FRENCH WORD-A-DAY

 
 At L'éléphant du Nil (Marais, Metro St. Paul) I want to write wildly, tattooing words beneath the skin of sensibility until they tickle and touch.

Reading / Book-signing
I have told you about my amazing writing teacher, Sheila Kohler... and now some good news for those of you in Kansas... Sheila will be in Wichita, for a reading on July 7th at Watermark Books (7 p.m.). Do not miss her for the world. I am sure glad I didn't!

sieste (see est) noun, feminine

    : an afternoon nap, siesta

synonyms: un roupillon, un somme = nap,  une méridienne

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 A Day in a French Life... by Kristin Espinasse

"Salut marmotte," Jean-Marc says, bounding through bedroom. Judging from the brightness of the light which filters in through the slats in the metal shutters, I can tell the time in French: début de l'après-midi. 

"Tu dors toujours?" my husband questions, breezing by me.  

As with hunger and eating, I feel the need to explain my sleeping. But if I am "une marmotte" when I sleep, does this make me une cochonne when I eat? He might say it but he doesn't, because this is not how he thinks. It is how I think. We think differently. (I always think I am the guilty party.)

It is half past three in the après-midi and I am curled up in bed, covered, despite the heat, with a robe and a sheet. I like the gown's reassuring softness and am willing to sweat for it. Surrounding me like a halo are books written by the writers at the conference I've just attended:  "The Children of Pithiviers,"  "Kitchen Chinese," "Moonlight in Odessa," "Sorbonne Confidential," "Slave Hunter: One Man's Global Quest to Free Victims of Human Trafficking" and "Design Flaws of the Human Condition."

The human condition...

"Je suis très fatiguée," I explain, blaming the intensive workshop.

Jean-Marc walks back across the room, causing each plank of wood to cry out the moment he lifts his foot. With each creak, the delicious depths of sleep retreat until I reach the sober surface of sommeil. I am now wide wake.

Barefooted and clad only in swim trunks (it is too hot for clothing), my busy-bodied better half is mumbling something about cards... cartes de visite. He had collected a stack of them from the grenache symposium last week. Have I seen them anywhere? 

A grape symposium? The idea tickles me and I wonder whether some take grapes too seriously? Then why not give serious attention to siesting? Why not a catnap conference? Why not now?

And now, with lightness, in good conscience, and in peace, I can return to the guilty pleasure of sleep, when out the door my husbands walks, creak, creak, creak.

  

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French Vocabulary

Salut, marmotte = Hello, marmot (a marmot is a furry rodent that hibernates)
le début de l'après-midi = beginning of the afternoon
Tu dors toujours? = Are you still sleeping?
un cochon, une cochonne = pig
Je suis très fatiguée = I am very tired 
le sommeil = sleep
la carte de visite = business card

 
Along Rue Saint Dominique, in the 7th (a.k.a. "Little America")

I Heart ParisShopper: made of recycled material

Blogger Espinasse has taken a step backward in the evolution of media by converting selected contents of her Web log into a book. Beginning students of conversational French will profit from many of these brief entries, and supplemental tables of expressions go far to demystify French idioms for anyone wishing to speak and write more fluent French. —Booklist

 Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Spoken French

Got Nintendo? Playing My French Coach for 15 to 20 minutes a day is all you need to become fluent in French

 
 Flowers from Paris...

Paris apartment for rent. St Sulpice.
215 euros per night (min.  3 night rental)
                       Click here for more photos 

 

un entretien (ontr-tee-en)

        1) an interview 

       2) management/service (a car check-up, etc...)

(Today's word is not in theme with the story.... more later...)
 

A Day in a French Life... by Kristin Espinasse

"Born-Again Writer"

I wanted to send you some flowers from Paris and let you know that all is well. My writing class ended this morning, hélas! If I take only one writing class in my life... well then I have been lucky enough to have taken this one, taught by a living muse: Sheila Kohler. 

Among the countless motivational morsels, technical tips, and amazing astuces, was this one, the big one, the one that I have needed all my writing life: RISK.

(A note to Mama Jules: you will excuse me for needing to learn this lesson from another, never mind you have told me to jump off the writing cliff time and again. It has taken the heat wave of Paris to warm these cold feet. And now, as I stand at the edge of the falaise, it is a matter of right place, right time, right frame of mind. The fall is another matter (and we will worry about that "on the next page"). 

When next I return to the keyboard, I shall hope to risk a little... to rattle the repenting writer within and in so doing begin again: a newborn writer wielding a courageous pen. 

***

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