RIVE GAUCHE.

i love paris. but it never welcomed me.

im back in london now, and it feels like home. it feels more like home than melbourne. i am looking forward to coming home though, i start second year fine arts in a week. shocking considering i have barely done any drawing this holiday break. but i have been doing a lot of thinking. my mind has been far more active in the past few months than i have ever remembered. i also have a fair idea of what i want to do this year in my course. having experienced first hand some of the greats in the world of fine arts, i just don't see how the course at vca can help me achieve goals anywhere near to that standard. so i think i will go back to the basics this year. i am going to look at hands, at feet, at forms, at life, at death. i want to know. i want to know everything.

paris is. is everything.

one day when i was by myself i spent half of the day around st-germain-des-pres and the latin quarter looking for the Shakespeare and company bookshop. a legend. i did find it eventually, it was amazing. on the bottom level is a range of french and english novels, philosophical thought, art, and literary crit. upstairs is where the magic happens; with a staircase practically made of books, and all the second hand books upstairs. within the nooks of the bookshelves are also these tiny beds where the young writers sit around and live in the bookshop. someone's practising on the piano in the corner for wednesday night's book reading and performance. another person is on the laptop. another is sitting on her bed in the childrens section writing in a notebook.

it was just so wonderful.

that morning i also ate at le deux magots. i remember reading about this famous cafe a while ago. it used to cater and house all the great thinkers; sartre, beauvoir, hemingway. it made my brain and senses tingle. also the greatest chocolat chaude. or viennois they seem to call it.

the left bank is where it's at for me.

rive gauche is all about the commercial galleries, art schools, universities, bookshops, young designers, restaurants.

musee de cluny

holocaust memorial

mariage freres

pompidou centre.

that is also what i explored that day.

another day:

notre dame

entire rue st. honore

arc de triomphe

marais

lafayette

louvre

louvre

louvre

louvre

there are no limits. no boundaries to how incredible to that museum is. it's not just about the art. it's the rooms aswell. rooms the size of medium commercial buildings. tall. wide. extreme.

strolling around the salons, you see velazquez, david, ingres, delacroix, caravaggio, brueghel, vermeer. just put up on the walls. all together. the only work that seems to get an entire wall to itself is the mona lisa. a given i guess.

i went to the louvre twice. on the first day i arrived and on friday night. and i still feel like i have only scratched the surface on the collection. my favourite painting was the nude by ingres.

coming back to melbourne, i have a feeling that i will be going through a 'bonjour tristesse' moment.