Postmodern Short Stories in America?

Hmm Postmodern Short Stories in America? That’s a good title, right?

I always loved short stories of the USA, and in my life I read a lot of these – I remember Faulkner, Salinger, Carver, but also Fitzgerald, William Goyen, Flannery O’Connor, Edith Wharton. I bought and didn’t read K. A. Porter, and in English – which is difficult for me – W. Cather, or more Raymond Carver…

Finishing the David Lodge autobiography, I found these three names : Brautigan, Barthelme and Coover, as postmodernists. Puzzled, because I know Brautigan a bit, I googled and found this subject : Postmodern Short Stories in America.

So, I did a little search and found this (I bolded the bold) : “The history of the short story in mid-twentieth century America continues to be marked by a tension between the twin fictional poles of realism and romance, the story of accurate ‘reportage’ and the story of fantasy and imagination.”

Thus :

“The short story also encourages a reflexive self-consciousness about literary form, a propensity to build into the story a commentary on itself – and a mingling of genres and registers.”

THIS is interesting, right?

Because, what is “postmodernism”, after all, now we’re… after that?

Wikipedia is a messy mess, look what I’ve found :

Skepticism, irony, or rejection of the grand narratives and ideologies of modernism, self-referentiality, epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, and irreverence.

Let’s dig :

• John Barth is said parodic, “The process of making a novel is the content, more or less.”
• Donald Barthelme, “…experimental, he avoids traditional plot structures, relying instead on a steady accumulation of seemingly unrelated detail. Subverting the reader’s expectations.”
• Robert Coover, magic realism, self-referentiality.
• William H. Gass, the stylist : “His prose has been described as flashy, difficult, edgy, masterful, inventive, and musical.”

 

See why I’m intrigued?

Do you know some of them?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Charles Sheeler, a precisionist American painter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precisionism

Never heard about Precisionism until I found C. Sheeler on Pinterest.

Precisionism celebrated the new American landscape of skyscrapers, bridges, and factories in a form that has also been called “Cubist-Realism.”

I love this work! Transparency, flatness, games of light, geometry. I also love that there’s nobody in his paintings…

Have a nice sunday!

Joachim Hildebrand : Wild West

It’s a book. I smiled because of the photographer’s simple knack : showing a shock between the “wild west” and the… civilization. It shows something…

Tamed nature, right? Hmm… It at least show how Americans are conscientious.

 

 

“I can’t be touched in my sleep” & Structural Surprises : Chronicle 47

“Then he struck a match to light his cigarette, but the wind blew it out”

______

I have a map of the USA on my bathroom wall. I like to wander over around when I brush my teeth. I keep being amazed by the size of the country – I discover names of roads, parks, cities. Joplin, Tulsa, Holton, Salina, Wichita, Overland Park, Oldredge! I dream to be on Road 35 with a car, a camera and 2 months free.

Also, I notice these strange grey fields : the indian reservations. When you live in Europa, it’s a bit mysterious! We only have a few images of Indians in head, mostly from movies.

So I found “Potawatomi“, thus I googled.

“Upper Mississipi River”

I really should try to know more. Maybe find a documentary, a book? I googled it. I should Instagram, maybe. Try to find a penpal…

______

This morning I remembered that my country was called “La Gaule” before the Romans invaded all of it 2000 years ago. They occupied it for 500 years until defeated by the Francs. We became La France, but in the process we lost our tongue, our language, le gaulois has been replaced by le français. French language is very similar to Italian, because we made it from Latin from Roman Empire.

If Romans would not have been defeated, we would be maybe now like US’s Indian Tribes : in reservations, grey squares on a few % of the map France, talking Gaulois and organizing Casinos and other trails.

Dang, we lost our language, though. Don’t be surprised if French is a mess to learn now!

Heeyyy maybe a tribe will attack America after 500 years of occupation, like here, and the USAns will go back to the old continent, the Indian natives will get back their country, but they will keep English to talk (with Mexicans). OK, that’s a strange mess, and a good novel to write. Please serve yourself 🙂

______

“…to have had a mature man to break it down”

______

I have a theory that if you live a long time under pressure (with religious or big-political parents for example), you accumulate a huge amount of… something. A steam that will eventually explode one day into bursts of nonsense and madness.

Tamed for some time by iron reason and logic, one’s brain looks like a white hot furnace/cooker, up in an ivory tower. Then beware…

• Violence.
• Inappropriate acts.
• Madness.
• Loss of common sense.

The young years, clamped in a vise, created monsters. A poopy bustling…

Ain’t it splendid that in UK, vice means two things? A clamp tool and a wrong mind.

______

Picture this : puffing and crimson nurses running after a fool…

_____

Bernstein‘s book : “Findings”.

Preface : talking about words and music, “I find the same joys of ambiguity, structural surprises, anagrammatic play and grace of phrasing in both”.

Well, I smiled. This could be a program for my blog! Ambiguity in three other books I just bought : Sud (photos, but no legends : you don’t know where it’s taken). In Tissot (classical painting, but the rich ladies are lost and bored). In Jones (who was a man, and a woman).

Structural surprises? Strange quotes coming from nowhere? Nonsensical titles? Yes I play. It’s funny.

I probably wish my Chronicles to be heard… as if you were listening to a fool, haunted by something, having a conversation with himself about seeds & ideas…

______

Time’s winged chariot…

Thanks for reading!

The Depth of the Air is Warm & Birds are Swarming like before the End of the World

My working day finished at 6 PM today and I was surprised to find a little daylight when I was outside in the streets of Lille : “Hey, the days get longer…”.

Walking/smiling in the city dusk, I stopped suddenly : a big frightening swarm of birds was crossing the sky-street-cut over my head, like in Hitchcock’s “The Birds”. Waow!

They didn’t attack.

I had to bike for like 20 minutes to go the the animal-hospital to get my Bidou diabetic cat 2 bags of his crusty catfood I ordered this week-end on the web. The night was coming and the air was strange.

Some days, it’s COLD but you feel the air is WARM, oui? I don’t know how to say it. In France we can say “The depth of the air is cold” (“Le fond de l’air est frais”). The contrary today : Cold but with a warmy depth.

I’m sure half of you understand this concept. Not if you were born in California or Florida. Kansas? Maybe.

And indeed, the birds felt it. As I was crossing a street I passed along a big set of trees. They were CROWDED with hundreds of screeching birds, invisible in the dark shadows. Frightening. Haunting. Big sound!

The night was there almost and I biked along, thinking about this chilly chilling thing in my chin : The End of the World is for soon.

In a way, we have a retained desire for catastrophes, right? One loves the cities-in-disasters scenes, from Godzilla to explosions, meteors or earthquakes. BAOUM!

Then I thought about Marguerite Yourcenar. She was a Belgian writer, and a great thinker. She says two things about romanticism. I rebuild this from my memory because I don’t need, here, to be exact.

ONE :

One must be very romantic to dare calling for reason

TWO :

Sometimes we’re romantic enough to hope for a disaster, and we don’t realise that it has already begun

See?

I love thinkers, because they always find new ways to open a problem.

I met very few real thinkers in my life!

As always, luxury is insular : you are alone if you can’t talk about these. Only a few will be interested in questions like “For an artist, do you have to be a rebel and invent your rules, or do you have to know all the rules before going over them?”. Most of human beings think it’s fly’s masturbation, right?

I wrote many articles about Paul Valéry and writing, typical-this.

OK.

The Polar Vortex (the big pocket of icy air above the North Pole) just split this week-end (as predicted – it’s global warming doing its thing). It’s a very big mess for the weather (and weathermen are hilariously excited and in a awe). We expect to have cold and shitty weather in Europa. Maybe we’ll be frozen next week? Gasp!

For America, it’s not sure. Half of this beasty continental pole-air pocket will attack the USA in ten days. But will it go to the East like in January? Or will it attack Washington, Oregon and California, letting the East in an Early Spring paradise? No weatherman knows today, it’s too early.

It WILL be a mess, though.

Watch the birds, guys! They know.

Thanks for reading!

Richard Estes, American Painter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Estes

Hyper-Realism painters are exhausting. Exhausting.

In front of this work, which is technically impressive and visually killing you, you wonder : How does he do that???

More realist than reality, right? There’s a “too much” thing here, and it’s also really gorgeous. In an awe : and it’s a good sign.

I chose 10 paintings for you :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From “Looper” to “Star Wars VIII”

1. Star Wars: The Last Jedi was directed by Rian Johnson (born in 1973). As I often like to chain the movies I watch with a link, I watched Looper… his previous film, the day after. Looper is a splendid Sci-Fi movie and I watched a long interview of Johnson in the bonuses. I discovered an adorable geek with a fast brain, capable of talking about Casablanca, Akira, who wrote, organized and directed the movie, which “delivers an uncommonly smart, bravely original blend of futuristic sci-fi and good old-fashioned action”, 93% on Rotten Tomatoes!
2. I really respect and understand that the Star Wars teams wanted this guy, as they wanted Gareth Edwards (born 1975)  for Rogue One. Monsters was a haunting masterpiece (though very low budget), and his Godzilla was… really different.
3. I have a third example : Joss Whedon. Smart father of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly (then Serenity), a great “space western”. After Cabin in the Woods, he was swallowed by Marvel Studios, directing two huge Avengers movies.

 

OK, here’s the pattern : smart directors swallowed by huge systems to make the biggest blockbusters.

Could it be a special Peter Principle?

Did we lose the guys for good cinema? Why?

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Adams, American photographer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Adams_(photographer)

Robert Adams (born 1937) is an American photographer “who focused on the changing landscapes of the American West”.

I like his photos, and understood I liked it because he works on borders : between nature and men things, between the past and now, he works on where things… rub.

 

Have a nice week end!

 

JP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peter De Bruyne, Belgian Photographer

http://www.peterdebruyne.com/

Peter De Bruyne comes from Belgium. He takes pictures of his country, or Poland, or USA. And see : he likes to be blurry!

Well, I’m interested in guys who don”t obey. Too dark, too blurry : “mistakes”. Therefore (maybe), there he goes!

You can find you own seeds in this approach (don’t obey rules, do something which seems wrong, insist). You can also think about this : “What does the artist want?”. The mood without the objects? Abstraction? You decide.

Have a nice day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Why do you live in this place?” – Shore & Depardon

Bonjour tout le monde !

In the preface of a French photography book called “Habiter en France” (“To live in France”, by Raymond Depardon), the writer says that it’s one of the most intimate question : “Why do you live in this place?”.

Indeed, I think he’s right. It comes from the deepest of the deep. Parents, roots, the sky, people around. We stay “here”, but why? What’s the bond? What do we like? Why do we live here? These questions seem to put us in a thoughtful silence…

Today, the 23 December 2017, I got this huge, heavy, mythical book from Stephen Shore, one of the best American photographer ever : “Uncommon Places”. It’s a present I made to myself…

Both books, one in the USA, one in France, like to show what is rarely showed. Not the Eiffel tower. Not New York. But little roads, normal houses, parking lots. And certainly not in a bad way. Uncommon places in America, and where do people live in France.

They both “insist” on photographing these places until we feel the mood, the sky, the silence or the little winds…

I remember this friend from Kansas, feeling the summer air here in France, like… “Ohhhhh… There is something…”.

 

I LOVE to have these two books together. In this blog, it’s because I found a common structure, a pattern, of course. Pictures of normal life. And as usual :

The pleasure comes from “finding the subtle differences” within these cousin works…

 

Merry Christmas! Thanks for reading!

 

Originally published in 1982, Stephen Shore’s legendary Uncommon Places has influenced more than a generation of photographers. Shore was among the first artists to take color beyond the domain of advertising and fashion photography, and his large-format color work on the American vernacular landscape stands at the root of what has become a vital photographic tradition over the past forty years. Uncommon Places: The Complete Works, published by Aperture in 2004, presents a definitive collection of the landmark series, and in the span of a decade, has become a contemporary classic. Now, for this lushly produced reissue, the artist has added twenty rediscovered images and a statement explaining what it means to expand a series now many decades old.

Snow in America

Winslow Homer, American painter

Winslow Homer, American, 1836-1910, “best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in American art.”

I saw a painting from Homer in le Musée d’Orsay, in Paris, a long time ago (it’s the first of the works I chose for you). The last one (the reader, at the bottom of this page) was my choice for my Journal, years and years ago…

I’m not a critic, I can’t talk about this guy. I just keep amazed by his… poise, his ease. It’s perfect, elegant, gorgeous, and sometimes even risky (see what he does with silhouettes, with the light, or weird angles…).

Is he well known? If you like him, you’ll find plenty more on Google Images.

In all these, I can… see the Wyeth family coming. The grand-father with his almost mythological America, the father with some dark moods, and the son : the sea, the sense of wind in the seashore… I’ll blog about them very soon.

Thanks for reading!

 

Logan, Arthur and Motoko

I am a movie lover, un “cinéphile“. I read a lot about movies. I own thousands of DVDs and Blu-rays. I love Orson Welles, John Ford and Elia Kazan. I love Losey, Bergman and Miyazaki. I BUY movies. I’m able to spend a year to explore 1961 in cinema history (yes there’s a Wikipedia page for that). I’m able to watch all Tennessee Williams movies adaptations in a month, just for the extraordinary pleasure of… oh forget it.

But I download them too. A lot. I watch, and if I like I buy. I’m old school. I don’t have Netflix nor an Apple TV. I want the discs, the bonuses, the sleeves. Les galettes : the “epiphany cakes” (yesss we say that, for movie discs). Makes sense, right?

It’s August, so I found many American mainstream movies to download. Fast and Furious number 39 (or whatever), or Alien Covenant (I wanted to watch is again, because it’s a bad, wrong movie, but also because of Scott, Giger/Böcklin, the “two notes flute in the echo” music, and the stress before the shuttle explosion).

By the way, I wrote to the actress behind the voice of Mother, in Covenant. Great work!

I left 3 movies on the side, because I was sure it was shit.

Logan, King Arthur and Ghost in the Shell. All of them had bad trailers. Logan smelled “I want to end this character violently”. Arthur really smelled like duck-billed platypus shit. And watching Scarlett Johansson exploding a window 6541 times in slow motion on Facebook was enough to keep me away from it (talk about bad e-marketing -> another article).

All of them took me by surprise.

But beware : I’m NOT talking about Kitano’s Hana Bi or Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter (I can’t wait to find these in Blu-ray). Don’t even talk about Heaven’s Gate, Single Man or Fanny & Alexander (I have the Blu-rays, thank you). I’m writing here about mainstream movies, to eat with popcorn and have fun with.

Logan surprised me because it was more violent, tragic, or let’s say “less stupid” than some other X-Men I watched (I watched them all). I like these superheroes movies, but here I was surprised and wondered about the audience targeted by it. So what : Adult geeks? I don’t know, but I loved it. The Wolverine girl, Xavier in his chair, powerful but dying, the cross-to-X at the end, it awed me.

I was really ready to laugh sarcastically at Arthur. But Ritchie made Snatch and the Sherlocks, and I loved U.N.C.L.E., so I tried… And I found it brilliant! Smart and fast, funny at times (I LOVE when Ritchie plays with dialogs/possible scene, like when Sherlock Holmes will fight), and so powerful (ohhh Excalibur). A good evil character (hello Jude Law), a mage… A good one!

I will forgive everything to Jude Law since he played in My Blueberry Nights.

Ghost in the Shell climbed greatfully towards the spider-tank scene (I own the anime movie, and I needed to know what they’ll do with the tank). The face to face with mother ending crushed me. The sound is great. Kitano is perfect. Binoche is fantastic (strong, fragile, alive). What a great surprise!

Well, I’m thankful. I read today something like “Even if it’s bad, it’s OK if it’s made with the heart” – I don’t remember where : Gide or Valéry? All of them were made with some heart.

Then I wonder how to blog about Logan : what are and what could be other branches in the almost totally kryptonitelic ridiculous tree of Superhero Movies? About Arthur : what’s the drive in Ritchie : a casualness, a “I allow everything, shut up” energy? About Ghost in the Shell : how to make a robot alive? How to adapt a fucking Japanese cartoon with elegance? How to convince Scarlett Johannsson to play that?

 

After all this, you will ALWAYS need to clear your spirit from special effects, Excalibur’s devastation, jumping in an invisible electronic device, or fake claws. I suggest an Ingmar Bergman’s movie : Winter Light. Or just one quote of this movie instead :

“God does not speak because there is no God. You should learn how to love, instead of praying”.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

The French “Qu’est-ce que tu deviens ?” is our way to ask “What have you been up to?”…

When you meet a friend, you can say “What’s up?”.

It’s clear and simple for a French, with the fascination we have for English’s conciseness : what is “up”, after all? 🙂

I think there’s a slightly different color in “What’s up with you?”, saying “What have you been up to?”, which is “How have you been busy these days?”. I’m good?

Well, we say in this case “What’s new?” : Quoi de neuf ?

After a long-time no-see, we often say : “Qu’est-ce que tu deviens ?“, which means “Who do you become?”, or “What are you turning into?“.

Yessss you see me coming, there’s a cultural difference here showing on the surface :

USA asks “What have you been up to?”, France asks “What are you turning into?”. One friend is asking about your actions, the other one is asking about your inner transformation. Isn’t it revealing? I don’t know, it makes me think, in any case…

 

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : clairemahoney

Coffee for Ants, Cars for Ants

When I was in my twenties, I had wealthy friends coming back from the USA. Each time, of course, I was like “Hey ! How was New York ? How was L.A. ?”

Each time they had ONE first thing to say.

“Everything, in the USA is big, BIG, BIGGER”

Coca Colas are huge. Steaks are Texas size. Popcorn bags are huge. Cars are huge. Coffees are huge. Trucks are huge. It was so funny to see their eyes like plates, while they were telling this…

Now I know a little more about this country, I know that distances are huge TOO, but the cars are not huge anymore : they probably understood the stupidity of it. This is sad, though… Happily we have some great photography books about this aspect…

Well, in France, one day, my Californian friend ordered a coffee in les Jardins du Luxembourg (you know, this magic place near le Musée du Louvre). It was grey and cold, so she asked for the biggest sized coffee they had, and got the, well, French “normal” idea of it.

“Coffee for ants”, hahaha.

I don’t know what’s the use of this article. The cultural differences are always interesting to list (imagine between Italy and China, or between Brazil and Canada, Angola and Norway). At the lowest level (the sizes of things – for example : houses), it’s just funny. You can compare flowers, insects, the name of different parts of your body, but also the way people make love, how our chakras meet, how we argue on the phone, or say bonjour with a new mother-in-law (in French, say “vous”, not “tu”)  : there’s a pleasure in comparisons.

Oh, voilà!

Well, that’s a beginning, right? Then you can explore narration, influences, money use, etc. It’s infinite. I wish for the moment we will meet people from other planets, don’t you?

Well, have a nice day !

Picture by W. Eggleston

Olathe means “Beautiful” – My Ouisconsin Toponymy Bliss

France is smaller than Texas alone, but like everywhere, it’s divided into regions, with different cultures, crowded (Paris region) or not (l’Auvergne), near the sea (Bretagne) or near Germany (l’Alsace).

Some regions have city names with the same suffix. Next to Lille (North of France), we have many towns finishing by “in” : Carvin, Camphin, Phalempin, Wavrin…

In Normandy you find many “ville” : Dauville, Trouville…

In Brittany : Bannalec, Carnac, Le Drennec, Glénac, Iffendic…

You know that I’m a little obsessed with America, and I often wander on the USA map, trying to find the origins of the cities. Indian native, or English, French, Spanish? I check on Wikipedia…

For example, there’s a List_of_Swedish_place_names_in_the_United_States

More interesting : List_of_non-US_cities_with_a_US_namesake, where I find a Chantilly, Missouri (Aawweeeeeeee) or a Versailles, Kentucky (oh really?). Paris, Texas, remember?

22 American city names comes from Norway! (Drammen, Wisconsin, OMG).

So, let’s see the States names. Alabama is Choctaw. Arizona means “The Good Oak” in Basque (South-West of France), Nevada means “snow-covered” in Spanish, and OMG, Wisconsin : “Originally spelled Mescousing by the French, and later corrupted to Ouisconsin” : That’s cute, n’est-ce pas?

 

For each city, you can open this little box of shells. I chose Olathe, Kansas, gives :

Olathe was founded by Dr. John T. Barton in the spring of 1857. He rode to the center of Johnson County, Kansas, and staked two quarter sections of land as the town site. He later described his ride to friends: “…the prairie was covered with verbena and other wild flowers. I kept thinking the land was beautiful and that I should name the town Beautiful.” Purportedly, Barton asked a Shawnee interpreter how to say “Beautiful” in his native language. The interpreter responded, “Olathe.”

I knowww, I will never be cured 🙂

Good day !

 

Sad Heart, Merry Spirit : Chronicle 9

I read in a Claude Roy diary, as he’s around 70 years old, that he would like to reach this season, this state : “Le temps du cœur triste et de l’esprit gai” – the time of the sad heart and the merry spirit.

Here I have a vocabulary problem : is “gai” happy, merry, gay, jolly? I don’t know. I chose merry.

But I’m very fascinated by this “goal”, from an aged author I liked very much. As if he knew he could never heal his heart. But, knowing this, building his own happiness, a “merry spirit”. This touched me, a lot.

 

Just read an article evoking Robert Osborne, a TCM Television Presenter who just died at 87 years old. It is told that Olivia de Havilland had with him :

One phone call a week, for decades.

Awwweeee! (-> this was the sound of my merry spirit). I wish I had a friend so close that she would call me once a week until I die at 87. Like a whatever-happens-I-want-to-talk-with-you. Awwweeee again (my merry spirit if very merried by this idea).

 

I read (but where, is it Casanova or Jünger?) about the Venice Purse, a knack which says that when you have to go to a “dangerous” place (which was Venice at the time), you needed to have two purses, one with a little money in case you’re robbed, attacked, knocked out, and another one with the main part of it – well hidden.

It’s just funny to know, but then you realize that when you travel abroad you really have to think about what you do with your passport, the amount of money you have with you, etc. I wonder what this concept can tell us about life in general : Be cautious? Watch the exits? Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket? But also : GO to places where you need to think about the Venice Purse, right?

Venice, in French, is VENISE. A perfect word to say : Venizzz. Elegant as a swan, right? Venice is more like braking at the end. No good. French better, sorry.

 

Elmore Leonard says somewhere about novels writing : “If it seems written, I rewrite”.

What a beautiful idea, right? Writing Style Dissimulation Efforts.

And a paradox many artists know well : work, work, work, until nobody sees you worked. It’s an interesting goal, and the path itself is enthralling too. How to reach?

There’s a balance to find, I suppose. It means you have the eyes to know when it’s not OK, when it is OK. Experience.

Well I have a vocabulary problem again. When do you use “enthralling“, dear? Can you say that about a person? How is it radioactivitied? Thrilling? Fearful? Exciting? Or more like “plainfully satisfying”?

 

I watched the Iowa episode of Aerial America yesterday. It’s amazing how many times I hear “French” in these. Detroits and Illinois were “frenchised” words, and how Iowa is a piece of this territory called Louisiana, the US bought to the French 214 years ago.

These TV programs tell me how BIG are the United States. Tonight I’ll watch Illinois, following the path of Bill Bryson’s book across America in car (cf Fixin’to traveling in the USA).

 

OK, it’s too long. I seize the run-up since a few weeks (is “seize the run-up” a good title?), like making the most of an epistolary energy…

I stop here. Next Chronicle next week. Here’s le hug by Ze French :

Have a nice day!

 

Fixin’to #traveling (again without moving) in the #USA

Sweatin’ like a sinner in church…

I downloaded a bunch of Smithsonian TV episodes of Aerial America. I just watched the Michigan one, and, say, I’ll probably watch the whole pack!

It’s just one hour long, it’s “taken from helicopter” so I see the country from above, it’s… interesting. There’s a little of History and some funny stories (Kellog’s, Detroit, Eminem, General Motors, Ford, the German population, lakes, and the fact it’s divided in two pieces). The flaws are : there are not enough maps to explain things. It’s not linked enough to the neighbor states. And the narration is a little too much American-TV (so everything is “THE BEST OF THE WORLD” – or the biggest stadium of the country, the greatest factory of the fifties in America, or the longest bridge EVER, etc).

I also have a pack of movies about American History. It’ll help, this summer, I bet, to move forward.

You’ll find plenty of arrogant European people telling that people in USA are non traveling ignorants who don’t even know where Belgium or Italy are on a map. But ask a French what is the capital of Colorado, or to place Oklahoma on the US Map, and you’ll see.

I began to read the hilarious Bill Bryson book called The Lost Continent. This guy is from Iowa and decided one day to explore his country with two big loops (cf map). So my next episodes will be Iowa and maybe Missouri. It’s another way to visit without moving, right?

When Bryson crosses some cities like Des Moines, Hannibal or Palmyra, I often stop reading and I go on Instagram. I search Pella, Iowa, for example, and, well, I see the land, the sky, the church, the roads, what people do, what people like (cycling or all terrain vehicles?). Do I see vineyards or corn fields? I can’t wait for Wiscasset, Maine, right? I Google-mapped too, a little.

I wonder what you people “feel” when you see one of yours words written in the UK way. For example with realise/realize or colour/color.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time on YouTube exploring accents. What is really the Southern Accent? So I watched this :

 

Sorry for my English, it’s difficult some days. I’m French, after all!…

Thanks for reading!

JP

Instagram : la_fille_de_la_cote

“And he heard how I laughed with you” : Chronicle 6

Happiness is a strange thing. Sometimes we forget to laugh, then we suddenly have someone who’s able to open a box. We laugh. It’s a strange and delicious laugh. It’s THIS box opening. A new sound. Something new. And we laugh.

As a French, I learnt at school that New was pronounced NIEW. Then I talked to Americans, all saying NOO. So now I’m proud to say : “Hey! That’s new!”. Correctly said (noo) and with the “no space between new and the “!”. I find SO interesting that we French are used to add a space here : “It’s new!” -> “C’est nouveau !”.

Today I watched this hippie movie, Hair, with my oldest daughter, and she and I loved it. Then we talked about the fact that last week we watched Forrest Gump. Like if we were studying the second part of the XXth Century of the United States of America, right?

I love this beginning, from Oklahoma to New York :

 

Imagine you live in America, and your street name is in Spanish, your city name is in Spanish and your school’s name is in Spanish. What does it mean? Well, OK, nothing.

I remember my own shock when I realized that San Francisco meant Saint François, and Los Angeles : Les Anges (The Angels, sorry).

I read that a wall between Mexico and the USA would be a little stupid, because Mexican immigrants mainly come by plane. Is that true? Can someone be THAT stupid? I need a lecture.

Tonight I watched a great documentary about one of your best photographer alive : William Eggleston. If you Google Image him you’ll (maybe) understand why I love him so much : he shows (with a fabulous sense of color) something intimate about the USA, he SHOWS something. And this with a “constantly random” attitude (kids, a light, a street, a store, a car), which I adore. I was watching him “hunting” images in this documentary, with a constant “awwweeee” in my mind. The eye of a photographer is something really special. I love that guy. Here are a few pictures :

 

 

 

To finish this chronicle here is a good picture I found of Facebook yesterday.

Don’t forget how you laughed. I won’t. Ever.

Have a nice day!

 

“Interstate 80” fantasy #traveling #USA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_80

I choose this road. 3000 miles. 60 days. Drive 50 miles a day every morning, then leave the Interstate to see what’s around. Drive. Park. Breathe. Watch things, nature, villages, cities, roads, people. Sit somewhere on a bench. Watch. Take pictures too. I could do it.

No, it’s NOT Route 66.

I can’t do it for real, because I’m shy, lazy and broke. Maybe on Google Maps?

It’s traveling without traveling. Maybe when I’ll be stuck in my bed when I’ll be 80 years old. By the way, I found the list of big cities I’d cross over.

I publish this. I have to go, dear readers : I want to visit Joliet, Illinois, now.

“Quad Cities”? Really?

San Francisco, Californie
Oakland, Californie
Sacramento, Californie
Reno, Nevada
Salt Lake City, Utah
Cheyenne, Wyoming
Sidney, Nebraska
North Platte, Nebraska
Kearney, Nebraska
Grand Island, Nebraska
Lincoln, Nebraska
Omaha, Nebraska
Council Bluffs, Iowa
Des Moines
Iowa City
Quad Cities, Iowa et Illinois (Davenport)
Joliet, Illinois
Chicago, Illinois
Toledo, Ohio
Cleveland Ohio
Youngstown, Ohio
Sharon, Pennsylvanie
Clarion, Pennsylvanie
Du Bois, Pennsylvanie
Clearfield, Pennsylvanie
Bellefonte, Pennsylvanie
Williamsport, Pennsylvanie (par l’Interstate 180)
Bloomsburg, Pennsylvanie
Hazleton, Pennsylvanie
Stroudsburg, Pennsylvanie
Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvanie
New York (par l’Interstate 95)