C'est La Vie

During one particularly lazy afternoon in Prague, Dan showed me up by writing an entirely new song while I lounged in bed, mindlessly watching South Park reruns. When we played it for me, we both really liked it and decided it would be fun to make a video for it. We left Paris before getting the chance, so upon arriving in Aix-en-Provence, we scouted for the perfect tiny side-street for the video. Here's the result:

Fun, no? We had a great time making it - and if you like the song, you should also take a look at Dan's website for free downloads, or scope out tour dates to meet up at a show! 

Notre Dame, and What's Inside

Notre Dame, from a bridge over the Seine.

In a letter dated 02 January 1922, D.H. Lawrence wrote to Earl Brewster that he was traveling to see the Indians of New Mexico, where he expected to find "new gods in the flesh."

*

Lately I've been considering how strange it it is that we do not begin to recall our lives from birth. How critical years pass from us and we remember nothing. Why should it be so? How is it with our great big human brains that we do not remember the exhilaration of our first words, our premier communication with the vast world? Why is it that our bodies learn to walk and our muscles can recall every nerve required to run - but we cannot summon when we first put our fingers to our mouths to discover what skin tasted like?

Why don't I know the sheer glory of what it meant to manipulate a crayon, or my toes? We spend so much time wondering what's "out there" when we barely even know what's inside.

*

My god is everywhere in Paris.

Notre Dame, seemingly lit from within.

Chandeliered interiors.

A view from below one of the many chandeliers.

Saint Therese de l'enfant Jesus.

Glowing streetlamp.

Jardin du Luxembourg

"L'Acteur Grec."
Bronze sculpture by Arthur Bourgeois.

Paris has given to me a newfound fondness for gardens. Each of the city's many parks are so well-manicured I find it hard to believe there is no longer any fastidious queen walking the grounds daily, inspecting every tulip petal.

What is so appealing about the gardens of Paris is how lovingly they appear to be tended. Truly, it seems that every flower, every blade of grass is . . . smiling? Yes, smiling! They are so straight, with such proud stems that I would swear they are showing off their beautiful little faces for your - and their own - pleasure.  

Not only that, but there are also always plenty of chairs for people to linger in, sculptures to contemplate, and perfectly sized fountains for launching sailboats on sunny days. Nice.

"Faune Dansant."
Bronze sculpture by Eugene-Louis Lequesne.

April in Paris makes my ♥ feel full!

 

Marie de'Medici, queen consort to King Henri IV.

Fontaine de Medicis.

A gentleman reading in the grotto of Fontaine de Medicis.

This little guy was the cutest, most fearless sailboat captain of all.

The Challenge (or, A Mini-Manifesto)

Inside the very first Shakespeare & Co. in Paris.

To my dear Readership,

How grateful I am to have your eyes and ears each day! Your comments, your encouragement, and your visits to my blog have confirmed in me the wish to continue with this lifestyle: traveling the world, meeting incredible new people each day, and recording the experiences here, as a "digital nomad" in a new century. 


Of Revolt originated as "my little experiment" - a dream I held fast to when, for the umpteenth time, someone elbowed my back during thankless commutes to and from the Upper East Side of Manhattan each day. Don't mistake my words; I adore my hometown and I even liked my job, most especially the kind people I still keep in touch with there. They're lovely, and I count them as important friends. And yet - New York, like any hometown, becomes small, and insular, and as provincial as any other place when you know enough people there.


So I left.


In the six weeks since my first post, this website has received just over 3,000 visits. I felt famous when I saw that number! My readers visit from Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom (bless their soggy souls), Italy, Hungary, Poland, Russia, China, Japan, Jordan, Pakistan, Australia, South Africa, and of course, the United States. As the countries keep coming, I promise to keep coming to you! 


Thank you to those who have been reading, and continue to read each week. You enhance my life in innumerable ways.


But now it's time to get real. I can either choose to consider Of Revolt as a simple travelogue - just an account of my journeys - or I can contribute to a community that might seem vast, but is really just a motley band consisting of outsiders, wayfarers, journeymen, poets, artists, writers, readers, musicians, magicians, backpackers, bohemians, tightrope walkers, sword-swallowers, carnival folk, outlaws, cowboys, couchsurfers, leather tramps, rubber tramps, people who use their heads, people who make things with their hands, people who live in caravans and camping vans, hippies, rebels, radicals . . . and you.


So I have entered the Travel Blog Challenge with the hopes that I can reach 1,000 readers per day and earn $1,000 per month. (Yes, you read that correctly - $1000 per month - and that would be a luxury, especially considering that right now I earn . . . nothing.) To be sure, I will continue to write honestly and live passionately, as I consider new ways to evolve within and for this "digital neighborhood." To quote the TBC website: "When we have enough bloggers who have completed the challenge we will have a powerful lobbying group to engage with advertisers, PR reps, and marketers." You know, the people who teach us to want things rather than experiences, rather than a life.

You don't have to vote for anything, you don't need to "like" anything on Facebook (though you can always be my friend!), and you definitely don't have to sign up for any stupid spammy emails, ever. You just have to keep reading. And tell your friends. Wink!


With love,
Jessica Ann Christine Veronica Kulick
(Yes, that's my real full name.)

Shakespeare & Co. (or, "Books!")

Most blessed books, most blessed typewriter.

We entered quiet and respectful; a stern-lipped young woman behind a desk sent quick hisses to anyone speaking in a pitch above a whisper. These pilgrims walked slowly, with great intention. A tall man about my age gently stroked the fine wood as we passed through the halls. I glanced down at my camera, wondering whether a few photos would have me at best scolded, or at worst, kicked out of this most sacred place.

I was in the very first Shakespeare & Company, the original site near the Seine. That's right, I made a pilgrimage to a bookstore.

Green doors are the best doors.

It might seem downright profane to say such a thing, but reading is my religion. I was raised as a "just-in-case-Catholic" without serious theistic convictions of any kind. But boy, we sure had a lot of books, newspapers, and periodicals scattered everywhere around our home; entire piles washed over the dining room table, dispelled from one of our eight hands before barely being captured into wicker baskets and magazine racks or, for the truly adored and lucky pages, onto an actual bookshelf, of which we had at least eighteen.

To the left of this piano is a tiny mattress: Hotel Tumbleweed.

Founded by George Whitman, Shakespeare & Co. was frequented by no less than the likes of Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Whitman often allowed visiting writers to sleep in the store, which he sometimes called Hotel Tumbleweed. He believed that "All the writer requires is a sensitive skin, a beard, the right kind of electricity in his brain-waves, and a world that is sufficiently disorganized to allow him to subvert it."

And while I don't have a beard, I do believe in the right kind of electricity . . . 

"This is the creed of Hotel Tumbleweed
Give what you can, take what you need."

Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Djuna Barnes,
Henry Miller, James Baldwin, William S. Burroughs.

My dear Daniel could take only so much of my excited exclamations.
"Boooooooks!" I would cry.

My prize: The Paris Magazine
"The poor man's Paris Review."

Green Keds

In France, nobody looks at you funny if it's a weekday and all you're doing is sitting by the Seine, drinking wine, and dancing. Because, you know, they're doing it too. Heck - they started it.

And if you want to sit with me, I'll share my wine and we can break the baguette into two and laugh at how sweet it is to see a handsome French man in scuffed loafers teach a Danish girl how to dance.

Green Keds

* A Special Note: You may have noticed a few changes around here in the last few days. Not to worry - they are all good things which shall be explained on Monday's post! In the meantime, if you're a regular reader of this blog, would you mind "following" it? The statistics are hiding what are sure to be your beautiful little faces!

On Being Thankful

These days I'm noticing that:

my bangs are too long,

and I'm sick of all my clothes,

our bags are too heavy,

and my phone's too expensive (bye-bye iPhone!),

coffee costs too much,

and Nutella is not a major food group,

and I miss drinking tea and reading in bed.

But then I try to remember:

that my haircut doesn't really matter,

and my clothes don't either (so long as they fit and I have some),

that my hands have gotten stronger,

and I don't need to make calls anyway,

that instant coffee tastes (almost) as good,

Nutella SHOULD be a major food group,

and that one day I'll be old and all I'll do is 

drink tea and read in bed.

So I do my best to:

be thankful that I have hair,

be grateful that I have clothes,

and welcome the new callouses on my palms.

Because I get to see THIS every day:

Notre Dame!

and not everyone does. 

Jardin des Plantes

And after winter's many deaths, 

we come again to spring, 

not born again but only to bear -

So let's give thanks to the worms,

And to the bodies we find there.

 

The Space Invader

A painterly invasion on Rue de La Huchette.

I promised Megan before leaving New York that I would diligently look for and photograph any original Banksy graffitti I came across in London. I looked. And looked. And LOOKED. But there was none to be found. You can thank your local CCTV cameras and that delightful English efficiency for duly erasing any traces of this - my favorite - street artist.

Black and white invasion.

(I did, however, succumb to a particularly persuasive vendor at the  Camden Lock Market: I am now the proud owner of three Banksy prints in wooden block form. My argument to Dan as for why we really needed to buy the prints? "They'll look so cool in the bathroom!" Him: "What bathroom? We don't even have an apartment anymore!" Me: "You know . . . the bathroom in our 'forever home'!" Him: [Fork over £15.] Me: "Eee!")

A spidery invasion on Rue de Terre Neuve.

In Paris, though, they're a bit more relaxed about these things. So when I came across one mosaic tile piece by Invader, I was psyched (as in shouting "RAD!" about sixteen times and throwing my fists in the air excited) and took, mmm, maybe thirty photos. Then the next day I saw another, and another the day after that. And at some point I saw so many that I just stopped taking photos of them all and enjoyed the fact that the French government has more important things to do than remove mosaics from some walls.

Ellipsis invasion.

A sideways invasion on Rue de Fourcy.

Cimetière du Père Lachaise

A cobbled corner at Père Lachaise.

These people used to be alive. When they were alive, they were famous. Now they are buried at Cimetière du Père Lachaise. Here, a selection of composers, poets, painters, and musicians and their thoughts on the final repose.

Jim Morrison

"Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as ravens claws."

Jim Morrison

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

"One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave." Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Honore de Balzac

"Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man." Honoré de Balzac

Eugene Delacroix

"If one considered life as a simple loan, one would perhaps be less exacting." Eugene Delacroix

Frederic Chopin

Frederic Chopin

"The earth is suffocating . . . Swear to make them cut me open, so that I won't be buried alive." 

Last words as he lay dying of tuberculosis Frederic Chopin

Marcel Proust

"It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying." Marcel Proust

Oscar Wilde

 "To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde - with kisses!

"Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace." Oscar Wilde

"You're one of the few reasons I'm proud to be Irish."
On Oscar Wilde's grave.

"Either that wallpaper goes, or I do." 

Last words as he lay dying of cerebral meningitis Oscar Wilde

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.

"You have to learn to do everything, even to die." Gertrude Stein

Paul Eluard.

"Elephants are contagious." Paul Eluard