The Art in Life

Beach day.

Posted on August 18, 2014 by Hannah

This past weekend I escaped away to the beach with my brother, brother-in-law, and soon to be sister-in-law. Looking back, I am tempted to say that I don’t know where this summer went. How is it almost september, almost time to go back to school, almost time for busy weekends and more responsibilities? Except, I know where all the summer has gone. It went to Kentucky and to Paris, to pain-killers and to car shopping, to visits from loved ones. It was wonderful, and I am blessed to even be able to have the luxury of a summer — thank you Academia.

But still.

The next two weekends I am out of town and then studying regains control of my Saturdays. So this last weekend, we slipped out of the city and headed towards the seashore in Delaware. I couldn’t have told you anything about Delaware before Saturday, and it is one of those states like Rhode Island and Vermont where my geography breaks down and I’m not entirely sure where it is. All I had heard was that there were some great beaches.DELAWARE I AM SO SORRY AND I TAKE IT ALL BACK. You are glorious. We stopped for some Chick-fil-a breakfast [Insert moment of silence where I stare off into the distance and think about those chicken minis that I rarely make it early enough to get.] and some Delaware locals heading to DC warned us about the terrible traffic. Instead, they recommended some back roads that took us through the stunning countryside, tiny towns, and about a million garage sales. Which we obviously stopped at and rolled into the beach with a coffee table and side table in the trunk of my car. BEACHES AND BARGAINS. Paradise.

What was not paradise was trying to find parking at Dewey Beach. After driving around for a while, I finally just asked a friendly women doing yard-work if we could park in her driveway for the day and she kindly let us. Paradise restored. Then off to the beach with some of my favorite people! And a whole lot of sunscreen because I glow in the dark and have a deep fear of skin cancer.
That girl there? I GET TO BE RELATED TO HER. My baby brother couldn’t have chosen a better lady to marry. I think I’ll just go jump for joy. And then I will enlist others into my jump shot, because you know how I feel about it. [I also debated long and hard about putting these pictures up because, you know, they feature thighs of much less than model quality. But then I decided that maybe we all need a little more acceptance and glorification of normal bodies.] After quite a few failed jumpshots, a “kind” soul on the beach took to critiquing us as we jumped and offering pointers. Very helpful. When we had finally cooked ourselves to a nice splotchy pink, we left the beach and headed to a shaved-ice stand between a grungy crab shack and a gas station. Yes, we are the classiest beach goers you ever did see. But seriously, that shaved ice was good, and Richard, the shaved ice chef, made us samples of almost all the flavors before we ordered. Richard also had to give us a tutorial in eating crabs, as our zeal to whack away at a crab did not come with any practical knowledge. I might have eaten some gills before Richard swooped in, pulled a knife out of his back pocket, and cleaned our crab for us.
This is a food that my landlocked native southern self just doesn’t know how to approach and I can’t eat shellfish without thinking of Jim Gaffigan’s routine on seafood. But they are so pretty that it was worth a try. Plus, it kind of seemed like summer itself: something so beautiful that you try to scrape out every last bit.How are you spending these last weekends of summer?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged beach, summer | 3 Comments

Talk photo to me.

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Hannah

Sometimes I consider putting a FAQ section somewhere, but then I realize what a joke that would be, as “frequently” implies, well, multiplicity and commonality. The reality is just that this is not the sort of blog where I have to spend copious amounts of time responding to inquiries about where I buy my clothes or how I do my hair. This is probably because the stuff I wear comes from very accessible and, dare I say, normal places like, you know, the Gap and stuff. On clearance, every time. No one cares about my lipstick color or accessories, because they are kind of just generic. Occasionally one of you wants to know where to eat fattening foods in DC or Paris (so glad that my expertise is well known) but even then y’all don’t see me as a city guru. I’m ok with that, and not really interested in trying to franchise my life, as seems to happen all too quickly in the blogging world.

Still I did create an email specifically for this blog so that I could respond to any questions that did come in. Usually, I forget to check this address for weeks or months, and then I do and see like three messages and I freak out with excitement and feel like a rockstar for a little while. Seriously y’all, I am just so not a big enough deal to not get excited about messages from random people, even if it freaks James out because he thinks it’s a little creepy and that people might murder us in our sleep.

Perhaps one of the only questions that occurs frequently enough to deserve an answer, is about photography. Specifically, what camera, lens, editing software, etc. do I use. I finally decided to sit down and write it up for anyone who wants to be a slightly-above-average-but-not-overly-serious-photographer. Because the truth is, I have absolutely no clue what I am doing, at least in terms of numbers and specs and whatnot. I hate, hate, HATE anything that smacks of technology, which means that people who want to “talk shop” will find a seriously boring conversation partner in me. I don’t understand all the numbers on my camera, but I do know by feel what works for me. So, after a long study of what I have, here are the quick technical details, followed by some things way more important and interesting.

Summer2014-147

I shoot most photos for this blog using a Nikon d300 camera. However, up until not terribly long ago, I used a Nikon d40 with the kit lens. All the photos on my old Paris blog were taken with that trusty little highly underestimated camera and I would heartily recommend it for anyone who is starting to dabble in photography. In fact, every photo for this post was taken with my old d40 while I awkwardly posed for James in the alley behind our house. No seriously — there are trash cans right out of this shot. I’m so fancy, you already know.
I either use a Sigma 24-70mm lens or a 50mm 1.8 prime lens, which is awesome because it is way smaller and makes the camera fit in my purse better. And yes, that is the main reason I started using it. Priorities.
I edit with a combination of Photoshop and custom Vsco Film presets that I designed in Lightroom, always with the goal of having the picture look how the moment felt. I shamelessly edit out the occasional zit before I put pictures on here and I am just not even afraid to admit that.

See? The prime lens is SO MUCH SMALLER and means that you can actually carry a normal sized purse. Totally worth learning to use it instead of the regular lens.
This is my older d40, and you can see that it is a lot smaller and thus lighter than the d300. Plus, it has really great auto settings, so if you hand it to someone who has no knowledge of cameras, they can still take a decent picture of you quickly.

And here, in a nutshell, is my philosophy on photography:

Better subjects make better pictures.

Yes, an awesome camera helps. But only if you actually take it with you, figure out how to use it, and take pictures of things that you want to look at. I have seen beautiful pictures created with a point and shoot or phone and terrible ones come out of my camera. I was an artist long before I had a camera, and the two photography classes I took in college really focused not just on the mechanics of photography, but on the art. Good pictures will be ones that are of things you want to look at long after the moment is gone. They will be the ones composed with aesthetics in mind, but also with emotion about what you are looking at. They will not necessarily be ones that everyone else loves or that are technically the best, but that is ok. As I mentioned above, all of these photos were taken with a camera that no one would consider professional, but it was good enough quality to let what I was seeing show up on the memory card, and the rest was up to me.

Here would be my pointers to anyone interested in learning about photography:

Figure out how to use whatever camera you have. Yes, you can research things. I call my friend Susannah all the time when I don’t understand what my camera is doing. But mostly, just try turning nobs and playing with it on the manual setting until you understand how it works intuitively. Luckily, going digital allows you to delete a lot of the ensuing mess. Also, photography classes can be really helpful and worthwhile, rather than letting a nice camera sit unused or only break it out while using the auto function. The classes I took in college were especially good because they involved us all submitting images every week, which were then critiqued as a class. This was a great way to share and learn, figuring out our own styles and strengths.
Think about the art of the images. One of the better, and easier to understand, series of tutorials I have read on this was the series that Annapolis and Co did on taking better Instagram photos. I encourage you to read her posts on composition, perspective, motion, etc. While they are geared towards iPhone photography, many of the concepts are about basic design and composition and are applicable for regular photography as well.
Edit. Delete crappy photos, unless they are so bad that they are funny. Sometimes I see people put up lots of pointless and artless photos on Facebook or wherever and I am just confused as to why. Take the photos you like and enhance them or crop them to capture how the moment felt when you were there. I’m not advocating the curation of a perfect life.* I keep lots of humorous photos or ones that aren’t “great.” I do however delete photos that I don’t feel excited about looking at. Why keep them? And I do believe in editing photos to look how the moment felt, because a camera can sometimes render things lifeless and dull. This doesn’t mean dump a bunch of money on Photoshop. For years, I just used basic iphoto editing and it is non too shabby. I also love the Vsco Cam app that allows you to apply some cool film filters to photos in your phone. You can turn down so your pictures don’t look too fake.
Take pictures of moments, people, things, and experiences that matter to you. This is the secret to great photos, the one I already harped on above. Photograph things that matter. These are the things worth capturing to you, and these will be the photos you appreciate having. Not just the big aspects of the moments, like the people and events, but also the little details that make up the moments: the pile of shoes by the door, the way the light looks on the floor, the little details that make big pictures. These things matter. But a random picture of a detail divorced from a big picture… maybe not so much. Sometimes I think we all take a picture because we have seen someone else take a similar one. We do it without thinking and it is cold and lifelike. I’m not saying I haven’t photographed my share of coffee cups. But those aren’t the ones my children will look at again and again, no matter how beautiful they are.

Did that hit any photo questions? Would a series (I feel so squeamish about proposing things like that because I am so not a pro, but whatever) on important concepts of photography, both artistic and mechanical, be something people wanted? Any photo tips from the rest of you photographers? Give me your feedback, O ye internet.

*PS: For every one of these pics, where I was whipping my hair back and forth like nothing else, there were also a couple like this. And I’m sharing this one, because I always see posts like this on people’s blogs where there are all those perfectly styled, hair whipping, magically product highlighting pictures and I wonder, do these people ever take awkward shots? How do they do the most awkward things ever — POSE FOR PHOTOS — and look so smooth??? Keeping it real over here on the blog. Reality check, and how did my eyes get so tiny?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged photography | 24 Comments

Dating.

Posted on August 11, 2014 by Hannah

By the time James and I got married, we had been dating four and a half years, of which well over two had been spent long-distance. One of those was international long distance, and I didn’t have wifi in my apartment, so we did a lot of scheduled skyping and emails. Another two summers of that time were spent similarly, because James had a cell phone plane without nationwide calling. Yes young ones, that used to be a thing.

I think periods of long-distance dating can be really good for couples. You learn to communicate, you have to learn to communicate, or you won’t make it. Your relationship can’t be about dates, cuddles, or proximity, and instead becomes about verbalizing feelings and explaining life to someone. A lot of marriage is also like this, only it happens daily over the dinner table. Long-distance love also forces on you the valuable life skill of being happy or sad for things that have nothing to do with you. If you had a great day, but your significant other had a bad one, you learn to feel genuine sadness for them and they have to learn to share in the joy of something they didn’t do. Long-distance can teach you much.

But it isn’t enough. You learn to love the essence of a person, but not their actuality, not their daily quirks, not their frustrating habits, not them in the flesh. Dating ultimately involves spending quality time with another person. Still, long-distance can also lead to some awesome dating moments because when you do see each other, you are SO EXCITED THAT YOU GO ON ALL THE BEST DATES AND DON’T EAT VEGETABLES AND LAUGH A WHOLE LOT. Obviously, real life isn’t like that either, and I distinctly remember a totally weepy breakdown shortly after our dating long-distance ended and I moved to DC and I wanted to know why those perfectly planned, every-minute-a-date, weekends weren’t happening anymore. Yep, I’m a real gem.

But we aren’t talking about that right now. Because for now, I am back doing this horribly awful but maybe still good long-distance thing, which means that when James was here visiting this past week, we rocked dating. Like, ROCKED it, non-married style, where I turned off the part of my brain that remembers that we share a checkbook now, so lavish gestures aren’t quite as awesome because they mean tighter grocery budgets. Baseball games! Picnics! Netflix marathons (Olivia Pope, where have you been all my life???)! Dinners out! Dinners in!

In the course of our dating over the past week, we also discovered a couple great new places around this city, and as it is RESTAURANT WEEK this week, maybe you local people are looking to try out some new gems. The rest of you, once again, you should just make DC on your “Must Visit So I Can Gain Weight” list.

GCDC- Grilled Cheese DC. We have wanted to go since it opened, but it isn’t in our area of the city and is only opened during the week. But after finally making it, we will be inconveniencing ourselves to return again. And again. (I actually have dinner plans there later this week so I can try the sweet grilled cheeses they only sell at night. ) It is nothing but artisan grilled cheeses – and tater tots, which facilitated me whipping out a Napoleon Dynamite reference like it was the early 2000s – but we were especially impressed with the owner. He was there greeting people, making conversation, and was so proud of his restaurant – with good reason. James got the buffalo chicken grilled cheese and maybe I still think about it.

When he left, James hid gift cards to various local places around the house and gives me clues to find them if I a having a rough day, so I can take myself on a “date” (yep, this totally isn’t our first long-distance rodeo). One of them was to Sona Creamery, which just opened a couple blocks from us, and I saved the card so we could go together. It is a wine and cheese bar that also serves some food, and while the menu is small and things are a little pricey for their size, the quality is perfection.

That iced tea. Lightly spiced, a little sweet, locally brewed and bottled. Hello hipster glory.

See that tasty looking flatbread with heirloom tomatoes? AMAZING. By far our favorite thing there, which is saying a lot, since I got the mac n’ cheese and mac n’ cheese is my favorite food group. We got suckered in and had to know about the artisan cheese on the bread, only to find out it is made from milk from a water buffalo….

… which obviously led to lots of googling of water buffalos at the table…

… and the purchasing of a small brick of the cheese to take home so that we can recreate the meal tonight for dinner.

Sona is having a 3course lunch for 20$ restaurant week special, so if you are nearby, you should totally go. And take me, because I told you about it.

James leaves tomorrow, and it will be mid-September before I see him again. Back to phone calls, emails, and me sleeping starfish style in the middle of the bed. Long-distance marriage is way less fun than dating, with one exception. When you are dating long-distance, you always wonder if it will have changed when you see the person, if you are going to make it through, if you will or should stay together. But with marriage, I know.

He is mine. I am his. Forever. He’s coming back, and we will just get right back to dating.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged DC, husband, love, restaurants, why i love dc | 20 Comments

That time I wanted to buy a house.

Posted on August 8, 2014 by Hannah

This month we enter our third year of living in this little one bedroom apartment on Capitol Hill, a place where I don’t think we really intended to stay for three years.

And I love this little place, really I do. I am fiercely proud of the little home we have built, eager to invite people in and [usually] happy with our space [when it is clean].

But sometimes I fantasize about better days.

Days when we have a smoke detector that doesn’t go off every time you open the oven. Days when we have a toilet that can be flushed twice within a 30 minute period. Days when you can shut the bathroom door without it locking you in. Days when we have an electrical system where you don’t have to have turn off all the lights to use the toaster without flipping a breaker. Days where we have a bathroom sink with an actual counter because I have broken almost all of my beauty products by knocking them off of that stupid pedestal sink, leaving me applying powder and eye shadow from ziplock baggies where I have gathered the pressed powder fragments. Getting ready in a bathroom where the only surface is a pedestal sink is probably a lot like landing an airplane on one of those floating airstrip things: no room for error. While we are on the bathroom note, sometimes I fantasize about a bathroom big enough to where I could actually have a breakdown and lay down crying on the bathroom floor. As it stands now, half of my body would have to be losing it in the hallway. And someday, someday I will have plumbing that doesn’t just stop working at amazing moments – like when 12 people are seated in my living room for Thanksgiving dinner. I dream of guest rooms, storm sealed windows, and shiny new floors. I dream of homes where the outside and inside are clearly defined, unlike our doors which let winter winds and summer heat blow right on in. The other day there was a squirrel in our living room. Sometimes I dream of, well, not that. (Although it was totally adorable and it maybe fled because it could sense my intense desire to domesticate it.)

Which is why, I recently decided that we were going to buy a house. In DC. On the combined fortunes of a politico and a grad student. Because I am an idiot.

But James, bless his soul, has learned that he should just let my stupid ideas run their course, let me crash and burn into a million flames on my own first, and then calmly put me back together. So, he let me go house hunting.

The first house I found was perfect, by my standards, which are as follows:

Does it have enough light so that I, if transformed into a plant, could photosynthesize?
Is it in a cute neighborhood, meaning, what is the brunch proximity?
Does it appear to have all major walls and doors?
How many people that I love can I get inside?
Are there fun quirky things like exposed beams and brick walls?

Things that house-hunting Hannah doesn’t really think to check:

If you flush the toilet, will you immediately re-see what was just flushed?
Do those bulges in the ceiling mean water damage?
Does this structure meet all current building codes and practical concerns for a structure that will house humans?

And the first house I found met all my criteria, but apparently none of the second, as James took one look – merely peering through the windows – and declared that my beloved row house needed at least 100k of work to be livable. I declared him a dream killer and pouted.

But when that little two bedroom house finally sold for over half a million dollars (go vomit and come back), it was immediately gutted, leaving nothing but the front brick façade standing.

Y’all, someone paid half a million dollars for an address and one brick wall. VOMIT.

But still, I persisted in my stupidity. The problem with the houses in DC is that they usually go for around a million dollars (VOMIT), which means that it has given me a warped sense of “cheap,” that is totally independent of our finances. 500K? PENNIES. The second house I found was a little smaller than the first, but totally livable from the get-go, no need for any massive demolitions. And it was cheap… for DC standards. Having basically already picked out curtains and a move in date, I blithely entered in some info on the online mortgage calculator, only to find out that, given what we could put down and factoring in a 40 YEAR MORTGAGE, we would pay a monthly sum that was about 3 times our current, already ungodly high, rent.

And then I laid half in the bathroom half out and cried as I told James that we would officially be renters FOREVER and that WE WOULD NEVER OWN NICE THINGS.

Because sometimes I forget that we can’t all live the same life. I see so many of my friends who live elsewhere buying homes, planting gardens, letting their pets out to run free in their large fenced yards, as if I even remember what a yard is. They are painting guest rooms and re-doing kitchens and buying real furniture (real meaning, not from Ikea with the added middleman of Craigslist). And I wonder, why can’t we do that now, why can’t we have that now?

Because we can’t. Because our life is not anyone else’s. And we chose this life, this little apartment big-city life, and I have to remind myself how much I love it. Because the rest might come, someday, even if it feels like it never will. But it probably won’t come here, in this city, not unless we change careers or become involved in shady dealings that make big profits. And when it comes, we won’t get this back, this life where we have so few responsibilities and such freedom.

Plus, with James home this week, I’m reminded that where he is, there is home, and that’s enough to make me happy.

But I still wouldn’t mind a toilet with more flush frequency and some squirrel free living.

Any house hunting horror stories out there? Or apartment living horror- I’ll take both!

PS: These images are obviously NOT from our home, but rather from the ephemeral someday home that exists only in my Pinterest board, in which I also become a way better interior designer than I am now. Plus, James would totally veto a lot of these looks, especially that last one, as he doesn’t share my love for ridiculous pattern juxtaposition and obnoxious colors. Oh, and weird animal pillows- I LOVE IT ALL. Images via /1/ 2 / 3 /4/

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged daily life, home, rants | 41 Comments

Celebrating.

Posted on August 5, 2014 by Hannah

James came to town for a visit right after I got back from Paris and we celebrated his birthday over the weekend with the type of party that he wanted: no gifts, no decorations, no fuss, small guest list. Just some burgers, strawberry cake, vanilla ice cream, and a small group of friends. On Sunday we celebrated his actual birthday with a baseball game, just the two of us.

Because some years, you want to do crazy birthday adventures. But other years, you just want to stay close to home and end the day in your pjs watching TV on the couch. Together.

Having him back in this city, back in our home, is the best gift.

I’m pretty crazy about this guy.

And fiercely proud of all that he has done with his life in all the years leading up to now and I know that this year will be no different.

Happy Birthday husband, you’re the best.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged husband, party | 2 Comments

Needing Paris.

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Hannah

“Paris is the sower. Where does he sow? In the shadows. What does he sow? Sparks. All that is, in the intellects scattered across the earth, catching flame here and there, and sparkling, is due to Paris. It is Paris that has kindled the magnificent blaze of progress.”

-Victor Hugo Paris*

They say that if you stand on this spot, the center of Paris, right in front of Notre Dame, that you will return to Paris. I’ve made sure to stop there several times on each visit, stepping in that slightly lower indentation where multitudes of tourists have stood and hoped. Because to be in Paris is to hope to return. I can’t imagine it any other way.

Every time I have been in Paris has been a moment of transition in my life, a moment where the future yawned uncertainly and terrifyingly, even if excitingly, before me. The semester in college where so many things seemed changing in my life; the year after graduation where I had no clue what to do with my future; the summer before I moved to DC, wondering what would happen there, what would happen with James. Paris, that graceful, old, and unchanging city has been a constant in my life, the hovering constant that there was somewhere I could flee where I had been happy, where I could always be happy again. Paris was a safe place when I didn’t know how I wanted the future to look. Paris will always be that for me.

But this time, the life that I paused to come to Paris is different. Despite all the uncertainty with James being far away, it is a life that is consistent, full, stretching forward with some promise of where it is going. It is a life in which I am joyfully anchored, happily rooted. This means that while I will always want to go back to Paris, to explore its streets, to be with my Parisian friends, to revel in the French culture I love, I feel freed from that painful need to stay there, that longing for it to be my home. I have a home that I don’t want to give up, not even for Paris. It feels just a little sad to say that, but it’s true.

I’m back in DC now, unpacking and pushing through the gross feeling of jet-lag combined with a month of eating almost exclusively pastries and cheese. It was sad to leave Paris and my friends, but the knowledge that I was leaving to come home, to come back to a life that I don’t want to give up to be elsewhere, that mediates the sadness.

And on the other side of the ocean, Paris will remain constant, will always be Paris.
*A friend loaned me this little book while I was there and I loved it. Total and ridiculous exaggeration written while Hugo was in exile, but wonderful nevertheless. There might have been a moment where Hugo declared that the “cry of golgotha found its fruition in the Declaration of the Rights of Man.” Hugo, you are out of control and I love you for it.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged France, Paris, travel | 6 Comments

Last days.

Posted on July 31, 2014 by Hannah

Some pictures and words from the last week in Paris. //Place des Vosges, one of my absolute favorite areas of Paris. However I did go there to eat with friends last weekend and we had very… French… service. Which is to say that we only got our food once we threatened to get up and leave if it didn’t arrive soon. // //Last weekend my friend my friend Jonathan and I helped our friend Emma search for a new apartment. I thought that DC was bad when it came to finding a place, Paris redefines difficult. I love apartment hunting (when it isn’t for me so I don’t have the stress of actually needing it) because it means you get to look in people’s homes and snooping is my favorite. By helping, I actually mean that we took lots of pictures of ourselves in all the cool spaces while Emma asked questions to get the information that actually matters. However, she found an apartment within the first day of searching so I do believe that our version of helping is legitimate. // //You know, I don’t ever want this to be one of those blogs where people look perfect all the time which is why I’m sharing that gem above. Whenever I sort through the photos on my camera I find so many like this: me being bossy and very descriptive about the photos I want taken. It’s how it is when you are usually the one on the other side of the lens. Also, lest that hair tell a different story, I basically wore a sloppy bun all but two days I was there, both days being ones where I made sure to get in some photos. // //Ok, let’s talk about these. They are miniature cakes that are the speciality of Bretagne and I can’t even emphasize how good they are. Which is logical, since they are basically made out of butter. // //Musée Rodin is one of my favorites. The museum itself is lovely, but you can also just pay 2 euros and chill out in the garden, where many of Rodin’s famous works are found. I spent a lot of this visit in art museums. The Louvre, but also the Musée d’Orsay and Rodin. Paris reminds me of how much art matters to me, how rejuvenated being in the museums makes me feel. I could do it in DC, go to lots of museums, but I often don’t. In Paris, it just happens. For the first time in way too long, I dug out my sketchbook and pencils and filled it with master copies, sketches of sculptures, and pen and ink studies. I didn’t realize how much I had missed it.// //No visit to Paris is complete without a trek to the Eiffel Tower. Though it is cliché, to ignore it is to miss something that matters to Paris’ history, its identity, its personal story. I have been reading a bunch of the primary source documents about the tower and it is fascinating. The protest against it, accusing it with destroying the skyline, betraying Parisian taste, and sullying the nobility of the other monuments. The defense of it, reminding the worried artists that a skyline must be marked by each generation and that from the tower you can truly view all of Paris’ gems. And now, the tower is this city for many. And I love it, for its history, for its beauty, and for its power to conjure up an entire ethos. //

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Paris, photography, travel | 14 Comments

Bread and Wine, Chicken and Potatoes.

Posted on July 29, 2014 by Hannah

You have most likely been thinking (ok, not really, because you probably don’t spend tons of time reflecting on what I have or haven’t posted), that these Paris posts have been sorely lacking in one of my very most favorite things: food. Lest you be tempted to think that I have not been scarfing my way around the city, I have saved all of the my food crazy photos for this one post so that we can talk about food and books and life. As Simone de Beauvoir said in her memoirs of her earliest years:

Amen girl. An important task indeed.
I love food, I love eating, and I love the community that gathers around the table, the counter, the kitchen floor, the picnic blanket, or the couch. I’ve been pretty open about that on this blog (what? You missed it? You are blind.), and for that reason, many of you have recommended Shauna Niequist’s book Bread and Wine. For those of you who haven’t read it, Niequist proposes to share “a love letter to life around the table,” highlighting the transcendental importance of gathering to share a meal.

There were several things I loved about this book. I loved the introduction, nodding and wanting to underline everything (I resisted, as it was a borrowed book) and considered painting phrases like this across my kitchen walls (also impossible, since we rent):

There were a couple moving or humorous moments in the book, some great encouragements to love ourselves and our friends, and obviously I cried anytime she mentioned miscarriage or infertility struggles, because we are at that stage of life where so many of our friends have dealt with the heartache of childlessness through one way or the other that it always hits close to home.

But I kept feeling dissatisfied with the book, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why until this past week. Niequist supposedly is sharing stories, but the chapters didn’t really read like stories, like events that culminated in one dish that held in it’s taste the entire story. I wanted Proust’s madeleine and instead I got a series of mostly similar stories about how the author had lots of dinner parties and traveled a bunch. I can barely remember (and I read it on the flight here) the recipes, or distinct stories because they seemed kind of the same. Moreover, I found myself getting annoyed about the discontinuity that the book seemed to convey between her life and her mission. Her mission was to inspire us back to the table and kitchen to build simple community, to remind us of the “sacred and the material at once, the heaven and earth, the divine and the daily.” Yet her chapters were full of perfect communities everywhere she went, trips abroad, parties with letter-pressed menu cards, and jobs and incomes that somehow facilitated constant entertainment status. And, as a friend pointed out, so much coffee and alcohol.

None of that is wrong, but for me the heart of food is its simplicity, its democracy, and her introduction made me think that was where she was going. Everybody eats. Even the lonely, even the undomestic, even the person who never travels. I felt like that simple message got a little lost in her lofty spiritual ambitions to remind us that the Word became flesh, which became a meal that we are called to remember. I didn’t want a recipe that was at one point served at a dinner party to great success; I wanted a story that evolved into something tangible.

I wanted it to be more like Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life, the stories and memories of which are burned so vividly in my brain that I absolutely insisted on eating a salad lyonnaise while in Lyon. She made me taste it with her story of eating it and I had to turn those words into reality.

I wanted it to be more like Deb’s Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, where, even if not a memoir, every recipe starts with the story that produced it. Because that is what our stories do, they drive us to the table and inspire what we spread across it. In one of my favorite recipes from Deb’s book, she recreates roasted chicken and potatoes similar to something she had in Paris. Not from a restaurant, but purchased from a street vendor that sells rotisserie chickens and the buttery potatoes cooked in their drippings. Deb’s description of that taste, that feeling, that greasy bag that she carried back to their apartment, stayed with me and last week, I had to have one of those chickens. I bought my chicken, carried it home through the cobblestone streets and ate it with two friends at the kitchen table. There were no place cards, no menus, not even any real cooking, since we paired it with salad and baguette. But we stayed around that table for a while, reaching back into the pot to pull out one more potato, one last bite of chicken. And that is the point: to be nourished, body and soul.

There is a beauty in food, in eating, in cooking, and Bread and Wine certainly got that right. But there is also a simplicity in it, a roughness, a reality, a concrete story that I felt she missed. I think by basing her title and premises on the miracle of the incarnation, she forgot that it ended in simple things. Bread and wine, earthly things, un-grand, everyday things. In her focus to drive us back to the table, she forgot that food, the community it inspires, and the stories it brings forth in us, aren’t limited to the table. They are in the to-go meal in the car that you laugh over on a road-trip, the pizza on the couch that is a Friday night tradition, the toast eaten alone with a book and a blanket at the end of a long day. These too are worthwhile, these too matter. Anyone else read it? What are your thoughts?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged books, food, Paris, photography, words | 26 Comments

A splash of blue.

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Hannah

Paris2014-15 Despite my general attraction towards warm and bright colors, I am totally obsessed with the vibrant blue that is splashed all over Paris. I just can’t get enough of the blue doors that are on so many buildings in this city. I am maybe already contemplating what I can paint a deep and rich blue when I get back. This will be made slightly more difficult by our rental status, but surely there is something in our apartment that could benefit from a bold blue coat. Right?

In the meantime, here are some of the blue doors that have been filling up my camera these days.
No really — this is an entire post of a bunch of blue doors that look almost identical. Aren’t you just so glad that I took up space on the Internet with this today? You’re welcome. As can be seen, sometimes bold blue doors make me so excited that I awkwardly half curtsy (?) in front of them.
Ok fine, I know that one is more like mint/ robin’s egg blue, but it was too pretty to leave out. Ok people, I’m serious: how can I get some of this color all over my home/wardrobe/life? Ideas?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged color, Paris | 19 Comments

Glimpses and Belonging.

Posted on July 24, 2014 by Hannah

//Yes, I realize that those first couple pictures are very similar to each other. I promise I really did cut out at least a hundred more of almost the same thing. I am also pretty sure that I have similar pictures from the other times I have been here, but I just can’t help it. It just overtakes me, you know? The beauty of the streets, the curved lamps, the old buildings. I can’t stop myself from wanting to hold on to it.// //The past couple times I have been here, my friend Emma and I have been on the search for the best Paris tea rooms. This time around, we slipped into brunch, a natural continuation of this brunch stage of life that we are all at. We went to a great place in Montmartre the first week and loved Marlette in the 9th last weekend.// // Please ignore the — as my friend Nancy describes them — chicken finger bangs that I have going on there, and focus instead on that pretty lady next to me, my brother Zach’s girlfriend Liz. My brothers happen to be excellent judges of women, a quality I like to take credit for, as they grew up with me, the epitome of female grace and poise. Ok, not really. But they have brought some great ladies into our lives. My brother Lyman JUST GOT ENGAGED LAST WEEK, and when I saw the text at around 4am, I did a little happy dance. (Why was I up, you ask? Because Paris had a crazy heat spell, doesn’t believe in AC, and I was having those weird heat-induced night wanderings that inevitable end in me trying to climb inside the refrigerator to cool off.) Liz got to spend one night with me in Paris as she passed through on her way elsewhere. She also left me with a bag of chocolates and pink champagne, an excellent anniversary dinner that I enjoyed on Tuesday.// //Oh Paris, you are that perfect blend of strict order and rebellion, people who like to wait in line just so they can cut, a country that loves rules so that they can break them, embraces red tape so they can find ways to avoid it. Spent an afternoon reading and enjoying these perfect lines in the Palais Royal.// //I firmly believe that the best investment for anyone who is spending more than a couple weeks in Paris, loves art, and is 18-30, is a Louvre Carte Jeune. It is the price of just a couple visits, gives you unlimited access to everything and allows you to skip those horrible lines that make you want to lay down and be trampled by tourists. It also frees you up to stop in just for an hour, rather than trying to squeeze the whole museum in a day. If you try the latter, you will inevitably get lost in the Egyptian Antiquities section and you will never, ever, EVER make it out. Seriously. No matter where you enter the museum, you will wind up with the mummies and will consider climbing inside an ancient sarcophagus and weeping quietly until you pass into the afterlife. With my pass, I have been hitting the Louvre pretty regularly (sorry Instagram followers… I know it has kind of been a Louvre-Love overload recently), breaking out my sketchpad and throwing myself back into art. Those sketches, pathetic though some of them are, are my favorite souvenirs of this city, tangible reminders of afternoons spent in one of my favorite spaces.////Sometimes, if beautiful light starts slipping through the kitchen window where I am staying, I dash out the back door of my building and sprint up 7 flights of stairs to watch the sunset from the floor where I used to live. It feels right up there, comfortable over the city.

A friend of mine recently asked me a question on Facebook, and I’ve been mulling it over since. She wanted to know if people here know I’m American, or if they think I’m French. It’s a touchy question for someone who loves a place so much, who has spent so much of her life learning this infernally picky language. I am proud to say that people, with the occasional rude exception because this is, after all, Paris, do not ever switch to English for me, or approach me an automatically assume I must be spoken to in not French. That is a win. Yet I know that for Parisians, I don’t pass as French. One time a group of Chinese school girls did cluster around me eating quiche on a bench and ask for a photo with the French girl… but they weren’t French. My height, my accent (not American, I have been told, but still an accent), my masculine/ feminine noun mistakes (something that will probably stay with me FOREVER because we just don’t do that in English), my desire to comb my hair and match my clothes, my open infatuation with this city and my irrepressible desire to smile at everyone because SMILING’S MY FAVORITE — all these things mark me as not from here.

And I think I’m ok with that. I am not from here. I have my own story and history and homeland and nationality. Why would I want to ignore all that? I can be understood, appreciated, eloquent, and perceptive of this culture. That’s enough. I actually have a special sort of disgust that I reserve for Americans who love to gush on Facebook and elsewhere about how much they hate America and how they actually “belong” somewhere else, how they imagine themselves as British or French or ______ because they spent a semester or a year abroad there. That’s ridiculous, especially if you didn’t speak the language, because that probably meant you hung out with expats the whole time. Who we are is a lifetime of accumulated experiences, and that doesn’t change, shouldn’t change, that fast. I think the whole world would be better off if people had the humility to both love where they are from, and also appreciate where they are going.

So back to this view, this view I called my own for a year and that keeps drawing me back. I am not, and will never be from here. But if loving something so much can make you belong to it, than at least I have that. //

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged France, Paris, photography | 12 Comments