THE PARIS LETTER: Medieval Villages, Architectural Deconstructivism, and Giant Babies

Hello Everyone!

Sorry to have been so out of touch again - My best friend Maya was visiting from the US for the last two weeks, and I ended up running around Paris with her - which was GREAT since I've been feeling so slowed down because of the pregnancy - and not getting around to writing the letter. But I'm back! And with special news from both Paris and Bruges, Belgium, where we spent last weekend drinking beer (Matt), eating Fries (me), and generally having one last get away before our daughter arrives.

Me in Bruges at 34 weeks

Speaking of - that arrival is really getting close! I'm 34 weeks now, although we found out this week that she might actually be OLDER than we thought initially. We had our third trimester sonogram, and afterwards, the doctor was looking at the results with us and said "Votre bebe est un peu...gros." - Yes, she's had a growth spurt, and all her measurements are now in the 85th percentile or higher for her age. The doc thought she looked more like she was 35 or 36 weeks, so it's possible she'll come a little early. I personally feel vindicated by this because I'd been slowing down so much and feeling so huge, with lots of back pain, yet it felt too early for that to happne - but now I know it's because I have Gargantua the Giant Baby living inside me. Oh yes, this has provided for some great nicknames. Matt is also calling her Gigantasaurus Rex. and Gargantuas Prime.



But seriously, she's not that big really - like she's maybe 6 or 7lbs right now. AND the other good news is that she turned and is now in a perfect head-down position, thank goodness. I'm basically just sitting tight and asking everyone for any labor advice they have for me - and packing my bag for the Paris maternite, which is huge - since you stay there for 4 or 5 days in France, and they don't provide many things that an American hospital would (like, they provide towels for the birth but not personal towels after that, etc), you have to bring two suitcases, one with stuff for labor and delivery, and one with clothes and supplies for you and the baby for the following several days. I'm trying to get everything together now, before I slow down even further -

Me and my best friend Maya at the Canal St.Martin

Meanwhile, it's been beautiful Indian summer her for the last few weeks - in the 70s and sunny, which is great for me and not so great for my dwindling supply of wearable summer maternity clothes. I've outgrown - or I should say, my belly has outgrown - almost everything I bought for summer, leaving me with some tank tops and light elastic waist pants - I basically look like I"m in pajamas all the time. But since I'm also spending a lot of time lying in bed reading, this is okay with me. I did get dressed up this week to go to a movie premiere, the first time I'd been to any kind of fancy event in WEEKS, and it was a real stumper trying to find a way to be dressy, cool, and comfortable - the nice thing, though, is that you're kind of just a belly on legs at this point, so as long as you find something big enough to cover you, you can just put on earrings and you're done. Its like pregnant belly as fashion accessory.

Matt and I had our one year anniversary of living in Paris a couple of weeks ago - it feels like its flown by, but then as we were thinking over the year, we realized that a lot has really happened (including the aforementioned Gigantasaurus Rex). I"m getting around in French completely competently, even though I've realized how far away I am from being truly fluent - but I'm not nervous about speaking and being understood in most instances, which feels big. We've navigated a lot of Paris bureaucracy (i just wrote Bureaucrazy, which might be more accurate) and feel like we understand better how to get things done with all the acronymed agencies - our health insurance is working, we signed our baby up for state-run childcare (before she was born, of course), I registered as a freelance "auto-entrepreneur" and set up my own professional tax number, etc. Matt's totally settled in at lab and thriving, and in general - though we miss a lot about the US and particularly New York - we're feeling more and more comfortable calling Paris home. To prove it, I just ate a chocolate croissant while writing this! Those chocolate croissants continue to be a real perk ....

Bruges Canals

So let's see - the other thing we did while Maya was here was drive up to Bruges for the weekend - sort of a last weekend getaway before the arrival of Gargantua. We all watched the movie IN BRUGES before we went - I highly recommend this film if you haven't seen; it's about two Irish hitmen sent to Bruges by their boss to hide out after a hit goes badly - we'd all seen it before, but thought it would be funny to see it right before we actually went there. And weirdly the movie is a surprisingly accurate portrait of how we felt about the city: There's one part where Colin Farrell, a disgraced hitman, says "I'm from Dublin. Maybe if I'd grown up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges would impress me, but I didn't so it doesn't". Then there's a part where Ralph Fiennes, who plays a Cockney gangster who had a magical trip to Bruges when he was a school boy, says "How can it not be someone's fucking thing? Are there swans in the canals? How can swans in the canals not be someone's thing? It's like a fucking fairytale village. How can that not be someone's fucking thing?"

And so we sort of felt both ways about it - Bruges is a gorgeous medieval village with canals that - not unlike Venice - had its heyday in the 14th and 15th centuries, and has relied on tourism to support it for the last two hundred years. So its got beautiful cobblestone streets and passages and churches and squares and canals, and yet it is incredibly touristy and doesn't feel totally "real". But at the same time, for a weekend we kind of didn't care that much. Most of the tourists come by bus for the day, so at night it was actually pretty calm and uncrowded. Plus, another thing Bruges does incredibly well is beer bars. Our landlords at the B&B we stayed in (Which was also EXCELLENT) had a book called "Around Bruges in 80 Beers", which listed basically every brewpub in town and what crazy Belgian beer to get there. So we did a lot of beer tourism, which was surprisingly fun for me too even though I couldn't drink much beer - I got to have tastes of a lot of beer varieties I'd never even heard of before - like one, called GUEZE, which is a spontaneously fermented beer that's like the beer equivalent of grapefruit juice. It's fermented from airborn yeasts and bacteria, and they completely ferment all the sugars, so it comes out very sour, which makes it both intense and refreshing. Matt just described as a beer that "feels like you're drinking champagne, but with the nose of a camembert". Mmmm...delicious.

Matt and Maya enjoying moule frites and more beer

We also went to the Groeningemuseum, Bruges's foremost fine art museum, and saw a lot of early Flemish art - Van Eyck and Bosch, etc. So beautiful and so disturbing! There's one famous painting there from the 16th century that's a diptych of a corrupt judge being flayed alive, and then his son being forced to preside on a throne covered with his father's skin. Gruesome - and this was apparently hung in the Bruges courts to remind judges to be impartial - Kind of awesome.

Geode, Parc de la Villette

Oh, to jump back to Paris for a moment - also while Maya was here we went to the ANTITHESIS of Bruges, the Parc de la Villette up in the 19th Arrondissement. This is a huge park in the north of Paris that was created in the early 80s on the site of what used to be the Paris slaughterhouses. It's now where the Paris science museum is, as well as a huge playground for kids and two big concert halls (one in a former slaughterhouse, of course). BUT, the part that seemed the MOST French to me (and you can see some pics of this in that album) is that the architect who won the competition to design the park based some of his designs on the deconstructivist philosophies of Jacques Derrida. Yes, I'm not kidding. Here, from Wikipedia:

"The park strives to strip down the signage and conventional representations that have infiltrated architectural design and allow for the existence of a “non-place.” This non-place, envisioned by Bernard Tschumi, is the most appropriate example of space and provides a truly honest relationship between the subject and the object."

Okay.

Les Folies at Parc de la Villette

Throughout the Parc there are 35 "Folies", red structures that are meant to act as "Architectural representations of deconstructionism". Again, it's hard to know what this means. But I'll tell you this- not only are they examples of architectural philosophy, some have now been repurposed and made into gift shops and hamburger restaurants. Which I wonder if Derrida would be horrified or pleased by ....

Hope everyone has a great week, and more news to come!

xo Claire