The Bold Soul: A Writer's Life in Paris

It's all Golden

There's a blog award contest sponsored by the Mairie de Paris, called the Golden Blog Awards, and I've entered my blog under the "Paris" category! If you feel so disposed, I'd appreciate your vote! In this award, you can vote once per day, per computer/IP address. If the icon is blue and says VOTE! - then do it! There are a lot of blogs entered and I have no idea if I'll win (especially since I'm up against 99% French-language bloggers) but it's fun to enter. Perhaps I'll attract more French readers! Please spread the word: you can send people directly to my voting page by copying and pasting this link: http://www.golden-blog-awards.fr/blogs/the-bold-soul.html And thanks for your vote! (Registrations end 18 October; voting ends 25 October.) Read more →

La Brocante Bizarre

What do ballet shoes, gas masks, dead animals and ashtrays all have in common? It's the French brocante... and this times, it's bizarre. Read more →

Boules

Boules (a.k.a. pétanque if you're from the south of France, or bocce if you're Italian) players in the gardens at the Palais Royal. We normally play when we're visiting Georges' sister in Saint Raphael. There are a number of places around Paris where people can play boules, including some small hidden gardens up in Montmartre and even the base of the old Roman Arena in the 5th arrondissement. All you really need is a reasonably flat surface that is compacted well and a just little bit gravelly, so you can often find people in the public gardens around the city, playing in any spare corner. And more boules. Arguing about the minutia of the game is part of the fun. The arguments can get quite heated, too, which is fun for the spectators. I'm sure they were arguing over whether one team's boule was 1cm closer to the cochonnet than the other's. This is often a game of millimeters, and players bring their own rulers to take measurements when it's a close call. You couldn't play boules with these, though. Read more →

Timeless

I love that you can look out through the giant clock at the Musée d'Orsay and see Montmartre (although it was a bit of a hazy view on this particular day). Which reminds me: it's been ages since I've been to the Orsay; last time I was there, they were still in the middle of some renovations and parts of the museum were closed off. I couldn't even find the polar bear statue, which is one of my favorites. I think I need to go there again, and soon... to see if he's back yet. Or maybe he's hanging out at the North Pole with Santa. Read more →

Les Mains d'Amour

My husband, the Hobbit

I posted this photo on my Facebook page, but then thought the rest of you would really get a kick out of this one. Walking home from Pigalle on Sunday, after having visited the kids' new apartment across town (Pigalle is the stop for the direct bus to their place), I suddenly noticed this HUGE, ENORMOUS, RIDICULOUSLY PROPORTIONED but BEAUTIFUL WOOD DOOR. The door handle? Was just in front of my FACE. So I made Georges stand next to it: Now, Georges clocks in at about 5'10" or so, so he's not a short man. But when he saw the photo? He said: "Just call me Bilbo". Read more →

Oh, La La Dee Da

So, it's been a week since my French-ness ceremony, and it was a week filled with lots of tasks and challenges. Which is why I haven't had the mental energy to blog, though I sat down once or twice to try and come up with a decent post. The best I can do at the moment is give you the snippets of my life from the past week. Which feels pretty much the same as it was BEFORE the French-ness ceremony, when you get right down to it. I made the appointment for next Tuesday to go and apply for my French passport and the Carte Nationale d'Identité. The former costs 86€ and the latter is free. Tomorrow I'm going to chase down the timbres fiscales for 86€ since you can't go to any of these government agencies and pay in cash, check or bank/credit card. They only accept these fiscal stamps that prove you have paid but at a centralized location. Guess they don't want to bother the other fonctionnaires with handling payments. It's a good system -- for THEM. For the rest of us it means having to find a place that sells the damn stamps. Allegedly some... Read more →

Integrated, Translated... Permeated

The ceremony is nice, but nothing has changed. Am I French? Am I American? Doesn't really matter. Because France has already made me a different person long ago, from the moment I stepped on the plane. Read more →

Je suis française

I will walk into that room as a foreigner. I will walk out as a citizen. Et voila! Incroyable, when you think about it. Read more →

Je me souviens

I remember. I remember it all. After 12 years, it would be easy to let this day pass without so much as a momentary pause to remember where you were and what you were doing 12 years ago when passenger planes were used as weapons of mass destruction. After 12 years, I don't want to wallow in the horror and sadness either. September is a happy month for us, especially this year. Yesterday was my youngest step-son's 12th birthday. Tomorrow (the 12th) will be my French Naturalization Ceremony, where I will officially be given documents proving my new second nationality. But I'm still American to the core (and will remain so) and I do still want to remember the 11th. Because the people who died that day - people from MANY nationalities and countries - deserve that much. And because I still choose to believe the world CAN be a kinder and more peaceful place, despite all evidence to the contrary. So... I wish us all a more peaceful world. Read more →