Café, Graves, and People Watching
While on my trip to Paris this summer, I was able to experience what only Parisians know how to do best, people watch. Granted I was in Paris for a school class, I was surprised to find out that people watching is something that the French seem to do all day every day. We would go on walks and pass by endless amounts of beautiful cafes with tons of French people sitting outside watching us all walk by.
Their eyes would follow us like a dog follows a ball their master is playing with. I felt like God was putting us right in front of all these Parisians like toys, dangling in front of their faces. I could feel their eyes piercing my skin as I walked by the countless eateries, and I constantly would stop and think, “why are these French people always looking at me? Do I look this foreign that they can pick me out of a crowd of thousands like I stick out like a sure thumb? Why don’t these people have jobs?”
We walked over to one of the Cemeteries in the Moulin Rouge area of Paris., the nitty gritty peep show side of Paris. It was beautiful despite all of the windows with the neon lights of eyes and peep show signs. Brilliant tall buildings surrounded these storefronts on all sides with a huge island with benches, bathrooms, and parks in the middle of the main street running through this sanctuary of Paris.
The graveyard was unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was compiled of mausoleums and grave of families, and single people of all different religions and races. I got the feeling that all of these dead people were too close together, that they weren’t happy, but perhaps that’s just the overall feeling in graveyards, I have never been to one before this.
We paused at Emil Zola’s beautiful reddish colored grave, or small monument to his life. As I sat there listening to my teacher talk about his accomplishments and how he stood up for what’s right and how he was not afraid to tell not only people but governments and nations when they are wrong. His grave seemed more alive than ever, that death was not the end of all things, possibly just a new beginning. I felt a sudden rush come over my body and I couldn’t stop and think about if my life had meaning, or if I was ever going to be accomplished or do something right with my life like Zola.
The cracks on the sidewalk slowly started to dissect my soul. I finally realized that I was being watched by a dead Frenchmen. This time however, I didn’t feel like they were judging me.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
L'orangerie
L’orangerie / Monet
Every art textbook I had ever been forced to read surrounded me. Renoir was to my left, Monet the floor above me and Picasso just in the next room, I was completely enclosed by some of the most influential pieces of art that had ever existed on the face of the earth. I feel small and weak, but still drawn to walk as close as I could to every painting. I would look at the brush strokes and watch the colors mixing like they were still being painted right in front of me at that exact moment.
The French could not have picked a better place to put their most prized artists and most loved paintings. Not even the Louvre could compete with L’orangerie. It was beautiful and known in the past as the place where the royal family would store their orange trees during the cold winters. The rooms were wide open and full of light, but no glare on any of Monet’s Water Lilly Paintings.
Each Water Lilly paining was about twenty feet long and about four feet high. I felt inclined to move myself back and forth up and down each painting looking at the amazing color and fusions that Monet had masterminded. I felt so stunned and awed that as soon as I saw all of the paintings I thought, these were probably one of the main reasons modern contemporary art was ever invented, because the power of these painting were so awesome, that I felt confused, scared, and yet safe and calm the entire time I spent in L’orangerie.
Later that day we traveled to Monet’s Garden in Giverny. No matter how hard I try I will never be able to say what I experienced there, but I can try anyway. As soon as we got off of the bus, we walked to and underpass that lead to his house and garden. We entered by the gardens and it was filled with endless rows of the most beautiful flowers known to man. It was a giant collage of different colors, vibrant ones mixed right next to dull and pastel colors. There were big flowers in between the tiger lilies and bouquets of daisies and hydrangeas.
The beauty that is Monet’s pond only silenced his enormous, hidden, immaculate garden. I had never known that it was man made and that the lilies were brought from Japan and all over the world and put into a man made pond in a small town a few hours north of France. Each lily pad had a beautiful reddish pink bulb in the middle flowering and blossoming unlike anything I had ever seen. They melted into the water, and dissolved into the mixture of water, sun, and plants. The water looked like one of Monet’s paintings, broken up by the water lilies, but a fusion of all the colors of the season, and daylight. The ripples and flow of the water resembled the brushstrokes and style of his immense paintings. The small Japanese bridge transcended over the water and floated peacefully on top of the pond. The bridge put the whole landscape together and simply complemented the pond, garden, and water lilies.
Every art textbook I had ever been forced to read surrounded me. Renoir was to my left, Monet the floor above me and Picasso just in the next room, I was completely enclosed by some of the most influential pieces of art that had ever existed on the face of the earth. I feel small and weak, but still drawn to walk as close as I could to every painting. I would look at the brush strokes and watch the colors mixing like they were still being painted right in front of me at that exact moment.
The French could not have picked a better place to put their most prized artists and most loved paintings. Not even the Louvre could compete with L’orangerie. It was beautiful and known in the past as the place where the royal family would store their orange trees during the cold winters. The rooms were wide open and full of light, but no glare on any of Monet’s Water Lilly Paintings.
Each Water Lilly paining was about twenty feet long and about four feet high. I felt inclined to move myself back and forth up and down each painting looking at the amazing color and fusions that Monet had masterminded. I felt so stunned and awed that as soon as I saw all of the paintings I thought, these were probably one of the main reasons modern contemporary art was ever invented, because the power of these painting were so awesome, that I felt confused, scared, and yet safe and calm the entire time I spent in L’orangerie.
Later that day we traveled to Monet’s Garden in Giverny. No matter how hard I try I will never be able to say what I experienced there, but I can try anyway. As soon as we got off of the bus, we walked to and underpass that lead to his house and garden. We entered by the gardens and it was filled with endless rows of the most beautiful flowers known to man. It was a giant collage of different colors, vibrant ones mixed right next to dull and pastel colors. There were big flowers in between the tiger lilies and bouquets of daisies and hydrangeas.
The beauty that is Monet’s pond only silenced his enormous, hidden, immaculate garden. I had never known that it was man made and that the lilies were brought from Japan and all over the world and put into a man made pond in a small town a few hours north of France. Each lily pad had a beautiful reddish pink bulb in the middle flowering and blossoming unlike anything I had ever seen. They melted into the water, and dissolved into the mixture of water, sun, and plants. The water looked like one of Monet’s paintings, broken up by the water lilies, but a fusion of all the colors of the season, and daylight. The ripples and flow of the water resembled the brushstrokes and style of his immense paintings. The small Japanese bridge transcended over the water and floated peacefully on top of the pond. The bridge put the whole landscape together and simply complemented the pond, garden, and water lilies.
My Daily Commute
Daily Commute
My alarm won’t stop buzzing in my ear, the back of my head, and throughout my entire body. It slowly rips me out of bed like trying to move furniture that’s nailed to the floor. Waking up early for work is one of the worst things in the universe.
My day doesn’t start until I get to the train station. Manhasset is a small train station with only one platform, unlike every other station that have two one for each direction. I never pay attention to the details of the station; I’m in a daze until I hear the train horn steaming down the rails like a close play at home plate. I walk onto the cold dark train, and take my seat squished in between the blue and green seats with the faded plastic wall paper that looks like the worst fake marble possibly ever made. All that keeps me sane is my blue iPod that takes my mind off of my surroundings. Before I can put my headphones in I can hear an old man calling his daughter and asking about his grandkids. I feel like he’s just calling to have this conversation in public. Every single morning this man calls and somebody always has to make a comment about his grandkids, and of course, he has pictures in his wallet to show the entire car. The train to me is like a metal coffin, dragging its dead crew and passengers into the one of the most densely populated cities in the entire world.
When I get out of my Train in Penn station, I don’t pay attention; I’m still dreary from waking up as the train jerks to a stop in as soon at it arrives in Manhattan. I finally wake up when I go up the escalator right onto 32nd and 7th avenue in the front of Madison Square Garden. I only have to walk one painted block of tall almost limestone colored buildings that surrounds what seems to be like the rest of the island. The buildings are taller than shadows that stretch across the biggest fields. I get dizzy looking up at them, and have to squint my eyes to see the very top. Caroline, the secretary in the office is in the elevator with me as I ride up to the fifth floor. She talks about the Giants because she thinks I’m a boy and love the Giants, but I really could care less, I’m a Jets fan. I daze through my job as well. They delegate me, a first time intern with work that stumbles’ my mind and jumbles my thoughts that by the end of the day I am so exhausted I can only think about the air-conditioning waiting for me in my room. Every day my job drains me until I am completely running on empty, no gas at all.
The underbelly of Penn Station is really quite a work of interesting architecture. I guess the color doesn’t matter, but the Long Island Railroad section is actually a sight for sore eyes. It is shamelessly dirty and you walk into the armpit of the station in sweltering heat to get to the tracks and to the coffin, waiting to take you home.
Conductors are always much more angry on the way home. I always thought they would be much more cheery but they are working while they watch everybody else get to go home. If I make the 5:26 train, it is always this poor old women who struggles just to get to the end of each car. Her fingers grab my ticket to punch holes into its fake, plastic, papery surface while her knuckles look like they are stuffed with marbles and the worst arthritis I have ever seen.
My alarm won’t stop buzzing in my ear, the back of my head, and throughout my entire body. It slowly rips me out of bed like trying to move furniture that’s nailed to the floor. Waking up early for work is one of the worst things in the universe.
My day doesn’t start until I get to the train station. Manhasset is a small train station with only one platform, unlike every other station that have two one for each direction. I never pay attention to the details of the station; I’m in a daze until I hear the train horn steaming down the rails like a close play at home plate. I walk onto the cold dark train, and take my seat squished in between the blue and green seats with the faded plastic wall paper that looks like the worst fake marble possibly ever made. All that keeps me sane is my blue iPod that takes my mind off of my surroundings. Before I can put my headphones in I can hear an old man calling his daughter and asking about his grandkids. I feel like he’s just calling to have this conversation in public. Every single morning this man calls and somebody always has to make a comment about his grandkids, and of course, he has pictures in his wallet to show the entire car. The train to me is like a metal coffin, dragging its dead crew and passengers into the one of the most densely populated cities in the entire world.
When I get out of my Train in Penn station, I don’t pay attention; I’m still dreary from waking up as the train jerks to a stop in as soon at it arrives in Manhattan. I finally wake up when I go up the escalator right onto 32nd and 7th avenue in the front of Madison Square Garden. I only have to walk one painted block of tall almost limestone colored buildings that surrounds what seems to be like the rest of the island. The buildings are taller than shadows that stretch across the biggest fields. I get dizzy looking up at them, and have to squint my eyes to see the very top. Caroline, the secretary in the office is in the elevator with me as I ride up to the fifth floor. She talks about the Giants because she thinks I’m a boy and love the Giants, but I really could care less, I’m a Jets fan. I daze through my job as well. They delegate me, a first time intern with work that stumbles’ my mind and jumbles my thoughts that by the end of the day I am so exhausted I can only think about the air-conditioning waiting for me in my room. Every day my job drains me until I am completely running on empty, no gas at all.
The underbelly of Penn Station is really quite a work of interesting architecture. I guess the color doesn’t matter, but the Long Island Railroad section is actually a sight for sore eyes. It is shamelessly dirty and you walk into the armpit of the station in sweltering heat to get to the tracks and to the coffin, waiting to take you home.
Conductors are always much more angry on the way home. I always thought they would be much more cheery but they are working while they watch everybody else get to go home. If I make the 5:26 train, it is always this poor old women who struggles just to get to the end of each car. Her fingers grab my ticket to punch holes into its fake, plastic, papery surface while her knuckles look like they are stuffed with marbles and the worst arthritis I have ever seen.
Americas Pastime
Americas Pastime
One thing that I have always collected are the tickets to every baseball game I have ever been to. Most of them being Mets games, the few Orioles Games stand out like a sore thumb in my ticket stub box. But its not only the tickets themselves that make them stand out, it’s the memories I have tied to each of the tickets.
When I look at one ticket, it says New York Yankees, Monday April 6th, 2009 4:05 p.m. 6 game flex pack. As soon as I saw the words Yankees, I can hear my roommates screaming in my ear. All being obnoxious Yankee fans, the first thing I can remember are the three near miss fights we almost had with the other ignorant fans. I can smell the old sticky beer making my shoes stick to the floor when I walk to my upper deck seats. I can smell the peanuts I bought for two dollars before I enter the stadium. I can tell by the wrinkles on my ticket that we didn’t go back to campus after, and we had a long night in downtown Baltimore.
The other ticket that sticks out is the one that’s larger than life. My roommate Scott’s grandfather gave us his tickets to see the orioles. This ticket reads section 24, row NN seat 7 and the price 48$. We were about 10 rows behind the O’s dugout. I can remember the bird running up and down the aisles stopping at all of the little children staring up at him with awe. I can smell the pulled pork sandwich that Brian bought me and taste it as I drink a warm bud light to wash it down. A combination foreign to me Shea stadium adapted food vendor pallet, all that’s missing is the funnel cake.
No stadium will ever be like Shea, I mean my friends have gotten beer there since they were fourteen years old. The beautiful orange, blue, green and red seats will always remain how I first saw them in my mind; even through they were always empty. My father had tickets on the second level on the third base side. He had two tickets to every game and I was allowed to go to around twenty games a year with my dad and about ten more on five-dollar ticket day with my friends. Keith Hernandez always sat in the private booth right above us and would wave every game in the 3rd inning when the camera had a close-up on his booth and its image being displayed on the megatron.
One thing that I have always collected are the tickets to every baseball game I have ever been to. Most of them being Mets games, the few Orioles Games stand out like a sore thumb in my ticket stub box. But its not only the tickets themselves that make them stand out, it’s the memories I have tied to each of the tickets.
When I look at one ticket, it says New York Yankees, Monday April 6th, 2009 4:05 p.m. 6 game flex pack. As soon as I saw the words Yankees, I can hear my roommates screaming in my ear. All being obnoxious Yankee fans, the first thing I can remember are the three near miss fights we almost had with the other ignorant fans. I can smell the old sticky beer making my shoes stick to the floor when I walk to my upper deck seats. I can smell the peanuts I bought for two dollars before I enter the stadium. I can tell by the wrinkles on my ticket that we didn’t go back to campus after, and we had a long night in downtown Baltimore.
The other ticket that sticks out is the one that’s larger than life. My roommate Scott’s grandfather gave us his tickets to see the orioles. This ticket reads section 24, row NN seat 7 and the price 48$. We were about 10 rows behind the O’s dugout. I can remember the bird running up and down the aisles stopping at all of the little children staring up at him with awe. I can smell the pulled pork sandwich that Brian bought me and taste it as I drink a warm bud light to wash it down. A combination foreign to me Shea stadium adapted food vendor pallet, all that’s missing is the funnel cake.
No stadium will ever be like Shea, I mean my friends have gotten beer there since they were fourteen years old. The beautiful orange, blue, green and red seats will always remain how I first saw them in my mind; even through they were always empty. My father had tickets on the second level on the third base side. He had two tickets to every game and I was allowed to go to around twenty games a year with my dad and about ten more on five-dollar ticket day with my friends. Keith Hernandez always sat in the private booth right above us and would wave every game in the 3rd inning when the camera had a close-up on his booth and its image being displayed on the megatron.
Little Neck Queens
The Scobbee Diner
When I think about a place I grew up and all of the locations that have meaning to me, one sticks out in my mind, The Scobee Diner in Little Neck New York. This dinner is tucked away in the small town in queens where I grew up right on the busiest corner of town. It is a haven for anyone older than seventy years of age on a Saturday or Sunday morning at the crack of dawn. They mob the place week after week, sitting at the booths seemingly uninterested in reading the paper, or the same old boring conversations and arguments they had the week before.
Each old couple distorted like the other. Their backs hunched over, and constant expressions of pain used to scare me as a small child, but now I am able to used to it. Their skin looks like the poison of a snake is traveling up through their veins and slowly killing their eyes. Their eyes are hidden behind the thick brimmed glasses that slowly scan the same menu day in and day out.
From an outsider’s perspective, this place is unlike any other dinner. The way it is set up allows you to get a good view of the entire dinning room from almost every angle and table. The old men with their wives seem so dull and almost forced to be here every morning and weekend, even though you know this is what they live for.
There are a few more places that jog memories like this are p.s. 94 park where I spent most of my childhood in queens. This metal gridiron was where most of my growing up took place. I learned how to take a tackle there on pavement, and learned how to play 21 on the basketball court. We rarely got to play basketball because the older kids had it on lock ever since I could remember. We were shunned to a small handball court in the far corner in the park. We played all different kinds of stickball and variations of that itself. The fence holding us in from the street looks into the sad parking lot of the Scobbee Diner, which was a homerun if we hit it over the second row of Oldsmobiles.
When I think about a place I grew up and all of the locations that have meaning to me, one sticks out in my mind, The Scobee Diner in Little Neck New York. This dinner is tucked away in the small town in queens where I grew up right on the busiest corner of town. It is a haven for anyone older than seventy years of age on a Saturday or Sunday morning at the crack of dawn. They mob the place week after week, sitting at the booths seemingly uninterested in reading the paper, or the same old boring conversations and arguments they had the week before.
Each old couple distorted like the other. Their backs hunched over, and constant expressions of pain used to scare me as a small child, but now I am able to used to it. Their skin looks like the poison of a snake is traveling up through their veins and slowly killing their eyes. Their eyes are hidden behind the thick brimmed glasses that slowly scan the same menu day in and day out.
From an outsider’s perspective, this place is unlike any other dinner. The way it is set up allows you to get a good view of the entire dinning room from almost every angle and table. The old men with their wives seem so dull and almost forced to be here every morning and weekend, even though you know this is what they live for.
There are a few more places that jog memories like this are p.s. 94 park where I spent most of my childhood in queens. This metal gridiron was where most of my growing up took place. I learned how to take a tackle there on pavement, and learned how to play 21 on the basketball court. We rarely got to play basketball because the older kids had it on lock ever since I could remember. We were shunned to a small handball court in the far corner in the park. We played all different kinds of stickball and variations of that itself. The fence holding us in from the street looks into the sad parking lot of the Scobbee Diner, which was a homerun if we hit it over the second row of Oldsmobiles.
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