second or so and is quite beautiful.


I managed to stay conscious until about 3 PM after not having slept on the plane. Then jet lag hit me like a brick. I am exhausted. I plan about four days of exhaustion. Tomorrow I will find the Tati store to get some larger towels to use and try to figure out how to conceal the cleaning equipment that is strewn in the bathroom.

Getting ready......

I will have 100 days in Paris. I land on January 17, 2012 near my favorite city in the world. It always smells like a farm when you land at Charles de Gaulle airport - and I always cry. Then there is the magical ride into the city, where after all the tawdry suburbs with their graffiti endlessly rushing by, you enter Paris as if you are entering a movie set.



It will be cold and the trees will not have leaves, but the beautiful off-white buildings will wait in whispers there along wet roads, their huge Haussmannian chests standing tall.




It will be early on a weekday and the traffic will be thick, but as we enter the city limits there is another kind of sound - an almost interior sound from another time. And I will hear my first siren go by with its shifting pitches, falling as it passes. We will whirl through the Place de la Concorde, spinning as the traffic seems to do there, remembering Joe McElroy's imagery of the Seine having water lilies in it - past the Jeu de Paume, turning, past Napoleon's obelisque, turning, past the naked trees of the Tuileries and over the river.




We will pass the Eiffel Tower and UNESCO this cold morning...







on the way to my place...a fourth floor apartment on the back of an old 19th century house, facing a garden. The entry hall will be cold in stone and wood, unheated and silent. Somehow I hope to find the souls whose auras still inhabit these walls - or as my psychic said, 'All good things come in from the north.'