Hanukkah: the 2nd night

FASHION! While most of the ideas will be 100%, Made in France, this one is only designed here, but I’m listing it because it is THE must have fashion accessory of the season, worn by just about every Parisienne I spot. AND at under 100€, its affordable, AND it looks great on everyone! Its the Mademoiselle Plume, the doudoune designed by Comptoir des Cotoniers.

Screen shot 2013-11-29 at 1.29.15 PMHonestly, any brand with do, but the Comptoir’s is particularly irresistible. Its refreshingly logo-free. Fashionistas will love the leather trim. Practical folk, that it is reversible so that it will go with your entire wardrobe. Everyone’s gotta love the wide range of colors available and its cuddly warmth. What I particularly love is that it is so thin and light weight, I can wear it under everything; bustling through the streets of Paris without evoking the Michelin man in a ribbed parka; warm in my little leather jacket, or ordinary trench, the doudoune poking out from underneath with flair.

Screen shot 2013-11-29 at 1.36.42 PMOwned by the same group as the Comptoir, Uniqlo collaborated on this project and has a similar jacket available in their stores and it comes with or without sleeves! It is more affordable, because it is not reversible and there is no leather trim.

Photos from their official site. This is not an ad. They don’t even know I exist!

 

http://www.comptoirdescotonniers.com/eboutique/t316-mademoiselle-plume?page=all

On the 1st night of Hanukkah

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My true love gave to me…. oh, wait, no. That’s Christmas. I’m so confused! A menorah on my Thanksgiving table! Ma zeh? Which is Hebrew for c’est quoi, ça? Which is Mr French’s way of saying, “What the hell is going on?” All this bi-culturalism can make life confusing at times! Tonight well be having guests who grew up in Columbia, Haiti, the US and France. Some of them in several of those places !!! Some  have a hard time with English while others know French.

And now there is the great latka debate. Em would not hear of it. She waits all year for Mom’s Thanksgiving mashed potatoes with a pound of butter and gallon of crème fraîche. Truth be told, I didn’t fight her on it. I love the potato galettes I can get pre-made at the Sunday market on boul Raspail. They’re delicious, even better as I savor all the greasy kitchen duty I’m dodging. So just a menorah in our home tonight, folks.

Last year I launched an Advent calendar with 25 holiday gift ideas. 25 is a lot of presents, especially when you’re also running around town buying Hanukkah AND Christmas gifts for everyone in your life. So this year, I’m going back to my roots and giving Perfectly Parisian Present ideas for the holidays.

Starting, of course, with my personal favorite a donation in honor of someone to, Medecins sans frontières Did you know they were founded in Paris? With such a supportive social welfare system, the French do not have a lot of charitable organizations, but local doctors started MSF during the Biafra crisis and they have become national heros, as well Nobel Prize winners for putting their lives in danger as they fly across disaster areas and war zones to help others, regardless of their religion, politics or history. People saving people. Who knows? It may be the first step towards world peace!

Happy Thanksgiving every one! Gobble, gobble.

An African Wax

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That’s is what I was desperately searching for yesterday afternoon. Sounds like a Parisienne’s secret beauty treatment, similar to une brésilienne, which often  leaves women in tears on the esthetician’s table. It’s not. It’s a simple stretch of fabric sold in swaths of 6 yards.

Despite their exotic name, African waxes are traditionally made in Holland, where weavers use wax to create the pattern, very much like a batik. The fabrics are dyed in bright colors with exotic prints, featuring chickens, geese, and Gucci handbags. They are then shipped to African countries where women take the 1.5m x 5.5m rectangles and transform them into bright, cheerful dresses, usually with a matching head scarf/hat that they twist into fabulous forms with stunning dexterity.

When I went to Africa 20 years ago, I bought myself a lovely wax and it has been our Thanksgiving table cloth ever since. 25 years of grease stains and red wine incidents have taken their toll. A few years ago I trimmed off a 1 meter bit to serve as butterfly wings for a Halloween costume, and last year was the proverbial straw for my poor camel when we purchased a new dining table that is simple too wide for my scrap of fabric.

When I explained to Mr French that I’d be spending an entire lunch hour looking for a new table cloth, he was somewhat dismayed. We’ve got a beautiful Jacquard and a stunning Basque cloth. What did African prints have to do with pilgrims and American Indians, any way. I couldn’t come up with a logical explanation, because it’s not logical. I need my cloth.

P1040100Chateau Rouge metro station is known for the many boutiques that serve the local African community that lives in the Goutte d’Or neighborhood. I love that the poorer part of town, just behind the Tati store, is the “Drop of Gold” area. Even today, the streets are spotted with jewelry stores selling gold by the weight.

It was only as I was on the escalator getting out of the metro that I realized I may have done something stupid. I had no address, no particular name of a shop, just the knowledge that this was the place to head. I looked up the street. No waxes. I looked down. Just more luggage stores and gold shops. I decided to cross the road and head up a side street, where I found one African hair store after the other. There may have been 20 of them on one small block. The only other commerce was shop with phone cabins for overseas calls, and an Asian lady trying to sell gold watches to passers by.

P1040099At the corner, I turned left, crossing back to the metro and heading up another side street. A Kosher restaurant, a Hallal butcher and more African hair salons, with a bakery on the corner. I stopped to take a photo of the flat, round breads in the window, marveling a the fact that immigrants to this neighborhood may not even know what a baguette is, when a man bumped into me. I looked up and saw that he was blind. I explained where were and where were headed, as I guided him to the bakery door. He replied, “Oh, here it is, I see, I see.”

Leaving him inside the warm bakery with their friendly staff, I turned the corner et voilà African Wax was beaming in bright red letters on a yellow sign. I walked in and was astonished by the prices: 62€ for 6 yards. I started looking around, and found the 47€ batches. The colors were bright and tropical, and it was hard to resist. I headed out the door, in search of more. The next shop was full of Africans, eating, joking and trying to sell their goods to the owner. Like Goldilocks, it took a third try to find the place that was just right for me. 10€ bolts in a vivid aqua with mustards and burnt oranges. In the corner of the shop, an imam was blessing a woman.

I joked with the salesman that I was in Paris, buying Dutch fabric, designed for Africans, being sold by a Tunisian for an American holiday.

 

Braque to basics

Screen shot 2013-11-25 at 3.42.38 PMA few weeks ago I was running through the halls of the Louvre on an art inspired scavenger hunt, celebrating Halloween with ThatLou. At our first destination there were extra bonus points for finding the ceiling that Georges Braque had painted in 1963. “AHH” I squealed with glee, “We’re going to get that one, I was at his exhibition this week!”

And indeed, I had been at the exhibition with my friend the Yoga Yenta and her Mom, in town from NYC. The thing with being a Yoga Yenta is that you work in a shop. Which means rising insanely early for yoga practice, then spending the entire day on one’s feet. Even one’s Saturday. Screen shot 2013-11-25 at 3.49.56 PMWhich explains why going to an art exhibition is a rare treat for the yenta. She was excited to be there and her enthusiasm was contagious!

The show starts with his earlier works as a fauvist and we appreciated seeing how he got from realism to this :

which then evolved to this:

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I was very careful as I took my photos, focusing only on the ones where photography was permitted. I had learned my lesson from the Matisse exhibition and was not looking to cause an incident. But a guard came over any way. He started explaining the rules. I politely pointed out that I knew the rules. Then he told me the real reason he had approached me. He was a professional photographer and he could tell that my photos were crap. I was framing them all wrong. Zooming in too much and not including the frame. I needed to include the frame. I thanked him politely (ever so polite with those guards!) and asked more about his work. Did he have a website? Of course! Could I have the URL to check it out?  No so fast! Instead, he handed me his phone number and suggested I give him a call. Most creative pick up line of the year, ladies and gentlemen.

Back to Braque. The yenta and I had been wondering about him. His work seemed to mimic the work of his contemporaries. It can be hard to distinguish some Braque pieces from a Picasso or a Matisse. We were a little puzzled about that, so we started reading and learned that Georges and Pablo were inseparable pals during the early Cubist movement. They’d spend hours holed up together, cutting and pasting their collages., then heading out to share a drink at the bar downstairs. No wonder their work looked so similar, they were echoing off one another as they explored Cubism.

Screen shot 2013-11-25 at 4.05.12 PMBraque’s later work reflects the joys of falling in love and the sorrows of war time with powerful palates and the simplest of lines. As we continued through the show, I tried to add some frames to my shots. It’s not easy, as the perspective makes for funny angles. But I kept zooming out, and out and out, until I got this shot, which I was quite pleased with. In fact, going home, I realized that I take all my museum photos of individual works of art for posting on this blog or using as my iPhone background. In doing so, I was missing out on the opportunity to create a bit of art on my own. So thanks to this anonymous guard and his sage advice, I had a little taste of what Picasso and Braque may have felt, exchanging ideas and developing their images in the ever evolving process the world calls art.

The Braque exhibition is on until Jan 6, but its popular, so pre-purchase your tickets!

If running through the Louvre, taking photos and having fun with art sounds like a good night out on the town, check out ThatLou. There’s a Thanksgiving hunt coming up this week!

 

The New York Times

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There was recently an article in the New York Times declaring hipsters had ruined Paris. It has created quite a stir over here and people have approached me about it all week. Like many, the article made me angry. Not because the “journalist” was bashing hipsters, name calling is an art of playgrounds, I rather like that it denounced the author as a fool immediately.

What made me angry was that a serious paper like the New York Times was promoting such dribble. Where were the fact checkers? The editors? If you substitute the word (insert nationality here) for the word Hipster in the piece, it would have been thrown out as hateful slop. And is the NYTimes really implying that a handful of 20 somethings could do what the Romans, British and Hitler could not? Are the French really so simple and child-like that they don’t know what’s good for them? Because lets be clear about this. The French are thrilled with the gentrification. The author was too, when he chose to live in a neighborhood that has been gentrifying since most hipsters were still in diapers and was called SoPi when I moved here over a decade ago.

The cocktail bars he laments are filled with affluent young FRENCH people who order burrata, sample kale and would probably be thrilled to find steel cut oats. These are smart, educated kids who had to study philosophy and “general culture” to get their high school diplomas. Most of them have a passport and travel the world exploring all kinds of different cultures, American included. They know what they want in their lives and they’re dead on with the cocktails. Until very recently getting a decent cocktail in Paris was an exercise in frustration and now its an absolute delight!

The French have been managing this city with more or less success for millennia, they don’t need the NY Times, or some pedantic American who has been in town for 24 months telling them what is good for their city and what’s ruining it.

Skimming along the NYTimes a few days later, I got even angrier because you see all the more important stuff going on in the world and you ask yourself… who cares??? Thousands are dead, homeless and missing loved ones in the Philippines. Entire families have been wiped out. 10s of 1000s have been displaced. That’s a tragedy. And it is thanks to the very same NYTimes that I looked to for ideas on how I could help. They suggested giving to Doctors without Borders, who is over there on the ground and doing what they can. I have been a big fan of Doctors without Borders ever since I backpacked through East Africa 20 years ago. They make a difference in people’s lives. They’ll even help hipsters! I blogged about them last year suggesting a donation to them would make a great holiday gift and this year I agreed to run the Semi Marathon de Paris on their behalf. They are in the Philippines doing what they can and I am here in Paris doing what I can, which is to ask for your support. Its easy, simply click on the link below. They suggested a minimum donation of 20€, but even 5€ makes a difference. Already through Facebook and Twitter you have been a fantastic crowd, helping me raise 285€, well past the 100€ they asked of me. But goals are meant to be surpassed, so don’t be shy. Merci!

http://www.alvarum.com/sylviasabes

The Bard

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I have a thing for Shakespeare. I’ve had it since I was about 9 years old and realized that I’d wormed my way through all the books in the (very tiny) young adult book section of our neighborhood library. After all Romeo and Juliette were only 14 when their story unfolded, so how “mature” could the stories be. Not at all, really. Two teens off themselves because they’re too impatient to check for a pulse. Boy, did that annoy me! But I was smitten, completely taken with the language.

Screen shot 2013-11-15 at 5.02.17 PMLiving in Paris you’d think I’d miss it, but I was always the first mom to volunteer when the girls’ classes would got to London for an afternoon performance at The Globe. Oddly, most parents are not thrilled at the aspect of herding 100 rambunctious teens to a frigid train station at 7am, hustling them through border patrol, and then keeping them in line as they are given 2 hours of free time just a few kilometers from Top Shop and around the corner from a pub. And that’s before the show even started. Its exhausting work, but I did it twice, in then name of the Bard.

Which is why I was thrilled when Cara Black told me that her friend Johanna Bartholomew was putting on an English language production of The Temptest right here in Paris. No trains. No teens. And I could go with my favorite partner in soirées Out and About in Paris.

I am always delightfully surprised when I attend a live performance in Paris. I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed and this time my luck held out. A professional cast of 5 hailing from England, Australia, Canada and France led us in this Brave New World. Joanna was incredible, casting magic across the stage as the Sprite Ariel while Nicholas Calderbank’s poise was perfect for Prospero. The surprising actor Dario Costa would go from the sick and twisted Caliban to the elegant Prince of Naples with a quick twist of his lips. Director Rona Waddington kept the stage bare and the cast to a minimum allowing the audience to really concentrate on the performances and the play. Because the play’s the thing.

Screen shot 2013-11-15 at 5.02.34 PMThe performance is held in an atmospheric, pocket sized theater nestled under the vaulted stone ceilings in the basement of a centuries old building; Théâtre de Nesle  in the 6th arrondissement.  Tickets are 20€, with two for the price of one. Performances run Wed-Sat at 19h30 until Dec 28 and over all the evening is considerably more enjoyable than anything to be experienced in getting thee to a nunnery.

http://www.theatredenesle.com/e/shakespeare-the-tempest/2013-11-15/

A room of my own

Screen shot 2013-11-13 at 2.48.57 PMI would not be the least surprised if someone comments telling me that this is not the first time I’ve used this titled. Like the great author Virginia Woolf, I am obsessed with needing a room of my own. A space of my own, where I can work and concentrate and get things done.

Mr French does not understand this. When I suggested that we should perhaps invest in a chambre de bonne so that I could have a place to write, he was literally aghast. It is the first time I have ever seen the facial expression “aghast” so it made an impression on me. A mix between shock, horrified and absolutely confused. It took me a while to understand that we were having a cultural difference. For Mr French, a dynamic young woman like myself requesting a room of her own is the Parisian equivalent of suburban housewife suggesting that you hire the hot new pool cleaner the Johnson’s down the street are using. It is a sign that Madame is looking for adventure.

I tried to explain that I find it impossible to work when I know there is dirty laundry piling up on the other side of the wall. It is easier just to throw it in the machine, which rumbles for hours, then beeps, demanding to be fed again. The cat wants out every hour, the post lady rings, the concierge buzzes, then Em comes home and my attention is required elsewhere. Mr French didn’t hear all that. He reminded me that I had spent months searching for a flat because I had insisted the living room be off the street. I needed quiet to work from home. And that the beautiful bookcase in our living room has a built-in desk so that I could work from home. He was hurt, confused and a little concerned, so I dropped the topic.

But I am obsessed and don’t give up easily. I thought shared work space would be a fair compromise. I found a couple of options, but they were all either too loud, too far, or unheated. Like Goldilocks testing the porridge, I was waiting to find something that was just right.

Monday morning my phone vibrated. A good friend was calling. A single Mom with two grown daughters who live abroad. Work was asking her to go to New Caledonia for a month. She has been working towards this position for years and needs a break from Paris. I was thrilled for her. But that was not why she was calling. She was looking for a cat sitter and thought of my quest for a room. Would I be willing to feed her cat for a month in exchange for a room of my own. An airy, light flooded apartment, more precisely, just a few blocks away from my home. She didn’t have to ask twice.

When I awoke this morning the sky was a vivid winter blue, the sun shone brightly and cast a gorgeous light over the city, making my heart smile as I headed out the door to a room of my own.

Careful what you wish for

This post is what the French call and Hors Sujet. It has nothing to do with Paris and it is uninterestingly personal. Consider yourself warned.

Screen shot 2013-11-08 at 2.51.16 PMWhen I was a young bride in Montréal, I met this incredible woman, Anne-Marie. The instant I met her, I wanted to be her. She was beautiful, charming and oh-so-elegant. Her home was charming, she’d lived in Africa; she and her husband went to balls and belonged to the fine art museum and were simply perfect.

AM and I became fast friends. We’d go on road trips together, sometimes with our husbands, sometimes without. We explored the East Coast, California, and once, with 4 very young children thrown into the back of a truck, the small villages of Hungary. When my husband du jour and I moved to Northern California she and her husband pour la vie moved to Southern California. Then we moved to Paris and they moved to Nevada; we divorced, they moved to Chicago. Our lives have been an adventure.

Screen shot 2013-11-08 at 2.53.28 PMOne of the things that AM and I shared was our belief in Creative Visualization. There is a book with the same title and it was our bible at the time. Basically, we believed that to live the life you dreamed, you had to dream it. It was that simple. Dream yourself into a gorgeous Bordeaux château, and it would happen. Yes, we were young and naïve. LIfe is not that easy, it interferes more than one ever imagined, throwing financial crises, illness and heart break across everyone’s path. And our dreams were incredibly silly. Once you’ve lived a week in a château, you realize that it takes 20 minutes just to open the shutters each morning… its a LOT OF WORK. But we had our dreams and we both dreamed large.

Screen shot 2013-11-08 at 2.52.32 PMAM’s dream was to have a boutique that supported local artists and artisans. Well, its not a shop, but 20 years later she has a very successful website that does just that and more as she supports and inspires women. Amazingly, despite the geography that separates us, I can say “I was there” when inspiration struck and AM came up with the name “The Succulent Wife“.

One year for the holidays my husband du jour gave me a “dream” journal; it encouraged you to define your dream job, your dream vacation, your dream day.

This morning, as I completed my second lap around the Luxembourg Gardens, that journal and the dream day filtered through my thoughts. In my dream day I had breakfast with my girls, went to yoga class and came home to run my photography studio before preparing the (organic!) evening meal for a dinner at home with the family. I wrote that 15 years ago. This morning I breakfasted with M, went for a run and came home to spend the day writing. Tonight we’ll be having a lovely home cooked butternut squash soup. The painting has changed a bit; E has moved away, I now run instead hit the mat, writing supplanted photography and my ‘family’ has changed more than I ever imagined possible. But the framework: its all there and its wonderful and terrifying at the same time.

Screen shot 2013-11-08 at 3.04.28 PMOf course, I was a dreamer, so I forgot some of the important stuff. Like earning enough to make a good living, having a room of my own and finding time to give back to the community (as for the health and well-being of my loved ones, remember, I’m a Jewish mother, you don’t write that kind of stuff down…it will attract the evil eye (ach, ach, poo, poo) and anyway, you’re saying it in your mind with every exhale you breathe!).

 

 

I am off now, to buy myself another dream journal and fill in the gaps for the next 20 years and a warning for you all to be very, very careful what you wish for!

Lunch at the taverne

Screen shot 2013-11-07 at 6.18.45 PMLast week I called Mr French at the office and asked if he’d be working on Friday.

“Why wouldn’t I work on Friday?” he asked in an incredulous tone that implied I had perhaps fallen on my head.

“Because its a holiday?” I ventured forth, no longer very sure of myself and completely incapable of suggesting exactly which holiday it may be.

“What holiday is that? Armistice Day is next week. And its a Monday and… oh, mon dieu! You’re right! It’s All Saints Day.”

All Saint’s Day. And there you have it. A random Catholic holiday in this laïque country I’ve adopted as my own. The irony is that the majority of the French are not religious, yet so Catholic they just assume all these fêtes are celebrated by everyone. They’re always surprised when I point out that fact, that actually, no, religious Muslims do not put up a Christmas in their home every December and that religious Jews do not break out the chocolate every Easter.

Screen shot 2013-11-07 at 6.19.32 PMHonestly, I don’t really care, as long as I have the day with Mr French to myself, but sometimes I do feel like sending off a letter to the powers that be and suggesting maybe, just perhaps we should get rid of All Saints Day and replace it with something the entire country would appreciate. Something like a Johnny Halliday holiday, a Monet Monday or the Curie Cure long weekend!

We spent our morning in jail, and coming out we were rather hungry. Weirdly, neither of us said a word, we just turned a corner and headed to the Taverne Henri IV, a place we both loved but had never enjoyed together.

Screen shot 2013-11-07 at 6.19.45 PMTaverne is what this restaurant really easy, with an emphasis on fast, hearty meals accompanied with plenty of wine. The owners are what one would call jovial, which really means very loud with a large smile on their faces as they yell out orders and keep everything flowing. There are only 3 mains on the menu each day, plus a selection of tartines and charcuterie plates, and maybe a salad or some other dish pretending to be healthy.

The diners are usually lawyers, policemen and clerks from the neighboring courthouse. Serious people who are there for a serious meal. The food is always simple and good, the portions huge. We both had stuffed cabbage that day. And since it was a holiday, I splurge on a fantastic café gourmand.

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We were the last table to leave for the day. While standing at the bar to pay, the proprietor offered me a “petite prune”, a little shot of plum eau de vie. When I think of eau de vie, I think of liquid fire that burns going down, but this was mellow and rich and tasted of plums and the bluster autumn day outside. It was absolute perfection.

 

Art for thought

Screen shot 2013-11-04 at 9.59.16 AMIt was not planned, but we saw a lot of weird art this weekend. We started with a walk through the blustery November rains to A Triple Tour at the Conciergerie. François Pinault is a local billionaire and serious art collector, married to Salma Hayek. He wanted to open a museum to show case his art in Paris, but authorities made it so difficult that he ended up acquiring the Palazzo Grassi in Venice and creating a museum there instead. During our visit last spring, I realized that this was Paris’ loss.

Screen shot 2013-11-04 at 9.58.36 AMA Triple Tour is Pinault’s first show in his home town and it is monumental in the sense that it is very, very large in scale. Keeping with the theme of the space (the prison that once housed Marie Antoinette), this show was all about imprisonment. People locked up in war zones, prejudice, poverty, insanity and disease. It is not a happy show and this is not beautiful art. It felt like a documentary of social Screen shot 2013-11-04 at 10.16.46 AMcommentary, more than an art exhibition. There was an incredibly moving film of asylum patients and a collection of elderly men in wheelchairs that many visitors thought were real. I can’t say I loved this art, but I could see that it is important art and I marveled at the luxury afforded to men like Pinault who can put on such a show.

After the show we headed across the Seine to the Marais, rue Vieille du Temple. It was not at all planned, but we ended up gallery hopping, visiting one contemporary art space after the other. At Yvan Lambert there was a 15 minute film of a peaceful wood and I loved the rest, but wondered why this was art. Across the street there was a show featuring a man named Erwin Olaf. I walked in the door, muttered, “weird Nazi art” and left, shaking my head. Next door, at the Mexican Cultural Center there was a collection of photos featuring Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. It was a highlight of the day.

Even if you don’t like the art, it is fun to visit the galleries in this neighborhood because it takes you into some fascinating buildings and remote courtyards visitors rarely see. And sometimes you’ll stumble upon an interesting show, like the Cy Twombly exhibit at Karsten Greve.

But finding the galleries is not always obvious. I couldn’t find a decent map online to give you an easy link. Every now and again there is a map of all the art spaces available in the galleries, but for the most part, you just have to read the brass plaques at the arched doors, and if you see the word “galerie” walk on in.

Screen shot 2013-11-04 at 9.59.57 AMThe is what I did at Galerie Perrotin on the rue de Turenne, a gallery I had never heard of before. Inside, there was a large Statue of Liberty, spinning on her side as the flames of her torch ate in to the wall. On the staircase landing there was a mini elevator, barely large enough for a shoe, with doors that would open and close. Fun, but a bit too conceptual for me.

Mr French headed out the back door and disappeared long enough that I decided to follow him into a converted workshop. An elder Chinese lady was floating through space, three manta rays pulling her reins through a flock of birds. In the next room a collection of older folks sat on couches and barca loungers, their heads replaced by large rocks. Screen shot 2013-11-04 at 9.59.43 AMAnd one odd looking man on a stool. I was marveling as the wax work that created the model’s skin. You could tell the age of the faceless guests by the quality of the skin on their hands. I leaned into to look at the one face int he work of art. “Wow, I declared to Mr French, this looks so real, I can see the skin m AHHHHHH!!!” I didn’t just see the skin move. The entire head turned towards me. The looking man was a dwarf who had been hired to sit as part of the show. If great art is supposed to make you feel something, it worked. I was feeling scared out of my wits!

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