Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: Paris


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Je suis Charlie.

Maybe we were all just as fragile as the sticker we stood behind. This sticker with only three words. But three chosen words could bring us together, couldn’t they? Hadn’t they brought us together so many times? So we wrote three new ones at the moment of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris — Je suis Charlie (I am Charlie). And we marched. We gathered. Together.

Lifted by the scents of the boulangeries, we asked for the same — something new, something fresh. We weren’t just journalists and jokers. Not only French, but humans — humans all over the world. People standing up for the rights to be free, and to be safe in that freedom. Safe to laugh, to create and to grow and to love. So we shuffled from foot to foot, knowing there is never really “safety” in love or creation. Knowing that there’s risk in both. But we lifted signs above our heads and out of our hearts, believing still, the risk was never, is never, meant to be our lives. We had to be secure in the living. Standing next to the ones we loved, and the ones perhaps we’d love to know, we said we were one. We said we were together. We said we were “Charlie.”

I can’t tell you which tragedy happened next. One blurred into the next. And we changed our pictures on Facebook from one flag to another. Vowed our support on Instagram. Shouted our discontent. And changed our banners the following week, and sometimes daily. And it was never enough, and too much for others. So we went back to our smiling selfies, and soon stopped changing our banners altogether.

I don’t want to grow immune to it. To look away at injustice. I don’t want to merely shrug my shoulders and move on. But neither can I, we, carry the weight of it all on our shrugging shoulders. Our weary hearts. Somehow we must keep standing, for and with.

This painting is of that day, that day when we claimed who we were. Standing behind the sticker is Pascal. He is my brother-in-law. Really, he is just my brother. The sticker of “in-law” has long worn off and dropped. Maybe that’s what family is — those who are still there once the stickers have worn off. Once the flags have been changed. And changed again. It is who we really are.

Maybe we need to ask ourselves each day, “Am I a part of this world?”; “Am I a part of the human race?”; “Am I a part of this family?” — look in the mirror, look at those around us, and proudly answer, I am.

Je suis Charlie.
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Little Eiffel Towers in her apartment.


She packed her delight alongside our Walgreens’ provisions. Just a young girl in a red smock in this Biloxi Walgreens, so eager to learn about the world. “Where are you from?” “France.” Gasping, she asked if we lived by the Eiffel Tower. No, we smiled, south. “But you’ve seen the Eiffel Tower?” “Oh, yes, many times.” She was so excited. She said she wanted to go. So desperately wanted to go, and began to count our change again, apologizing. “No need to apologize, it is exciting, distracting even,” I said. “Do you eat croissants?” She asked, wanting to know everything. “Yes,” I replied, “I even make them.” “Oh my! You have to send the recipe!” I told her I would. And I meant it. She already had me, but then she went all the way. “I’m going to make enough money one day to take my mom. She loves Paris. She has little Eiffel towers in her apartment.” My heart spread across the Walgreens store.

I took her email address that she scratched on the back of our receipt. I sent her pictures of croissants I have made. The Eiffel Tower I have stood next to. Kissed under. Dreamed above.

Sometimes all we need to know is that it’s possible. I hope she believes it. If we can give each other that gift, then we have everything.

I carried her delight through the electronic doors. Hope stayed with her. We are all on our way.

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Travel day.

Today we will be traveling from Marseille to Paris. Paris to New York. New York to Minneapolis. The fact that I get to type words like travel and Paris and New York and Minneapolis, and that I have stories from each place, memories, footprints, even artprints…this fills me!

Maybe it was from Ernest Hemingway that I first learned about this “feast.”

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast.” – Ernest Hemingway, to a friend, 1950

My “lucky enough” was that I always found a way to feast, even with what some would call absolutely nothing. But what they couldn’t see was I had words. I had hands. I had paint. I had an imagination. This took me everywhere — long before I stepped onto a plane. And it has stayed with me. Hemingway was right. It does stay with you – if you carry it, nurture it, give thanks for it – every day!

Zipping up the luggage now. Giving thanks. Time to feast! Bon appétit!

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Pull over fantastic!

There is a Prada store alongside the road near Marfa, Texas. Prada Marfa is a permanent sculptural art installation by artists Elmgreen and Dragset. The installation, in the form of a freestanding building—specifically a Prada storefront—was inaugurated on October 1, 2005.

I suppose it can be argued as a statement against consumerism, but that was all lost on me, when we saw it, in this middle of nowhere…the extreme unlikeliness of it all, it just seemed so beautiful.

A picture came up in my photo memories — me, standing in front of a Christmas store window in Paris. That is “pull over to the side of the road” fantastic — the unlikeliness of it all. I mean, I was born in Alexandria, Minnesota! It took me years to see it – but what a gift – to begin there. A gift to begin with (you probably are thinking I would have said “nothing” here) but to begin with desire, hopes and dreams and the belief that if I kept driving, driving through this empty dessert, something magical would happen — and that, is not nothing! That is something! And something magical did happen! Continues to happen! Every day! You just have to be willing to search for it, long and hard, and pull over to enjoy it when it does.

I remember it was an extremely cold day in Paris. The winter winds were blowing. Most people walked with their heads down, bracing the cold and the wind, having seen it all before. But this was Christmastime, in Paris, and I couldn’t keep my head down. I could barely keep my feet on the ground. I stopped in front of each window. Big smiles – the unlikeliness of it all! The magic of this season, this life! I am the Prada store in Marfa. That is my Christmas miracle – every day!


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The Eiffel Tower doesn’t need me.

When you say the word France, people immediately think of Paris, and not without good reason.  Paris is a magnificent city. Magical really.  The Eiffel tower, the Louvre, Montmartre and Sacré Coeur. It is, as Hemingway said, clearly a “moveable feast”!  It is fashion and history and artists and writers. Coffee on sidewalks. Croissants and romance. It is Notre Dame. It is what was, and what will be again.


But Paris is not France, not all of it. There is so much more.  Today, I’d like to take you to the lengthy, rugged coastline of Brittany.  Here you will meet French people, not tourists.  Here, they will wave to you (this doesn’t sound like much, but my Minnesota-nice loved it).  Their houses, are not palaces, but they are manicured.  Each small yard is covered with flowers. I saw a woman on her hands and knees with a scissors, cutting the grass. These people are proud and welcoming. We went for lunch at a small restaurant with white tablecloths and a bowl of caramels (the taste of Brittany) for dessert. I asked the waitress where we could purchase these caramels – I loved them! She stepped away from the table, I thought maybe she didn’t understand. She returned with both hands forming a bowl filled with these delicious caramels and she dropped them in my purse. My first (non-family) gift in France.

We went to an antique store, browsed the history, our mouths filled with butter and sugar. I was drawn to a cup filled with old paint brushes. Green handles worn from hopeful hands and spotted with paint’s proof.  I held them up and asked how much they were?  He said something I didn’t understand. My husband said they were free for me – gratuit! I held them to my heart – what was and what will be.

The next store I bought a sketch pad and began painting with my experienced brushes. Together, we sat at the beach and tried to capture this rugged beauty that I had never seen before. This worn in warmth of a place, that maybe needed me to tell its story, as much as I needed to feel it.  An exchange of beauty. This is not the Eiffel tower, but believe me, this too, is France. Bienvenue!