I suppress a snicker every time I look at Zee Thinker.  Isn't this statue, by now, the epitome of a cliche?  And aren't cliches cause for mirth?

However, he provided me with a wonderful photo op, because my favorite Parisian dome, Les Invalides, was there in the background.  Even though it was a dreary day, that dome gleamed in the gloom.

The first time I visited the Rodin Museum I was struck by the notion I was standing in the room at the tail  end of an extreme yoga class.  I spent a few moments imagining an avant garde Rodin savvy about yoga way before even Mr. Iyengar.  The rooms were awash with sprawled bodies, legs wide open, backsides hugely arched, genitals flying, necks flung back like they had just been hung. The profusion of movement in the rooms.  Earthy.  Bold.  Open.

Verging on mayhem.

This time where was all that yoga?  It seemed quieter to me.   None of my favorites were there.  None of the contortionists.  Maybe because it's November?  The leaves are falling off the trees.  Time to calm things down before the madness of Christmas?

The first time I was there, there was a wind storm that day.  Maybe the wind crated that sense of energy and sweat.

I love this museum either way, any way.  This is where Rodin lived his last years.  The shape and moldings of the rooms are intact.  The gardens, now at the end of the year are starkly beautiful.

And outdoors, in addition to The Thinker, there are several pieces.  One is my all time favorite.

The Burghers of Calais.

Their story is incredible--their love and bravery, the leaders of their people, willing to give up their lives because it was the morally right thing to do.

I liked their faces close up.  Here's one of them.

And one minute later?  After facing their own death to save the people of Calais?  They are allowed to live.

Let's face it.  Solemnity, suffering, and unhappy endings are not the honey of life.

Happy endings are.

The air is lighter here.  The world is beaming its approval. I'm skipping.

For HE IS ELECTED.  It even made me cry seeing good old Jesse Jackson crying...even after what he tried to do to Obama way back whenever.

I gave money to the man playing the sax on the metro going to the American cathedral.
I gave money to the two men playing the accordion and trombone on the metro going to St Germaine de Pres.

I went shopping.

Le Bon Marche is a grande dame in department stores.  It has this panache, you see, that the glossiest stores in LA cannot even begin to emulate, even if they put in the crown molding and imported an Art Nouveau glass ceiling for effect.

Aside from the furniture sections which I find absolutely luscious, the store doesn't actually sell anything different than Bloomingdales--

But, it has it's Parisian air of elegant savoir faire, and I just like going in there.

Today I went in specifically to look at their Christmas decorations.  Last year I was blown away by them, particularly the confections that were made in Lyons.

Alas, there were no Lyons ornaments.  And the Christmas area itself, was, how do you say?  Not up to zee snuff?

But the rest of the glitter was in place.  Our country has a new president, one we can be proud of, so I just wandered through the store looking like I'd swallowed whatever it is one swallows when they are hugely, smugly, totally thrilled with the way the election went.

YES!!!!!!!

 There are lots and lots of museums in Paris.

I am not a museum lover.  I like to go on about how I got dragged to every museum in the world while growing up, and that is why I am tres yawning and dulled and un petit how you say BORED OUT OF MY MIND by zee museums filled with all the leetle tiny objets de boringness--
Where one is supposed to be tres quiet and whispering and no laughing, please.  Absolutely no making fun or laughing.

Going to a museum brings out the worst in me.  Like all those times when right in the middle of Mass, for god sake, I'd want, need, could barely control, the need to laugh.  Loud.  Without control.  Once that kind of moment hits in any place that takes itself terribly seriously, well, one is done for, n'est pas?

Museums.  Very serious indeed.  Related to history, ART, culture, architectural detail non pareil, quiet, whispering, guards at every door, which brings out the paranoia big time, can I use my camera or not, am I being crass by even taking photographs, instead of standing in worshipful silence, staring at whatever priceless item I am staring at--

Thinking, how long do I have to stare?  Is one minute long enough for this painting?  I can see--it's a painting painted a long time ago of a very serious woman, holding a baby who probably died young, and I hate it when that happens, so, maybe I can just move along to the next one...or even fast forward to the front door and outta here--

"Wait a minute," says my companion.  "We've only been in here for five minutes.  You said you'd give me twenty."

It's much better if I go to a museum alone...and the only place that happens is here in Paris, where, you guessed it--

I LOVE the musees!

I die for love for zee musees here.  I pick carefully.  I do not, I repeat, do not bother with the gargantuan odes to boringness supreme, as in the Louvre or the Orsay or the Grand Palais, or that nightmarish, the Pompidou.

I go to the Musee des Poupees.  I go to the Galerie-Musee Baccaract, Musee Marmottan, the Musee Nissim de Camondo, the Musee Carnavalet, Cognacq-Jay, Picasso, le Petit Palais, le Musee Gustave Moreau and the Musee de la Vie Romantique.  The Musee Jacquemart-Andre.   Also the ones that call themselves Fondations...like Le Corbusier and Dubuffet.
There is a never ending supply of these small museums.

My criteria?  That they are small, housed in what were beautiful private mansions..or if not mansions, quirky odd, hidden ( I love the hidden ones...the first year I was here I was afraid of them.  But last year I broke the noose and found Le Corbusier.  I even rang the buzzer at Dubuffett!).

I like them to have a specific product they're about--like the doll museum.  Like the crystal.  A single artist, and the museum is in his/her former studio (like Gustave Moreau.  His dining table was tiny.  Could it really have been his?  But upstairs were two studios which were soaring).

I like to have to hunt them down.  I get all over Paris finding these places. 

And, hopefully, they have a gift store.  My favorite fall back position when I am trapped at a museum with a die-hard museum aficionado is  "I'll meet you in the gift store."

Currently, my favorite store is at the Petit Palais. Though huge and an actual museum, the museum is light and airy.  The art is basically Art Nouveau, which I love, and right now there is an exhibit of the fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier.  His photoes are up amongst the Fauves and the Impressionists.  There was much clucking, but it really works.  But the gift store...the gift store is fabulous.  They have these black candlesticks and these pop up books--

There is a never ending supply of these musees.  Last year I missed out on the fan museum, but that one is in the works for this year.  It's one that requires one to ring the buzzer.  Last year I chickened out.  This year I'm bringing my friend Emily who has no fear.

I won't make the museum farther out that has an exhibit of Les Deux Chevaux...although maybe I will.  It comes highly recommended. 

I will definitely miss the museum that has old carnival rides and such, housed in a huge art nouveau shed somewhere.  This one requires reservations and the parties can't be smaller than fifteen.  I do not have fifteen friends in Paris....

And finally, I am a musee madness person here because it is EASY.  I don't have to drive to get to them.  Oh oops, better stop for gas on the way.  I don't have to park.  I don't have to sit on the freeway in stop and go--

Paris is a dream that way.

I came.  I saw.  I fell in love.

With a house in a huge park.  This statue and one like it guard the back door.  Two others are in the front.

It's faded pink.  I adore pink, and am finally old enough to admit it in spite of what those who prefer saffron, pale black and razors think that says about me.

It does not have landscaping surrounding it's perimeter.  One English gardener I admire once pointed out that Americans have this mania for planting boring shrubbery around their houses like a choker that's too small for the neck.  You know what I'm talking about.  Bushes.  Lots and lots of nameless bushes purchased from Home Depot.

This house is surrounded by pea stones...I think they're called that.  
 When we lived in Brussels, when I was a teenager, I admired the chateau-like home next door.  Their driveway consisted of pea stone,  and I asked my mother if we could have such a bucolic and elegant driveway.  Nevermind that our house was a kind of moderne ode to Art Deco with a very definite style of its own, and pea stone wouldn't have done, not at all.
My mother squashed the deal entirely.  "Pea stone are messy," she said.  "Do you want to rake the edges back into the driveway everyday?  Do you want to weed out the weeds that will grow in?  Do you want to pick pea stone out of your shoes every time you come into the house?  And what happens when the baby (because there was always a baby when I was growing up) chokes on them?"

I lust after pea stone anyway, and here stood this pink house, sans bushes, surrounded by pea stone--

And Parc de Bagatelle itself.  Which is to say a world famous garden built on a dare, and on this day, the site of installation art using crystal, devised by four lustrous...crystal people--
Baccarat, Daum, Lalique and St-Louis...the last of whom I don't know a thing about.

I also chose to go because getting there would a challenge.  One of those leaping off the cliff, and involved two metros (easy) and a bus (unknown, therefore to be treated warily).

The whole way there I said to myself if I hated it I could just leave.  I could stay on the bus.  If needs be, I could walk home-- 

And if it started to rain, it didn't matter because I'd brought my umbrella. 
I have long ago started carrying the light weight cheap sac I bought at the Monoprix the first day, and am leaving the beautiful black leather sac at home because the thing weighs a ton, and is probably why every other year when I get home I have had to run to the acupuncturist first thing for my shoulder.  And so, the cheap sac has a special place to put one's umbrella...you see.  Which makes it all the better.  And it doesn't have any pointless magnets which turned out to cause such problems with my metro tickets last year.

The only thing the bag doesn't have is...panache.  Which I have decided I can live with.

Anyway, the outing was a total success. 

The park is beautiful. 
The crystal installations were...well, er...the ones outside were not up to snuff, actually.  But I had already fallen in love with the pink house.  Not Trianon--that is the other house (I use 'house' in lieu of sounding painfully confused as to what one should call these kinds of  extravagant follies).

But, inside Trianon (not my house.  My house was closed to zee public) were several incredibly beautiful panoramas using crystal in it's most creative and festive form.  Those made up for the outside installations.  Outside the crystal needed to be larger, to counter the sprawling landscape, the grottoes, the waterfalls, the swans--

So,there were swans.  Unless French swans are somehow kinder than American ones, then I was surprised by how cute the people thought they were.  How the adults let their children toddle right up to them, arms outstretched innocently.  Swans are mean.  I still remember a swan chasing some little kid in the Boston Commons...maybe the little kid was my little brother...I don't remember.  It was a blur....

There were also peacocks.  These birds were unflappable.  I snuck up to the first one I took a photo of.  I'm sure it was amused, and stood there patiently waiting for me to get my 'clandestine' shot, because I soon figured out one could march right up to them, yakking on their cell phone...as in this one oblivious woman who trod right into my photo and never noticed, trilling away on her phone, as she was also turning around jerking her head at her children and husband to notice the peacocks.  Her husband and children did notice my picture taking efforts, and slunk by hastily.  God...people.  Why are they always around???

I turned the wrong direction going out.  Had to ask the crepe making man the way.  He said "Go that way.  Turn at the second left."  In French.  I thanked him, hoping I'd understood him to say left and not right and all.  As I walked away, the woman who had been standing there when I approached, and who had seemed reluctant to stop talking to let me ask my question (a common er...issue here) called out after me in English "Left.  Make sure you turn left.  Zee second left."

Then I metroed and bussed it home. 
Every teenager in Paris seemed to be enroute at the same time, laughing loudly as teenagers must do to become adults.

It was a dreary and drizzly day, the other day.  I hung out my window, and yes, the pitter patter of raindrops could be heard on the courtyard below.

I turned to my 10 day weather forecast/ Paris, and it said yes, it was indeed suppose to rain all day. 

Hooray.  At last something besides balmy, breezy sunny weather.  I grabbed the umbrella that was in the apartment when I got here, so I assumed it knew its way around, and headed off to Le Marais to force myself to go into some museums.  What better weather to be stashed away inside a museum.

It was cold, wet, slippery and altogether painful being out in the drizzle, even if there were those oh so evocative wet cobblestones, and I had the fun of hoisting an umbrella aloft.  The Impressionists made an art of these kinds of days.  The most beautiful artwork is "Paris on a rainy day."  But maybe it's the clothes I'm thinking of, and those elegant umbrellas--

Because wet cobblestones are obstreperous hijackers of balance, ruthless destroyers of expensive high heels, and it is an excellent thing they are no longer used.

However,  I persist in finding them beautiful, particularly in the rain.  I find the starkness of European cobblestone courtyards gorgeous.  I must be having some kind of healing experience as an adult, because I hated everything about cobblestone courtyards when I lived in Brussels when I was a teenager. 

So, it's cold here when it drizzles.  I forget about how cold wet cold is, and how klutzy wearing all those clothes to deal with the cold are-

I had to take off my gloves to take a picture.  I had to do something about the umbrella while taking the picture, like angling it underneath my armpit, which I couldn't feel through the t-shirt, sweater and jacket, my scarf kept getting in the way.  Gloves removed, my fingers were now cold and wet, so I was terrified I'd drop my camera, dropping it for good measure on a cobblestone from which it would slide right into the caverns between cobblestones, where it would get soaked and die.

It was a quiet day out there on the rainy streets of le Marais.  Until I'd had enough of appreciating wet cobblestones and bleak Northern European courtyards, and headed out to rue Rivoli, the kind of street that never sleeps, see, so it was alive with pedestrians and umbrellas.

And suddenly I was running for my life.  It is war out there on the mean streets of Paris when it's raining and umbrellas are fighting to stay alive, I mean aloft.  Suddenly I was feinting and slicing and changing lanes and back tracking and stopping dead and all but throwing my umbrella away to avoid other umbrellas.  There had to be an easier way.  Nobody else looked flustered.

So, I took a brief pause.  And saw.  Intimidation, under the guise of acting like you were indeed the only one who was on the sidewalk.  Don't be the first to give way.  Okay.  I could do that--

I commenced to walk as if I knew what I was doing, as if I didn't even see anyone coming, as if my umbrella was a pet monkey on my shoulder.  It took nerves of steel.  Particularly if a twenty-something girl was coming my way. She always added to the aloofness by being in the process of text messaging, or maybe even speaking into her phone.   But okay.  I could take her on.  I used to be a twenty-something girl.  My beautiful daughter is dangerous twenty-something--  

But then, I also noticed there was a breed of Parisian that day who was paying attention to others.  It was the delicate elderly woman.  Meticulously done hair, leather gloves, tiny heels on steady black pumps, silk scarf.  This woman was tilting her umbrella out of the way first, and even smiling while passing, her dignity lighting the way.

When I got close to home there was a protest going on.

Nobody had their umbrellas up.

 I had time to spare before a reading at Shakespeare and Co.  I had time to spare because I've been practicing getting to places early.  Which normally would be cause for a nervous breakdown.  Getting to a place early, that is. 

But the rushing, the swearing as I am rushing because I am late so as to avoid the hitherto more dreaded getting there early--

Well, I finally noticed that I was hating the frantic trip to my destination even more than the idea of waiting. 

So I was early for the reading and went over to the Notre Dame to see what there was to see.

There were these skating fiends.  They skated, at high speed, using fancy foot work, up and down, swirling in and out of the white cones like slalom on rollerblades.  They seemed to know each other, but it could have been just a case  of instant camaraderie brought on by having this crowd in the palms of their  hands  And they had a crowd that was oohing and ahhing and crowing their delight.

The skaters were cool and rarely knocked a cone out of place.  And when they did, they were cool and calm as they put the cone back in place.  I wonder whose cones they were.  And I wonder if I go back, they'll still be there.

The reading was an ode to incompetence, made palatable only because the setting was beyond colorful.

The very self-assured author had written a couple of books about Paris before and after.  His books were photos of before and after, and so, what should have been a lovely little talk and slide show, turned to him holding aloft his laptop to show the pictures.   It was upstairs at Shakespeare, in two teeny rooms, so he had to sally in between both rooms to show the pictures.  He had no actual talk, either, it turned out.  No commentary.  Just, "So here, you see?  In this picture?'  Laptop held up.  Laptop carried into next room.  "Now you see how it is now, in this picture."  I think we were supposed to groan with dismay.  Indeed we did.  But not because of the pictures.  

He was a bumbling uncle figure, totally delighted with himself, boring every one to sleep with the sad selection of laptop displays.  One  valiant fellow, the Duke of Windsor's younger unknown brother, kept up a series of jolly questions that somehow drew from our author a point of view, a point in general, and a raison d'etre for the rest of us even being there in the first place.

I wanted to take the Duke home with me, but his wife, at least I think she was his wife, fell asleep early in disgust, and stayed firmly nodded out on his shoulder the entire "talk". 

It was a delicate evening when I came out, even though this is a raucous, tourist and student ridden part of town.

October is a very good month for Paris.