It was my first proper break in almost a year and a half, and I don’t quite have the words to describe how badly I needed it. With 3.5 days to go, I wish I had another week of rest ahead of me, but I’m grateful that this happened at all, and that Amber and I were able to take time off together. Despite a day being swallowed up whole by a bad migraine and some health rumblings that took care of themselves, this past week has been a treat.
We watched The Drama (I’m giving the film a B, and still processing how it made me feel), and the protagonists’ home made me miss our apartment in Noida. We have a lovely space in Brussels, but we’re some ways away from it feeling lived in.
On the weekend, we went for a hike in Bois de la Cambre and the Forêt de Soignes, and then visited Parc Bruggman and Parc Montjoie (including a little detour into Bois de la Cambre) a couple of days later. Can I spend all my days outdoors please? It doesn’t even have to be sunny or warm; I’ll walk in the rain. I saw four new-to-me birds during the hike: Great Tit, Eurasian Nuthatch, Short-toed Treecreeper and Cetti’s Warbler. It is super rewarding to see these small birds that I feel I am so bad at spotting the first time around.
With Sarthak, who came down from his mountain paradise in Chartreuse, Amber and I spent two days in Paris. It was unseasonably and uncomfortably warm, but that didn’t stop us from being out and about most of the time. We went to The Musée des Arts Décoratifs to see the exhibition marking a century of Art Deco. I was really excited about this visit, but the exhibition was underwhelming. There was no audio guide, and there were items on display that didn’t even have captions. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the curation was very France and Euro-centric, but it was definitely a disappointment. Not everything was terrible, of course. I was thrilled to see AM Cassandre’s posters in the flesh, especially since he featured so prominently in the new type walk that I ran in Panjim in February. We went for a walk in the cemetery in Montparnasse, an old favourite, and Sarthak found Jean Giraud’s grave and left a drawing there. On our way out, we visited the art supplies store, Adam, and I picked up things for a new project I have cooking in my head. Sarthak had already brought me the perfect notebook for it, and he helped me pick the right kind of colour pencils at the shop. Now for me to get past my inertia and get drawing.
Between all these plans, I found a bit of time to tinker around the India Street Lettering website one afternoon, and finally set up this blog. I also picked up my Belgian resident card at the start of the break.
Before I wrap up, two updates from the previous week that I would feel silly not to document. TypeTogether released Bree Devanagari, a typeface I had been chipping away at for years. Prateek and Rhea released their game Fishbowl.