A couple of hours on, as predicted....
Jun. 17th, 2003 12:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darcydodoToday was strange, fun, tiring, and many other things. It started out with me helping a French girl named Sandrine correct her paper on (in English) and translation of (into French) a novel by Linda Hogan entitled Power. I'd agreed to do this a few days ago, and I was getting paid for it (I figured 20 euros/hr was approximately equivalent to $25/hr, which is the going rate for grad. student tutoring at home). Besides, it means that I now know of a book I'd quite like to read at some point. But it also meant having to get up at 7:30, which didn't allow me to start catching up at all on my sleep (in fact, it helped deprive me of more of it).
Class was a mixture of stupidly hot and wearying room (our usual room, which we were back in today), much nicer (read: colder) room that we moved into after the break, and a large coffee during said break. There are also two new girls in our class, from Finland. (Have I actually listed the nationalities that have cropped up in the class? I don't think so. There're three people from Spain, one from Guatemala, and one from Mexico [although she seems to have disappeared somewhere along the way]; two Italians; one Chinese guy; one guy from Vietnam; an Australian who's been living in America for the last several years and spent some time in England, too; someone actually from England; two Russians; and me. There was, briefly, someone from Libya, but he switched classes. And now there are the two Finnish girls. So I think that's that.)
After class, I headed over to the Louvre again, since Monday's the other day of the week it's open late. I planned to get a Youth Card, since it's only fifteen euros and would allow me free access for the rest of the year (not that I'll be here so much longer, but I could go a few more times even while I am here). However, the horrible woman behind the ticket counter (I suppose it wasn't really her fault, but even so) told me that I was too late to buy a card, that day. I could, however, send in a form requesting one. Well, that would be silly, because it'd probably take the rest of my time here for the form to get processed, and it was equally silly that it was too late, because it was only 6 and the museum's open until 9:30-ish. So I bought a normal ticket and figured that if I went two more times after today, it wouldn't be costing me any more than the youth card. I looked at the map (yes, this time I sensibly picked one up) and decided that, since I want to go back to the d'Orsay on Thursday, I would spend today's visit to the Louvre visiting the 19th century French paintings, so that my various museum trips would be nicely continuous. However, at this point I discovered the next silliness: on Mondays, it's not so much that the Louvre is open late; rather, the Rez-de-chaussée and Entresol are open late. So I couldn't get up to the first or second floor, and hence couldn't see what I had planned to.
By the time I discovered this, I was in amidst the collections from the Levant and ancient Iran. So I learned that when I am as tired as I was, it is not a good idea to put me anywhere near things that have something to do with my work. I walked quickly by lots of things that normally I would spend a good deal of time examining, and I actually spent much of my time in the rooms around that area staring at signs blankly for a good minute or two, before realizing that I was simply looking at a sign that said "Don't touch the display pieces" in three languages including English. I was, very much, in a "Fire bad. Tree pretty" state. So I was pleased when I got to a room with very very large things in it, because they were easier to look at. I'm realizing now that I have no clue what temple said monumental statues and friezes were from, 'cause I wasn't properly into my write-interesting-things-down stage yet. (Oh, but my handy Louvre map says: it was the palace of King Sargon II of Mesopotamia.) A bit further on, I saw a very cool green (bronze) lion (with white eyes that had steatite pupils); it was from the Lion Temple at Mari, along the Euphrates. It reminded me a bit of the hunting dogs guarding the gates at Chantilly; it, too, had been a gate guardian. I realized a little while later that I was probably in a lion mood today; I got almost as excited by a glazed-brick Babylonian lion. Although it may have partially been the blues and greens in both pieces that I was drawn to. (There were other lions that I liked as well, though, so I think it was, by and large, a lion mood.)
I was getting sick of being surrounded by lots of little fiddly vases and fragmentary statues and stuff, so I found a handy staircase and went down it. It led to the Islamic Art, which at first I thought I wouldn't particularly care about. But the first pieces I saw were some paintings from the 18th or 19th century, and at that point I proceeded to remember that Islamic art really is quite good. Walking through those rooms also ended up being very soothing. There were lots of blues and greens and brick-reds, lots of glazed tiles, and they were nicely spaced against white walls. Sometimes I understand Hemingway's need for a clean, well-lighted place. Maybe I should convert to Islam just so I can be surrounded by such things. Especially the tiles. There were gorgeous Persian rugs, too (well, a lot of them were Turkish, really); real ones are so much nicer than anything it's possible to purchase, today, probably even at an exorbitant price. Nice pieces of glazed pottery; I especially liked one "plate with graps" from Iznik in Turkey, made around 1545. Apparently it showed a lot of influences from the pottery of the Ming dynasty; I wouldn't know. The grapes looked vaguely like black-eyed peas.
In one room there was a display of some armor and weaponry; there was a suit of armor from India or Iran that actually had the zigzag pattern shown on ancient Phrygian armor in Greek vase-paintings. (I can think about work in relation to completely irrelevant things, you see.) What most impressed me, though, was that it was chain-mail. Some of the links, I guess, were gold. I'd like to see someone in Wychwood try to produce that! Other interesting things in the rooms: several pairs of wooded doors with lovely parquetry (well, not precisely; it wasn't smooth); it was carved wood with inlaid bone and bits of gilding. The first set I saw, so the only set I wrote down the information for, was from the mosque al-Maridāni in Cairo, constructed in 1337-9. Another gorgeous bit of inlaying I saw was a stand for the Koran.
There was a cabinet with all sorts of science-y things; there were astolabes and celestial spheres and a jeweler's box of tools (well, apparently that's how the French is translated; I was guessing it was more for a scientist of some sort. Anyway, in French, it was called nécessaire d'orfèvre). Said box was made of painted wood, but in it there were golden scales and compasses and such tools all neatly packed away. It reminded me very much of a compass kit I used to have, that had slots made precisely for the different sizes of compass and the different compass heads and whatnot. In another cabinet there were Turkish scissors. Yeah. They looked exactly like scissors today, except with really long blades and stupidly ornate handles.
I also got to play "ooh, look, it's a language sort of like another language I really don't know!" which is always a fun game. It came about in this way: there was a placard talking about the Arabic family terms (ibn for son, and so on), and it said that abū was father and umm was mother. This caused me to bounce and think "hey, that's like in Hebrew, where aba is father and ama is mother." And then I felt pleased and continued to wander.
Wandering took me back upstairs and told me to try and find a way out, since I was getting really quite tired. Finding a way out didn't happen very quickly, though, and en route I stumbled across the Reception Hall of Apadana, the palace of Darius I. There were big bull heads and archers and winged lions, the last two made out of more of those glazed bricks. Then I had to go into the Egyptian part, which caused a major dilemma on my part, and this in turn led simply to vague annoyance. I was tired. I wanted to leave. But because so much was closed, there were only a couple of stairways in the entirely wing that led up and down. This meant that I was forced to walk most of the way through the Egyptian part. Normally, this wouldn't be a bad thing; sarcophagi and the book of the dead and suchlike are obviously right up my alley. But that's what I was talking about before; when I'm very tired, I don't want work-ish things. Partially because I'll just spend forever looking at them. So I was torn between hurrying through the Egyptian galleries and not looking at anything at all, and stopping every two seconds because something incredibly interesting had caught my eye. This, in my reduced mental capacity, made me cross. But I eventually escaped, regretting all the time that I didn't have several more hours to spend looking at the Egyptian whatnots, and left the Louvre.
It was a nice evening, and I really wasn't all that hungry, so I decided I'd wander along to a random métro station on the Rive Gauche, in the meantime being on the lookout for dinner-ish things, instead of rushing back to the Cité to eat there before the resto-u closed. After a while, I decided that I could go to Les Deux Magots and just get the hot chocolate, which is a whopping six euros, and have a tiny cheap something somewhere for diner. But, of course, the closer I got the more expensive things got, until I was amidst cafés where a single hard boiled egg cost two euros. This was obviously not a good way to go, and I determined to head farther away from Boulevard Saint Germain in order to find sustenance, planning to then return for my hot chocolate. (If I'd had sense, of course, I would've had the hot chocolate first, and then grabbed something somewhere near the Cité.) What this actually resulted in, however, is me simply wandering farther and farther away from Saint-Germain-des-Près, until I decided that there was really no point in going back. I wandered through some art market in the Place Saint Sulpice just as it was packing up, then caught the strains of some familiar piece from within the church itself, where I presume a service was underway. Eventually I ended up at a little Basque restaurant called, I think, Le Chipiron (or something similar) on Rue Vaugirard, where I was the only patron. I had a terrine of rabbit (chunks of meat in a molded jelly, served with very sweet caramelized onions and wedges of surprisingly unripe, but red, tomato) and a glass of red wine and did my homework; for dessert I had Brebis cheese (it's ewe's milk, I think) with black cherry jam, which I figure must be the Basque equivalent of manchego served with quince jam. It was nice, and peaceful, and then I walked to the Luxembourg RER station, which was a few blocks away (it turned out I was only two blocks from the Boulevard Saint-Michel), and went home.
Oh, and apparently today was Bloom's Day, which I really ought to have known. I'm not entirely sure if there's a suitable way to celebrate the holiday, though, anyway.
Class was a mixture of stupidly hot and wearying room (our usual room, which we were back in today), much nicer (read: colder) room that we moved into after the break, and a large coffee during said break. There are also two new girls in our class, from Finland. (Have I actually listed the nationalities that have cropped up in the class? I don't think so. There're three people from Spain, one from Guatemala, and one from Mexico [although she seems to have disappeared somewhere along the way]; two Italians; one Chinese guy; one guy from Vietnam; an Australian who's been living in America for the last several years and spent some time in England, too; someone actually from England; two Russians; and me. There was, briefly, someone from Libya, but he switched classes. And now there are the two Finnish girls. So I think that's that.)
After class, I headed over to the Louvre again, since Monday's the other day of the week it's open late. I planned to get a Youth Card, since it's only fifteen euros and would allow me free access for the rest of the year (not that I'll be here so much longer, but I could go a few more times even while I am here). However, the horrible woman behind the ticket counter (I suppose it wasn't really her fault, but even so) told me that I was too late to buy a card, that day. I could, however, send in a form requesting one. Well, that would be silly, because it'd probably take the rest of my time here for the form to get processed, and it was equally silly that it was too late, because it was only 6 and the museum's open until 9:30-ish. So I bought a normal ticket and figured that if I went two more times after today, it wouldn't be costing me any more than the youth card. I looked at the map (yes, this time I sensibly picked one up) and decided that, since I want to go back to the d'Orsay on Thursday, I would spend today's visit to the Louvre visiting the 19th century French paintings, so that my various museum trips would be nicely continuous. However, at this point I discovered the next silliness: on Mondays, it's not so much that the Louvre is open late; rather, the Rez-de-chaussée and Entresol are open late. So I couldn't get up to the first or second floor, and hence couldn't see what I had planned to.
By the time I discovered this, I was in amidst the collections from the Levant and ancient Iran. So I learned that when I am as tired as I was, it is not a good idea to put me anywhere near things that have something to do with my work. I walked quickly by lots of things that normally I would spend a good deal of time examining, and I actually spent much of my time in the rooms around that area staring at signs blankly for a good minute or two, before realizing that I was simply looking at a sign that said "Don't touch the display pieces" in three languages including English. I was, very much, in a "Fire bad. Tree pretty" state. So I was pleased when I got to a room with very very large things in it, because they were easier to look at. I'm realizing now that I have no clue what temple said monumental statues and friezes were from, 'cause I wasn't properly into my write-interesting-things-down stage yet. (Oh, but my handy Louvre map says: it was the palace of King Sargon II of Mesopotamia.) A bit further on, I saw a very cool green (bronze) lion (with white eyes that had steatite pupils); it was from the Lion Temple at Mari, along the Euphrates. It reminded me a bit of the hunting dogs guarding the gates at Chantilly; it, too, had been a gate guardian. I realized a little while later that I was probably in a lion mood today; I got almost as excited by a glazed-brick Babylonian lion. Although it may have partially been the blues and greens in both pieces that I was drawn to. (There were other lions that I liked as well, though, so I think it was, by and large, a lion mood.)
I was getting sick of being surrounded by lots of little fiddly vases and fragmentary statues and stuff, so I found a handy staircase and went down it. It led to the Islamic Art, which at first I thought I wouldn't particularly care about. But the first pieces I saw were some paintings from the 18th or 19th century, and at that point I proceeded to remember that Islamic art really is quite good. Walking through those rooms also ended up being very soothing. There were lots of blues and greens and brick-reds, lots of glazed tiles, and they were nicely spaced against white walls. Sometimes I understand Hemingway's need for a clean, well-lighted place. Maybe I should convert to Islam just so I can be surrounded by such things. Especially the tiles. There were gorgeous Persian rugs, too (well, a lot of them were Turkish, really); real ones are so much nicer than anything it's possible to purchase, today, probably even at an exorbitant price. Nice pieces of glazed pottery; I especially liked one "plate with graps" from Iznik in Turkey, made around 1545. Apparently it showed a lot of influences from the pottery of the Ming dynasty; I wouldn't know. The grapes looked vaguely like black-eyed peas.
In one room there was a display of some armor and weaponry; there was a suit of armor from India or Iran that actually had the zigzag pattern shown on ancient Phrygian armor in Greek vase-paintings. (I can think about work in relation to completely irrelevant things, you see.) What most impressed me, though, was that it was chain-mail. Some of the links, I guess, were gold. I'd like to see someone in Wychwood try to produce that! Other interesting things in the rooms: several pairs of wooded doors with lovely parquetry (well, not precisely; it wasn't smooth); it was carved wood with inlaid bone and bits of gilding. The first set I saw, so the only set I wrote down the information for, was from the mosque al-Maridāni in Cairo, constructed in 1337-9. Another gorgeous bit of inlaying I saw was a stand for the Koran.
There was a cabinet with all sorts of science-y things; there were astolabes and celestial spheres and a jeweler's box of tools (well, apparently that's how the French is translated; I was guessing it was more for a scientist of some sort. Anyway, in French, it was called nécessaire d'orfèvre). Said box was made of painted wood, but in it there were golden scales and compasses and such tools all neatly packed away. It reminded me very much of a compass kit I used to have, that had slots made precisely for the different sizes of compass and the different compass heads and whatnot. In another cabinet there were Turkish scissors. Yeah. They looked exactly like scissors today, except with really long blades and stupidly ornate handles.
I also got to play "ooh, look, it's a language sort of like another language I really don't know!" which is always a fun game. It came about in this way: there was a placard talking about the Arabic family terms (ibn for son, and so on), and it said that abū was father and umm was mother. This caused me to bounce and think "hey, that's like in Hebrew, where aba is father and ama is mother." And then I felt pleased and continued to wander.
Wandering took me back upstairs and told me to try and find a way out, since I was getting really quite tired. Finding a way out didn't happen very quickly, though, and en route I stumbled across the Reception Hall of Apadana, the palace of Darius I. There were big bull heads and archers and winged lions, the last two made out of more of those glazed bricks. Then I had to go into the Egyptian part, which caused a major dilemma on my part, and this in turn led simply to vague annoyance. I was tired. I wanted to leave. But because so much was closed, there were only a couple of stairways in the entirely wing that led up and down. This meant that I was forced to walk most of the way through the Egyptian part. Normally, this wouldn't be a bad thing; sarcophagi and the book of the dead and suchlike are obviously right up my alley. But that's what I was talking about before; when I'm very tired, I don't want work-ish things. Partially because I'll just spend forever looking at them. So I was torn between hurrying through the Egyptian galleries and not looking at anything at all, and stopping every two seconds because something incredibly interesting had caught my eye. This, in my reduced mental capacity, made me cross. But I eventually escaped, regretting all the time that I didn't have several more hours to spend looking at the Egyptian whatnots, and left the Louvre.
It was a nice evening, and I really wasn't all that hungry, so I decided I'd wander along to a random métro station on the Rive Gauche, in the meantime being on the lookout for dinner-ish things, instead of rushing back to the Cité to eat there before the resto-u closed. After a while, I decided that I could go to Les Deux Magots and just get the hot chocolate, which is a whopping six euros, and have a tiny cheap something somewhere for diner. But, of course, the closer I got the more expensive things got, until I was amidst cafés where a single hard boiled egg cost two euros. This was obviously not a good way to go, and I determined to head farther away from Boulevard Saint Germain in order to find sustenance, planning to then return for my hot chocolate. (If I'd had sense, of course, I would've had the hot chocolate first, and then grabbed something somewhere near the Cité.) What this actually resulted in, however, is me simply wandering farther and farther away from Saint-Germain-des-Près, until I decided that there was really no point in going back. I wandered through some art market in the Place Saint Sulpice just as it was packing up, then caught the strains of some familiar piece from within the church itself, where I presume a service was underway. Eventually I ended up at a little Basque restaurant called, I think, Le Chipiron (or something similar) on Rue Vaugirard, where I was the only patron. I had a terrine of rabbit (chunks of meat in a molded jelly, served with very sweet caramelized onions and wedges of surprisingly unripe, but red, tomato) and a glass of red wine and did my homework; for dessert I had Brebis cheese (it's ewe's milk, I think) with black cherry jam, which I figure must be the Basque equivalent of manchego served with quince jam. It was nice, and peaceful, and then I walked to the Luxembourg RER station, which was a few blocks away (it turned out I was only two blocks from the Boulevard Saint-Michel), and went home.
Oh, and apparently today was Bloom's Day, which I really ought to have known. I'm not entirely sure if there's a suitable way to celebrate the holiday, though, anyway.
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no subject
Date: 2003-06-17 06:49 am (UTC)Well, absent being in Dublin and/or rereading Ulysses, you could always soliloquise about sex.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-17 09:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-17 10:25 pm (UTC)