Michele Roohani

I knew Hopper before I met him again in Lausanne a couple of weeks ago and I was delighted to say hello to him again. He had some new things to show me.

I’ve known his beautiful but quiet women:

Silence is ubiquitous in his paintings even when there are many people present—it’s almost as if you have surprised these two ladies having dinner at “Chop Suey” restaurant (1927).  You always feel that Hopper is on the verge of saying something, but he hardly does.

As John Updike observes, “we are always eavesdropping on that wonderful Hopper silence.”

Just twenty years before the above paintings, Hopper painted his women like this (I had fun playing with these little water paintings):

After visiting Paris in 1906, “protected from the slow ravages of compromise—either with public taste or with his own immaturity—he developed his style invisibly along with his character”. Look at his men—I love the look of the dandy:

People at the theater, listening intently:

Hopper was fascinated by the city at night, solitude, and silence; this is where he shines the most: a scene of a roman noir of the 1930’s…

I loved the studies for his most famous painting, the Nighthawks; you are almost waiting for Humphrey Bogart to turn around and say something to you:

Voilà! The quintessential Hopper: “he stares with sober passion at the most ordinary things about the U.S.”

I have great memories of  New York diners of the 1980’s (when I used to take English classes in Manhattan); they conjure up my first impressions of United States. The NY Times article Ajay is pointing to in his comment is an amusing end to the puzzle of Hopper’s DINER. Hopper, famous for his reticence (“If you could say it in words,” he says, “there’d be no reason to paint”) created the Diner in his imagination!

Let’s just go back to his women again. They bathe in liquid light: this movie usher below (1939), waits in her own little world, oblivious to the sound of the film being played next door in the theater.

He painted nudes too—he always used his wife, Josephine as the model;  I like this one best where you can’t see her face:

His paintings are not overloaded with details and information but the essential message is well expressed. The painting below is one of my favorites; Mitra and I stopped in front of it for a few minutes wondering about the simple elegance of this image:

Say hello to Edward Hopper, a silent witness to an American century—he painted during 60 years of his 84 years on earth!

To me, Hopper excels when depicting women—look at this beautiful woman in south Carolina. You can almost hear Duke Ellington’s Chloé…

I waited that morning for Hopper in Lausanne’s Hotel Beau Rivage where you can only afford to have a coffee.

I went to Fondation de l’Hermitage to see Monsieur Hopper and the rest is History…

After the exhibition a stop at l’Esquisse, the little café of the museum, rich with climbing roses.

Hopper’s quiet canvases are well appreciated in these times of constant chatter and chaos; I wonder how he would have painted a rose…

It’s 1999 and I am reading in a special issue of Time magazine about the geniuses of the second millennium: Einstein, Einstein, Einstein and finally a short article about this “mad looking” guy and W O W…I discovered a wandering dervish, a nomadic mathematician: Paul Erdos!

Both his parents were high school mathematics teachers. Erdos (pronounced AIR-dosh) was as generous as he was brilliant with his ideas—never hoarding them and always sharing them with whoever was ready to give him a place to stay and work with him on the joyous and collaborative activity of mathematics: he would show up at their doorstep and say:” My Mind is Open!”

And this is how the myth of the Erdos Number or the “collaborative distance” between an author and Erdos was created: Erdos himself is assigned Erdos number 0. Mathematicians who have written papers with Erdos (511 by 2007) receive Erdos number 1. Writing a paper with someone having Erdos Number 1 earns the author Erdos Number 2, etc…
I made this image of the name of the 8,162 people with the Erdos Number of 2:

Addicted to coffee and amphetamines he was most of the time, super alert, achingly lucid. He wrote papers with more than 500 people, the optimum” intellectual promiscuity”…

Finding  that “property is nuisance,” Erdos had no home, no car, no checks to write and no income taxes to pay; a mathematical pilgrim with no home and no job: the real wandering dervish who founded the field of discrete mathematics, which is the foundation of computer science. “In the years before the Internet, there was Paul Erdos.”

To check out the funny side of the ‘collaborative distance” visit xkcd.com:

Here are some funny quotes by Erdos:

“Finally I’m becoming stupider no more…”

“God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers.”

“There are three signs of senility. The first sign is that a man forgets his theorems. The second sign is that he forgets to zip up. The third sign is that he forgets to zip down.”

To see Erdos tell a funny joke go here

To see parts of N is a number, a documentary about him by George Paul Csicsery, go here

After living for a few months in Switzerland, I couldn’t wait to get to my favorite Cuban restaurant in Los Angeles, Versailles; everything tastes more delicious and was way cheaper in the good old U.S. of A.

The most famous item in the menu is the garlic chicken and even for somebody who is not a “beer person”, this Corona was just too good to miss:

I tried to go back and rediscover all the inexpensive great restaurant of my hometown like the King and I where they still serve the best Thai food since the first glass noodles I had there 25 years ago.

To have the best restaurant cheeseburger in Los Angeles (Tommy’s is still great), I went back to the Westside Tavern—they have a gorgeous bar,

and they serve a rare cheeseburger to die for:

I love old diners (my first impression of America remains diners with bad coffee in New Jersey and New York) and I miss Bob’s Big Boy in Santa Monica; Coogie’s who replaced it has a super fresh simple chopped salad:

Nothing says more southern California than a killer burrito like this world famous border burrito from Eduardo’s Border Grill in Westwood (surviving the attack of Persian restaurants in the area):

The dudes are preparing them with tender loving care,

worth every cent of its 8 dollar price!

So I am not very beer, or burrito or hamburger but Switzerland does this to the poor Californian foodie who comes back: I wanted to eat everything in every menu of every restaurant!

Lemons and limes are always fresh at Eduardo’s,

so are different kinds of salsas:

It takes mediocre expensive food to change Ms. life is too short for bad food and cheap wine’s  opinion about inexpensive modest restaurants of L.A.

All of the above places were great and gave me a lot of pleasure (and poundage!) but the tea at André’s was as usual priceless…

White is the color of purity, cleanliness, and innocence…or is it? I am surrounded and inspired by it lately and these are my white (ivory, ecru, eggshell, etc…) images:

I went out to take pictures yesterday; I love the quiet that sits with the snow,

even when it gets dark early.

These are my shoes,

and this is not,

these are LeNôtre’s shoes:

on more recent creations, this is a white interior,

and a very expensive exterior,

and people who can’t afford it:

Four white dogs,

and some not so white ones,

a white wedding gown,

a much simpler one,

and some pretty pearls to go with it,

and a white church to complete it!

Some punctual white statues,

and some timeless ones:

Sunlight flirting with a quiet white curtain,

in need of music:

to dance the “Swan Lake”,

or some other dance in white pants:

back in good old California, some white table at the Huntley’s:

with some great coffee in white cups,

white on white:

and San Vicente’s majestic magnolias…

see “my green movement” here

my “red post” here

Drive forty minutes from Bordeaux, and you will get to the most amazing wine country of the region, Sauternais, or the only area around Bordeaux where the noble rot grows.

A most peculiar wine is produced here that has not much to do with the red Bordeaux wines that we all know (red or white). Sauternes is made from grapes that have been affected by a gray fungus, Botrytis Cinerea,  which causes the grapes to shrivel, leaving a sugary fruit with concentrated flavors resulting in distinctively flavored wines.

I had heard about the Noble Rot (an oxymoron of a name) but I was still amazed to see these grapes on the vine stocks:The grapes are definitely getting ripe here, all semi rotten! The best Sauternes come from vines that have been hand-picked—up to 12 separate times—to ensure that the grapes are not removed from the vines before reaching the perfect degree of ripeness required for these wines.The eminent Château d’Yqem, the most expensive Sauternes wine, is the only estate in France who has received a class of its own, one step above Premier Crus. Each grape is picked individually, and only when it is rotten enough. Thanks to the noble rot and a lot of hard work, the result is an exquisitely flavored wine that is acidic enough to avoid falling into the trap of being a mere dessert wine.

The Sauternes region is located 40 km (25 miles) southeast of the city of Bordeaux along the Garonne river and its tributary, the Ciron, which demarcates Barsac (Orange on the map) and Sauternes (yellow on the map). Barsac lies within Sauternes, and is entitled to use either name. Somewhat similar but less expensive and typically less-distinguished wines are produced in the neighboring regions of Monbazillac (which I tasted  a couple of years ago when visiting Bergerac) , Cérons, Loupiac and Cadillac (not the car)!

The moisture the Ciron brings, and the morning mists it causes, are favorable to the development of the fungus Botrytis cinereangus. This contributes to the high quality and renown of Sauternes wines.My guide explained that vines produce one to two bottles of wine everywhere else, but in Sauternes, you can only get one to two glasses per year! No wonder this wine is so revered (and expensive)…

Not having money to burn, I only bought some of the more modest bottles after the tasting:

Of course, there are myriads of labels to choose from:like these bottles with ample and intense golden liquid inside…You wonder how on earth with amazing wines like these in the region,some of the locals drink coffee…

My other post about wine:

A night with some dry drunk Persians here

Budapest, the neglected beauty on the Danube, is a city of friendly people, opulent buildings, golden domes, thermal baths and opera.

Budapest became a single city occupying both banks of the river with a unification on 1873 of right-bank Buda and with left-bank Pest.

A foreign city robs you of your prejudices about different neighborhoods—you look at everything with fresh virgin eyes.

Let’s start by my posh, but relatively inexpensive, hotel room and its great view:

grand cafés everywhere,

like the Callas :

The Hungarians are Opera-crazy and they have their elegant Opera Houses to show it:

There are plenty of beautiful Hungarian girls,

and boys:

and very proud ones at that: The Heroes’ Square welcomes you with seven Magyar chieftains (Magyar: Hungary) who led the Hungarian people in their proud history; I highlighted a couple that I liked best:

Now we’ll take the Budapest metro—super efficient and easy to use— to go places.

Like a good muslim, I first went to visit the great Saint Stephen Basilica:

the madonna looks friendlier in orthodox churches—somehow less aloof, more human…

In spite of all the gold in the public places, Budapest has its share of run-down buildings,

this huge metropolis is not as pretty as her smaller sister city, Prague,

but is as rich in history and as breathtaking in sights:

the sunset on the Danube is majestic:

Again as a good Shiite who does believe in Holocaust,  I went to visit the Dohany street Synagogue of Budapest, the world’s second largest that caters to a mix of Orthodox and Reformed Judaism unique to Hungary:

in spite of its Byzantine Moorish style, the similarities between this synagogue and a grand church are striking: there is an organ (Franz Liszt played on it once),

and even pulpits!

In the Jewish quarter,  you are constantly reminded of the Nazis’ atrocities:

Budapest is known for its 80 geothermal springs but I didn’t have the courage to accompany my friends to these pools in Szechenyi bath:

the Fine Art Museum was more pressing but that should wait for another post; the Hungarian parliament deserves a post all to itself as well.

If you want to stay in great affordable hotels in a great cosmopolitan European city, go to Budapest (or ask my friend, Reyhaneh, who is a champion in finding great deals!)

I leave you with this quote: “The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget” and “Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence” by Thomas Szasz.

p.s.  I am not writing about food because the only good meal I had worth writing home about was with my favorite Hungarian,  Professor Ungvari, at Remiz.

It’s one of those great (and gray) September mornings in Paris and I take my poor jet lagged body out to take pictures of a city that looks more majestic without its occupants or tourists like me!

I would like to take you with me; first we take the bus:

the streets are all empty—one of the oldest surviving buildings in Paris from the 16th century:

even the marché is not open yet,

Saint Michel is unrecognizable at 7 am:

the cafés are just opening,

walking along the river bank in Isle Saint Louis,

Notre Dame is majestically melancholic,

but pretty soon, life starts in the city:

I decide to go towards the Marais; I am surprised to see a Pain Quotidien on my way—so far from Brentwood and Westwood but exactly the same menu:

rushing towards Place des Vosges, the street signs stop me:

its’ too early in the morning for gooseberries,

I really need a strong coffee,

but of course the waitress cleans up the street and not the table left from the previous clients,

the galleries around the square are too commercial but I am glad to discover a painter from Rafsandjan, Reza Sarrafi, in one of the windows:

the wine paintings are from another painter, Annekov:

Voilà! Now you know.

I am not kidding when I say I love this city—here are my other posts about Paris:

Alone in Paris

Paris and Paul Newman

Pretty girl in Paris

Giacometti, a post from Montparnasse

I met Arcimboldo and some Germans in Paris

Opera Garnier in Paris

Paris was a woman

Paris at 6 am

Bread and Music

Abundant in nature, the color Green is Life and it represents peace, growth, renewal, health and serenity to me.

Dewing’s women are sublime in this chartreuse mist…

I like all shades of green:  lime, emerald, mint, sage, etc…Here are some fresh strawberry leaves in my backyard,

the elegant magnolia tree in my street,

the green shadow of this fuschia flower,

tired shoes on a shawl,

my green room,

two fish on this 11th century Persian ceramic,

and two naughty fish hiding under the water lilies:

and one fish on this green door,

a mean tequila shot with some limes:

a way gentler one,

I like the green man thinking,

and these beautiful women holding lights:

Shakespeare smiling behind a green fountain,

the lonely bike waiting,

my favorite tree (sycamore) leaves,

and least favorite, succulent plants.

How about these smart water plants who lure the beetles with food inside at 8 pm and eat them at 12 am?

Even coffee tastes better in a green atmosphere as Starbucks understood long ago:

A green bottle with a red soul:

I have more pictures of trees than anything else in my archives; there is a quiet majesty about a tree that has always stopped me in my daily hustle; this one is looking in the mirror:

a green Buddha,

an exquisite Delahaye ,

Green luck,

green food,

beautiful narcissus,

last but not least, green hope…

“من چه سبزم امروز و چه اندازه تنم هشیار است…”

“How green am I today
And how alert is my body”

“Que je suis verdoyant,
Et qu’il est alerte mon corps”

Sohrab Sepehri

p.s. all pictures but the last one are from my personal archives.

This is a small clip I made of these images with the beautiful “THIS” song of Brian Eno:

Pretty girls who wish to model for you are not rare in Paris and I found a great one, Lisa Tahmassi, to walk with me in La Butte aux Cailles neighborhood . You are never sure whether it will rain or not—an umbrella is usually a must in almost any season.

These two old gentlemen were so out of place in this very chic neighborhood (ok, the café was pretty beat-up)—they couldn’t take their eyes off of her!

Ah…the never-retiring beret…

It was too early to start drinking anything but an espresso at the counter:

I love these no-fuss cafés of Paris where you can have the best “petit noir” for 1.5 euros.

A world in turmoil screams for our attention,

the financial meltdown was starting to hit the front pages.

I have more pictures of Lisa but they have to wait for another post, another day.

Putting these images together, I am reminded of this terrific, light-hearted song about being young and in love in Paris by Jacques Brel,”Les Prenoms De Paris” (Names For Paris); listen to it here.

“Le soleil qui se lève
Et caresse les toits
Et c’est Paris le jour
La Seine qui se promène
Et me guide du doigt
Et c’est Paris toujours
Et mon cœur qui s’arrête
Sur ton cœur qui sourit
Et c’est Paris bonjour
Et ta main dans ma main
Qui me dit déjà oui
Et c’est Paris l’amour
Le premier rendez-vous
A l’île Saint-Louis
C’est Paris qui commence
Et le premier baiser
Volé aux Tuileries
Et c’est Paris la chance
Et le premier baiser
Reçu sous un portail
Et c’est Paris romance
Et deux têtes qui tournent
En regardant Versailles
Et c’est Paris la France

Des jours que l’on oublie
Qui oublient de nous voir
Et c’est Paris l’espoir
Des heures où nos regards
Ne sont qu’un seul regard
Et c’est Paris miroir
Rien que des nuits encore
Qui séparent nos chansons
Et c’est Paris bonsoir
Et ce jour-là enfin
Où tu ne dis plus non
Et c’est Paris ce soir
Une chambre un peu triste
Où s’arrête la ronde
Et c’est Paris nous deux
Un regard qui reçoit
La tendresse du monde
Et c’est Paris tes yeux
Ce serment que je pleure
Plutôt que ne le dis
C’est Paris si tu veux
Et savoir que demain
Sera comme aujourd’hui
C’est Paris merveilleux

Mais la fin du voyage
La fin de la chanson
Et c’est Paris tout gris
Dernier jour, dernière heure
Première larme aussi
Et c’est Paris la pluie
Ces jardins remontés
Qui n’ont plus leur parure
Et c’est Paris l’ennui
La gare où s’accomplit
La dernière déchirure
Et c’est Paris fini
Loin des yeux loin du cœur
Chassé du paradis
Et c’est Paris chagrin
Mais une lettre de toi
Une lettre qui dit oui
Et c’est Paris demain
Des villes et des villages
Les roues tremblent de chance
C’est Paris en chemin
Et toi qui m’attends là
Et tout qui recommence
Et c’est Paris je reviens.” Jacques Brel

I had the best coffee in Los Angeles  last week at Caffé Luxxe. Following  a tip from the director of Coffee Quality Institute—aka the Cupper Gods—I experienced the joy of having a real espresso outside europe: “espresso should have a rich honey-like texture topped off with a velvety, dark red-brown “crema.” This is the sign of una bella tazza di espresso: a beautiful cup of espresso.”

Here is my first cappuccino:

I was so sick and tired of (at best mediocre and at worst just plain bad) coffee served in the chain stores. The horror in the eyes of my european friends  after receiving a bit of bitter coffee in the bottom of a big paper cup has always amused me! It looks like they are serving you what’s left from the previous customer…

I went back this morning for an early cup and standing at the counter, Italian bar style, I read a horrifying article about Putin and Georgia (call me a masochist) and remembered all the problems I was trying to forget… The great coffee brought back the vanished smile to my face!

They have a great Synesso machine and Yaniv, the talented barista creates these fabulous cups with panache! To see how, watch this short clip and if you have a better attention span (read more than 30 seconds) watch this one on the craft of making coffee art.

So is coffee good for us? An excellent article on the subject by Jane Brody in New York Times has some answers.

Finding a European style café that serves great espresso in Los Angeles can almost make one forget the world’s problems.  Now If you really want to be scared just look at this map from Le Monde Diplomatique.

How is that for a nightmare in the making? Not only we are not at the End of History  but people like Fukumaya should start paying attention to the latest conflict involving Russia!  You take Kosovo, we take Georgia and Moldova!! Be scared people, be very scared…

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interests.”  Winston Churchill

These are sobering times – now you know why I needed to find a good cup of joe.