Women like silent men. They think they’re listening.
~Marcel Achard
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Category Archives: Art
The Nature of Fire
“Angels are Overrated
I don’t want to make love to an Angel.
I don’t want someone who’s perfect beyond belief. Unblemished in any way. Idealized within an inch of his life.
I know that’s what love songs and the television shows and the movies and the romance novels tell me to want. They sell perfection. They tout variations of an airbrushed, asexual ideal as the sexiest thing on earth.
God, that’s boring. [...]”
Extract from The Nature of Fire
Mes Cheris, please join me in welcoming another women who found and embraced her inner French-ness. Though actually a New Yorker through and through, Stacy China epitomizes the very qualities we hold dear and define as intrinsically and exquisitely French. What qualities are those you wonder? Well let me tell you a few words about this special woman before we turn to her and listen to what she has to say.
Stacy started out her career as a newswriter – nothing is taboo from politics to sports but it is what she does in her spare time that really distinguishes Stacy. A sensualist by choice and action she is an autodidact in all matters relating to coffee, tea, chocolate and fine lingerie. She has travelled the world, is an avid reader… and writer. She is the author of some romantic and some very “osé” essays in The Nature of Fire … so let’s hear from Stacy herself:
SIF: What do you do and how did you end up doing it?
I bring different experiences to people. Sometimes this occurs through my writing, sometimes through my speaking. Sometimes it happens when I stop speaking and just participate silently. As a child, I wanted to be a newspaper columnist — Jimmy Breslin at the New York Daily News was my role model. I liked him best because when you finished reading one of his columns, you felt something. Anger, sadness, a sense of justice being (or not being) served…but you felt something. I knew it was different from a straight news story. Unwittingly, I’ve brought this desire into my professional and personal life, it seems. Although I can write them very well, I don’t do well as the straight news story. I’m the one who wants to make you feel.
SIF: Where do you get your inspiration?
From books, art, architecture, music, fine foods (coffee, tea, and chocolate being my favorites), football, travel, film, and haute couture. And really interesting people.
SIF: What does your typical week look like?
Lots of yoga (at least six classes per week), lots of reading, taking time to sample a new coffee or pastry at a place I’ve never been to before, an inordinate amount of thinking (probably to make up for all the time I can’t think during yoga), some writing.
SIF: What (or who) would you like to be/do when you “grow up”?
I’m starting to realize that I’m already grown up — shocking! So all I can strive for is to be a clearer, more distilled version of myself. Think espresso.
SIF: Do you have something new in store for us?
Yes…but I can’t talk about it yet. It’ll be wily and feminine, though. And lots of fun.
SIF: Is there something else you would like to tell the SIF readers?
Yes, lovelies — be yourselves! ALL of yourselves. Don’t bother to categorize and compartmentalize your physical self from your cerebral self from your emotional self from your spiritual self…it’s all connected. It’s all you. Encourage them to all get along. Listen when one of them objects to whatever you’re doing — she’s likely doing so for a good reason. The boldest thing we can do is live as holistic creatures. Be bold.
Chers Frenchies – I invite you to read Stacy’s book, The Nature of Fire, a series of 19 essays that delve into issues of “sacred satisfaction”… I hope that aroused your interest already…
A bientot mes cheris, enjoy vos grandes vacances.
~ Shéhérazade
The NEW F-Word…
In 1889, a number of Cambridge students decided to start a periodical discussing student politics and literary efforts, they called it “The Granta”. While Cambridge still has such a periodical (now called River Cam), “The Granta”, turned into “Granta” and in 1979 following a financial crisis it reinvented itself as a literary magazine that states its mission is to convey ”the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story’s supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make real”.
I first became aware of Granta very recently when I fell upon their 115th issue:
The F-Word. Non mes amis, it is not a four letter word, I was just as surprised as you to learn it actually contained 8 letters. This chers Frenchies is one of the most amazing looks into the female condition in the 20th and 21st Centuries, not from a preaching place, not from a theoretical point of view but rather by diving into the lives and intimate feelings of women of all walks of life, in different countries and situations, this is the most touching and in touch review I have fallen upon in a long time.
Chers Frenchies, if you are wary of another dissertation about feminism, this is not it (sure there are some articles of that type too) but here is a collection of stories, one more beautiful than the other, some painful or pathertic, others heroic, always simply women living their lives.
Whether looking at 230 women in the French Resistance who were caught by the Nazis and sent to Birkenau – how they lived and of the 52 who survived the concentration camp or looking at a male transvestite in India who, when he turns into a woman, is suddenly made conscious of the position of woman in society, alternatively looking at the sexuality of young girls in Africa, the stories are told sometimes as fiction others as documentaries always in a truthful and compassionate tone.
This is not a feminist book as such, in fact while it delves into the problems Feminism has had to tackle it also points to some of the problems with Feminism itself. This book contains beautifully written fiction intertwined with essays and documentaries, giving each reader the freedom to focus on the texts that inspire her most.
Four Women, One Revolution from Granta magazine on Vimeo.
The Observer wrote about Granta: “In its blend of memoirs and photojournalism, and in its championing of contemporary realist fiction, Granta has its face pressed firmly against the window, determined to witness the world.’
The F-Word is nothing if not a long and profound look through that window. Each one of us usually only has his or her narrow perspective, F-Word points a flashlight upon the globe, bringing new perspectives into our line of sight.
Open your eyes, look through that window and you may be surprised by some of those stories and perspectives that you had never even thought about. You do not need to be a feminist or even approve of it, to enjoy some of the stories perhaps, just learn about people who gave their lives for our freedom, or enjoy a good piece of writing.
Bonne Lecture,
~ Sheherazade.
Buy Granta: http://www.granta.com/Shop
About the Granta Sex issue: http://www.sheisfrench.com/reading-granta/romance/
Proper Diner Invitation by Robert Capa
If this worked for Ingrid Bergman. It works for me!
Reading about the fabulous and fascinating love life of Ingrid Bergman in the Figaro Madame (easily translated on google). Her affair with Robert Capa, the war photographer happened when she was still married with husband #2 or was it with husband #3 ? Anyway who’s counting! She was loved more than most women can even dream of but I am convinced that this is because she loved more than most women dare to….
~ Mes cheries, don’t heistate to love, Love, LOVE!
http://madame.lefigaro.fr/celebrites/cest-ta-joie-que-jaime-240711-168974
Taped on her the door of her suite at the Ritz, invited the famed actress.
“Subject: dinner.
Concerns: Miss Ingrid Bergman.
1. This is a community effort. The community includes Bob Capa and IrwinShaw.
2. We send you the draft of flowers along with this note in which we invite you to dinner tonight, but after consultation, we realized that we were able to pay either the flowers or dinner, but not both. We put it up for vote and dinner has won by just a little.
3. It was suggested that if the dinner does not interest you, flowers could be sent to you. But on this point, no decision has yet been taken.
4. Besides flowers, we have a bunch of dubious quality.
5. If we write more, we leave nothing to the conversation, as in charm our resources are limited.
6. We will pick you up at 6 am 15.
7. We do not sleep.
Signed: Worried. ”
“Sujet : dîner.
Concerne : Miss Ingrid Bergman.
1. Il s’agit d’un effort communautaire. La communauté comprend Bob Capa et Irwin Shaw. 2. Nous avions le projet de vous envoyer des fleurs en même temps que ce billet par lequel nous vous invitons à dîner ce soir même, mais après consultation, nous nous sommes aperçus qu’il nous était possible de payer soit les fleurs soit le dîner, mais pas les deux. Nous avons mis la question aux voix et le dîner l’a emporté de peu.
3. Il a été suggéré que si le dîner ne vous intéressait pas, des fleurs pouvaient vous être envoyées. Mais sur ce point, aucune décision n’a encore été prise.
4. Outre des fleurs, nous avons un tas de qualités douteuses.
5. Si nous en écrivons davantage, il ne nous restera rien pour la conversation, car en matière de charme nos ressources sont limitées.
6. Nous passerons vous prendre à 6 h 15. 7. Nous ne dormons pas.
Signé : Inquiets. »
~She
Manly Virtues
If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
The most beautiful people
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Photo by Robert Mapplethorp
Reading about Cleopatra in National Geographic
Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt — National Geographic.
-In the memorable phrase of critic Harold Bloom, she was the “world’s first celebrity.” If history is a stage, no actress was ever so versatile: royal daughter, royal mother, royal sister. Cleopatra is an inexhaustible muse. To a recent best-selling biography add—from 1540 to 1905—five ballets, 45 operas, and 77 plays.