Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…

Tag Archives: Paris


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As only fools can.

The messages were clearly mixed. Every day in school we were reminded not to act the fool, but then were dared to be one, simply by heading to the chalkboard.  It seemed to me always a fine line between misbehaving and risking failure. It was harder to see then, but maybe it all came down to intent. Was the goal to shock, or to try? Both got laughs, giggles behind hands. I found out early on, the audience was in their own control. It was about how I felt. How did my behavior affect my heart? For me, I always felt better trying. 

“Better to go down swinging.” That’s what I heard on the ball field behind the Dairy Queen on summer afternoons. I took that advice through autumn as I tiptoed to the blackboard (heels were never a place for courage.) Sometimes I would get it right, and return to my desk all smiles. Sometimes, I would be covered in chalk’s dust, as if wiping the mistakes on my pants would erase it all. But I was swinging, wasn’t I?!!!  And I was happy. 

I heard it on the transistor radio in my grandma’s kitchen — “Only fools fall in love.” Is grandpa a fool? I asked her. The biggest, she said. I smiled. I was too. I loved them both. 

I guess I’m still swinging. Every time I open my mouth in France, I am covered in the mistakes of dust, but look at me, I’m here! If you want to be at the front of the class, you have to risk the chalkboard. So I risk, daily. Do I look the tourist? Maybe. But who cares? It’s Paris! You should put a baguette under wing and marvel at the Eiffel Tower. I have, and will continue to risk it all for love, for the joy of living!  My pants I can change. This is the only heart I get — I’m going to use it!

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Leaned in.

I don’t know if they know — that they live in Paris — these birds flitting about the Eiffel Tower. How special it is. But then does anyone? I hope so. Mostly because I’m hoping it for myself — this magical recognition of time and place. 

The first time I visited the Loring Cafe in downtown Minneapolis, I was amazed that I didn’t need a passport. Was I in another country? Inside a novel? The floor creaked beneath as I meandered through the scents of coffee, bread baking and old furniture. People hovered behind books, leaning back into cushions, further than I had seen anyone relax in public, as if the words were blankets. Between the clank of dish and the changing of the record, the thought occurred to me, for perhaps the first time, the life I wanted could be anywhere, if I only paid attention.

You’d think something as important as all that could never be forgotten, but I have to work at it. I have to give myself the reminders. Like displaying my bathroom cabinet as if it were a counter in the Galeries Lafayette. Plating cookies in front of art. Using my favorite pencil (having a favorite pencil for that matter!). Telling myself, as I busily flutter and flap through this life, to smile, and really look — to take the time to say, “Hey, that’s the Eiffel Tower, isn’t it!”  

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Today’s new page.

I imagine she thought she was introducing us to something new when Ms. McCarty assigned us the book Lord of the Flies. She had underestimated the previous hour we had spent with the senior boys in the gymnasium, playing (barely surviving) a game of dodge ball. Still, it was nice to be seen, to have some affirmation as I sat dazed in the front row, with the word Voigt tattooed across my forehead. 

I suppose I’ve always been looking. In the books. Not only to see myself in the situation of the characters, but the authors. Right from the start, I was Beezus. I was Ramona the Pest. I was Beverly Cleary. I was the dancing of words on the page. Because if the simple arrangement of words could change the story, why couldn’t I do that in real life — simply move the words around. 

Books made everything possible. All that randomness of words on the page. Of lives being lived. Anything could happen at any time, pain, happiness, confusion, even love. 

Oh, I’m still often dazed, but for much better reasons.  As I Hemingway the streets of Paris, or when we connect with the words beneath my fingers — when our stories gather us in, on today’s new page. 

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New light.

It’s funny that we still say “in broad daylight,” as if any of it should be surprising anymore. 

It took only seven minutes to complete the daylight heist of the Louvre in Paris. At 9:30am on October 19th, the brazen thieves walked away with priceless jewels of France. 

It was Hemingway who wrote about his years in Paris, “You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind…” And still, we didn’t expect it. I suppose we never do. 

Even in the autumn, or the dark mornings before the time change…even after reading day after day of what is done in broad daylight, I’m still surprised. And doesn’t it have to be, surprising, for us to continue this human experience. Amid all the name calling and crimes committed, shouldn’t we still be surprised, shocked at the behaviors all around us. We can’t let this become normal. We simply can’t wash it away as the new light.

For us to maintain any sort of humanity, our most priceless of jewels, we have to be surprised. Surprised enough to call it out. Fight against it. Be better. 

And it was Hemingway, too, who told us, “there would always be the spring.” I still believe. The unshuttered light comes through my morning window. 

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In the palette.

There is a color to Paris, I thought like no other. The earthy tone of warmth. Beautiful, not because they had been spared, but just the opposite, because they had come through. A palette of empathy, not asking you to blend, but a knowing and welcoming nod. A grandeur of grace. 

My mother had that. Before we knew of Paris. Before we even dared speak of beauty itself, she taught me of grace. In the earth tones of survival, she found something beautiful. And I took to it like a dream. I carry it with me, her with me, every time we visit.

At my friend’s house last week, I stopped in front of a photo. It was of her parents’ farm. I stood for a minute. Drawn in, not exactly sure why. But then I noticed it. Could it be? So far from the Eiffel Tower? This same earthy palette. I suppose you could chalk it up to the color of old film, an aging photo, but I felt it too, this same feeling. Again, maybe it was because of my grandfather, my mother, or our recent walk through Paris, or maybe there is beauty in all things that survive, that grow, that keep becoming. 

I smile because someone just wrote on my post that my mom is “still teaching us.” I think it’s true. Possible. If, no matter where we are, we keep walking in grace.

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My Notre Dame

After five years of restoration, the Notre Dame cathedral reopened in Paris! I don’t know that one exclamation point can signify the extraordinary feat. While most agreed that five years would be nearly impossible, the greater consensus was — “not on my watch…” It wasn’t whether it could be done, but that it had to be done. And it wasn’t just Catholics, or Parisians, the world seemed to be invested. For it isn’t just architecture, it is a story of our humanity. Some will call that faith. Fortitude. Survival. Pride. Celebration. Maybe it’s all of those things. But this building, this evidence of our living, this story that has stood for nearly a thousand years, all agreed that it couldn’t be lost to something so banal as a dropped cigarette or a loose wire. Not a war, not a natural disaster, nothing in all this time had taken it down. No one wanted to be the ones that let it go. 

Every detail was replicated. Details that most will never see, but all will feel. The voice of Notre Dame has been restored. Each rafter is aligned to the note. There is a sound that exits because of the building. It rings again. Still.

In my most humble of ways, I work each day on keeping my own “Notre Dame” alive. There is a voice to my Hvezdas. My Alexandria. My Van Dyke Road. My friends. My new French family. My Provence. My Paris. All rafters in the voice that is mine. Is ours. And I will do everything to keep that alive. It is my watch. It is my responsibility. 

And don’t we all have that? Aren’t we all keepers of the story? Isn’t it our joyful duty to do the work? To pass on the love? To keep it alive? To be the exclamation point of this time? This place? “Yes! Yes!!!” I shout, we shout, over the sound of ringing bells.

Paris, 2024
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Beyond the Left Bank.

Last week we had the good fortune of revisiting the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.  Located on the Left Bank of the Seine, it houses the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionistmasterpieces in the world. Painters include Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. It began as a railway station in 1898. By 1939, the short platforms became unsuitable for the newer, longer trains, and some considered it useless. There was even talk of tearing it down. But because of the vision of a select few, it was saved. And it is now one of the most beautiful and visited museums in the world. 
I suppose it’s always been human nature to give up. Supplied with life’s hammer, we have a decision to make, again and again. To build or destroy. Standing on the left bank once again, I know my decision is already made. 
The first thing I see each morning is this painting. The children by the sea. There is wonder. There is joy. This can never change. I put down my hammer, and pick up a brush. There is beauty to be made. Still.

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My notables. 

They’re very good about marking their notables in Paris. Carved on the sides of buildings. Voltaire lived here. Voltaire died here. I’m not sure everyone notices. They are perhaps too occupied, trying to get the hand placement right on the photograph so it looks like their finger is placed atop the pyramid outside the Louvre. 

And as I stand there, in this sea of outstretched arms and index fingers, I shake my head at myself — wondering if it matters. Me, standing there too, but with my new Degas sketchbook, and Voltaire notebook, lifted by the these lives, feeling their presence still.  Immersed in the joyful responsibility of doing more. Because of them. 

And I do feel it – them – the others that have come before. Those that have made the paintings. Wrote the books. Dared the thoughts. Lived the lives. I have to believe it all matters. 

I sent my Minneapolis friend the photograph of me in Paris, wearing her blazer jacket. Layered over my mother’s blouse, and the t-shirt I purchased at The Walker in my home state. She replied – “The jacket! I’m with you!” — all the proof I needed that it does matter — to carry the ones who once carried us, who lift us still. 

I smile and carve my notables.

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On St. Germain

“There are so many people who imagine that words are nothing. On the contrary, don’t you think, it’s as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint a thing. There’s the art of line and colours, but there’s the art of words that will last just the same.” Vincent Van Gogh

We were sitting in the car together on St. Germain, deciding on a place to eat. I pointed through the window to Sawatdee — the only Thai restaurant in St. Cloud, Minnesota. It was unusually warm for an autumn day. Did we want spicy? The slight breeze rustled through the fresh Daytons bags in the back seat of my mother’s car. I got a slight and welcome waft of her Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door perfume as she tapped her hand on my shoulder — the way you touch someone when you want to make sure they are listening. “I forgot to tell you,” she said. “What?” “I was talking with mother (my Grandma Elsie) about your show. I told her how many paintings you sold. She told me to tell you that she’s so proud of you.” Her voice cracked as she said.

Now to put it in context, it was not the nature of an old Swedish woman to tell you how she felt. Oh, she would show you, with a belly squeeze, a rootbeer float, but words of actual praise didn’t come naturally or frequently. My mother, who let go of that silence long ago, gave me those words with such joy and such ease — these words that were almost visible as they ran the path from her heart, through her hand, into my very being. So filling, there was nothing for either one of us to do but cry. We swam in a magnificent tableau of tears of tenderness.

If I were to name this “painting,” it would be Saturday on St. Germain. It’s not lost on me, as I now sit here in France, home of the actual Saint Germain — a cradle of intellectual and artistic life. Renowned writers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and artists like Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway frequented its alleys, making Saint-Germain-des-Prés a significant hub of French culture. How delicious, I thought, that my first equivalent encounter would be in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

Did you come from a line of artists? People ask me this often. Not in the conventional way, I suppose. But pictures were painted with heart and words. And I see them. Live in them. I am indeed cradled to this very day.

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Shoes of our humanity.

Sometimes I find myself in a hurry for no particular reason at all. Returning home in my good shoes, I have to fight the inclination to simply throw them in the closet and change quickly into my “around the house” gear. Then I see the paper forms that the shoes were originally packed in — and I pick up my mother’s torch. I place the forms back in the shoes. Toes and heels. Safe. Cared for. Wrap them in the larger sheet of tissue paper, and place them gently in their space. 

It’s always about the torches. These things that were carried, through all kinds of inclement weather, tumbled down hills, and struggled up mountains, with tired grips and hopeful hearts, excited grins that reached through outstretched arms to say, this is important, this is who I am, who we are, the best of what I could be, the start of what you can become!!!!

The athletes gather in my adopted country, under one flame, lit by millions of sparks. Passed on from mothers and fathers. Grandparents and teachers. Coaches and companions. Tiny flames that say it all matters. We all matter. And we have to care. We have to take the time to place the forms back into the shoes of our humanity, and keep them strong, keep them alive, and walk proudly on, farther, further, into the best that we can be.

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