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.

Oh, you know, just chilling with Simone de Beauvoir, NBD

Today, after learning how to do laundry in Paris (1. laundromat, and 2. hanging wet clothes on available surfaces in one's apartment to dry) I hopped on the line 6 Metro, which is the line that goes the closest to my apartment, and I got off at the Cimitiere Montparnasse. And this may seem strange, but it was amazing. Really. The cemetary is huge, and has its own map to show you where famous people are buried - Serge Gainsbourg is there, as is Jean Seberg, who was in "A Bout de Souffle," directed by Jean-Luc Godard (who is buried somewhere else, probably the Montmartre cemetary, because famous French people seem to be buried in one of the two places), Baudelaire is there and Man Ray and Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. I was most looking forward to seeing Man Ray's tomb, but almost as soon as I entered the cemetary - it's crazy - a beautiful veritable city of tombs and mausoleums and it's very bright and full of trees and yes, beautiful - I practically tripped over Simone de Beauvoir's grave. She's buried with Jean-Paul Sartre. Anyhow, I stood there and just kind of stared at it, like, that's Simone de Beauvoir. Right in front of me. People had left little notes and Metro tickets on her grave, and someone had kissed it and left behind a huge pink mouth print.

And I don't know why, because I haven't read The Second Sex or anything, I'm not a rabid Simone de Beauvoir fan, although I do think she was cool, but seeing her grave and the notes on it made me stop and stare and I almost felt like crying, not because it was sad that she was dead or because it was depressing, but because there was something so beautiful about this tomb and the idea of someone being so affected by the things that she wrote that they would kiss her grave or bring notes to it years after her death. That in itself is really amazing to me. I don't know why, but it is.

After Simone, I looked around for Man Ray's grave, but the cemetery, like many things in Paris, was very confusing, and I kept thinking to myself, "Where the hell are you, Man Ray?" But he continued to elude me. Which is fine. His photos mean more to me than seeing where he's buried anyhow.

And then I remembered that Man Ray is buried with his wife, who changed her name to Juliet Man Ray, and I have always found that kind of ridiculous. I mean, Man Ray was a name that Emanuelle Radnitzky assumed as an artist, it wasn't a real name and it definitely wasn't a last name. It would be like assuming your husband's first name, but not even that, because come on now, there will never be another Man Ray. It always struck me as kind of stupid. Especially considering that Man Ray's long-term mistress in Paris was a woman named Lee Miller, who was also a photographer and who we hear nothing about. I wonder why Juliet Man Ray chose to call herself that. I don't know what she did for a living or if anything makes her notable, and I find that sad. It also makes me sad that although Man Ray's work as a photographer is amazing and kind of my favorite, Lee Miller's work doesn't seem to exist.

And then I thought of Simone de Beauvoir. Maybe I responded to seeing her grave the way I did because she is identified through her own accomplishments, not Jean-Paul Sartre's. After all, her grave doesn't say Simone de Jean-Paul Sartre. In Paris, great artists and philosophers of the past are typically men, and the women that they spent their lives with typically labeled as "muses." Exhibit A: Camille Claudel and Lee Miller, artists in their own right, lovers of male artists of much greater renown.

So amen to Simone de Beauvoir. Kisses and notes on a tomb just for her, because of the things she wrote, and Jean-Paul Sartre is there too, but you go to see both of them. That's how it should be done.

After visiting Simone de Beauvoir, I walked from Montparnasse to the Eiffel Tower. Because I felt like it. I was out for nearly four hours, fortified by a butter and sugar crepe, just wandering the city until I had gotten to the Eiffel Tower and it got too cold and dark to not descend to the Metro and head home. And it was nice to get off in my neighborhood, away from the spotless, chichi buildings of the central arrondissements. I was thinking about Simone de Beauvoir, and Man Ray, and this guy I call the Bob Marley troubadour who rides line 6 a lot, and only seems to know how to play one song - "Redemption Song."

Paris has given me so much to think about.