CURRY AGAIN

When I first got here I found a bag of chickpeas for relatively cheap, and thought I should buy them because my healthy mother uses them quite often. Since that purchase I've had a hard time remembering what exactly she cooks with chickpeas. I've experimented a few times. It hasn't been bad. About a month ago I cooked a pot of chickpeas and couldn't think of anything to use them on so I put them in the freezer and then moved them to the fridge this week, thinking some great idea would come to mind.

We like cheap food around here. My house mate, Katie, bought 25 kilos of potatoes off some farmer a few weeks ago for only 5 euros. Most of you reading this don't use kilos, so in case you have no conception of how much that is... over 50 pounds. She split them between herself and two other people and we STILL have a bucket of small potatoes in the cupboard which are determinedly putting out small creepy-looking fingers. My other housemate, Sarah, and I almost ate them for dinner last night, but decided they looked too much like fetuses. Disgusted, we ate toast.

Today, though, I was very bored about dinner time and struck upon a hopeful theory that anything can be curried. Anything. I had ultimate faith in this idea even though I've never tried to curry a single thing. Open Google. Curry recipe. Curry chickpeas. How convenient.
I made the sauce, opened my container of chickpeas, and was greeted by stench. OH NO. They were covered in small bubbles, pale and slimy. But, Oh well, I thought, We still have multitudes of potatoes.

I have to tell you though, now that the dishes are washed and I'm sitting here with a jar of Nutella, potatoes don't curry. Don't try it.

SOMETHING ABOUT PAINTS

Last week our field leader had this idea that I should illustrate the story at the end of the lesson by painting. Usually I have nothing to do with the story-telling; it has more to do with introducing new vocabulary and I tend to serve cookies as soon as it's over. But everyone who teaches classes agreed that they shouldn't waste the opportunity for the story to be painted-- I am leaving in a month, and then no one else will want to paint. It will be back to flannelgraphs for ever. All the flannelgraph backgrounds we use, incidentally, are the exact same ones I remember from Sunday school. Same movable pillars, same Sea of Galilee scene.
So last week I painted the story of the Miraculous Catch of Fish at one class location, and the Ascension of Jesus at another location, and in two weeks I'll do another one at the last location. Three paintings. I've never painted as a performance before so this is all quite new to me... should it be a literal illustration or just a nice painting of some people? Should I bow when it's over? I'm not sure that the ladies know what to think either, since mostly they just stare and then give me curious looks when I'm cleaning up; on the other hand, some of them just can't tell me enough how pretty the colors are.
The kids love it. It seems like they would like to paint also, and that makes me like the kids more. Even if we can't paint together.
I am enjoying the paints, too. I didn't bring any with me and hadn't meant to buy any while here. But when they were first dropped off at the house for me to test, I was almost in heaven to squeeze them out and spread them around a canvas. Colors! I forgot how much I love you. My soul is happy because of this.

FRIDAY

Yet again I don't want to update anyone on the recent happenings of my life.

I want to be quiet today. Do laundry. Listen to Simon and Garfunkel. Draw something.

You lose.

The only update I can offer is that this morning I got Black Like Me, by John Griffin, in the mail. I just finished Out of Africa and have decided to fuel my lifelong curiosity about homeless people in America. It seems like next I should read something set in Asia.

(This is laundry in France):

BEAUTIFUL

To make up for the complaints of my last post-- and I might repeat that I was very tired-- this time I am only putting up things that are lovely. To start with, Beach House, a new favorite band.

And while you are listening to that, you may look at this:

ICECREAM! Tiramisu flavored, with cocoa powder on top. Could anything be better?

YES, in fact, there is more.

Three dear friends have arrived this past week, so now there are five of us living in the house. So. Many. Girls.

Sarah got here on Saturday morning. Katie and I were terribly worried that she would be annoying or encroach on our space or who knows what, but much to our relief she's very easy to get along with. And this is good news, because she's here for three months to intern at the office, primarily as a photographer. Yay.

Yesterday my old old friend Libby Bruner arrived with Brianna Hudson, who was an MK with us in Papua New Guinea. They're touring Europe because they can. They are staying on my bedroom floor for three days.

And to close, big, bronze, naked people piled up under a fountain. I found them in Luxembourg Garden.

Goodbye nudes. I am going to eat frozen pizza.

OH MY LIFE

11:08. This is the third time I've tried to start writing something now. I'm so tired though that all of my thoughts are very grumpy and as soon as I type them I tell myself, Corrie, please, this is pathetic. No one wants to hear you whining. Go to bed.

I would however like to tell you one gripe. You females will understand.

I'm having one of those NOTHING TO WEAR weeks. I wake up in the morning, crawl upstairs to make coffee, and crawl back down to examine the options. I feel very much like an obscure species of Small Dark Ground Dweller in the basement sometimes, mostly in the morning when my hair is gross and my socks are crooked and there is no light on this side of the house. I pull out a shirt.

This looks acceptable. I put it on. Nevermind, this is not acceptable, but only very familiar.. Probably because, oh yeah! I just wore it 3 days ago.

Next. Wore you yesterday.

Next.

Finally I end up in something and have to spend a few minutes folding the rejects. Every morning I cast bitter eyes toward the sleeping bag that is folded in the cupboard, which took up precious space in my suitcase and was, upon arrival, totally unnecessary. In the garage there are probably 700 various extra sleeping materials, and I'll make it 701 when I leave the dern thing here.

Said sleeping bag has even inspired thoughts of turning sheets in the OM linen closet into new skirts, as some of them have quite fascinating patterns.

Now, one might say, For Pete's Sake, Corrie. Go buy some clothes. You're in PARIS, you might as well. And I might take one's advice on this if I ever get over how expensive they are. Plus sometimes it's satisfying in a small way to harbor mean thoughts toward the sleeping bag. Thorn in my side. I bear it with grace, don't I, except when blogging?

There has actually been real activity around here the past few days that I ought to make an update on, other than the state of my negative-3-item wardrobe, but I'm so tired I think I'll fall onto the keyboard any minute.

The real update will have to wait.

Good night. I just tried to spell something which I'm unable to specify because it was spelled incorrectly, and my computer said "no guesses found." It's that word for totally unaware, like a coma, to describe my level of awakeness right now. Maybe someone else can spell it right.

VERONIQUE

It's been a while since I gave you guys a real post, and I can't go to sleep tonight so I guess it's time.

There is a very interesting woman I can tell you about, who I see on a very regular basis.

Veronique, the most bizarre person in my acquaintance, goes to class at Telegraphe. She speaks French quickly and is always speaking, but I guess she comes to practice her writing. Originally she is from some African country where her father is allegedly a high government official, possibly the prime minister, but I don't think it really matters. There are so many stories, you see, that it's hard to know which are true or which she only tells to some or which she herself even believes. During class when Marie is giving examples of the proper use of articles, Veronique will look across the table at me as if we have a great joke between us. Who knows, maybe we do. I smile back.

Last class she tromped in with a large bag of old photos and memorabilia which she was going to use to prove to the employment department that she, Veronique, is not just a nobody off the street. She deserves a governmental stipend, and here are the pictures to prove it-- we saw them ourselves. Her father had an important looking ribbon across his chest and she, in the 80's, looked very smart in a shoulder-padded blazer and sleek hair. Almost a different woman than the one I see twice a week. She still wears the dramatic make-up, but that's the only similarity.

She now has a mass of matted gray hair corn-rowed to her head that ends in colorful braids tied in a knot on top. One can hardly ever see the gray stuff, though, because it is swathed in cloth. Patterns, plain; colors, white; round and round and always crowned by the braids wobbling like a loose doorknob. I have a hard time placing Veronique's age. Her skin is smooth, her smile bright, her eyes quick behind their gold-rimmed glasses. She has the air of a child and the mirthful confidence of an old woman.

Veronique adds extras to all of her clothes. She wears a green sequin-and-feather pin on her jacket, sews shells onto her coat, tears sheets and uses them for shawls, and wears up to three different patterned scarves at once. She wears pants with skirts with boots, shorts with leggings with sandals, the same lacy undershirt all week; recently she stuck scissors through her hand and has now embellished the bandage with a cartoon character handkerchief. It's been there for two weeks now. She embroiders. Once she came in and spread out several patterns across the table, explaining to us that she was going to embroider a bra for a friend of hers. Did we like the roses or the birds best?

I didn't specify, since I kind-of hope she won't consider me deserving of such a gift.

She always leaves in a great hurry. But when Marie and Katie and I get to the metro station, there is Vero, sitting in a colorful pile of garments, overjoyed to see us and to make conversation. Last week she and Marie sat chatting across the isle from Katie and I, who were reading as usual. Suddenly I was interrupted from my Baroness Blixen calmly shooting lions in Kenya, by Veronique, whose own story had evolved to the point of yelling. She leaped out of her seat and started sliding down the pole by the door in a way that was not altogether prudent, and continued all the while talking to Marie in extremely loud, animated French-- much too fast for me to keep up with. Katie and I both put our books away to gape at the show. Marie was cherry red, and everyone else in the train was watching.

After we got off I asked the other two what the story had been. Apparently Veronique's niece once stole her credit card, and after a while Veronique had reported her, and then the family got angry at her instead of the niece, and how that became the production that it did is beyond me. Veronique is full of wonders.

She's an odd mix of Africa and everything else you can find in Paris. Her geometric patterns, her Parisian furs, her headdresses, her Hindu forehead dot, her compliments, her need for your laugh and your admiration. Does she keep track of what has happened and what has been said, what the past really is and what she believes it to be-- or is it all as jumbled as her incredible wardrobe?

Is anyone truly aware of what their life is?

MONDAY AFTERNOON

ART ART

Accidental discovery of the week: Monet's water lilies. Check that off the list of life goals.

Also one of my favorites, Cezanne, above, was everywhere at the same free museum. How convenient.

I'm trying to practice art more while I'm here. I've been on creative burn-out since school last year. But I think there's a certain note of distinction when someone asks where a piece was from and you reply, cooly, Oh, I did that one in Paris.

Corrie Andrews, you are the epitome of shallow motives.

Also something I noticed: not every last picture in the museum was extraordinary. So to become a master maybe I just need to be prolific, because they certainly were.