Geraldine story:
A bit challenging to try and get all these words together in a narrative that should make sense, but I’ll try, by relating the visit I made last week to Pinault’s Collection in the « Bourse de Commerce » in Paris.
With my Afro-American friend, Kathleen, who had a pass which helped us avoiding quite a long queue, we decided to just get a first random glance, as we had been told that there is a lot to be seen.
As you enter this round building that was, at a time, a granary -La Halle aux grains- your eyes are immediately cought by the height and the light of the glass and iron dome and then, as they look down, they encounter a whole statuary, with this huge replica of « L’enlèvement des Sabines » by Giambologna sculpted in the 1580’s. Around this central piece, delimitated by a concrete wall, a number of items are displayed, such as a couple of African chairs, a plastic chair etc. When you are wandering around these objects, some of them ,have very small flames to them and then, you understand that the sculptures are in wax and then you find out that they are made to last the duration of the exhibition ! It took Kathleen and I a while to discover this, morons we were !
On the outside of the concrete cylinder stands a circular corridor with 24 showcases that had been erected in the Bourse de Commerce since 1889. Various objects are displayed in each one, which are a pure « sign » with a symbolic value : there’s a suspended damaged moped or a Walt Disney Production sign, or a Picasso blue period sculpture, etc…
And from there, you step into different galeries with various artists. We immediately stepped into Gallery nr.2, dedicated to David Hammons, an Afro-American artist, reporting his Black ethnic origin. The artist gathers all types of rough materials in the street and by their assemblage, makes these final objects : for example, there is a baskett-ball hoop made of cristal, lamps, metal hardware, sandpaper etc … When you discover that the artist was born and brought up in Harlem, this « fantastic » and very kitsch object becomes fully significant. Another very relevant piece of his art is this 2 headed african statue, made of pieces of wood, nails, cardboard, a small mirror in the stomach, painted in orange, symbol of incarceration in the US : we were told that this is the colour of the women’s uniforms when in jail.
Another interesting piece of art is made of very thin branches, probably from some kind of sapling that are assembled to make 5 musical lines on which little chips of broken discs are attached, representing the notes and make a musical line probably dedicated to jazz, here again one of the artists favourite subjects.
We then went down to level -2 to the Auditorium where we were introduced to Tarek Atoui’s electroacoustic composition « The Ground » : if you sit in the Auditorium you hear modern electronic effects from sounds of mineral or vegetal objects very poetically intertwined. After just sitting there in the darkened auditorium for a while, you can see in the next room the objects that make the music and the way they are assembled. Amazing ! It certainly looked like one of those serendipity effects in sound research.
Then, we wondered around the top lanes of the rotonde looking at the ceiling painted with ports from different parts of the world from which, apparently, the grain or goods were shipped in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Some you could recognize : Canada, Russia, France, Caraïbs… others you could more or less imagine where they were from. The glass dome provided the light, and you could see the candles burning in the top of the « Enlèvement des Sabines », which you couldn’t guess from the ground level. I stood for quite a while at different spots looking up and down, dreaming, going back to the old times, being pulled into modernity at the same time and that feeling was just tremendously fullfilling.
Then Kathleen, who is a very pragmatic person, living in Paris and always looking for new places to invite her friends, took us up to the top floor to discover the restaurant – tea-room and find out about menus and prices. She likes sweet taste, like most vegetarians and all these cakes and deserts made me think I would probably catch a toothache if I absorbed too many. Nevertheless, because of Covid, in order to keep distances, you had to reserve your table ! End of story !
And I must admit I wasn’t that interested, but the view over Paris is just wonderful, with St Eustache church right near, Beaubourg in the distance and between these two edifices, the Tour St Jacques, the Hôtel de Ville, the just recently reopened « Samaritaine » and in the far, the Eiffel Tower.
All I know, is that I shall certainly go back to this place where there is so much to discover and, at the same time, so many different concepts organized in the one same place.
Story contribution by Annemarie
serendipity, moron, toothache, black, sapling
It was over 30°c when they arrived at the tiny house and it was indeed a tiny house hidden down a path of mature silver birches reaching far up Into the skies, the wind soughing through the leaves. Pushing aside elderflower blossom and spotted laurel a black door appeared, nestled in the greenery. Inside there were two tiny bunk beds, a small table and chairs and a fridge with 2 bottles of wine and 8 tins of beer and two small appetising cakes. The only way they could sleep in those beds was to bend their bodies in half!
“We'll work something out,” said the man. '”After all it's probably too hot to sleep in tiny beds in a tiny cabin with tiny windows. We could always sleep under the stars. But first of all I’ll need some painkillers; my tooth has been agony all the way from France. I think I'll wash them down with a beer. You want some wine? Red or white? Very generous with the drinks, aren't they?” he said to his wife.
They sat down on two deckchairs beside a small patch of rhubarb, and drank in the warm sun and the now warm beer and wine; then they ate the cakes.
“I can’t quite decide the flavour of these cakes. In fact I haven't tasted anything quite like it before,” munched the wife.
Tired after the 8 hour journey eyelids began to flutter, two heads slumped sideways and very soon the couple were fast asleep, one of them gently snoring. After a while the woman suddenly awoke with a start, feeling great blobs of rain bombarding her. She shook her husband awake.
“Quickly, wake up it's raining; we need to shelter.”
They struggled from the deckchairs, ran and stood under some enormous leaves, the raining pattering and splattering above . When they looked up the sun was still shining and the leaves were a luminous lime green roof hovering over them and beyond they glimpsed a brightly coloured rainbow.
“That must be some kind of Alice in Wonderland drink we've had . We've completely shrunk; these spiky stems reach way above our heads and the leaves must be at least a metre across,” said the man. “Look there's the owner of the place and he's coming this way.”
Henk, the Dutch owner, hastened along the path, his feet slapping and splashing in the puddles and he joined the couple under the enormous leaves.
“Gosh, he's shrunk as well!” whispered the wife to her husband.
“How are you doing? I saw you hiding from the rain, do you need any help” he asked in perfect but charmingly accented English. He turned to the husband under the giant parasol of leaves where now only odd drops of rain plopped onto them and they could see the shadow of the splashes through the almost transparent emerald leaves. “You look very uncomfortable - is something wrong?”
“Well, now you ask, I would like to find a dentist; I have the most terrible toothache.”
‘Serendipity!” exclaimed Henk “ that's my profession! Yes I’m a dentist “ ( His English really was excellent!)
“ Let's see what I can do”. And hurried back to his house and returned with a piece of strong, thin cord. He tied one end around the man's tooth and then he bent a small sapling before tying the other end to the little tree. “1,2,3..” and without warning he let go of the sapling, which sprang back whisking the man's tooth on the end of the cord, drops of blood spitting against the verdant leaves.
“Now go inside my house and rinse your mouth and I will pack it out with something.”
“Can I just ask you one thing - why are we so small suddenly,“ the husband burbled through his bleeding mouth.
“We must be morons! “ laughed the wife, “We are in Holland. It was the cakes; they were cannabis cakes; we've been hallucinating!”
The trio stepped out from beneath the rhubarb patch but on looking back it was no hallucination. They really were giant rhubarb leaves.
“No, no” said Henk “those are my gunnera plants and if you had gone a little further in you would have stepped into a shallow pond. Thirty two years I have been growing the plants, now as high and wide as a room!”
“And the cakes?” asked the wife .
“Yes, they are cannabis cakes. This is Holland and I have many guests who return for the cakes and I thought your name was familiar when you booked so I prepared some for you,” replied Henk.”I did not know that Williams was such a common name and that this was your first visit here.”
Sarah's story
Colour
Dippy was very absorbed, colouring with painstaking effort the pictures in her book. She chose with care from the 24 colours in the pack of markers her mama had just bought her. Her friend Cilia, who was a year older and already in school, had told her that school was mostly about colouring. She would like that. Only Cilia had said they didn’t have markers, only crayons. Dippy didn’t know about crayons because her mama had always bought her markers. So she asked what they were, and why. Cilia had stolen one from school, it was red, and she started to draw on Dippy’s shorts, which were yellow.
“Stop that!” she said. Her mama was very definite about not getting marks on her clothes. But Cilia only laughed and said it didn’t show, see? and that that was why they used them at school. Then she had tried the crayon on one of the flowers in the book, and it came out not bright at all. That had rather dampened Dippy’s enthusiasm about school.
She heard the grownups talking about colour. There were some men there she didn’t know, and they seemed very upset about something. One of the women was very excited too. She had a voice that screeched like a toothache. But oh, yes, Dippy knew about colour. She knew that colour was important! Birds of green and yellow and blue. Flowers of red and pink and orange.
With only half of her mind listening to the grown-ups, she heard one of them say something about “black men” and white men”. Did such things exist? She thought about what white men could look like and remembered a book she had about a snowman. They must be like that. Fat, very fat, with black eyes and orange noses and colourless skin. They wouldn’t be much fun to colour, almost nothing to do. That’s why there was no white marker. Then she wondered about black men and decided to draw one. She had only birds and flowers in her colouring book, because that was what she liked best. But there was a blank page at the end of the book, so she chose the black marker and began.
She drew the man: head, torso, arms, legs, and coloured them all in. But when she wanted to draw in the features, she couldn’t. Nothing showed on the black. She was aghast. Black people must have no eyes. Or noses or mouths. They must be very strange indeed. Poor black people!
But she was tired of colouring now and wanted to go outside, to skip and run. She skipped and ran all the way down the road, to a little sapling grove she knew, where it was green and cool inside. Her special place, far enough from the last houses so she could think it was her own world.
In the grove there were flowers, wild flowers in between the trees. Every month there were different ones. It must be God put them there for her. This time they were blue. Then she heard a man’s voice behind her. She turned and he was coming towards her. He had a strange, different look, and did not look friendly either. She gathered up her flowers and prepared to run.
“Hey you. Don’t run away from me. I just wanna know something.”
So she stopped. “What you wanta know?” she asked.
“You just tell me where the black community live.”
“Black community?”
“Yeah. Where the black people live.”
“I don’ know!” She was amazed. So there were black people around here? She would ask her mama, and turned as if to go.
But the man lunged towards her, and that gave her wings. She ran, out onto the road as if the devil were after her. A car screeched to a halt and she heard an angry shout. Ah! It was Bubba, her big brother and he was yelling at her.
“What you doin’ out here on the road? You spose to be home for lunch. And prackly gettin’ yo’self killed!” But he opened the door for her and she climbed in. She shot a look backward and saw the man retreating back into the woods.
“Hey, Bubba,” she said, “ where de black community live?”
“Where de what?”
“De black people.”
He threw back his head and laughed fit to kill.
“You’s a moron!” he spluttered. “Dat’s a good one!” And he went on laughing. But then he sobered and said, “What wuz you runnin’ from?”
She told him a man was trying to catch her.
“Was he a white man?” he asked.
“Oh, no!” The image of the snow man flashed before her mind’s eye. “Sorta pinkish. But his neck was red.” Her brother looked very put out.
At home her mama didn’t scold her for being late. That was a good thing. So she thought it was a good time to ask her question.
“Mama, where de black people live?”
Her mama turned and stared, a little laugh at the corners of her mouth. “’Why dat’s us, din’t you know?”
“Us? But we not black people, we’s just folks!”
“We’s black folks.”
“No,” she insisted. That was all wrong. She looked at her arms. “I not black. I’s yellow. And Bubba, he … coffee-colored.” She pictured her dad. “Papa he sorta chocolate-coloured.”
“And me?”
“You, Mama? You’s a cream colour. You’s de prettiest mama I know. And Papa,” she added, to make no favourites, “he de handsomest daddy dey is.”
“Ah, Serendipity,” sighed her mother. “you got a lot to learn. If only people could think like you. But dat ain’t de way de world is made.”
Paula's story
Laura stood on the sidewalk in her bright pink work apron, staring up at the name of her restaurant — HER restaurant — painted in a beautiful script above the doors of the building. She had ordered black paint, but the artisan whom she hired for the job had arrived with navy. And although at the time, she had thought, what a moron, he persuaded her to let him work, and if she didn’t approve of the finished product, he would redo it. She had realized almost immediately that he was right: the blue letters stood out beautifully against the warm, bright gold of the painted brick façade. Quite French Provincial, she thought now. Perfect.
After years of trudging from restaurant kitchen to restaurant kitchen across Manhattan, her knives neatly tied up in their cloth sleeves, tucked under her arm, she had finally been able to make her dream come true. Her own restaurant. What amazing luck to find this small building, just a few streets from her apartment, shortly after the death of her beloved uncle left her with an inheritance large enough for a down payment. There was even enough money to furnish the place, in a minimalist fashion, and only 12 tables, but it was a start. Today was the big day: she would open her doors, offering a modest lunch menu. It was October in New York, and the day had dawned perfectly, with an azure sky and temperatures that barely whispered of the winter to come.
Meanwhile, a few blocks away, 28-year-old Eliza was ensconced in the reclining chair of her dentist’s office. Seven months after the car accident that shattered her jaw and broke almost all of her teeth, she was being fitted with the dentures that would surely rule her life for the rest of her days. Her dentist was, even now, as he worked, cautioning her that she must eat only soft foods for the next several weeks until her mouth and jaw adjusted to the foreign objects. Her mother had thoughtfully bought her a very expensive blender, which was sitting on the kitchen counter of her apartment, waiting to be put to use. Puréed foods and milkshakes, Eliza thought. That’s my life for a while. “Look on the bright side,” her dentist said. “Never again will you have a toothache!” Great, Eliza thought. Who really wants their dentist to crack jokes at a time like this?
When she finally was released, her jaw aching and her back stiff, she realized she was hungry. Hungry for what, exactly, she wondered wryly. It’s not like I have many choices. As she hurried down the sidewalk, she stopped suddenly in front of the former Vietnamese place where she had ordered so many takeout dinners over the years. It had been transformed, into a sunny yellow building with sparkling new floor-to-ceiling windows, and a row of tiny café tables in front. Small maple saplings
sprouted from dark green wooden planters between the tables.
A woman in a bright pink apron stood in the doorway with a welcoming smile and a stick of chalk in her hand. Then Eliza spied the chalkboard propped against the door advertising today’s lunch special: a trio of soups. What luck, she thought gratefully. She looked up to see the name of the restaurant, painted in a beautiful navy script against a gold background, and she smiled: Serendipity.
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Jackie contribution
A serendipitous moment
I was dubious about him from the start. Leaning into the door like a young SAPLING sprouting out with spots and boils on his forehead. I have a terrible TOOTHACHE he said stumbling into the shop – showing me his BLACK gums while licking an ice cream and dripping vanilla all over my clean floor I painstakingly wash and disinfect every morning. I reminded him that the dentist was a few doors down the street.
He fingered the clothes on the racks and undid the scarves trying them on this way and that – put them round his scrawny neck and screwed them up into a ball. Flinging them back on the table like a MORON with no manners. He reeked of cheap perfume that followed behind him like a sick dog with tail between his legs. His raincoat looked like it had been dragged through a ditch and the shoes if you can call them that – had clearly seen better days.
How much is this? How much is that? Questioning the quality and whereabouts of fabrication.
I reminded him to wear a mask not just over his mouth but cover his nose as well , spray his hands with the disinfectant gel … sounding like a mother scolding her three year old. He didn’t pay attention just continued round the shop and I concluded that he had to be got rid of quickly. I opened the door stood by it and said clearly that he should have a nice day – trying to usher him out – I’d like to try this he said holding up a man’s shirt – oh dear I dreaded the state of my changing room after he’d been in it. Now I need something for my girlfriend, picking up several dresses – blue, green and red,
I began to panic thinking he was going to walk out of the shop with all my stock without paying.
Well I’ll take all this, he said piling loads of shirts, scarves and dresses onto the counter and pulling out a Gold Platinum credit card. The transaction went through - a truly SERENDIPITIOUS moment – it made my day and even my week ! and taught me a lesson. Never judge a person on appearances alone.
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