Interview With A Toddler | Try, Fail, Grow, Repeat

Full disclosure: for all of you who have been following me on Facebook and Instagram, you’re probably sick to death of hearing me talk about Rodin and The Gates of Hell. If so you should just skip this post, or maybe just read “Interview With A 4-Year-Old” below.

Because we went to the Rodin museum and IT WAS AWESOME. And I’m gonna talk about it. At length. Here we go…

The Louvre, Musee D’Orsay, and the Pompidou Center will all forever hold their own special “museum places” in my heart. But the Musee Rodin will be the first place I visit (ok, maybe second after Berthillion) if and when we ever return to Paris.

Auguste Rodin found the strangest, most painful nooks in our sexual, murderous, hopeless, human hearts and he leaned into them with all he could muster. And some small part of that effort is sitting in a damned sweet house and garden in Paris. And you should see it before you die.

We clear? Good, let’s move on.

B posing with Houseplant Daycare in the lobby of our building

Working on a Hama Beads version of Stuart. If you don’t know who Stuart is, have a kid and wait.

Tribute for all you Will Ferrell SNL fans out there. You know who you are.

The Gates of Hell. The plaster at Musee D’Orsay was cool, but seeing the bronze cast was something else. I’m reminded of the chapter in DeKooning’s biography when he first sees Arshile Gorky’s studio and realizes, “Holy shit, I need to up my game.” Rodin was not born a genius, he worked until he arrived at one.

Experimenting with “The Kiss” before it became “The Kiss”. This is a much darker, more violent version, but compelling nonetheless.

The Thinker presiding over everything is pretty cool, but there’s so much going on here that it’s impossible to take in everything right away. What strikes me first is the male nude figure being cast out away from the door below The Thinker, to the left. His rejection, for lack of a better word, is palpable, and this kind of physicality simply wasn’t done in sculpture before 1900. You can feel so much anguish in his posture it burns.

This is near the top of the door about 17′ off the ground, and I needed a better lens to capture it, but I love this section. It feels so close to a depiction of hell. Or the 2016 Republican National Convention.

Like something out of a modern-day horror movie, but so much more

Juliann’s favorite Rodin, “The Kiss”. I understand why. It makes me feel like when I used to climb the rope in gym class.

Not a clue what this work is, and I don’t recall seeing it. I had “Carry the Cranky 4-Year-Old” duty and Juliann had “take pictures of everything” duty, so I don’t remember this sculpture. But now that I’m seeing the pictures I’m sorry I missed it. It’s awful. And gut-wrenching. I would have titled it, “Rose’s Fate If Jack Had Left Her Below Deck”.

Just two smiley guys heading up to the 2nd floor

Having a laugh during our lunch break at the Musee Rodin

In addition to visiting Musee Rodin we also decided to bite the bullet and take the child WAY out past his bedtime so we could see some of Paris at night aboard one of the famous Bateaux Mouches.

The boats are huge and so was the crowd that crammed onto the 2nd-level open-air deck, but it was such a smooth, well-run operation that I hardly wanted to kill anyone. Which is a step forward for me in a large, selfie-stick-brandishing crowd.

It was a satisfying way to see the beauty of Paris at night. Words cannot describe how all of the bridges, the Place de la Concorde, the Louvre, Notre Dame, and of course, the Eiffel Tower, glowed at night. We tried to capture it in photos but the pics are just a pale shadow of the beauty we were privileged to see.

Rodin’s tribute to Victor Hugo, who is listening to his Muse

Posing next to one of the galleries at Musee Rodin

A work by my lovely wife, Juliann. I believe this is a Lego recreation of the Governor’s Head Aquarium from “The Walking Dead”

Killing time at the bus stop on Rue des Ecoles

There’s no way to describe how beautiful the Eiffel Tower is at night. Despite what common knowledge says, there IS a way to get someone to fall in love with you. Take them to Paris and tour the city at night.

The best our poor Sony Nex-6 could do at 10:50 pm. My loves and the Eiffel Tower.

We didn’t get back to the apartment until late, so we slept in, had a late breakfast, and then headed out on a few errands.

One of the errands was to find a store that carried Hama Beads. Our host has 2 sons, 8 and 11, and they have a Hama Bead set. Braeden and J dug into it a couple of days ago and tried to make a picture of Stuart but we were short on yellow beads, so today we went out looking for some.

Photo op in front of Hotel de Ville, by far the most beautiful town hall I’ve ever seen

We stopped for a few pics at Braeden’s now-favorite fountain, the “Finx Fountain”, so named by our 4-year-old. The kid is CRAZY about Sphinxes.

After a few dead-ends (Google Places for business isn’t very reliable as far as Parisian toy stores go, FYI) we finally were directed to BHV, a monster department store in the Marais.

[Aside: on the way we got a bit hungry and Juliann hadn’t had breakfast, so we stopped into Boulangerie La Parisienne, the 2016 winner for best baguette in Paris. J got a mini Pain au Chocolate, and I got a Croissant aux Amandes to share with the boy as a treat.

OH. MY. GOD.

The pastry in this country is going to kill me if I let my guard down. I have one maybe every 2-3 days and I need to get out before it becomes an everyday habit. It was soooooo good. Buttery. Sweet. Savory. Damn. I wish I had one right now.

Anyway, time to end this aside before things get out of hand.]

We wound our way to the Loisirs Creatifs section of BHV, found the elusive beads, and headed home. We had a nice lunch, the boy and Juliann took a nap while I hit the gym, and they both worked on Stuart while I cooked dinner.

All in all, a successful day.

Checking out the rarely-empty Plage Paris on the Rive Droite. On the weekends it’s jammed with families enjoying the sand.

Interview With A Toddler

If you’ve been following our adventures in Paris you know that in two days we leave for Normandy and then we move on to spend the next six weeks in other parts of France. To commemorate our last few days in Paris we thought we would hear from everyone’s favorite 4-year-old Blew, the Master Braeden himself.

(Note: this interview has been heavily and liberally edited to prevent gouging of eyes, rending of clothes, and gnashing of teeth by our readers)

J: So what is your favorite building in the whole city? You can only pick one.

B: Ummmmm…The Arc de Triomphe, aaaaand Notre Dame, and the Eiffel Tower…

J: Ok, so why do you like the Arc de Triomphe?

B: [makes unspecific hand gestures then bursts into maniacal laughter]

J: Can you explain the gestures you’re making? Why do you like it?

B: Because, ummmmm, it has all kinds of sculptures all over it.

J: And why do you love Notre Dame?

B: [pause, then quietly, with reverence] The bell towers.

N: We’ve been in Paris now for a month. What was your favorite thing out of all the things we’ve done so far?

B: Minion, minion, minion! [Making Stuart the Minion out of beads]

N: How many stores do you think we went to today to try to find those beads?

B: Eleven. [Actual number: 3]

N: Eleven stores? [J laughs] It felt like it.

Barbara Walters we ain’t. Maybe next time we’ll conduct our interview way before bedtime, and not right after a filling meal. You live some and you learn some.

Tomorrow we’re doing laundry and getting our last-minute errands done before we check out of our apartment in the Latin Quarter and say goodbye to Paris on Wednesday. We have a few things we want to do in the city before we leave, so if we’re feeling frisky we’ll do a little touristing, otherwise we’re ok with taking it easy.

The next time we write we’ll most likely be in Normandy, so au revoir for now and we’ll see you on the other side.

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