I want to write my blog. That is what I was saying in my last three posts in a perfect Serbian. Go figure it!? Often my inner language turns out to be Serbian. Maybe it is some nostalgia for a language that is mine, a language that I heard a lot when I was a child and that for many years I haven’t spoke and I rarely hear.

I want to write… but. But, writing and living prove not to be very compatible. If I think now how much I usually write, the lack of the living part appears so huge that it scares me. Still, the life without writing scares me even more. How can you live if you don’t write is a radical thought I feel as my truth in good and in bad, in sickness and health.

So, I will be back.

e veceras cu boami stavrno da pisem

ne ne veceras cu majkemi da pisem.. znam sve: ideje, teme, slike

veceras cu majke mi da pisem novi blog

DAY TWENTY FOUR, FIVE and SIX of MySexLifeInParis

After twenty five days in a big city that thought actually half empty is completely crowded from the point of view of BiH citizen, one starts to dream of untamed wilderness. And logically what one does is to stay in a tiny apartment because it is the closest you can get to ‘people free’ when car free. Naturally, trapped inside four walls, guilty of not going out.. I was in great danger, practically only one step from eating a whole sausage if it was not for my flat mate Francois that introduced me to the Paris bicycles.

They have these stands with rental bicycles that you take at one point and leave on the other, take a metro and than maybe again another bicycle somewhere else, and all this for one euro per day.

Since the day twenty four I have already went couple of times by metro to the Bois de Boulogne and enjoyed the peacefulness and beauty of cultivated nature.

For a modest price of 6 euros (plus another 50 that I lost when paying a bill!!) you have a view on Eiffel tower from this exclusive terrace. The exclusive and bourgeois are somehow terms that I hear and use often since my arrival to Paris. Big cities do this to you. In Mostar you can be a billionaire and yet the best restaurant you can go to will charge you at most 50 euros, if you come with two friends. Here it is no problem at all to find a restaurant that will charge you a dinner 300 euros. And it is a big problem to find a place for 30 euros.

I don’t know exactly how to explain it, I just have often a feeling that the size of your wallet is extremely important. And that a lot of people are estimating it all the time. Even when I went to the cinema to see a movie that was advertised as a French family saga from the eighties to nowadays it was all about who bought what to whom, what job, how many holidays and where… and in this ‘posh’ cafés and parts of the city you see it clearly – the urgency of underlying that you are different from the rest. As far as I can see this is the most desired difference one can claim here.

I know that in Mostar the car you drive or the brand of the cigarettes you chose to kill yourself with are also very important.. but on the whole, ‘chez nous’ the social hierarchy stress is still much less omnipresent.

Bosnia and Herzegovina: war traumatized, corrupted and poor, and yet it feels more equal and easy going. Bravo!

And as if he could of felt my latent homesickness my Saturday date, a French, thought Greek by father, took me to dance in the center of Paris, to the Seine embankment. I was very excited and I’ve put tip top make up, mini skirt, mini.. everything mini. Because I was going to dance on Saturday night in Paris.

We entered.

I throw out my vest.

I was ready.

The music was ready.

‘Gas, gas..

Ovo je ritam..

Ovo je seksi ritam…

Gas, gas…’

For those of you that read and don’t die of laughter or tears, let me explain: ‘gas, gas… this is the rhythm.. this is the sexy rhythm…’ was one of a WHOLE night serial of imbecile sort of gypsy disco folk songs in our language. I cried, I laughed.. but I did not dance. A black guy next to me asked me where I was from. I answered. He said he never heard of it while he was listening to the worst music of a country he never heard of. The whole place was dancing, completely oblivious of .. well anything… letting it go, enjoying the so stupid to be super cool less than three notes music.

Tour of France: three hours of wandering on Champs Elysees to see this. It is another of those things that I would normally never do, that I don’t like etc., but because I am a tourist I had to do it.

A protest of some Sri Lankans against the terrorist organization LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). It was moving to see how much energy these people were putting in their cause. And it was especially moving to understand that the cause they fight for is just basic human rights.

DAY TWENTY ONE, TWO and THREE of MySexLifeInParis

Butch, I miss you.

Since you left all I see are asses and so much potential, but nobody with whom to share all this wealth of information.

I am left without choice: I had to turn serious so I called my new friend Baptiste, stand up comedian and we spoke serious. It does sound a little bit a nonsense – a comedian that speaks serious, but in my humble experience lot of comedians are dead serious when not on a stage, actually most don’t laugh on a stage as well.

And I went to see other two stand up shows. In Paris in this moment there are something between fifty and one hundred one man shows. They take place in small theaters called café theater that are actually exactly as a standard theater but a lot smaller and sort of informal. I’ve been on shows were there were only twenty to thirty people and the most these places can do is around fifty, maybe seventy people in the audience. The shows almost to the minute last one hour, so they are sort of short and they are not expensive – around 15 euros per ticket that can become only 11 if you buy it on the day of the show. The quality is not excellent but there is always something to laugh about.

In Paris a part from Seine there is another big water: St. Martin’s canal. People often go to the shores of this canal, take food with them and dine next to the water. It is interesting: a little bit alternative and hippie. I went there with some people I know; one of them is moving to Berlin so they talked about rents in Berlin and in Paris.. an eternal subject that seams to have its share in whatever conversation. They spoke about bicycles, technical aspects. So I said I hated Museum of the primitive people’s art and got my share of attention. But, than they continued about Dubai that one of the guys visited couple of times this year - its economy and ecological issues regarding its development as it is. (and not a word about shopping.. which is actually great in Dubai. Nobody to ask me what I think about Dubai and about rents and about bicycles. Really, however interesting the subject can be if you have to fight to say something it is not interesting at all.)

And I had my first real date. I rarely have dates with people I like. For I usually understand much before a date if I like or not somebody and I like somebody every five years. So, patience for another couple of years and I am ready for the next big encounter.

I am really the last person on the world that can give advise in dating, if nothing because I just have very little experience in the field.

The guy I had dinner with the other day is a real gentleman: charming, sincere, goodhearted, good-looking, polite and in every way an excellent company. I can hardly find any reason not to throw myself in his arms. But, I don’t. He has it all, but that thing that makes you throw yourself in his arms against every reason.

And that is exactly the part of the dating agencies that I don’t understand. The description I would give to my agent would be exactly what my gentleman date was. They would then mach me with alike and I would stay single.

Carry question: ‘Do we stay single because we don’t know who we like or because we lie to ourselves about the look likes of what we fall for??’

Carry question 2 that serves as an answer to Carry question 1: ‘It does not function because it is our reason that, for example, in a matchmaking agency puts down the description of the guy we look for? While all that counts is our inner self that is miles away from our reason.

Finally, isn’t usually our inner self that of a sick person that needs to be put down a dozen times per day by a sweet, childish and irresponsible never totally dedicated ideal guy?

I suppose... Thought the sense of security and validation that a gentleman can pass to you is very attractive and hard to resist indeed.

Discovered my new favorite food – snails.

DAY NINETEEN AND TWENTY of MySexLifeInParis

Day Two and Three With My Friend Butch

Because we are intellectuals we go to the museums: they have the best bars and restaurants - the food is eatable, and people fuckable.

As we come we install ourselves in the bar and for the following two hours you can hear us say things like:

- On your left, the most beautiful guy you’ve ever seen!!

- On your right, on your right.. (for those that still have to think what is right what is left) the most beautiful guy you’ve ever seen!

- On your left the most beautiful Ass you have ever seen.

And so it goes for the next couple of hours.

At some point the conscience speaks and the routine is interrupted by: ‘Should we go to see the museum?’ But the other has a ready answer: ‘No reason to hurry.’

After three hours of this joy I became melancholic because our fun number one is to look guys that don’t look at us.

And than, not because these guys don’t look at us but because we are intellectual after all and serious people of age, we take out the camera and pretend to shoot bits of scattered sculptures as we photograph pretty faces and asses. Because we are not some teen kids that just look, now we act – we photograph. And when my friend Butch decides to act, this is how serious he is: camera on a table, whistling and picturing – big nothing.

Basically we spend the whole day making fools of ourselves. And that is serious. Thought probably not as serious as the fact that being foolish is what we consider the basis of our friendship. Believe it or not he once even praised me to a guy I liked saying no girl is as big a fool as me. No wonder I am an eternal single.

In the mean time Butch reports that even from the point of view of the male toilette these men deserve..

Oh, friends – it is so easy to be stupid when you are in a group. At this point Carry Bradshaw, my indisputable idol, would ask herself: ‘Do we need friends to be stupid?’ Yes, Carry we do, but you and your friends.. something tells me you could cope very well even on your own. I am sorry people, but I still bare so much bitterness after the Sex – the move, two hours and half of my life ruined. And as you witness: I have better things to do!

Ratings:

The jury agreed to assign the Mr. Big prize to this guy.. (do I hear applause.. and some groans)

And the special prize for good intentions and obvious effort to our number One! (oh, isn't he as sweet as saccharine?)

Finally it was time to upgrade and we entered the museum to admire two hats and one hand. At least I admired them when I was not feeling like cutting of Butch's head for having taken me to yet another unnecessary museum… but than I came up with a fantastic idea: I took a mirror from my purse and at last found some sense and beauty.

As friends do, we finished our days together shopping - not any shopping but twin shopping. Something only best friends and fools know.

DAY EIGHTEEN of MySexLifeInParis

Day One With My Friend Butch

Butch and I go back a long time… a time when we were two young kids without job and education, but with lot of dreams. Years passed, we changed: I lost my teen kilos, he lost hair, we got bitter and believe it a proof of our maturity, though people still accuse us for being kids; our education was beautiful, but inappropriate as a premise for a job we want and the dreams.. yes they are the same.. as if to remind us daily that nothing really changed.

A part from OurSexLifeInParis what we want the most in the world is to work. But it is hard. You hear often successful people lament for not having collage education, people going back to school to get diploma in order to go ahead with their carrier. We mourn over having a diploma: if we could of just invested all those years starting at the bottom and than slowly building up just as every other ignorant person, if we just were not so skilled and intelligent in general what perspectives would open in front of us.

But, we are so God dam superior that you just have to live with it. And as a number one losers we pass time scheming new wining moves for the victory. For example it never happens to us not to be even invited for the job interview. To own the truth before failing we succeed: we make three to four interviews – with the human resources, with the department’s manager, with the financial manager and a phone call interview of we are sorry we don’t need your services, but we’ll have you in mind as soon as some vacancy opens in our cleaning and garbage department.

Butch recently made all these interviews in top magazines and top TV channels and it is decided that in shortage of any real work experience in his CV there will be one page of full description of all the interviews he made it to: '- No, I never worked as TV producer, but I made four interviews for the position of second assistant to the assistant of one very important TV producer. - So, you got the job? - No, but I went to four interviews.'

You are kindly invited to comment on the pros and cons of this strategy. Thanks. P.S. We are anyway going to do it.

When we are not dreaming about super great jobs we go to visit museums. This time it was the turn of the Museum of the embankment Branly. What can you expect from a museum that is named after its address? A bunch of objects looking the same, meaning the same: against the rain, for the rain, against the devil, for the good spirit.... So, it is a museum of the arts of primitive people. But they’ve also put things of not so primitive people. It is so difficult to decide who is primitive and who is not, so that at the end the definition of the museum is geographical: the museum of the extra European art.

Luckily the architecture is beautiful. As soon as we arrived we visited the restaurant at the open that looked great and also presented couple of interesting male subjects that we could not but admire, so that the actual visit of the place was continuously postponed for the later hour. I still remember one of the finest examples of the human male gender with whom we even entered in conversation, but that left just because Butch did not made it crystal clear that he is not my boyfriend. Later we went to the shop and bought him a silk scarf to underline the obvious and open the road to our mutual multiply conquests.

The thing that knocked us both at this museum was the most amazing theatre venue. I breathe hard and my tong tangles as I think of it. The following pictures will not really help you to
understand and feel it. You just have to believe us.



So, in this museums a part from the 1004884 thousand wood masks you can also see:

Smiley penises much more to the point and cuter than the Obelisks.

Grand Fishermen

Copt Ethiopian middle ages frescos that are something special in their kind.

The Arab theater of the shadows: this theatre practice has been taken from India and became very popular in the 16^th century Turkey with a repertoire featuring a new cast of characters. It was often used as a means of social and political satire.

In the evening we went to the ‘exotic’ area of Paris, visited some strange clubs, saw a lot of interesting things and it is a real shame that I forgot my camera at home and can’t share that experience with the rest of you.

DAY SEVENTEEN of MySexLifeInParis

Visit to the Museum of Decorative Arts

All the time I bitch about museums, but at the end I always turn back to them. In fact can you imagine how boring MySexLifeInParis would be if there were none of these experiences. And museums are not ‘dead places only about objects’, you also meet people in the museum: for example that chubby red faced guy you met at the entrance and you were relived to move on from is your company for the following 50 rooms. Unless of course you don’t slow down and continue the visit with the adorable gay couple that is clearly annoyed by your presence.

Some days I get up and think: what is the point of me visiting them anyway when I as an adopted Florentine know it all. If everything important in the last 1000 years of European art was invented in Florence, what is the point to go around and see less.

Well, you always see something new.

It is not like the first room of the museum will be about Florentine art.

And if it is, which is understandable and just, it can never be first 5 rooms!

Unless we speak about the museum of Decorative Arts in Paris.

From the center of Paris, from the palace of Louvre, we proudly present you – Florence!

In all these Florence rooms there was even some space for Giorgio Schiavone that is Juraj Culinovic that made a full picture. It all makes you feel so superior. In fact, the more inferior one in truth is the more you need and search for the proof of the opposite.
Beautiful Lombard woodwork – intarsia door of 15^th century aristocrat's cabinets from their study rooms that were treasuring various scientific and technical gadgets of the time.
Beautiful girl in the mirror admiring fine surfaces of the objects and listening to the audio guide in French, admiring fine sounds of that mysteries language.
The way Napoleon liked his carpet, chair and tapestry.
And his dishes...

A rococo commode… you never know whether to like it or hate it. It is in the domain of your horoscope.

Rococo people liked Chinese people and everything Oriental and Florental and Forestall.

Two beautiful peaces from the twenties:

To finish the day a revitalizing freshly squashed juice of apple, orange and kiwi for the modest price of 7 euros. But, the idea is really good: they have all sorts of fruits and a very powerful mixer so that on the spot they produce these different juices absolutely fresh, tasty and healthy.

DAY SIXTEEN of MySexLifeInParis

SALES: The FEAST Of GOODS
In the ancient times when there was Eastern and Western Europe I got the luck to be born in the East. There were times, especially when watching Beverly Hills 90129 that I would ask myself most seriously why didn’t I have the luck to be born Brenda and at sixteen drive to my fancy high school and kiss with Dylan all day. My reason would than consul me with the usual: ‘At least you are not born in the Middle East, at least there is no war.’

In 1991 my reasoning was forced to turn down to the more modest: ‘There is a war, but at least you are alive.’ I so much appreciated being alive that I did not appreciate anymore cloths, boyfriends, music.. anything that was less serious than dead serious. I know you would of loved to have met me in that period - such a fun teenager I was.

Took me ten years to start seriously shopping again: ‘What is the point when anyway we are going to die?’ But, by this day I suppose I became a serious and respectful shopper again. Lets be honest: in our cities there is not so much more to do. So, I shop. I go out on a street, I walk around and as usual I am in search of the sense of the life (or at least of MySexLifeInParis) but what I get is a Chinese pendent!

I don’t think I could ever be a good salesman – and not just because I would not let people buy things that don’t suit them, but mostly because however cute the T shirt or a bag is it is just a thing.. and I don’t believe even in important things like Justice and Communism let alone in a T shirt. But there are people that do – the salesmen. I see it every day.. the most junk, unusable, unfashionable, ugly thing is sold with passion and belief. So, I suppose what they like and believe in is a profit, and I could believe in that too… but their ability to project the noble worship of profit to a junk useless ready to the garbage yet another key pendant is something in which they beat me by far. (Unless we are talking about the most junk useless ready to the garbage yet another pair of shoes – nobody beets me in that!)

Nota: The picture of this building is taken in the same street as the previous pictures of numerous shops like the one above. It was only by a chance that I understood that this was one of the first sites of the French Academy of Science, in which by the way was for the first time read Tartuffe.
But, unlike the shops you can’t enter here.
Unlike the shops I don’t know how much they believe in their ‘product’, but I know that they are not trying to sell it.

So, I passed by the historic site of the French Academy of Science and got myself a Chinese pendent.

I saw a stand up – one man show by Baptiste Lecaplain. It was not in a club, but in the smallest theatre I’ve been to: a venue of 40 seats. It was incredibly intimate and at the beginning I was afraid that such proximity (without beers) would make the public withdraw in themselves and then the most embarrassing thing would be to have the audience in this intimate position without any intimacy going on. But, Baptise thought very young, knows his deal and he started the show with the maximum of the interaction with the public directly asking for certain actions… that broke the ice and established relationship between us and him. Once we had that relationship he chilled out and let himself be. Throughout the show we laughed because his jokes are well crafted and because you can feel that he is goodhearted, clever and pleasant guy giving it all.

DAY FIFTEEN of MySexLifeInParis

I went to see a museum Nissim de Camondo today.

It is a mansion built in early 20^th century in 18^th century stile housing a nice collection of furniture and art of French 18^th century. The visit was interesting mainly for two reasons: to see from inside the rich man’s house of early 20^th century and for the amazing and touching story of the de Camondo family.

I would not recommend this house to those that search for the 18^th century architecture because the arrangement of the rooms and service areas is modern, but it is not bed to see the modern house from circa 1910., especially when you’ve spent years watching/living inside ‘You Rang, Milord?’ BBC house.

But the real people that lived in this house could also make great material for grand BBC stories. A Sephardic family that after the exile from Spain settled in Venice, latter in Istanbul, became the biggest bankers of Ottoman Empire, moved to Paris, became French and fought and died in First World War, extinguished in Auschwitz in the Second War War.
http://www.lesartsdecoratifs.fr/gb/04museecamondo/index.html

The ancestors: Nissim and Salmon de Camondo.. and French officer Nissim de Camando.

I spent a couple of hours in one fashion photo studio with no particular task rather than chatting with some three or four assistants during the shoot. And so it seems that in Paris it is difficult even to find a non paying job in fashion world – today on a shoot there were three or four non paid assistants: assistant to the video man, assistant to the stylist, second assistant to the photographer and an assistant to make up or hairstylist. And a Croatian model – Nika Senjak, the one in background getting the make up.

To finish the night - open mic in Paris. Next week it is my turn to stand up? The audience awaits, as you can see.