The Legand of the Lemon Lady: Where My Love For Lemons Originated...

As, hopefully, you can tell, I’ve made a few changes to the look of my blog. I hope you like them. I have also added a list of other blogs I enjoy, so if you get bored at work… your welcome. Also you can now comment on blog posts under the name “anonymous” if you don’t want to set up a Yahoo or Google account… your welcome parents.

A few people have asked me where the name LemonsLemonsLemons comes from. So, I thought I would address that question today in honor of the new look. (And yes, I know it looks very similar to the old look.)

I like lemons.

Here are some reasons why I’ve always liked lemons…

Sour Lemon Sharks from Woolworths in England
Lemon Sorbet
Lemons in your Ice Tea
Lemon Pepper on everything

Then something happened when I as 15 that changed my view on lemons, from just liking them, to kinda being obsessed. I made the mistake of going to the Musee d’Orsey with my sister.

When I first moved to Germany the summer between my freshmen and sophomore years in high school, my mom, my sister, and I went on a girls trip to Paris. Sister loves Paris. She was an art history major in college (yeah my parents produced art history and American studies majors, go figure) and she took French in high school and she found out she was pregnant with my nephew while in Paris with Brother In Law. I mean I think Paris is beautiful and historical and I love food, but Sister REALLY thinks Paris is beautiful and historical and give her a baguette and she’s happy as a clam. So after we arrived in Germany and after my father dragged us all jet lagged through Bavaria and the Alps, Mom, Sister, and I jumped on the train to Paris.

After an interesting train ride sharing a compartment with a mother and her two Harry Potter loving children and a slightly creepy French tennis player we arrived in Paris ready to see the sights thanks to Sister and her tour books and knowledge of every building and statue. When I say we looked at a lot of art, we looked at a lot of art. Now, I like art. I do, but OMG does my sister like art. She can tell you why a certain painter painted an arm longer than the other or why a cherub has a thin halo instead of a thick halo. Then she would want to sketch. She would plop herself down in front of some naked guy holding grapes and draw him from different angles as Asian tourists took pictures and videotaped her. I’m sure it was a dream come true. I mean I can imagine if I was an artist, sitting with my back against the marble wall of some random hall in the Louvre sketching priceless works of art would be awesome. (Maybe even living out the movie that plays inside my head)

On the day after the Louvre, we visited the Musee d’Orsay where all the impressionist paintings are housed. The museum itself is an old train station that has been converted into a holding house of some of the most priceless, amazing, beautiful works of art. Monet and Renoir and Degas and thousands of other master artists have work inside its wall. When you visit the Musee d’Orsay you start on the ground floor and then you take a very long series of escalators to the top floor and work your way back down. This system keeps people walking the same way and traffic moving swiftly. We finished two floors and my feet were killing me and Mom was hungry, so even though I’m sure my sister was ready to press on to the next lowest floor, we made her stop at the museum café and have a bite to eat. We bought our pommes frites and whatnot and quickly found a seat to rest our feet and enjoy our little snack.

Me: “Nom, nom, nom, my feet hurt, nom.”

Sister: “Nom, nom, nom, I love art, nom.”

Mom: “So, girls what has been your favorite piece of art you’ve seen today?”

Me: “Well, I…”

Sister: (Quickly cutting me off) “Oh, well there are soooo many that are worthy of that title…. I mean first there is Monet’s Blue Water Lilies or as the French call them “Nymphéas Bleus” in its square format that just overly emphasizes the neutrality of the composition. And, it is true that if you get really close to the painting the bush strokes are stronger than the identification of the plants and water they are suppose to represent. The man was a genius, a lily pad loving genius! And the Van Goghs! Did you see The Church in Auvers –Sur –Oise? It is amazing to see such a gothic structure become light and almost flamboyant like rising from the shadows. And Cezanna… I love how… blah blah blah…”

Me: (To myself) “OMG will she never shut up? And what’s the difference between composition and dimension? Didn’t she explain that yesterday? Crap this is all just running together…”

Sister: “blah, blah, blah… Courbet vaginas… blah, blah, blah… Pissarros’ fragmented brushstrokes… blah blah blah…”

Me: (Again to myself) “Divisionism??? Okay, remember when it’s your turn say smart things like composition, dimension, and divisionism. Repeat, composition, dimension, and divisionism. Repeat, composition, dimension, and divisionism….”

Sister: “blah, blah, blah… The Redon off centered child that on one side the painting was airy and light and the other had the dark child in the shadows... blah blah blah and a whole lot of other shit about art I can’t remember/don’t want to look up/wasn’t listening in the first place.”

Twenty minutes later when my sister stopped for air and what was remaining of the French Fries, Mom turned to me and, ever the fair mother, asked me, “So, what was your favorite piece of art?”

Me: “Ah… Um… (What can’t I think of anything?) Well… You see… (Crap, who were those pretty blue painting by again? What were those smart sounding artsy words I was suppose to say?) Um… There was this one of a Lemon I liked."

"Le Lemon" by Edouard Manet 1880

FML. Really? Really? Out of all the amazing works of art I had seen for the past five hours the only painting I could remember was smaller than an 8x10 and pictured a single lemon on a plate. Yeah, a lemon on a plate. I could have remembered the beautiful Degas ballerinas, or that large painting of the men stripping the ballet studio’s floor by someone I can’t remember and Google seems to be failing me. I could have remembered all the Van Gogh self portraits that are all colorful and beautiful but always seem haunted underneath the rainbow paint. But, no. My mind went blank and the only single piece of work I could remember from the last five hours of looking at what can be argued as one of the best collections of art in the world, was than damn Manet’s Le Lemon.

So, I went with it. And I did and still do kinda love it. It is small and dark and I felt sorry for it. Yeah, I felt sorry for a painting in a museum that is probably passed over all day long while people speed walk to the Monets. Since then, I’ve become a lover of all things lemons. Later that summer I took my photo by lemon trees when Mom, Sister, and I went to Austria. Sister has painted me two painting of lemons. One was a copy of the original and one was her interpretation. I have lemon shaped candles and lemon earrings. I have a lemon throw pillow and a lemon apron. I’ve embraced an infatuation of the great citrus because of a small painting in a large museum on the other side of the world.

And there you have it, the story of
LemonsLemonsLemons.