Paris, Then and Now: Cook's Return

 

by Marquis Who's Who In America/The World writer Paul Heidelberg has recently been released.

To the general public, and to traditional publishers in particular, COOK'S RETURN A NOVEL OF THE LATE 20TH CENTURY, is now available in print and digital formats at www.amazon.com, www.bn.com. etc.

The author's intention is that a traditional publisher will team with writer Heidelberg to publish COOK'S RETURN under that house's imprint.

To the reading public: As of November, 2015, you can get my book at the above websites, etc. About that I say, do just that and enjoy a book that took very much hard work to start, work on intensely and finish.

A very brief description of the book: Artists create, love and learn on the idyllic Greek island of Crete and in Paris.

The novel has a strong female protagonist -- the Parisian painter Simone, who "paints what she wants to paint, not what art dealers want," but still succeeds at a big art gallery in Paris.

Now, with recent events in Paris, COOK'S RETURN has taken on a new meaning -- it is a record of France, Paris and Parisian artists in a world as it once was; a world that will never be the same.

　

Paul Heidelberg

November, 2015

New Mexico

(The novel was written in Florida after much time spent in Paris, and in Crete, during and after service in the U.S. Air Force at Iraklion Air Station near Iraklion. In Iraklion is the grave site of the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis, the author of ZORBA THE GREEK, REPORT TO GRECO and other great books.)

The Man from Bordeaux I Story/The Man from Bordeaux II Story

Good Wine Aging In Europe
Photo (c) Paul Heidelberg



EPILOGUE TO WINE AND SPIRITS WRITING/PHOTOGRAPHY TRIPS TO FRANCE'S CHARENTE AND CHAMPAGNE REGIONS

BY PAUL HEIDELBERG

So, there I was at the Brasserie Coq D'or in Cognac, seated next to a table of obvious celebrants -- a Man From Bordeaux, about 35, was treating his wife and her family (Charente Folks).

I was wearing a long-billed orange cap that could be described as Hemingwayesque, I suppose; for that and other reasons. including my resemblance to the ecrivain, the Man From Bordeaux kept looking at me, screaming (or what was very close to screaming) "You're Hemingway, You're Hemingway."

(I've been told for many years, including by a Swiss woman I was seated next to at the Brasserie Lipp in Paris a few years back, that I also look like the French Poet Paul Verlaine. Verlaine was a great poet, but an evil man, and did such things as beat up his mother, and his young son on separate occasions -- he injured each of them badly enough to serve jail time.)

BORDEAUX MAN II

I encountered The Bordeaux Man On Horseback during a trip to a 6,000 acre hunting camp in France's Dordogne Region. I had been invited to participate in this adventure by another man on horseback -- an owner of a large, privately-held Cognac house.

The two men on horseback rode into forested land that surrounded large meadows where about 20 hunters were waiting with rifles for the deer that might be chased out of the woods.

As I am not an aficionado of blood sports, I was glad that during that day spent in the French wilderness, no deer were taken.

The highlight of the trip were my friend's 20-plus Anglais-Francais hunting dogs -- you know, the brown and white kind of dogs you see used in English fox hunting. Towards the end of the hunt, one of the dogs came up to me and laid next to me in the sun on a hillside, acting as if he were my own dog of many years.

Later members of the hunting party said they were very surprised to see this, as this was the most difficult dog to "round up" at hunt's end -- it was usually the least friendly to humans.

The time spent with that chien is a fond memory.

The trip's cuisine: Vin rouge for breakfast served with large platters of scrambled eggs. After the hunt, apertifs of pastis and water and biere pression in a "hunter's clubhouse room" before we sat at tables in the large room where we had our breakfasts, where we had more red wine and dined on great loaves of fresh-baked bread and fantastique pommes frittes served with huge roasts of wild boar.

Woman In Paris

Parisienne seen on the Right Bank.

(If the first time you saw the word Parisienne it was in connection with a Pontiac auto -- no problem. Models from the 1950s and 1960s were especially fine "Belle Femmes.")


Photograph (c) Paul Heidelberg

New Mexico Snowstorm, December 5, 2011/Photo One

This photograph was taken Monday, December 5, during a mammoth snowstorm that was pounding Central New Mexico. The photo was taken near U.S. Highway 60 that runs through New Mexico, East to West.

In the East in New Mexico, Highway 60 starts near the town of Clovis, where the great Buddy Holly of Lubbock, Texas, recorded some of his legendary music, including the timeless classic "Oh Boy."

(For more about Buddy Holly, and John Pickering, who sang backing vocals on "Oh Boy" and other Buddy Holly tunes, visit www.musicoftheworldXXI.blogspot.com and www.texasmusicnow.blogspot.com.)



(When this photograph was taken, the Arctic storm was nowhere near finished.)

Photograph (c) Paul Heidelberg

New Mexico Snowstorm, December 5, 2011/Photo Two

"Old House Seen Through Frosty Window"

This is an old house near Highway 60 that traverses New Mexico from East to West. The house sits at 6,500 feet in Central New Mexico near the Manzano Mountains.

(When this photo was taken during the morning of December 5, this early December, pre-Winter storm was nowhere near finished.)

Photograph (c) Paul Heidelberg

Paul's Email-Postcard from La Closerie des Lilas in Paris: The Ernest Hemingway Plaque



"At The Lilas In Paris"





This is an authentic plaque, not tourist trap nonsense.

When Papa came into the Lilas, if you were sitting at his seat at the bar, you moved.

(There is a similar plaque for French Philosopher/Writer Jean-Paul Sartre at a nearby table.)

The book, photographed with the plaque one Sunday morning before the Lilas opened, is the new edition of Hemingway's Paris memoir A MOVEABLE FEAST, first published posthumously in the 1960s; this version is more as Hemingway would have wanted it -- the bad editing of publishing house editors has been corrected by Hemingway's son Patrick and his grandson Sean.

Contact Paul Heidelberg at paulheidelberg@yahoo.com to learn how to obtain a gallery-quality, high megapixel, 11 by 14-inch print of this photograph that was taken with Heidelberg's Leica digital camera, and for information about acquiring gallery-quality prints of any of the other photos on Heidelberg's blogs.


PHOTOGRAPH (c) COPYRIGHT PAUL HEIDELBERG

Paul's Email-Postcard from Spain: "Land of the Great Poet Federico Garcia Lorca"

The Fountain Of Tears

At FG Lorca's Birthhouse Near Granada

Green, I want you green...




This is a photographic remembrance of, and tribute to, the great Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca (Poet, writer and artist Paul Heidelberg believes he may be Spain's greatest poet ever).



The line, Green I want you green, is from a FGL poem; the one photograph was taken at The Fountain Of Tears near Granada, Spain, near where FG Lorca was killed by supporters of Francisco Franco at the beginning of the Spanish Civil in August, 1936. (The other photograph was taken at Lorca's Birthhouse near Granada.)



After some searching with the help of two Spanish friends, Heidelberg found The Fountain Of Tears in August, 2004, 68 years after Lorca's death (almost to the day).



(Heidelberg lived in a village in the highest mountains of Spain, the Sierra Nevadas, "Sud de Granada," from June, 2004 to August, 2006).



This spring-fountain was named by the Moors many centuries before Lorca's death; it was so named because the Moors thought the bubbles that rise to the water's surface resembled tears.



The fountain is still crying -- it now cries for Lorca: The Lion of the Alhambra, as flamenco singer Juanito Maravillas sings in his Nuevos Fandangos cancion, "La Muerta De Una Poeta."

 
(To read a poem to Lorca that mentions The Fountain Of Tears and the photograph with the strange image emanating from the mirror, go to
http://www.paulheidelberg.com/
and click on the link to
Selected Poetry 2004/2005
and then click
Por Federico, Agosto 2004)

Note: The poet in me has prompted me to paste that poem here as I update this post in 7/11.

Like all great artists, Lorca lives on through his art; so, Viva Lorca!:



POR FEDERICO, AGOSTO 2004




Hola Lorca:

I was there

at the Fountain of Tears

yesterday,

and today

I can imagine

your spirit

in the clear, cool waters

between

plants of

brilliant shades of green,

standing and swaying

alive in the water,

moving with the bubbles of tears;

it is a pretty place,

one could have

a worse place –

and,

you have your mountains

and olive trees,

moons,

when the nights are right.

You died

ten miles,

as the eagle flies,

from your birthplace,

where your younger spirit

erupted from the mirror

by the piano –

a huge arc

of light

shooting across

your photograph,

and,

a ghostly image

of a face,

forever frozen

on the wall.