I had forgotten...

one of the pleasures of hot days (and nights) in a country where the houses have shutters: sitting in a cool, dim room, relishing every breeze that seeps through the louvers.

It is still light at 11 pm here, unlike the Bay Area where it is dark at 8 or not long after. People are up and out late--or is it only that one hears them more because one throws all the windows wide open once the sun goes down? I left the windows open but closed the shutters when I went to bed. This morning the air through the still-closed shutters has a coolness, but it feels already as if it is going to be a scorcher.

Yesterday was the first day of the Colloquium in honour of Hélène Cixous at the Maison Heinrich Heine at the Cité Universitaire. A fascinating, almost too-stimulating day of talks and meditations on her work (with much talk of Derrida, too) around the themes of memory and origins. Especially notable (for me) were the talks by the writers Cécile Wajsbrot and René de Ceccaty, along with those of some of the scholars, such as Maxime Decout from Lille and Ginette Michaud from Montreal.

More talks today and a dinner this evening on the rue Racine.

This photo is of a reading at the much regretted Village Voice Bookstore on the Rue Princesse in March 2004. St. Patrick's Day, I seem to recall. The occasion was the launching of the translation of Cixous's Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint (un jeune saint juif). I remember an overflow crowd to hear Cixous and Derrida.