Tag: france
takings from.. Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life
“I spotted a hut in the middle of a field, near the Château de Rosay, its windows glinting in the sun, and the word café painted in giant letters on the roof. I went in for a drink, and asked the proprietor if he had rooms to let . He offered me a little cottage some fifty yards off, with a thatched roof on which iris was in bloom. The following week I spent five days there. There were red tiles on the floor of my room, and i slept in a farmhouse bed under a plumped-out blue eiderdown: at five in the morning I awoke to the sound of cocks crowing. Eyes still shut, I let myself drift between sleeping and waking, between mornings long past and the light now welling up behind my shutters. When i opened the cottage door, there was green grass, and trees all in blossom. I would go and have coffee, and put a table up under an apple tree, and become once more that little girl doing her holiday task under the catalpa tree at Meyrignac. It was to her that i was now offering what, in various forms, she had so often dreamed of: a little house to herself. ”
-Simone be Beauvoir, The Prime of Life
I have lots of things to teach you now..
I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night.
It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry. It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever.
Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all.
It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity.It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die.
It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It’s a dream already ended.
There’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born.”
-Jack Kerouac
Slow roasted chicken with silky potatoes green beans and veloutè sauce
Slow roasted chicken with silky potatoes green beans and veloutè sauce
we ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other
Earnest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Restaurant Polidor 41 rue monsieur Le prince 75006 Paris
Polidor restaurant featured in Woody Allen’s, Midnight in Paris 2011
We dined here three time during our four night stay, at this wonderfully humble restruant famous for Hemingway. I ordered the same meal twice not for any other reason than to simply indulge my senses once more in the simplicity of this succulent dish, suprême de poulet veloutè de morilles,purèe. ‘superbe’
Slow roasted chicken with silky potatoes and green beans with veloutè sauce
Ingredients for the chicken: 4 large pieces of free-range Maryland chicken,1 litre chicken stock, 3 continental parsley stalks, 2 cloves of garlic, cracked pepper
Method: place all the chicken into a deep baking dish, they can rest on top of each other. lay the parsley over the chicken, add the garlic whole to the baking dish, lightly season with the cracked pepper and then pour in the stock. Cover tightly with foil the entire top of the baking dish to keep all the steam contained. Set the oven at 180°C and slow roast for 2 hours. Check the chicken after approximately an hour and ladle the stock over the chicken sitting out of the stock, recover with the foil and continue roasting. Meanwhile prepare the veloutè.
ingredients for the veloutè sauce: 100grams butter,100grams flour,1litre chicken stock
Method:In a saucepan gently melt the butter without letting it colour. Remove from the heat and add the flour all at once and stir to combine. Place the pan back on the heat and cook over a gentle heat to a lightly fawn colour. Allow to cool. Bring the stock to the boil. Add the stock to the roux (flour mix) slowly over the heat, beating in well and allow to thicken before adding the next ladle. Bring to the boil, adjust heat to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes.
ingredients for the potatoes: 6 large desiree potatoes peeled and chopped,50grams butter, 250mls cream, salt to taste
method: In a pot of boiling water add the peeled and chopped potatos, boil on a rapid heat until cooked through then strain and return to the pot, mash well until there are no lumps . In another saucepan gently heat the butter until melted and add the cream cook until warmed through then add the mix to the potatoes. With a cake spatula and over a gentle heat work the cream through the potatoes until silky smooth.
Next, boil the string beans for a few minutes, ladle the veloutè into wide bowls add a large scoop of the potato and place a piece of the chicken on top finally drain the beans lightly drizzle in olive oil and season then place a few onto the chicken. Serve.
Carla Bruini.. si belle
paris, tu me manques terriblement
paris, i miss you
terribly
Shakespeare and company
Shakespeare and company
Fifty Grand and The Sun also Rises, introduces us to Hemingway. His individual and his concept of human nature were both very close to ours (referring to Jean-Paul Sartre). Hemingways lovers were in love all of the time, body and soul, actions emotions and words were all equally permeated with sexuality and when they gave themselves to desire, to pleasure, it bound them together in their totality.
There was another thing that pleased us. If a man brings his entire self to every situation, there can be no such thing as a ‘base occasion’. We attached much value to the small pleasures of daily life, and Hemingway lent romantic charm to such things as a walk, a meal or a conversation;… at the touch of his pen insignificant details suddenly took on meaning. The kind of realism, which described things just as they are.
words by Simone de Beauvoir, Prime of Life
One thing that I have taken great delight in was the unforeseen wonder of the bountiful bookshops prevailing in this endearing city. Paris was indeed full of surprises. We visit the well-known Shakespeare and Company and immediately are captivated by the lively atmosphere of passionate literary fans wandering in awe of the scene of books that they are surrounded by. Upstairs there is a library, of donated books that are neither for sale nor for borrowing, they are priceless in their value and you can take great pleasure in making yourself comfortable in a worn leather chair and immerse yourself in one of the precious pieces for a while. No one will ask you to move or to leave, you can sit, absorb, dream, write, read or even play the piano if you are inspired to do so.
Paris’s bookshops are alluring and plentiful, they are a wonderful way of intimately getting to know this enchanting city.
Piazza dei Ciompi, flea market
one of the most wonderful things to do is to get lost in a city that you have never seen before. the most enchanting of all our discoveries so far on this journey have come purely by accident or a touch of fate. my husband and i tend to wander with no plans or intent, except to maybe eat perhaps. This little endearing market discovery, we found on the outer skirts of Florence’s city centre. Tiny stalls lined and filled with Italy’s lost treasures. There was an abundance of old preloved paintings, books, and nostalgia quite similar to that of France’s Saint-Ouen flea markets (located in the northern suburbs of Paris, and as featured in Woody Allen’s 2011 film ‘Midnight In Paris’). There was something to be found here for anyone interested in grazing through the days offerings.
You will find this delightfully alluring market in Piazza dei Ciompi, Florence.
our parisian apartment
pictures from our parisian apartment in the Latern quarters, St Germain. A parfait’ place to stay while falling in love with Paris.
rue du cherche-midi,paris france
from an apartment in Roma, words ..germain greer
This book is dedicated to LILLIAN, who lives with nobody
but a colony of New York roaches, whose energy has never failed despite her anxieties and her asthma and her overweight, who is always interested in everybody, often angry, sometimes bitchy, but always involved. Lillian the abundant, the golden, the eloquent, the well and badly loved; Lillian the beautiful who thinks she is ugly, Lillian the indefatigable who thinks she is always tired.
It is dedicated to CAROLINE, who danced,but badly, painted but badly, jumped up from a dinner table in tears, crying that she wanted to be a person, went out and was one, despite her great beauty. Caroline who smarts at every attack, and doubts all praise, who has done great things with gentleness and humility, who assaulted the authorities with valorous love and cannot be defeated.
It is for my fairy godmother, JOY with the green eyes, whose husband decried her commonsence and belittled her mind, because she was more passionately intelligent, and more intelligently passionate than he, until she ran away from him and recovered herself, her insight, and her sense of humour, and never cried again, except in compassion.
It is for KASOUNDRA, who makes magic out of skins and skeins and pens, who is never still, never unaware, riding her strange destiny in the wilderness of New York, loyal and bitter, as strong as a rope of steel and as soft as a sigh.
For MARCIA, whose mind contains everything and destroys nothing, understanding dreams and nightmares, who looks on tempests and is not shaken, who lives among the damned and is not afraid of them, a living soul among the dead.
-words lovingly borrowed from Germain Greer, THE FEMALE EUNUCH
paris moments
“There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who
has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
walking the streets of paris, going nowhere in particular
St GEORGIA & Boo 