Three days, countless conversations over coffee with friends, Jardin du Luxembourg readings of Eat, Pray ,Love, and nostalgic day dreaming of Paris – a city I’m still in but already miss terribly, and here I am.
My weekend, which started on Thursday evening, was probably one of the best I’ve had yet. I unplugged from the internet (partly by choice, and partly because we blew a fuse and had no power…oopsie), and embraced the city like a true Parisian, strolling the streets and cafe hopping like it was going out of style. Coffee was sipped and good conversations were had and I found myself pinching my arm just to beg the question; is this really my life?
I took pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. Want to see? I’ll show you. I like to share…
We visited Jeu de Paume, a photography museum, on Thursday afternoon, for our photography class. Part of our photography assignment is to capture pictures of people just as they are in the style of Lisette Model, a famous street photographer whose work is on display at the museum. My friend Jane and I took the streets to play paparazzi yesterday. I made my attempts at embracing Model’s style of catching people in the moment. She says,
“It is the surface I am interested in. Because the surface is the inside…Everyone has a way of expressing one’s own body, not only the face. When people relax and they sit and they don’t even know one is photographing them, they are very much themselves.”
And I just love that.
It got me thinking. What would a photograph taken of me without my knowing say? What are the moments that I would want to be captured? How do I want to wear my soul, and show the world all the love I know I’ve got to share?
I asked Jane to tell me something she was passionate about as we sat at La Rotonde, sipping our third cafe crème of the day. She speaks four languages. Pretty amazing, huh? She’s one kick ass soul sistah, if I don’t say so myself.
She told me about how her next language would be Italian, but that Chinese isn’t really up on her list. French and Spanish are under her belt as well as a little Portugese and of course English, which is actually her second language, Spanish being her first. She laughed with excitement telling me about her love of language and communication, teaching me important French phrases, and not so important ones too, and encouraging me to do all the talking on our city adventure so I could practice my French too.
See that? That’s what joy looks like.
This whole weekend, I didn’t take a single food picture. Not one. Okay, I lied. I snapped a picture of this coffee.
But that’s all. And let me tell you, it was so liberating. I realized that I had been putting so much focus on telling you about the actual food I had been experiencing (This is a salad. It has vegetables in it. Yada, yada, yada. No shit, Sherlock. Pardon’ my French… I am, after all, in France), that I had been leaving out the stories and experiences that surround it, the part that would show you what’s inside, like the picture of Jane up there.
That’s what I’ve always wanted this blog to be about. Food stories – the feelings, thoughts and memories surrounding good food and the people it’s shared with. And of course, my silly stories of being a twenty-something yogini, trying to take my practice with me off the mat and into the world, all while trying to just figure myself out – an ever changing, yet intriguing process that I love and hate at the same time.
That’s what I want a photo of me to say. I’m so much more than a body, or a shape. There’s a lot inside this little heart that wants to get out – and I’ve decided to just wear my soul on my sleeve.
If I snapped a picture of you when you least expected it – what would it say? How do you wear your soul on the outside? What would you want a picture to say about you?
