France, 1983

Submitted by Arnold on 01/24/2010 - 9:41pm
France, 1983

View in Thickbox
( tags: )

I'M SICK OF THE FRENCH

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sun, 01/24/2010 - 11:57pm.

 Lovesick, that is. It’s funny, I just saw Truffaut’s `Jules and Jim’ again. It’s…well… so French.  I’m looking at Arnold’s photo and I see Jules, Jim, and Catherine (interestingly enough! :) biking 71 years before this Citroën 2CV (French: deux chevaux vapeur, literally "two steam horses") made its way down this country road.  I don’t know where this is but the three were on the French coast.  I’m not ashamed to say the film bored me though I can appreciate its cinematic value.  Yea. So why did I watch this film again? I love things French, it’s that simple.  Paris is my favorite city, French my favorite language.  I love sitting in Luxemburg Park feeding pigeons and sparrows as they perch on my arm.  I love the magic of Paris architecture and the cold, hysterical beauty of French women (oops! stereotype).  I love the deep contradictions of the French.  So Catholic yet so sensually and morally self-indulgent.  So superficial and so unbearably philosophical, so penetratingly brilliant.  Merleau-Ponty and Foucault. Cézanne and Rodin. So uninhibited and so closed.  So arrogant and so messy.  The French represent my love of contradiction and my contradiction of love. 'Where else can you find a term, jolie laide,' which means both pretty and ugly; or more accurately, someone who is oddly attractive.  I am so romantically unromantic.  That’s why I’ll watch any French film, no matter how bad.  So, thank you Arnold for the beautiful French landscape with its amazing composition and light. I can hear the car! which gives the photo a very French lightness of being.  So light, the cross of road jumps out, with a heart its center and an arrow pointing inward as if to say, Even on an unfinished, dusty road or in a 2CV, the French have conquered love. 

 

thanks

Submitted by Arnold on Mon, 01/25/2010 - 5:53pm.

for the passionate response. I do not have quite such complex feelings for things French, but the situation that the picture presents is so filled with affection (and that little self referential arrow ties the knot) and longing. As the viewer I have choices to make. I do not know the consequences of any of them, but they are not scary, just pleasurable. I love being in a zone where fear is not the governing experience.

ARNOLD, THE ZONE OF NO-FEAR

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Tue, 01/26/2010 - 12:17am.

 " I do not know the consequences of any of them, but they are not scary, just pleasurable. I love being in a zone where fear is not the governing experience."

 

I love this statement, Arnold.  I was thinking exactly about this today as I received a new delivery from my yoga teacher.  It was quite strange, receiving the gift itself felt almost like helping to give birth to something greater than oneself.  It was indeed a supremely pleasurable experience and, because, as you say, fear was not governing the experience, I found myself in this very deep meditation, which was more like dancing in the sky, dervishing myself in a circle of love as if with an infant in arms.  Crazy really.  God, I love meditation.  It's like dreaming oneself a parent or parenting oneself a dream, or waiting for the opportunity to do it all over again, but this time without it slipping away.  There is time, there is time, there is time. That was the present from my yoga teacher.