Week 31, 2025 — The start of summer

Paris has been cool, even a bit chilly at times, in a cheery, magnanimous mood as people disappear into their holidays. It's also the time to look around to connect one last time with those still here. I've had a more social week than usual, and enjoyed it a lot.

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My own vacance will be on my old road bike. I'd decided this was the kick I needed to make all the improvements I've put off for the last decade. Put on a more comfortable saddle, get flat pedals for sneakers instead of clipless shoes, give it a good clean, get the gears checked etc. I had ordered a new rain jacket and seatpost bag, too. So this week I ran around town chasing down deliveries that hadn't made it to my door, and trying to get bike shops to give me useful advice. It was time-consuming and more expensive than I wanted but I'm almost there. It it feels good to have my trusty companion be functional and welcoming to ride again, instead of gathering dust as I default to the new and new-fangled bike. (I'm going to lend that one to my sister for our trip, while I take the old one.)

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I went to the David Hockney 25 show at Fondation Louis Vuitton, after really enjoying his retrospective at the Pompidou in 2017. The highlight were several series of drawings, some of them on the iPad, from his home in Normandy. This was basically his COVID project, except unlike most COVID projects, he kept going. The Pompidou show had a few exploratory pieces. It had looked super basic, and I remember thinking huh, everyone's iPad drawings looks the same in the beginning, and does Hockney need to be on the iPad in his 80's? But fast forward seven years, and gosh his work is beautiful and unequivocally his. It's humbling and inspiring, and I was happy to learn more about this phase of his life in "David Hockney in Pays d'Auge", a work journal by writer and gallerist Jean Frémon who periodically visited him. I read half of it in the crowded gift shop instead of getting in the queue. One day I'll encounter it again in a bookstore, and enjoy re-discovering it.