Sacré Septembre

On est déjà presque fin octobre? Je ne le crois pas! De toute façon, j'ai fait plein de choses pour commencer cette belle saison d'automne.

Le premier weekend du septembre, je suis allée à la plage pour la fête du travail. Malheuresement, j'ai dû travailler, mais j'ai eu la chance de profiter une dernière fois du soleil, de la chaleur de l'été, et des fruits de mer bien frais.

Le weekend prochain, je suis allée au festival du vin en Virginie. (Je ferai tout pour essayer du nouveau vin.) Il faisait beau, il y avait un petit vent, et il y avait beaucoup du vin! On y est resté toute la journée et on n'a même pas gouté la moitié du vin en vente...j'ai tout de suite compris pourquoi le festival déroule pendant 2 jours. 

Un vignoble avait 26 vins à gouter. J'avoue que la plupart de ses vins était dégoutant…vin à la cerise, vin à la fraise, vin à l'ananas, etc. Il y avait beaucoup de filles qui aimaient ça, mais à mon avis, ce varié du vin est trop sucrée et trop modifiée. 

Après quelques dégustations, j'ai noté qu'au sujet du vin rouge, la plupart des vignobles font que du Cabernet Sauvignon ou Cabernet Franc. En outre, il y avait plus du vin blanc que du vin rouge. Même avec le vin blanc, il manquait quelque chose. Soudain, j'ai compris qu'il n'y a pas du chêne dans le procès. Résultat: Il y a un certain manque du gout et du corps. Apres cette réalisation, j'ai demandé à chaque vendeur comment ils font...je me souviens que la plupart a répondu qu'ils laissent le vin veiller en acier inoxydable!

J'ai bien bu, mais bon, ce n'était pas comme le grand festival à Lyon. J'ai quand même acheté 6 bouteilles, 3 de Barboursville, 3 de Horton. 

Festival du vin en Virginie

Le weekend d'après je suis allée à Six Flags, le grand parc d'amusement. Il y avait une sortie avec mon boulot et on avait tout le parc le vendredi soir. J'ai fait chaque manège plusieurs fois. C'était le top du top! Je me sentais comme j'avais encore 6 ans. Il y avait un manège qui s'appelle Superman où tu es allongé. Puis, quand tu arrives au sommet, tout est renversé. C'est comme tu voles! Comment la coeur a battu!

Samedi soir, avec ma nouvelle colocataire, on est allée à Virgin Mobile Freefest. Le concert s'est passé à Columbia, Maryland où il y a un grand parc avec trois stages. Le problème? Il pleuvait toute la journée/nuit. Plutôt festival de la boue, je dirai. Tout le monde était bourré et en train de se tombait. Heureusement, on n'est pas tombé une seule fois. J'ai vu MGMT, Robin Thicke, The Avett Brothers, Pretty Lights, et Vampire Weekend. On était toute mouillée mais ça se faisait du bien d'aller entendre plein de musiciens dans une seule nuit! En plus, le concert était gratuit! Gagné!

Pretty Lights au "Freefest"

Le dernier weekend du septembre, je suis allée encore au événement du vin qui s'appelait Wine Riot! Par contre, cette fois l'endroit était plus petit et concentré. Apparemment, les vignobles vont partout aux États-Unis, une sorte de festival internant. J'ai parlé avec quelques vendeurs pour mieux comprendre le procès aux États-Unis…comment importer le vin d'ailleurs, comment avoir la licence de vendeur, comment les tarifs sont diffèrent selon l'état, etc. J'avoue que j'aimerais bien faire ça comme boulot.

J'ai rien acheté cette fois, mais j'ai noté le nom de deux vendeurs pour rechercher plus tard. Un à importer ses vins de l'Afrique du Sud. L'autre se trouve près du lac “du doigt” au New York. Après, on est mangé à la Brasserie Beck. J'ai commandé un steak-frites. Grace à mes années à Lyon, capitale de la bouffe française, je sais comment commander un bon steak. Plus du steak bien cuit pour moi!

Après, on est allée à la Nuit Blanche à Shaw, un endroit près de l'université Howard (historiquement pour les étudiants blacks). Il y avait trois étages d'artistes, DJs, et œuvres. J'ai trop aimé cette artiste du graffiti. Tout cela m'a inspiré à recommencer à peindre.

Artiste à la "Nuit Blanche"

Trop beau les drapeaux!

Salle de "Wine Riot" 

J'adore! Ce panneau m'a fait pensé à mon "Pépé Brouillette"

Dimanche, je suis allée au festival du livre au National Mall. J'ai entendu la grande écrivaine Joyce Carole Oates parler de son procès d'écrire, son nouveau livre, et ses inspirations. J'ai acheté deux livres, Midnight in Mexico et And The Mountains Echoed. J'ai pensé à attendre pour avoir mon livre signée par les auteurs, mais la queue pour Khaled Hosseini avait déjà 7 rangs. 

Festival du livres 2013

Joyce Carole Oates

Voilà, en bref, ce que j'ai fait ce dernier mois! Si vous souhaitez voir un quartier particulier ou que je vous faire découvrir un sujet américain qui n'est pas forcement rapporté en France, laissez-moi un commentaire.

Je pense à consolider tous mes photos, projets, et pensées sur un nouveau site web, mais pour l'instant n'hésitez pas de me suivre sur Instagram pour regarder quels plats je cuisine en ce moment! 

A plus dans le bus!

La petite pamplemousse

The (Jealous, Self-Conscious, Over-Thinking) Interestings

I still equate the return of chilly weather and the scent of bonfires with a new (school) year. The fact that I'm not going to class (as either a teacher or a student), has brought a mini-depression, if I must admit it. Just think for a minute. If you're fortunate enough to go to grade school, secondary school, and then, college, you've spent approximately 18 years adjusting to the routine, the carefully planed and themed lessons, the week-long breaks in late December and early spring, and the constant absorption of names, dates, equations, theories, and "facts." While in school, you're constantly reminded that you're preparing yourself for growing up, for living in the real world, for getting a real job and paying your bills on time; but, you never learn any of this from your homework, pop quizzes, or final exams. You never are told how an ordinary day only becomes what you make of it. You are instead told to follow the rules, connect the dots, and be on time or else your grade will drop or you'll get a detention slip. There are no specific tests or homework assignments on how to treat others, how to know the difference between what you're good at and what you should be doing, how to go from being entirely dependent on your parents to not at all, how to live your life without following others, how to control your jealousy, how to build self-confidence, or how to just be "yourself."

You grasp these concepts and understandings through time, experience, repeating mistakes over and over again, reading (a lot) of physical books, going to unfamiliar places without breaking out the GPS or map, and spending time alone (especially after spending an afternoon surrounded by friends, family, or peers). Why then, do I crave the classroom more now than ever before? Furthermore, do you? Could you care less? Do you recognize this feeling I'm attempting to describe or did you shout "Hallelujah!" upon receiving your diploma?

I recently finished the latest novel by Meg Wolitzer. I bookmarked one of those "Books to Read This Fall" lists, added The Interestings to my requested library holds, and finished its 480 pages four days later. I'm terrible at accidentally giving away the ending to anything, so I'll try to be as vague as possible. Essentially, Wolitzer explores Jules Jacobson's life, starting with those awkward, yet exciting teenage years. Throughout each chapter of Jules' life, Wolitzer fleshes out the ebb and flow of jealousy (rooted in each and every friendship), the feeling of insecurity that never seems to leave (no matter one's age), and the distinct, yet, often overlooked difference between nostalgia and reality. I can't attest to what's written about married life (with or without children), but I can affirm that Wolitzer pens the twentysomething years as a perfect mixture of confusion, transformation, and dedication.

When I was fourteen, I was given a journal. The cover is a shimmery gold with three, black Chinese characters; when read together, they translate to "Imagination." I decided this would be a different journal. I started writing down famous quotations, browsing the Internet for as long as I could before getting disconnected by an incoming phone call. Thoughts from Helen Keller and Benjamin Franklin fill the first few pages. I slowly moved away from stalking the unending pages of quotation websites and started to write down sections of books or poems that stuck with me, hit me in the gut, made me cry, made me laugh, made me stop in my tracks and reread a second, or even third time. Last night, I broke out my black pen for the first time in months, and added the following quotations from Wolitzer's book (in cursive, if you must know).

"This was a time of life, she understood, in which you might not know what you were, but that was all right. (...) The time period between the ages of, roughly 20 & 30, was often amazingly fertile. Great work might get done during this ten-year slice of time. Just out of college, they were gearing up, ambitious, not in a calculating way, but simply eager, not yet tired" (59).

This paragraph, if we're talking baseball, is a grand slam. It explores a trio of thoughts one must possess in order to pass the twentysomethings course in life (or so I believe after living through the first five years). First, you know and accept the fact that you don't know who you are or what you're doing. Second, you are still growing. (Well, mentally... Physically, I stopped growing at 16). Third, you are excited and ready (in your mind) for what's to come.

"Instead, it took nearly two months, a period during which they each performed their separate life tasks in seeming preparation for nothing, but which turned out to be preparation for so much" (70).

I keep telling myself that the past year and a half is leading me somewhere, preparing me for a huge life moment or a place I don't know even exists yet, but will. As much as I rant to peers and friends, I'd like to highlight the fact that you should always appreciate the mundane lifestyle while you have it.

"And Yvonne said, 'We are all here on this earth for only one go around. And everyone thinks their purpose is to find their passion. But perhaps our purpose is also to find out what other people need" (220).

Yvonne's words sting, but Jules needed to hear them to take the leap out of acting and into psychology. Sometimes interests and hobbies don't turn into anything more than just that. I've already figured that out with belly dancing. Now, the hard part, is figuring out what people need from me.

"Everyone tended to believe everything was their fault;' maybe it was just hard to imagine, when you were still fairly young, that there were some things in the world that were not just about you" (275).

I still have not learned to only say "I'm sorry" when the result of an action is entirely my fault. I'm working on it (and trying to remember it's not about me!)

"Manny shook his head and said, 'Oh, come on. You're telling me that because of the Internet, and the availability of everyone, every whim, every tool, suddenly everyone's an artist? But here's the thing; If everyone's an artist, then none is' " (380).

Amen, Manny, A-holy of holiest-men.

If you find yourself doubting your life, your interests, your relationships, you mistakes and your successes, I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy of The Interestings. My ambition battery is recharged and ready to go as a result of following Jules through life. For an extra bonus, or in case you simply want musical inspiration as well, check out this lovely artist, Jessie Ware.

Out and over to ponder life a bit longer over a cup of Moroccan mint tea,

La petite pamplemousse

Fair & Lovely: What's in a Color?

Roughly two weeks ago, Nina Davuluri, Miss New York, won the 87th Miss America competition. If you didn't watch it live, you had to have heard about the ridiculous outcry on Twitter. Buzzfeed does a wonderful job highlighting some of the most colorful tweets that surfaced right after the announcement. Reading through some of these, I was shocked, disgusted, and embarrassed. Are people really that ignorant to make such commentary? Or, do they just want to be the first to start a new wave of rant tweets in hopes of gaining new followers on this social media platform? Do they refuse to open themselves up to the people around them? Or, is the harsh reality of our country's divided history so deeply branded into our (thick) skulls that we will never succeed in our battle against racial and religious stereotypes? Or further, are there simply too many people with an excessive amount of free time on their hands that they decide to start petty fights behind their mobile phones, computers, and tablets just to see what happens?*

As a kid, did you ever focus on or care about the color of the people around you? So, why and when exactly do people become so obsessed with skin color? More importantly, will we ever move away from this obsession or is it ultimately a pre-written key player, a state of mind passed down from generation to generation, in each and every history chapter, past, present, and future?

The past few weeks I've been concentrating my personal reading on race relations in the news. After Duvulari was crowned, I thought back to my undergraduate degree, where I focused on South Asian literature. I remember learning about the caste system and how it still exists in today's (modern - well, maybe in terms of technology) world. I discovered interesting skin creams, like Fair & Lovely, which claim to whiten a woman, even down there. Crazy, right? In the same article, one interviewee connected the hype of being lighter skinned back to British rule, when donning parasols and staying indoors was considered "la mode." Others blamed the obsession on the invasion of American retail lines.

Ironically, I find that here in the USA, TV series like Jersey Shore and Real Housewives, promote more and more white Americans to become obsessed with obtaining the perfect tan, rather than embracing their color as well. Why can't we all embrace our differences and learn to be comfortable in our own skin?

I guess, all I really want to know is, where did all the good, accepting, open-minded people go?

La petite pamplemousse

**If you aren't already a fan of Stromae, I highly suggest going on Spotify to listen to his latest song, a modern remix of the infamous Carmen. Les paroles sont ici and decent English translations are available if you can't read the French.