Secrets Of A Paris 'Plus' Shopper

by Dorty Nowak

I skipped dessert today, which is not easy to do in Paris, where patisseries flaunt their delicacies on almost every street corner.  I was on my way to my favorite bistro when I passed a store whose name caught my eye, “Plus Madame.” Since I’ve never seen anything “plus” relating to women’s clothes advertised in Paris, I stopped to look. A sign in the window informed me that the store specialized in sizes 42.  42! That’s a size 8 in the U.S. and a size 10 in the U.K., but in France, it’s a “plus.”  Suddenly, so was I. 

I shouldn’t have been surprised after several years of trying to squeeze myself into French fashion. “Oh, what a pretty outfit. Did you buy it in Paris?” my American friends ask. Well, no, I didn’t. Never mind that with the weak dollar there are no bargains here. The truth is, I don’t fit into most of the clothes I try on.

For one thing, French women have no hips. This is particularly apparent now that skinny jeans – which look like they are painted on – are very a la mode. Not that I, who actually has hips and a waist, have ever dared to try on a pair. Forget blouses too. The sleeves are cut for toothpicks. Even lingerie isn’t an option. Beautiful as it is to look at, on me it leaves far too little to the imagination. Dresses are a possibility, as long as I don’t mind the waists being near my armpits, and the lengths just shy of indecent.  

Still, I long to look like the svelte Parisian women I see every day, so I keep shopping. Too often I find myself in a dressing room, with an outfit that looked so perfect on the rack but on me, isn’t. Staring into the mirror, I feel like Alice after drinking the Mad Hatter’s potion – very, very big in clothes that are much too small.

Click to read more ...

Becoming A Fan

by Dorty Nowak

Hot and frustrated, I stared at the pieces of the supposedly easy-to-assemble electric fan that came with nine parts instead of the required ten. My apartment, like most buildings in Paris, has no air conditioning and, after several days of unremitting heat, I was desperate. I picked up the instruction sheet, ignoring the number for the help center that was probably located in China, and folded it into a fan. My makeshift fan worked surprisingly well, reminding me of a museum that I had been meaning to visit ever since I read several years ago that it might have to close.

Le Musée de l’Éventail, the fan museum, if mentioned at all in guidebooks, usually merits only a brief reference.  All I knew was that it was a museum about the history of fans. Not electric fans but, rather, the hand held kind that was an essential accessory throughout most of human history, including, for me, today.

Conveniently located near the center of Paris, the museum is housed in a typical Parisian building that looks like the others around it except for a large stone bas-relief of a fan on its façade.  Pulling open the heavy wooden door, I knew that this was not a typical museum. Steep steps led to a dimly-lit door beside which a sign announced mysteriously, “Mme. Hoguet.“ Wondering if I was in the wrong place, I rang the doorbell and waited.  After a long pause, an elderly woman opened the door, and I entered another world. 

Fans were mounted on every inch of the walls of a long corridor – ancient fans from Egypt, China, Greece.  I picked up a flyer titled simply “History” and read that fans can be traced to man’s earliest days. Originally the accoutrements of royalty, by the 5^th century B.C. fans had become a widespread fashion accessory. These early fans were rigid but, in the 7^th century A.D., a Japanese artisan created the folding fan after observing the wings of a bat.

Turning a corner, I entered a sunlit boutique where a riot of color greeted me.  Beautiful fans of all sizes and shapes were offered for sale, from very expensive to modest in price.

Click to read more ...

The Alignments in Carnac, Brittany, France

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

We drove around a corner and encountered an astounding sight: row after row of standing stones, stretching to the horizon. “Pull over!” I demanded. Barely waiting for Gary, my husband, to stop the car, I opened the door, jumped out, and ran over to the green metal fence that separated the stones from me. I shook my head in disbelief, in awe. So many stones, lined up and going—where? Why? They fit no category I knew: they were an enormous puzzle of countless granite megaliths pointing to the sky, rooted in the earth. Hundreds, thousands of stones lined up in slightly wavering rows that went on for kilometers, as if the stones were frozen in the act of marching—somewhere. What was the point? What did they mean? What were they for? The stones made no response.

Nowhere in the world has as many megalithic sites as Brittany, and Carnac is in the center of them. The amazing profusion of ancient remains includes isolated standing stones, rows of alignments, earth-covered tumuli, quadrilateral and oval enclosures, and table-like dolmens, each with its own energy and story.

The dolmens with their elaborately engraved interior walls are intriguing, but the 6000-year-old alignments fascinate me. Many of the original stones have been hauled off for re-use in nearby farmhouses and fences, but nearly 3000 menhirs (Breton for standing stones) remain. They are lined up in three sets of slightly undulating rows facing approximately northeast/southwest and extending for kilometers. Starting in the northeast are the Kerlescan alignments, followed by the Kermario alignments, and ending in the southwest with the Le Ménec alignments. The different sets contain from eleven to thirteen rows, and include from approximately 600 to nearly 1200 standing stones. Each set ends in the southwest with an ovoid or quadrilateral stone enclosure (or what remains of one). The cumulative effect of so many stones, so many alignments, extending for such a distance, is awesome.

Click to read more ...

Healing at Saint Onenn’s Holy Well, Brittany

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

It was a place you couldn’t find unless you’d already been there—or unless you found someone to take you there, someone with permission to cross from here to there….

While my husband, Gary, and I spent the day in Paimpont, our traveling companions visited a holy well in the nearby village of Tréhorenteuc. By chance, they had met someone in a bookstore who told them about it and led them to it. They had dangled their feet in the water and meditated, one by one. It was a lovely place.

Eager to visit it, I asked them where it was. Just up the road from the bookstore—easy to find, they assured us.

The next day Gary and I drove to Tréhorenteuc and followed the road out of town. Soon the pavement ended and the road narrowed. We nearly high-centered the car as we crept over humps on the farm lane that led to the top of a hill. We were sure that at any moment we’d see a sign announcing “Ste Onenn’s Well.” After all, our friends had walked there from town. How far could it be? Maybe it was over to the right, in that clump of trees. Or just over the horizon.

Half an hour later, defeated, we carefully turned the car around and drove back into town. We parked and walked back up the hill. And down, and up again. I followed a trail into the woods. No luck.

We walked over to the tourist office and asked for help.

Claudine looked at us uncertainly. “It’s on private land, not open to the public.”

Click to read more ...

The Black Virgin of Rocamadour

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

She called to me just as I was falling asleep, exhausted from too much travel. We had had a long, twisting drive to reach her sanctuary, perched on the side of a sheer bluff in the Lot region in southwestern France. My husband, Gary, and I had gone to bed early, around 9:30 p.m., too tired to enjoy a night stroll through the tiny medieval village of Rocamadour, which sheltered her chapel.

I was almost asleep when I heard her loud and clear, as if she were standing next to me. “Get up!” she commanded. “Come visit me in my sanctuary! That’s what you’re here for!”

I groaned. I was tired. Besides, I’d already visited the Black Virgin of Rocamadour in her sanctuary just a few hours earlier, right after we had arrived, because we’d been told her chapel would close at 7:30 pm.

I turned to Gary, lying next to me in bed. “She’s calling me.”

“What?” He mumbled.

“The Lady is calling me to visit her. You want to come?”

He muttered something. Then, “You go ahead.”

Suddenly energized, I sprang out of bed and got dressed. After all, when the Goddess calls you, you have to go. I knocked at the room next door where our friend Anne was staying. I knocked again, louder. After a few minutes she opened the door, looking sleepy.

“The Black Virgin is calling me to go to her. Want to come?”

She nodded. “Give me a minute.”

Soon we were on a night-time pilgrimage to the Goddess, walking through the silent, deserted streets, climbing the 223 steps of the Grand Staircase that lead up to her cliff-side sanctuary. We followed the Rue de la Mercerie to a small square, the Parvis de St-Amadour, center of the holy precinct. Then we walked up to the upper landing and stood in front of the chapel doors. They were locked.

I shook my head, disappointed. “I know we were told the sanctuary would be closed, but I’m sure the Black Virgin told me to come and see her.” Maybe it had just been a daydream, I thought, or a moment of confusion as I drifted off to sleep….

Click to read more ...