Xtreme English liked the wrapping video I posted, and she posted this great White Christmas version! I love it!
White Christmas
Monthly Archives: December 2008
Just how I feel
Lurking story
A few days ago, I was at Musée d’Orsay, where I went to see this stunning exhibition that has been on for quite a while. I have always been interested in masks!
Masques, de Carpeaux à Picasso
I can’t really show photos as they were forbidden inside the exhibition. But they have collected all sorts of masks, mortuary masks, mascarons, carnival masks and all sorts of decorative items. Really interesting.
I had the surprise of finding this particular item that I remembered and had photographed at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise
Taken at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, based on Le Silence
There was its original, at Musée d’Orsay, part of a sculpture by Antoine-Augustin Préault, aptly named Le silence
I went twice as I really liked the show.
The second time, I also went to the upper floors and was intending to take photos from there but realised I didn’t have the right camera with me. These days, I tend to take only a small camera along and leave my Panasonic at home.
And while I was standing there, looking down,
Lurking at Musée d’Orsay, a photo taken in 2006
and looking at a man who had been there for quite while, clad in a wet raincoat, looking down like me, I overheard a museum attendant explaining to what turned out to be the house detective that this particular man had been standing there for over an hour and that she found him suspicious.
He walked towards Raincoat Man and asked him if he was alright, saying that he was worried, seeing him up there for such a long time. Raincoat Man drew a card out of his pocket and explained that he was on a job, watching a couple down there. House Detective smiled, shook his hand and walked away. You could feel that they belonged to the same world.
I was sorry I hadn’t taken a photo of Raincoat Man. He was so intent on what he was doing that he wouldn’t have spotted me.
Walking to and from Musée Marmottan
I must say that with winter and cold weather, my walking takes me quite a lot to museums and exhibitions since I’m lucky enough to live in a city that provides quite a lot of those.
Now, is it that I’ve seen too many of those, lately? Or is it that I was in a bad exhibition mood on that day?
I had decided to walk to Musée Marmottan, 2,6kms according to my iPhone map, except for the fact that I managed to get lost and probably walk longer 
View from Pont de Grenelle
It was really freezing cold that day and my steps took me across Pont de Grenelle to the Right Bank of the Seine where Musée Marmottan is.
Musée Marmottan now houses mostly Claude Monet‘s paintings and has a special exhibition at the moment called Monet, l’œil impressionniste. A lot in the exhibition focuses on medical details about Monet’s eyes and how it influenced his art.
Well, I didn’t enjoy it, probably because I’m not all that interested in medical details, or even in Monet, I guess.
I don’t think I had ever seen that many Monet paintings gathered in a same place and am ashamed to admit he is not my favourite painter.
Probably because I am an ignoramus and don’t understand much about painting and art and also because I am more interested in the drawing and the composition than the colours?
Well, I really don’t know but it just didn’t appreciate the place the way some of my friends had.
On the way back, it was even more freezing, but this is what I saw on either side of the bridge
The Eiffel Tower, seen from Pont de Beaugrenelle
What I like about rivers is that whenever you cross them, even if the view is always the same, the light never is!
Rosy clouds mirrored in Front de Seine building
About the top photo, if you are wondering what that bateau-mouche is doing astride the river, it was taking a U-turn, the way those boats do it.
On my own
I am writing this after reading Ronni’s Rethinking Living Arrangements at Time Goes By and Naomi’s Housing Ourselves in Late Life at A Little Red Hen
Me, one day?
I moved into my new flat some twelve years ago, and it took me forever to get to do it, as I had lived in the same flat ever since I was four.
When I moved in, I thought, and I may even have said this to several of my friends
When I move out of here, it’ll be in my coffin.
In French, we have a colourful expression, les pieds devants, (feet first) to express it.
I have lived in this flat with my daughter and now I live here by myself. And I have to say that I love it this way. I just do not enjoy living with other people any more. When I go on holiday with a friend, it’s all right because we both know that it’s for a short time. But I think that I am now too set in my ways to be able to do otherwise.
Understand me, when my husband was still alive, –and when I was younger–, I enjoyed the sharing, the companionship, the conversations. But it’s all part of the past and I am just too selfish to envisage a flat mate, even though it would mean sharing duties as well as sharing the space.
From my window
I may be be too young an elder to envisage a time when I will think differently, but at the moment, as I wrote in a comment at Naomi’s,
I can consider death with no qualms but moving out of my beloved flat is just something that, I feel, would kill me.
Maybe I’ll change my mind, and I do admire people who make different decisions. It might also have to do with the sort of assisted living conditions you see people in… In this country, I see those places as the antechamber to the cemetery. So I’d rather keep to my own flat as an antechamber 
I fancy the idea of dying here in my sleep and going to lie forever, next to my husband, or maybe it is above him? at Cimetière Montmartre, being watched over by the cats there.
I don’t mind being watched over by cats when I’m dead
I do realize it might just be that I am not ready to consider being assisted yet, probably too young and too healthy, but I’d rather jump the hurdles as they come along and see what happens. I am also aware that I am privileged to own my flat and to have a retirement allowance that lets me live more than decently. At least at the moment, since we can’t know what lies ahead. But I feel that I have seen really bad times, what with being widowed at 48 and having breast cancer, and just point blank refuse to worry about more trouble coming my way. I’ll face up to it when it happens, as I have always done.
