[Discovering the Obscure] Finding the Buried History of Paris I

Paris is known for its rich history, a city of lights that has been literally lit since its fortification by Celtic tribes in the 3^rd century BC. From thence forward, the momentum the Parigots have taken on to build what is known collectively as the art mecca of the world is one still today unprecedented. Gustave Eiffel raised his tower over Napoleon III’s inspired city in 1889 during the World Fair at Champ de Mars. The Louvre, undoubtedly the greatest collection of masterpieces predating every renaissance art has roamed in and out of, stands in its very spot where construction began in 1202 and finally established in 1793 in the 1^st arrondissment, garnering a reputation that if one is to see every painting and every wing, it would take an estimated 3-4 days. The Roue de Paris, a traveling Ferris wheel on the Place de la Concorde, stands 200 feet tall, a structure that can be erected in 72 hours and dismantled in 60, adding to the romanticism of Paris as rides at night over Paris are said to induce lifelong companionships. Nothing less than extravagant too, the Catacombs in the 14^th Arrondissment, the Pompidou in the 1^st, the Bastille in the 11^th, and Sacre-Coeur in Montmartre (the 18^th arrondissment).

But what about the forgotten structure, locations, events, all of which just as spectacular visions as the tourist attracting aforementioned, all now gone or are going into disrepair?

The Chateau Rothschild was erected in 1855 for the Rothschild family. By 1934, the Chateau was left abandoned, though the family still maintained the grounds which once held the footprints of figures as Fredric Chopin. When the Nazis took Paris, the Kriegsmarine took possession of it and in 1944, US forces took occupation as Paris was being liberated. Though it was purchased by a Saudi Prince in 1986, the purchase was only one of esthetics, as the chateau still sits on its very grounds, falling deeper into disrepair.

[Notes on reaching the Chateau Rothschild from the Hotel Monte Carlo on 44 Rue Du Faubourg-Montmartre]

1)     Walk about 7 minutes to the metro station at Richelieu-Drouot

2)     Take the 8 line (Purple) towards Balard for 7 stops

3)     Your stop is La Motte-Picquet, Grenelle

4)     Take the 10 line (Yellow) towards Boulogne/Pont de St. Cloud for 8 stops

5)     The Chateau Rothschild overlooks the Park Boulogne-Edmond de Rothschild, a popular area where families picnic. The structure overlooks the park and it’s impossible to miss.

Human Zoos, however appalling and shocking today, were world attraction at World Fairs. It was true in 1851 in London, again in 1889 in Paris, 1893 in Chicago and in 1904 in St. Louis. The gimmick was to bring Pygmies, unfamiliar cultures and tribes from around the world by way of kidnapping mainly, cage them with usually Chimpanzees or Gorillas and bill them themselves as animals from the dark, enchanted forest and lands of savages and unnatural creatures.

Find the location of this human zoo is quite a task, namely due to its location in the commune of Vincennes on the outskirts of Paris and the fact that most Parisiennes of today are oblivious to there having ever been such a loathsome exhibition in their beloved hometown. Another reason is that public transportation, while available, is not as active in Vincennes as it is in the inner arrondissments of Paris. To add, the site which once held the Human zoo during the Paris World Fair is well concealed near a school of botany and an intermediate school. The site is called Jardin d’Agronomie Tropicale and as anyone who has made it a hobby or interest in locating sites no longer on mainstream radar, it’ll involve some investigative work, interviews and a knowledge of reading handwritten maps and a bit of athleticism (the rises of Vincennes are infamous).

A taste of [The Vacant Room]

A tactile bliss of tactile sense materialized as she came into view. Our hunger, young, wanting and wearing was still there, still unfulfilled and healthy, a leaf that collapses by no sense of breeze. Against the wall of Cosi, reading Gordon Park's [Whispers of Intimate Things], she arrives in all black, shrouded in a babuska, the light appealing to her unfair triumph. In those words of Dante Alghieri, "In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight-way was lost." She struck me as a mistress in a spy film, Hayworth from 1948's [Gilda] and I dreamed to take her to Kaus's Horcher, that "Place to go if your goal was seduction," or Goethe's Averbach Keller, the set encounter of Mephistopheles and Faust, where Mephisto's wine turned to fire, a sojourn through a pastime scattered Rhinelands, a cottage as a pied-a-terre, she, my hausfrau to a ephemeral home, the pseudo-dramatist, the tertiary tragidenne, on that day, Cassandra finally to light, the prologue to a fantasy, filleted of its nucleic pulse, julienned and scattered asunder to the four corners of the abyss. Her touch, even so modest, evenly distributed on my skin, even amongst the most harsh of contacts, is of a light petal brush, Parisienne wails and fugue sienna dew murmurs, the plentipotentiary enchantress, the deed to my heart was far sold, little lights dancing amongst the little saplings and the lake is starred, far transient scars with the brightening of a thousand cigarettes

[Toulouse-Lautrec's Regular] Ladies & Gentleman, Suzanne Valadon

            There is no certainty many can draw from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s portrait of Suzanne Valadon, alone, propped in ennui, at a table, a bottle of wine at both her leisure and sole company.

Is she a regular? In what Paris haunt does she meet the inebriate state she’s bound to meet? And if not that very state of intoxication, is she planning to meet another to replace that intoxication with momentary flames?

            So much can be drawn from a portrait, particularly one of a woman who mothered the great Montmartre artist Maurice Utrillo, at beck and call to Lautrec, to Jean Renoir, to Edgar Degas, all of which could have been the possible father of Maurice, who’d developed an abuse of his own for alcohol by the age of 10, presumably, at the very moment Lautrec’s brush made congress with canvas, could have been in the depth of his many wanderlusting fits, walking the streets of Paris, in utter displace of a boy of his age.

            But during that very portrait, Valadon has no interest in Maurice’s whereabouts, nor her own; she’s unkept, she has shredded the beauty the myth of Art History has passed down to us as heirlooms; and where myth makes immortal, witnessing a vision in abstract depth reminds us that before immortality was conceived, flesh and blood, trial and tribulation, bludgeoning at the spearhead of blunt objects, strangulation by garotte, has all left their mark as to remind us, no one reaches a timeless time without their time in timeless torture.

[The News of Amedeo Modigliani's Death]

            You could say she looks familiar, perhaps a woman you’ve seen while walking down the crowded sidewalks in a city you’re not a native of; her olive features appears she may be a descendant of that boot shaped peninsula in southern Europe, the one that lost its might and will to fight at the decimation of the Roman Empire, transforming itself into a nation of seduction rather brute force. Modigliani is Italy, and so is she, Marie, the daughter of the people, appearing in 1918, in the 24 year of Modigliani’s life, 2 years prior to his death. Perhaps it was an homage to a death he knew was impending, an inevitable obituary one writes, savoring their own vanity, so gargantuan, the subject of death itself fails to render it obsolete.

            This voice, all canvas, all olive texture in the frame, form and symmetry of Marie, is latent, then and now, a war-cry given a century after the conclusion of a war that has wiped clean a nation once occupied by its own illusions. Does this explain the grey emptiness in the eyes of Marie? Or the elongated stretch of her body, as if she herself is peering through a window with a distorted view as to investigate the gossip of a world gone quiet herself? And does she ever conclude those rumors to be of substantial truth?

            Indeed she does; so she pulls her hair behind her neck, wraps it in a dense black tie, dresses herself too in black, becoming two years prior, an attendant at the burial of her creator, her peace spoken from the dazzling arches of dulled lips.

[Obscure American History] & American Horror Story

 

            If you are familiar with FX or horror, the you are familiar with, or have known of, the tremendous variation that is the American Horror Story. With an admixture of reoccurring, devout and talented actors, writers, directors, history and unrestrained sexual depravity, extravagant dossiers of sporadic, unpredictable grimace, it is no wonder why 7 seasons have picked up so much momentum that worldwide it has placed itself apart from the ever-dwindling of creativity in the field of horror and now bracing for an 8^th upcoming season.

            Taissa Farmiga, the younger sister of renown actress Vera Farmiga, has found her footing, displaying, as Elizabeth Olsen, as Jake Gyllenhaal, that a family’s credentials in Hollywood is not even a spec that defines her resume. Making an appearance in season 1 (Murder House), season 3 (Protect the Coven), audience have inquired numerous times on when, if ever, would she make future appearances. Angela Bassett, the legendary, seasoned actor/writer/producer and director herself, along with Kathy Bates, Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Emma Roberts, Gabourey Sidibe, revisits and redefines themselves in so dramatically creative fashions, it creates a stunning effect on even an audience who has followed Angela Bassett since “What’s Love Got to do with it” in 1993, Kathy Bates in “Misery” in 1990, even the beloved Sarah Paulson who was so despised in the multiple Oscar-Winning film “12 Years a Slave.”

            From a historical point of view, American Horror Story taps into some of the darkest moments and tragedies to ever occur in American history, abide by time-traditional issues while disregarding those very censors (during that time) by introducing what phases of history that have gone unknown to the latter generations. In Season 4, Monsters Among Us, Evan Peters portray “Lobster Boy,” a moniker attached to him from his genetic congenital malformation of his digits. Between shows, he earns his money in a way that may have seem so peculiar to those who have revered the 1950’s as a more “curtsy” time. Women are in the living room, discussing their husbands, dressed in the latest fashions, perceptions that tells that audience they are women of standard who live up to those traditional stands, whilst simultaneously, following an unspoken compulsion to fulfill a need, one that today is seen just as “getting off,” but in the 50’s, as a recommended treatment to the now defunct medical condition “Hysteria.” Lobster Boy, or Jimmy, takes his station in a back room, catering to one woman after the other by placing his lobster claws under their dresses and titillating them until they reach orgasm. This very gathering of women was commonplace between the Victorian age and up until the early 1960’s when Hysteria was removed from legitimate medical conditions and made illegal to diagnose or to be medically treated as such.

            In the very same season, Jessica Lange, portraying Elsa Mars, is visited by the two headed Prince, Edward Mordrake, portrayed by Wes Bentley, and forced to share the darkest, tragic moment of her past. During this very tale, audience is shown a vivid picture of Germany before the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party. The Weimar Republic was then the mecca of deviancy, drug use, and all forms of depravity catering to even the most unusual of compulsions.

            During season 3, Protect the Coven, there were multiple emphasis on the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and the little-known fact of the fleeing of others who would have possibly been victims of the trials and tortures that befall those who remained. Although it was not mention that the Salem Witch trials took place in over 6 town, across a little of a years-time, over multiple trials and that the burning of suspected witches never took place, only drownings and hanging (burning was a European penalty for witchcraft), the broad strokes it covered was enough to inspired audience, once ignorant to that very portion of American history, to educate themselves to it.

            From the previous 7 seasons, it cannot be farfetched in the least to assume that writers, actors, directors and producers who have given us 7 years thus far unprecedented entertainment, will honor those prior years with a future triumph.

[When in Paris] Tips on Paris and the Parisienne

            The difference between the traveler and the tourist are never so much more evident than when visiting the “City of Lights.” Annually, Paris sees almost three times its population in tourism, accounting for 30% of France’s GDP. The tourist would claim that Paris is an expensive city to visit, while the traveler would claim that it, as New York City, Chicago, Rome or Berlin, are affordable, that is, if one who visits is adventurous enough to search for the almost unbelievably inexpensive accommodations and cuisine available throughout the 21 arrondissements.

            From a vast empirical standpoint taken from the legions of notes I’d made when visiting Paris in March of 2017, here are a few interesting sociological and economical facts, along with dispelled myths that can prove helpful to those who are planning to visit or have and planning a return.

Learn to speak introductory French: With tourist constantly bombarding their city from English speaking nations almost year-round, most Parisiennes (Paris natives) have learned enough English to make themselves helpful to browsing visitors. Learning French is not just a novelty; it displays a respect for French language and culture while simultaneously debunking their widespread belief that (primarily Americans) feel so entitled as to feel that their language must be accommodated everywhere they go.

  

While the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Pompidou, the Arc de Triomphe, the Bastille, the Catacombs, Versailles and the Roué de Paris attract most, if not all, visitors, you’ll rarely encounter even a lifelong Parisienne who has ever frequented either if any.

Tourist areas are designed around making the most income from the least amount of consumer goods. There are 21 arrondissments (neighborhoods) in Paris, designed clockwise, the 1^st arrondissment being the Left bank at center, winding around to the rest until reaching the outermost borough. The 1^st (Louvre), the 2^nd (Bourse), the 5^th (the Latin Quarter/Odeon/St. Germaine) and the great 18^th (Montmartre) are the most concentrated with visitors. The average tourist may pay an average of $35/meal and $100+/night for hotel accommodations. These costs can be reduced if the time is taken to browse, talk to denizens, ask around. My favorite part of Paris, the Latin Quarter, where one can find both the original and new Shakespeare and Company, there are full 3-course, excellent meals available starting at $14/meal. An establishment of note, of Greek cuisine, Maison De Gyros, is located at 24 Jardin du Roy in St. Germaine.

If you happen to be walking the spacious and vast sidewalks of any arrondissement, be attentive, when coming head up with a Parisienne, it is perhaps a social mystery in itself, that they always head towards the walls or away from the street, allowing you to pass with the most space to maneuver.

Once you’ve spent a few days in Paris, you’ll notice that Parisiennes eat just as much as Americans; the difference, Parisiennes walk, they are more mobile than the average Americans. I’ve witness women in 6-inch heels out pace me on the streets and while ascending subway stairs.

Paris, historically, was/is the center of literary evolution. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin, Sherwood Anderson, William Bourroughs, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Djuna Barnes and many more made their names world renown while residing there. The legacy of literature is still very much alive there; while on the subway, on the bus, walking the numerous cemeteries so artistically designed over centuries, you’ll notice people reading. Paris is a city of great literacy, where books are sold in amazing quantities along the quai daily and consumed without restraint. While at a party on the Rue de Montmartre, vague mentions of my writing led to 7 of the partygoers to get out their phones and order copies of my novels. It is a city for writers, both established and aspiring.

No shame is attached to human emotion in Paris. Don’t be surprised to see women crying unabashed in public, couples kissing for great amount of time in the middle of the sidewalk, on the subway, during café conglomerates. After leaving De Gaulle, a Parisienne is tremendous misery completely came out her misery, helped me with directions and afterwards returned to her depth of tears.

Parisiennes adore their pets; Walking along the crowded districts, you’ll see dogs and cats asleep in window displays in various stores while their owners are working. There is only a leash law in the subways in Paris, so during your late-night outing, having drinks, meeting new people, more than likely, you’ll see a cat resting comfortably on top of the bar or at times, jumping onto your table, curiously wandering who you are.

Leaving tips for service is considered extremely rude in Paris. Remember this is the birthplace of the bourgeoisie and the former occupied streets of the Commune; to tip is to throw your money into someone’s face, upset and emphasize a class system that separates the “have” from the “help;” If you wish to leave a tip, always ask if it’s okay.

In terms of fashion, Paris, as it has always been, is years ahead of everyone. Women usually go natural, aren’t “curvaceous” as the average American woman, go without make-up to work but with it on outing and to the grocery store. In the Winter, Parisienne women wear dark make-up and ankle boots.

Paris is a city that takes great pride in its rich and lengthy history; this is seen with teachers taking their students on everyday field trips amongst the city, amongst the people, classrooms replaced with visions and structures that once stood as the tallest in the world.

[For more notes on Paris, stay tuned]

[Olga] Pablo Picasso's right side Immortal

          Anyone who has ever had the initiative to visit Paris, that is for its rich history as an artistic mecca, may have become familiar with the adoration of Parisiennes; Napoleon III and Olga Picasso, two, some would say, with as much inclination as the next, defined an era of art between Napoleon’s reign and Olga’s zenith.

          Born in the Russian Empire in 1891, in what is today Ukraine, Olga’s childhood ambition to be a ballerina was the very dream that brought her face to face with Pablo. Already making a name for himself as an artist, Picasso designed the costumes for [Parade], Sergei Diaghilev’s and Jean Cocteau’s collaborative ballet, which took center stage at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. And as classic Picasso, propelling charm, intelligence and the spell of the artist, Olga departed the touring ballet as she delved into a freefall love affair with Picasso, who invited her back to live with him in Paris upon their return from Barcelona that very year.

          Almost a year since the day they met, in 1918, Olga Khokhlova became Olga Picasso in the observation of Max Jacob and Jean Cocteau. While the Great War (the war to end all) was coming to a final yet destructive close and the Great Influenza became its predecessor, taking the life of both August and Rose Rodin, Olga became Pablo’s first wife and the mother of his first-born child and son, Paulo. The birth of Paulo was the birth of their deterioration as a couple. After discovering Pablo’s affair with his 17-year-old Paramore, Olga took Paulo and moved to southern France, filing for the divorce which Pablo would refuse due to, under French Law, having required to divide his estate evenly with Olga. Olga would be married to Picasso until her death in 1955 but with Picasso, when those four years of inseparability was abundant, Olga picked up the brush, familiarized herself with acrylic, led Pablo to place vivid vision on bland canvas, creating unimaginable masterpieces. It came be said that Olga, as his muse and wife alone, was another era in the many Pablo Picasso would begin, but the only to eroded across all the rest.

          Evolutionary Biologist would postulate that monogamy for most humans is such a difficult feat inasmuch we, as a species, weren’t meant to be monogamous and with that very postulation, Pablo isn’t given an out or exclusion from breaking his vows, even in biology, a man’s crimes committed are always his to be held accountable for. If the “Non-monogamy” postulation so happens to prove solid, then too is its other half, the part which makes marriage so much more a beautiful becoming, something that endures, if love is enough to deter two humans from their own biological pull, stay afloat against the falling waves of overwhelming odds, dance in the dazzle of “temporary insanity,” an act that has been known to prolong its effects. Pablo’s legacy required 9 decades to solidify; between 1917 and 1921, was all that was needed for Olga, her reparation, the part of the estate she was denied, having endured love for such a restless soul as Pablo, so that our admiration of her sacrifice, can find its place to dance on her tongues as she once dance in Chatelet.