Later than most I know, especially for having signed up here near the beginning. I finally got some pictures of things here in Aix-en-Provence, France where I've been living for the last 3 months.

Here's Mont Sante-Victoire, the mountain that is mostly famous for Cezanne having painted it nearly 100 times. I've climbed it twice, and hopefully the next time I'll get a picture from the top to post here. A truly beautiful view...you can see roman acqueducts and small French towns dotting the landscape for kilometres around.





that second one is a view from about halfway up.

Here's one of the train stations here, the large Gare St. Charles in Marseille. Just such a typical French image, the roof of the gare.



And lastly, Cezanne's workshop, just to the north of the centre-ville, which is left in exactly the condition that he left it on the last day of his life. They even replace the fruit he left there with new ones to preserve the authenticity. His coat and hat are still on the coatrock thing.



Just wanted to thank everybody for this great community. It'll be four years for me here come the fall and I've enjoyed every minute of it. The people that have been there for me over the years, you know who you are, I really appreciate it.

The only thing that remains is to meet more on the global travels that await me in life. I'm looking at grad schools for applied linguistics or ESL now so that I can make myself into a perpetual traveler, just teaching English around the globe.

And what's more, I just found out that I might be able to come back in the fall and spend another 4 months in France, if the director here succeeds in convincing them to let me take the senior seminar you need to graduate here as an independent study. If that works out, then 2006 will look like this for me: Aix-en-Pce (jan - may) -> New York (june) -> Istanbul (july, august) -> Aix-en-Pce (fall)

Anyway, thanks for reading this and all my other inane posts. And big thanks for all the music you guys have introduced me to and shared over the years. I wouldn't have any idea what was going on musically in the states right now without you guys. Thanks to your help I'll be able to submit a shmoo poll in December (hopefully not still topped by Built to Spill though)

wow. thanks for all the pics (and posts), c.
cezanne, the grandaddy of modern art is one of my true art heroes.
i think i've studied his work more than any other artist.
an aside: when painting still lifes with fruit/vegetables he would let them sit and spoil as he painted. he said they had a relationship on the table that he did not want to interrupt.
freaking genius, he was.

I'm getting close, I was hoping to be at 1,000 by the end of March, but I got too busy to post at a high rate count. Now, I am quickly catching up again.

I will take quite a while, i may be to a hundred soon though.

as he heads towards abstraction i love it more and more. some of the last sainte-victoires are some of my favorite. i take my classes in a building that adjoins to the one where he went to school with zola as a child. pretty crazy to walk on steps that he definitely walked on every day.

i saw this "les baigneuses" by gleizes at the museum of modern art of paris last weekend and i couldn't help but think that it looked a bit like what cezanne might have been painting if he was still alive in 1912 (when it was done) although the geometricals figures in it aren't quite as warm as his, if you know what i mean.

[img][650:431]http://www.kilidavid.com/Art/Artwork/Gleizes/DSC04406.JPg[/img]

completely agree, c.
what kind of classes are you taking?
are you another art punk?
how did this get by me?

I just reached 400 yesterday, I figure that 400 is a pretty big milestone in postcounts

++i

i wouldn't by any stretch of the imagination call myself an art punk, but i know a little bit here and there. this is the first semester i've ever taken an art history course and i find it really interesting...just because you're basically studying cool ass people and the crazy shit they did. i am not really at the point where i can really comment intelligently on a given work (especially in french) but i've always appreciated the shit out of art. i spent 45 minutes standing in front of pissaro's 'jeune paysanne faisant du feu' at the musee d'orsay last week just revelling in the colors and the fact that it was giving my legitimate butterflies in my stomach. i don't get people that say they don't like art or that couldn't spend weeks walking around a museum like that...i guess they've never experienced a similar sentiment. i unfortunately cannot find a picture of that paining online and it's tearing my soul apart.

so anyway, don't worry, nothing's gotten by you.

other classes are

FREN269 - literature of the maghreb
FREN295 - french theatre/acting
FREN287 - internship (at a high school where i teach english)
FREN209 - history of ecology in france
FREN294 - 20th century art/literature (survey)

pretty interesting shit i guess. i just love french.

Where are the pics of your hot french chicks.

okay, i can marry you now.

Hey, have you ever read any books by this guy? He lives in the area where you are right now.

well if not that, i could at least be the new cabana boy.

never heard of him actually. i'll look into it though. i'm heading to the french library for the first time this afternoon so i'll see if i can dig anything up.

lots of accomplished authors in the cadre provencal. marcel pagnol is of course very popular (and rightfully so) i highly recommend "the glory of my father" "the castle of my mother" or his other books in that series to see what provence is actually about. there are also movies of the same title starring gerard depardieu that are pretty good as well.

jean giono is always great. "un roi sans divertissement" ("a king without diversion" i suppose in english) is written in northern provence and is an incredibly ridiculous book. they made a movie of it but i don't know if any of it would have been done with english subtitles or in translation. definitely worth seeking out if provence intruiges you at all.

np: flaming lips - free radicals[/quote]

forthcoming i hope. french chicks are so cold, so unwilling to talk to anybody that they don't already know, and they hardly drink at all out at bars. trying to buy a french chick a drink is pretty much impossible.

i was actually hoping that it would be more along the lines of swedish girls as there's a scandinavian institute here that imports like a hundred of them each semester. alas, they are equally as straightlaced and prude. getting a glass of wine into their hands is quite a feat and then they hardly have a sip. last time i had some swedes over the apartment i emptied nearly a whole bottle of wine pouring like 7 of them glasses only to find every last one pretty much full. not a fucking sip, not a fucking one of them.

needless to say i polished off all the leftovers.