Beachcombing Belgium

On our way to catch the ferry in Calais, France, we visited a lovely stretch of beach in Belgium. It was a chilly, sunny day - sounds of seagulls, surf rolling itself at our feet again and again like a mantra. It was wonderful to walk on sand again, to sink into sand dunes, our bodies avalanching to the glossy glow of beach below. 

Hunting for empty razor clam shells -  they look like old Chinese men's fingernails stretching outward  from beneath the sand. Hours later we boarded the ferry with pocketfuls of them.

This is the North Sea, close to the English Channel. Across the water, England. Our new home.

Akychame and Daddy: reminds me of the "Footsteps" poem. 

We watched the barnacles poke out for meals, then hide in a wink.

Little miss celebrity in Hello Kitty bathrobe and "bling"-ful shades.

Windswept, barren loveliness everywhere. Everything buried and unburied by sand and sea.

Our Lovely Paris Vacation: A Poetry Reading, Burning at the Notre Dame Cathedral, and a Midnight Picnic on the Left Bank

There are pigeons and love-birds all around Paris' famous Notre Dame Cathedral. Oh, look, here's a couple of love-birds snuggling in front of the wood and calligraphic metal door of the cathedral. Can you hear them cooing? Can you hear the mighty organ reverberating ecstatically through the stone walls of the gothic cathedral?

Inside, the cathedral is glowing with candles and faces turned to god, burning passionately. Everything rises. Far above us, in the pocket of heaven tucked into the angles of the cathedral ceiling, our prayers took wing in the dark warm spaces. A little bit of this hallowed atmosphere entered our lungs, then released itself back into the respiratory system of the cathedral, each of our bodies a minute bronchi in the breathing in and out of this great stone spirit.

This was a brilliant day and night! Oh man, it's the stuff of dreams! We spent time at the legendary Shakespeare and Company English-language bookstore, where we saw a poetry reading and where the kiddos curled up on an old couch with the resident puppy. Then, just literally a hop, skip, and a jump across the river and voila! We were at the Notre Dame cathedral!

We visited the cathedral in 2005 too, but it was closed...so we hung out with backpackers, tourists, and all sorts of colorful characters late into the night watching street artists and fire jugglers. This time, though, oh man...not only was the cathedral open, but there was a midnight mass in progress (serendipity - my true religion!!!) when we entered, replete with organs and the sound of many voices raised like wine to god. After this heady experience, we had a scrumptious picnic while watching a street performer juggle and blow fire. Every time I look at this picture (above), it evokes these memories.

On a sophomoric note: in this picture (above) Phil's backpack looks like a futuristic jet pack, the twin "jets" of the French bread about to propel them across the Seine. It cracks me up!


With full hearts and souls and bellies we strolled around the Left Bank as long as we could before collapsing. It's a sacrilege to waste time sleeping in the city of lights...so we traded a bit of sleep for a bit of Paris that we'll have in our memories forever. A dream for a dream.

Prophylactic Art Appreciation at the Louvre (Jalina's Angsty Critique of Museum-Baggers)

Inside the Louvre: See the man taking a picture in the foreground? It's impossible to take a picture without photographing someone else also taking a picture. This self-referential mirroring or echoing of each other's bodies, actions, and human hunting instinct is very fascinating to me.

One of the most interesting aspects of this behavior is taking pictures of ourselves and loved ones in front of landscapes, art, or other awe-inspiring objects and places. What are we proving, edifying, immortalizing? What am I saying by posting a picture of my children with Aphrodite? What does it mean? What need does this spring from?

How many times do we need to re-create the world we live in? For instance, I wonder how many alternate worlds we could create by amassing tourists' photographs and laying them side by side? What few insignificant corners of the earth would be left uncharted and virginal? What a pilgrimage that would be; traveling to all of the places in our great cities that haven't been photographed (there must be very few). As soon as you'd get there, you would pay homage by not taking a picture.

Sometimes I wonder if I see the real world at all, or if I am there simply to transform it into images and words. My mind is always in the future, re-creating the experience that I'm not participating in because I am obsessing over how I can best describe my un-experience of it.

I recently read a woman's travelogue about a trip to the monasteries of Thailand. Her story goes like this: when she arrived at a very remote, breath-taking monastery, she realized that her camera was broken. She couldn't record her surroundings and take them home with her. When a monk asked her what was wrong, she told him that her camera was broken. He replied, "but your eyes aren't broken."

Many times I've shared this woman's frustration. I'm ashamed to admit it, but it's true. I've felt that a visit to an incredible place was wasted because I couldn't capture it in a box. I've chastised myself from time to time for allowing myself to get caught up in the moment and forgetting to take pictures (angry that I didn't stop living in order to record my living). Humans exhibit a strong hoarding instinct, a greediness, an illusion of controlling our world and recreating it on our own terms. God-like. I am so guilty of this.

Photography also involves the safety of being an observer, playing the anthropologist, never actually touching the skin of the world. Convincing ourselves that we are separate from our subjects. Photography is a variation of hunting; we kill by slicing a second of a person's existence from their whole self. We pin them to our walls like butterfly specimens. Conversely, we photograph to keep the people we love alive; though it's illusionary, it makes us feel good. They will remain real to us forever because we have their likeness. We turn them to stone. Invincible.

I think of Medusa, turning flesh to stone in one blink. I also think of Galatea, Pygmalion's sculpture turned to flesh with the aid of Aphrodite (see above). Goddesses who turn flesh to stone and stone to flesh. Humans who turn eyes to screens and screens to eyes. Our flesh will remain supple as long as we avert our eyes, seeing and experiencing everything through a filter - eclipses in photographs, Medusa in a mirror, touch through a plastic sleeve.

What I wonder is, how is this different from watching a documentary on TV or scrolling through the museum’s holdings on their website? In each case, we are divided from our experiences by an electronic screen. Ironically, the Louvre's website offers photos of every collection so that visitors don't have to climb over one another to take a picture to prove that they were there. All of the pushing and flashes made good picture-taking an impossibility anyway. The irony and futility fascinated me.

That's when I decided to watch the people instead of the art. I stood at the very back and watched semi-circular waves of spectators engulf sculptures like phagocytes, then raise their arms high in the air, their hands burning brightly above their heads. Flash, flash, flash. For a brief second every raised hand became illuminated. It was as if this were a divine pilgrimage....holding our burning souls in our hands, little offerings at the feet of Winged Victory, Aphrodite, Mona Lisa.

I became obsessed with taking pictures of the backs of crowds in the museum - the tense, struggling bodies, the right hands all raised in unison, flashing.
The desperation for acquisition is tangible, visceral. Everyone in the museum had traveled so far and made so many sacrifices to be in proximity to these works of genius. I found this so much more interesting than the artwork itself.

In a life-sized painting of saints, there was a veritable hail-storm of fiery comets blazing down from the sky, toward the saints' heads signifying enlightenment or sainthood. The painted saints are being bombarded with light from within their own landscapes, presumably driven by god's hand, and also from without. We magnify their enlightenment every time we flash, our hands mimicking gods'.

By late afternoon I was “museumed-out” already. I was eager to be at our hotel pondering my newfound understanding of the world of art (which is still, regrettably, laughable), but I was entranced by the throngs of tourists acting out my own deep-seated need to possess beautiful things. So I decided to stay a little longer, watching people through my camera's view-screen. In each of my photos I zoomed in on someone else's camera or cellphone screen, to capture a picture of them taking a picture.

It was a hall of mirrors, truly, every sculpture and canvas reproduced exponentially on thousands of screens jostling for the best light and angle, little knowing that their pictures became mine. By taking pictures of them taking pictures, I worked less and profited more. For every one of their pictures, I had two. I was the über-consumer of the food chain; its hungriest proprietary organism.

Paris' Left Bank: the Legendary Shakespeare & Company Bookstore

In every corner, dilapidated couches and cupboards in the walls serve as beds for any down-on-their-luck bohemians in Paris lacking accommodation. In exchange for a couple of hours of work in the store, travelers can crash at "Tumbleweeds," snuggling up in beds and couches in the bookstore (above).


This was our first visit to Shakespeare and Company bookstore, the old haunt of Anais Nin and Henry Miller (a couple of my favorite lovebirds and writers). It's a fusion of living room and bookstore, of 1950's and 2007, of bohemian hedonism and commercialism (it was surprisingly expensive). I had to remind myself that we're not just paying for books. We're paying for history, ambience, and, some would say most importantly, we're paying an institution that provides free shelter to writers from all walks of life.

One of the owner's good friends stopped Phil to tell him how happy he was that he had brought his young daughters to the store. He said that they are very lucky to experience a place like this so young. I'm not entirely sure that the girls saw it that way, though; they couldn't wait for the poetry reading to be over! They curled up on couches and quietly read and played with a dog who seemed to live there along with a group of transient writers.

Funny side note: I had the most uncomfortable conversation with a resident writer there, who was striking a magnificently introspective pose while seated at a little desk with pen in hand (remember Burroughs in Naked Lunch getting pulled over by the cops? When asked to prove that he's a writer, he holds up a pen and says something like, 'Of course. I have a writing tool'). After about a minute of conversation, during which he made it very clear that he is a writer who is "pondering the next great American novel" he cut me off and said, "do you mind? I have writing to do." I'll bet that Henry Miller would be as amused by this as I was.

Here are a couple of pictures of the bulletin board upstairs (it's interesting if you click on them to enlarge):


As I was taking these pictures, a curtain above the bulletin board rustled, and I nearly jumped to see a woman lying down in a little bed behind it! Anything that can conceivably be used as a bed, is. After that little surprise, I made sure to act really cool just in case there were other people similarly curled up in hidden nooks throughout the store, watching me. God forbid someone catch me photographing Shakespeare and Co. like it's some sort of tourist attraction.

And...the treasure. There is always a treasure at a used bookstore, and it is different for each of us. This treasure is pretty self-explanatory (besides just looking like a hell of a good read):


It's missing the "I" but that's OK; "I" wouldn't exactly want to be in this novel, anyway. Judging completely by the cover.

Lvov and Mommy's Favorite Memory of Paris

Lvov and I sitting on the edge of a little dock-island in the middle of the Seine, our feet dangling over the river at midnight, a bottle of French wine after a poetry reading...chilly noses and cuddles...Eiffel tower in the distance and drunkards and lovers stumbling about on both sides of the river...Lvov and I hung our feet over the edge and sang like a couple of happy drunks while Akychame and Phil walked around filming and taking pictures. It was amazing to see everything lit up with white light, and to watch the dinner and party boats cruise slowly past us, waving. We were in the heart of our lives, in the heart of the Seine in the heart of Paris.

Lvov says:

Sitting with Mommy on a skinny island by Pont Neuf bridge was my favorite time in Paris because it was with my mommy and we had a perfect view of the Eiffel tower with the white lights going off on it. Last time we were in Paris last year, we looked down from the Eiffel Tower and on the grass below somebody had carved a huge heart into the grass. Probably for their boyfriend or girlfriend to see when they looked down from the tower. Mommy and I were cuddling and we could see and hear little waves in the water and other people were scared of sitting so close to the water, but mommy held me so tightly. It was really nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My 35th Birthday in Strasbourg, France

I just turned 35! This is going to be the best year of my life. I can feel it. I could feel it the night of my birthday, cathedral bells singing and ringing through the cobblestones and vibrating through the soles of my feet. Like water, the music rose through me to my tiptop branches and leaves. I was nourished.

My Dad reminded me that bodies completely regenerate themselves on a cellular level every seven years . . . by this logic, not one cell in my body is the same as when I was 28. A re-in-carn-ation of sorts. "Carn" meaning flesh; becoming flesh again. Old cycles , tendencies, habits have fallen from me like dust. This body has reinvented itself five times, blooming and blooming from my soul's stalk. I am so thankful to become 35 with my lovely (loving) family at my side celebrating me and my life.


Here's my first sweet baby and me kickin' it at the hotel after I sampled my TWO homemade birthday cakes (both girls insisted on making me their very own cake). I emailed Aunt Cindi saying that both my heart and my waistline expanded exponentially that night...


The Lvov of Love:



The best thing I ever did in this world was make these two little humans!!! And speaking of making things, check out the gifts they gave me...



Akychame spent hours and hours hand-sewing me a pillow with a heart embroidered on it and another tiny heart hanging from the corner of the pillow by a ribbon. I called them "you & me" hearts. It reminds me of the saying, "having kids means to forever have your heart running around outside of your body" (or something like that)...the pillow is me, and Akychame is the heart attached to me by a fine length of ribbon, running around outside of my body.

Lvov wrote me ten love notes, some with poems on them, some with drawings...some just telling me all of the little tiny things that I do that she loves...one has a drawing of us holding hands. Above my head she wrote, "the Queen of Love" and above her head she wrote, "the Lvov of Love." And one note had I love you written over and over again in every conceivable inch. The greatest part is, she wrote exactly 35 I love you's for my 35th year, but she didn't do it on purpose. It was a total coincidence!



My birthday cakes were only alive for two days, but they were very well-traveled. Because the girls wanted me to have birthday cakes ON my birthday, and because they wanted the cakes to be homemade & not bought at a patissier, the cakes ended up traveling in the back of our car from Germany to France, then being carried by Phil & the kiddos from a deep-throated car garage through downtown Strasbourg in the middle of the night past street performers and throngs of tourists; and lastly, up, up, up to our little hotel room and onto the cozy bed; and then, of course, into my mouth, which to the cakes must have seemed an awful lot like descending into the car garage again.

Here's a typical little street in Strasbourg near our hotel. Notice the patissier (below) that we completely ignored because we already had the most delicious cake in the world.



Here's our charming hotel by the Strasbourg cathedral:



The hotel literally buzzed when the bells sang out. They would chime for five minutes every hour high above the heads of puppeteers, acrobats, devils, and fire-jugglers performing below for the "Street Artist Weekend," a gala feast of the senses sponsored by the city.


This is the view from our hotel room. We could feel the energy & excitement of the city through our open windows. Below, people dined at midnight under crimson umbrellas, sports teams sang songs to rival the bells, drunken lovers stumbled by, and here and there a person would saunter slowly by on stilts on the way to a performance. If you crane your neck to the left and lean out of our hotel window a little, your eyes will follow the bells to their source. The magnificent singing cathedral. You have to enlarge this photo and imagine that the ground is vibrating and the air buzzing with a call to prayer.


Little did we know when we pulled into Strasbourg on a total whim (the way we do most of our traveling) that the city would be teeming and burning with the Street Artist's Festival. It was sheer luck and serendipity. If I have a belief system, a spirituality or superstition, it hinges on serendipity. It's the knuckle, the joint upon which everything poetic revolves.

Here's a picture from my favorite street performance - pungent gasoline and rocking bagpipes lit the night on fire (you might want to click on the photo to enlarge):


Even the puppets were playing with fire that night. I couldn't have wanted a more spectacular birthday if I were a queen. It's as if every performer in the city outdid themselves just to entertain me.


Everywhere I turn, I see fire. I seek its warmth and destruction, the smoldering of old modes and skins. It will light the way for me, burning a path warm and smoky. This is going to be the best year of my life.

Lvov's Birthday and Father's Day with Grandpa Bill in Paris

Wow, this weekend was such a blur of activity, celebration, and emotion - I hardly know where to start! Not only was it sweet Lvov's 9th birthday, but it was also father's day. . . and I was able to see my dad in Paris! Oh, the serendipity!






















We drove to Paris in about five hours, but first we stopped off in Reims, France (birthplace of Jean of Arc) to visit the gorgeous Reims Cathedral (pictured above). We learned so much. We saw the secret Masonic symbols chiseled into the stonework, we learned about flying buttresses (and flying butts - the gargoyles are pretty shameless!), about Catholic beliefs and saints, and we even (to my utter delight) gazed at the famed stained glass windows designed by Chagall! Oh how I love his dreamy, swirly artwork (reminds me of Wm. Blake's and Kahlil Gibran's).




















Finding the Hotel Wilson was really crazy. Driving in Paris is NO JOKE. Phil and/or I have driven all through Japan, Korea, Afghanistan, Boston, NYC, Germany, and Italy - and nowhere is driving as crazy as it is in Paris. Thankfully we finally found the hotel and hooked up with Grandpa Bill!

This trip made us seriously consider getting one of those GPS navigational gizmos, though it's at odds with our gypsy wanderlust. We thought it would be cool for the voice on the GPS to rhyme all of the directions ala the children's story Madeleine in Paris - "In the hidden Hotel Wilson, all covered with vines, stand twelve befuddled tourists in two straight lines..."




The kiddos lit candles for BB and said a prayer.

It was so great seeing Grandpa Bill! Somehow we managed to pack everything into just two days: tons of hugging, many beers (we're talking 5-pounders) and outrageously delicious French onion soup (just called onion soup) at the Circle Brasserie with Dominic, our outstanding waiter who rallied everyone around us to sing happy birthday to Lvov; meeting Dad's co-workers; learning the Paris Metro system; celebrating Lvov's birthday from the Eiffel Tower at midnight with the lights sparkling. . .we all also had a delicious picnic of toasty bread, fresh tomatoes, garlic & pepper cheese, fresh basil the size of lamb's ears, pineapple sliced messy and sweet at the table, and local red wine.

When Dad had to go to work at the air show, we went to Le Bois de Boulogne, a gorgeous park in the heart of Paris not too far from the Arc de Triomphe. It was great to get away from the touristy areas and just chill out. Akychame braided me a wildflower garland and Lvov did flips (in a body harness) on a huge trampoline with a bunch of French kiddos.

When it came time to say goodbye to Dad, I cried and cried! It was way too short a visit, but I'm lucky that circumstances bring my Dad to Europe at least once a year. My residencies at Bennington, sporadic though they are, help to fill in the gaps.






We look forward to you all visiting us soon! You're all invited (hurry up - just one year left in Germany). We're planning (fingers crossed) to be headed back to VT in January for my next residency at Bennington. Until then, I am going to try to keep you all woven into our lives with the thread of this family blog. I'm not a very consistent creature (who is it that said the only truly consistent people are dead?) but I'm going to try my best to keep in touch because we miss you all and want you to be a part of our lives, even though we're miles apart!