Vacation, all I ever wanted.

Vacation continues, and I have to admit, I really miss my teaching routine, which isn't even much of a routine, which is saying something. Also, I was really sad to miss Halloween. I mean, I love Halloween. It's probably my favorite holiday, mostly because I love dressing up. I've been Margot Tenenbaum (okay, well, I did that a lot actually), Patty Hearst, Deb from "Napoleon Dynamite," and as a child I was frequently a witch or a Greek goddess. One year I was Medusa. One of my favorite pictures my parents took of me when I was little is one of me as a four-year-old dressed as a firefighter for Halloween. I even have charcoal smudged on my face for extra effect.

We never skimped on Halloween at my house.

And when I got to college it just got more extreme, culminating in last year, when I made a tank top with the SLA logo on it, as well as a cardboard gun. There was also a beret involved. Looking back on it, it was a pretty politically incorrect costume, and I don't think I'll be Patty Hearsting it again any time soon. But I do love Halloween, and so being in a country where Halloween isn't really a big deal was kind of sad. I mean, I firmly believe that any party is better when it requires a costume. At Smith we often had themed parties -- in the time I was there, we had a communist party, a Candyland party, a Wes Anderson party, an alter egos party (I was Margot, as per), and a lot of themed birthday parties.

So I'm getting worried that maybe college is the only time in your life when it's acceptable to frequently dress ridiculously with very little reason to. Because if this is true, I really should have savored it.

I went out Saturday night, but the first stop was a bar in the Marais for a cheap beer (sensing a theme?) with some American friends, and then a birthday party one of my French friends was having at his place in "the sketchy part of Montmartre." Which, by the way, is actually that sketchy. Welcome to Paris, where ordinary people walk their dogs alongside prostitutes and drug dealers after midnight.

For the record, the French party turned out to be a costume party, which made me feel lame for not having one. Maybe I'll get a second chance at some point.

So today I spent my vacation time doing Important Things, like grocery shopping, which is really more like a hobby for me here, because I love it, returning overpriced and poor quality housewares to a French furniture store (yay! money back!), getting my new monthly metro pass, and taking my phone to the place I bought it in the Marais because today it decided to just up and die. Oops.

After my errands, I returned to the Cimetiere Montparnasse to take pictures, like I've been meaning to since the last time I was there. And Simone de Beauvoir's grave? Still amazing. And I finally found Man Ray's grave. It turns out it doesn't get me like Simone. I think that often times, the art that someone produces is more meaningful than even something like seeing where they're buried. At Smith we were always talking about archives and reading early drafts of famous writing, and learning about the writers that way, but I'm thinking more and more that you can actually get way more out of just looking at the final product -- at the painting, at the book, or in this case, the photograph. Just like Sylvia Plath's poetry means more to me than her drafts or journals, Man Ray's photos are a lot more meaningful to me than seeing where he's buried. Maybe that doesn't make sense. Because Simone de Beauvoir's grave gets me all choked up and I haven't even read anything she's ever written.

There goes my theory.

Also? I am such a Smithie. Ruminating on art and life and death with references to Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir, and Man Ray. It's times like this I feel a bit like a stereotype/caricature.

Anyway, something funny happened as I wandered the cemetery. I found Charles Baudelaire's grave (yeah, that's not the funny part) and all of the sudden, just as I was zooming my camera lens onto his name, my camera battery died. Now, usually, I can trick my camera into thinking it has enough battery by messing with the battery slot, but this time it didn't work. At all. The camera just stopped working.

So I'm beginning to think that old Chuck Baudelaire isn't too fond of people photographing his grave. Man Ray doesn't seem to mind though, which, given his field of expertise, just makes sense. And I have to admit, I find that pretty funny.

I cooked dinner at home while listening to Feist and then Duke Ellington again, and I have a new theory about jazz. I'm pretty sure it was invented for people who live alone. Because you can have it on at all hours of the day, and it kind of livens up a quiet apartment, and you never have to turn it off, because you can read to it. Okay, so having music I can read and write to is key. I can't do either if the music I'm listening to has lyrics, because I can only focus on the lyrics. It's like the opposite of ADD. It's like I have some kind of musical fixation syndrome.

So yeah. Even though it makes me feel like I am secretly a 47-year-old man, listening to jazz (Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, and Miles Davis specifically) is keeping my apartment lively. Even when I'm reading Wuthering Heights after I make dinner.

Next I'll probably be taking up cigars and golf and saying things like "old chap" with no sense of irony whatsoever. And then waxing poetic about Simone de Beauvoir and cooking vegetarian food and writing in my journal while sitting on my flowered sheets. So that'll be interesting. Leave it to Paris to bring out my girly defaults and old man tendencies at the very same time.