Friday 19 August 2011
Avignon, FRANCE
He had the same eyes, Nico. I would have recognized them anywhere. But his hair was blacker than I had remembered, and his Marseillais accent was thicker than I had realized when I knew him years ago. The nuances of language come only with fluency. I met him when I was nineteen and naïve, a virgin in every possible sense of the word. It was my first time in France. I wanted so desperately to fall in love.
We first met at Red Sky, or maybe O’Neill’s, peu importe. It doesn’t much matter. I was tipsy and happy and I wasn’t afraid of men yet, no, not then. I met Nico before the terror started, before I learned how to distrust, how to hate, how to fear. I was innocent when I met Nico. I trusted him. I trust him still.
We decided to meet up at Place Pie. It was only natural. He was in jeans, the back sneakers he always wore, a grey shirt that unbuttoned in a V at the neck, the white fedora that I used to playfully steal.
« Comme c’est bizarre de te revoir, » he said to me as he kissed my cheeks. Left right left.
He asked me right away about my novel, the hypothetical one that I promised him that I would write one day. He was sure that I had started it. I laughed and shook my head as we found a table on the terrace at Red Sky.
« Mais tu écris toujours j’espère . . . »
« Oui, t’inquiète pas. Et je te donnerai un exemplaire dès que mon boucan sort. Si jamais ça sort . . . si jamais j’en écris un qui vaut être publié . . . »
We ordered drinks in the afternoon heat and picked up where we had brutally left off, somewhere in the middle of the folly of the spring of 2009.
I have been doing aller-retours between France and the United States for so long now it seems that Avignon has become the France of my youth. A golden Virgin stands at the highest point of the lonely town, her hands clasped in prayer and her head ringed in a crown of stars. She looks out over Avignon—over its lavender, its cobblestones, its palace with its statues of headless saints, its cicadas, its olives, its wine, its river, its ramparts. It was Mother Mary that watched the madness of my youth. She watched as I broke into le Rocher des Doms with Thom; as I stumbled through Place Pie, weeping; as I lit cigarettes in the rain while walking home to Monclar; as I sat alone by the river, writing and inviting my fate. Avignon is a city where no one knows me deeply, where no one expects my voice on the telephone, where no one worries if I don’t call. When I wander at night, the beat of my boots echoes off of rampart walls. There is no sound more lonely than that of solitude. No one here asks me what I want to be when I grow up. Except Nico.
« Tu te souviens de cette soirée-là ? . . . celle où nous sommes rentrés chez toi—ou bref, chez Isabelle—et on n’a fait que causer pendant toute la nuit. Et le lendemain il m’a fallu m’enfouir dans le jardin pour que personne ne me voie . . . et il y’avait tous les gamins et Isabelle dans la cuisine cette matinée quand nous sommes descendues, tout doucement, en cachette. Et toit t’étais en train de me chuchoter et tout et j’avais trop peur moi qu’on ne nous découvre . . . »
One night two years ago he stayed the night at Isabelle’s house, secretly, in my bed, wrapped in my sheets that smelled like lavender. I will remember his eyes, always. He had taken off his thick, black-rimmed glasses and placed them on my nightstand, next to my morning cup of tea. We shouldn’t have risked it, no, not there. Shawna had refused to bring Levy home; instead they took a cab to Adrien’s apartment in Agroparc, near Montfavet. Levy had complained that the bed would be too small for the two of them, but it was Shawna that knew better. Our host mother was strict, temperamental, bipolar. I never should have suggested that Nico stay over. But I did. And we did nothing that night but lay in bed and stay up all night talking, I swear.
Two years ago, Nico was a police officer that wanted nothing better than to act, and I was a bilingual aspiring author who had always dreamed of painting. He said that he hadn’t wanted to let his father down. He had done for his son, sacrificed so much to get Nico where he was. Nico had entered the police academy to appease family tradition.
« Mais là où je suis aujourd’hui n’est pas là où je veux être demain. »
“Where I am today,” he said, “is not where I want to be tomorrow.”
« Et moi je veux écrire. Je vais écrire, à n’importe quel prix. »
“And I want to write. I will write, at whatever cost.”
Where I am today is never where I want to be tomorrow.
At twenty-one years, I suddenly feel old, fatigued. I have become nostalgic. I haunt the stumbling ground of my dangerous youth. I remember its caresses, its insults, its kisses, its violence. I remember running into the frigid waves at the beach at La Ciotat with Shawna, I remember the route to Apt in Alex’s car that always smelled like kif, I remember Adrien’s apartment in Agroparc where we drank vodka and picon, I remember sitting on a bench on Nico’s lap outside of La Cadillac and kissing him for the first time, I remember calling Levy from the airport in Marseille and crying while waiting to board a flight to London, I remember buying a long-stemmed zinnia, with red petals and a red ribbon to match, and leaving it in a vase on my desk at Isabelle’s as a final gesture, a gift, a goodbye.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
La solitude de la voyageuse
Saturday 13 August 2011
Nice, FRANCE
Summer in the city, and I’m so lonely, lonely, lonely. There is no solitude comparable to that of a suitcase, or watching the sunrise over the Mediterranean alone. I went to Antibes one Saturday just to rub up against strangers, I admit it. There was a white wedding parading out of the cathedral there, and the shower of rose petals and the lace and the cameras and the ochre of the steeple against the azure of the sea all left me close to tears. I have become sensible, unstable. The sight of the sea alone makes me cry.
I spent my Saturday afternoon in Antibes at the Picasso museum, housed in his old studio with tall uncurtained windows that overlooked the sea. I stood in the center of a gallery of his sketches and I felt him there. I did. In the mid-1940s Picasso’s mind was filled with fawns playing lutes and flutes, centaurs wielding tridents, big-hipped women stretched out on rocks like mermaids, or sometimes dancing, hands raised, breasts bared, eyes closed, hair flowing as wild as Medusa’s. I didn’t have the drugs to sort it out. I stood in the center of Picasso’s studio and looked out the window like he once did. The cloudless sky floated in the Mediterranean depths and a bright white cruise ship floated by in the sky.
The Mediterranean inspires a certain madness, not the cold madness of my winters, no, it is a warm madness, the madness of a girl alone on the sea; it is the folly of youth, of passion, of waves, of loneliness, of love, of sunlight so bright that it burns the sky to a bleached blue. It is a madness that I feel when I am home alone; when I cook couscous and vegetables and listen to Jimi Hendrix; when I walk the length of la Baie des Anges along the Promenade des Anglais late at night; when I open drawers and cupboards and closets just to see what’s inside; when I wander until I’m lost on a hill overlooking the bay; when I eat breakfast on the balcony with a view of the sea and feel so immensely overwhelmed by the beauty of my solitude.
Nice could be the saddest of all cities. It burns. Summer is its greatest tragedy.
I am mourning my departure in advance, as always. It’s my most morbid habit. Where has my time gone all of a sudden? What will I do with my body that stings with salt and sunshine once back in the aching fields of Ohio? My body is forbidden there. They judge me down to my bones.
Sometimes I am convinced that I won’t be buried there. I hope hibiscus will grow near my grave. I want an olive tree planted in my backyard. I want a courtyard with walls where ivy climbs. I want my gardens to be lined with lavender. I hope to hear cicadas outside my windows at night. I hope one day my children will want to see the country I came from. I want them to be bilingual, like me. I want to tell them the stories that my mother and my grandmother told me. I want to hold them and tell them “je t’aime.”
And if I never go home? If I abandon the work that I have started there? If I promise to my friends that I’ll write? If I sell my car and my furniture? If I pack my library of literature into a big box labeled “Anglophone” and store it in my closet until it’s dusty? I’d be no better off than before—adrift, aloof, alone. As for happy I cannot yet say. My greatest fear is that one day I’ll stop loving this country, that I’ll grow old with it no happier than I would have been elsewhere.
We ambiguously aspiring expatriates are a lonely bunch. We just don’t know where we belong. We’ve stretched the cord to the mother country but we haven’t quite severed it. We’re licking at our open wounds. We shop and drive and read and make love in a foreign tongue, but we will always count to ten and cuss in our native language until the day that we die.
* * *
The most beautiful day that I remember in Nice, it rained. It was cloudy in the morning, stifling, the humidity as high as the sky was low and the bus was late as usual. I listened to The National on the bus to school because I was lonely among people. It began drizzling by the time I got to school. Our grammar review of adverbial clauses and gerunds was punctuated by rain but by the time we paused for lunch the city was again whitewashed like an overexposed photograph. Painfully bright, le soleil brûlant, the ochre buildings of la Place Masséna standing like sunburned guards of the blinding sea surging beyond the Promenade des Anglais. But by mid-afternoon the clouds were back to menace the sky and I sat at the back of the bus with my book and my brain all clouded over by the newest novel by Nina Bouraoui.
Chez moi, I sat on the balcony to read. I didn’t notice the rain until I heard what I thought was the beat of soft percussion coming from the garden below, but it was just the rain tap tap tapping on a plastic gutter like a hollow African drum. The rain was sudden and claustrophobic. The mountains veiled themselves in fog and the sea disappeared into the horizon. Claps of thunder came from nowhere and everywhere all at once. A bolt of lightening over the water illuminated a hole in the sea and the thunder ricocheted off of the invisible mountains to the north like a boomerang. The palms drooped like weeping willow trees in the rain.
And then as subtly as it started, the tap tap tapping on the gutter slowed to a steady, lethargic beat. The smells returned all at once, wet, sensual, rich: sweet silver pine, hints of lavender, eucalyptus, hibiscus. The apricot and lemon trees in the garden glimmered with citrus gems. I could see the sea begin to move again, a sleeping giant groaning under a thin sheet, deep and dark and black and blue as a new bruise. The clouds lumbered out to sea like the ferries that depart for Corsica from the port and a rainbow took their place, a great arching gate to the fiery, forbidden continent across the salty belly of mother Mediterranean.
A cool breeze from the sea sighed with the scent of salt and the recent rain. The sky was clear all at once and from the balcony I watched a sailboat skirt the shore. Ever since the summer solstice—when I was still hundreds of kilometers away, isolated in the French Alps—the evening has been creeping up earlier and earlier, a sunlight thief. The shadows slink up the sides of the buildings, one story of balconies and awnings after another. There are more gardens on the balconies in this city than there are on the ground. On their balconies, my thousand anonymous neighbors grow orchids and morning glories. But I didn’t come to Nice to see gardens and parks; I wanted to stand at the edge of a continent and feel the waves around my ankles pulling me out to sea like watery manacles.
There is something about the Mediterranean that makes me fall in love with everything. After the rain that day I was drawn from my balcony and down to the sea. It was the color of slate, or a magnet, the color of the roof of my parents’ house, surging under the low clouds after the storm. As I walked along Rue Robert Latouche and down to the water I was fascinated by the flowers and the trees and all I wanted was to know what they were called. I wanted to name them all, to cultivate my own garden of Eden. I know that Paradise no longer exists because I admit that I am sometimes ashamed of my sex and because now I bleed on the moon’s schedule and not my own. But no angel or god could tell me not to eat from the tree of knowledge and taste its fruits of passion.
As I walked down to the shore I crushed leaves between my fingers as I pashed bushes along the sidewalk just to smell them. I ran my hands through the juniper bushes that spilled over the walls of the villas on the hill and I remember that their odor was sweet like the mountains yet salty like the sea.
I put my earbuds in because suddenly I felt all alone there on the street but I couldn’t stand the thin digital sound and I took them out again just to listen to the people around me speak. The tongues of the Mediterranean are too sweet to taste. The Italians sing when they speak. The French kiss when they meet. The Arabic of the Algerians and the Moroccans is as windswept and sunburned and infinite as the great shifting dunes south of the Atlas mountains.
That evening I was hungry I remember but I preferred the smell of salt after a sudden storm to a thin dinner of rice and zucchini. I am too poor to be living in the French Riviera, really, I know it, but the Mediterranean is gold every evening at sunset. The rocks where I sat that evening down by the shore felt alive. They had kept the heat of the sun long after the sky had lost its brilliant light and they warmed my palm when I touched them. On the rocky beach, people sat in little groups of two, three, four, with their umbrellas, their fishing rods, their picnic baskets, their beer. The children no longer ran the length of the beach, shrieking in the waves. It was the sitting hour. I sat and waited while the sun and the moon exchanged thrones. The round, powdered face of the full moon reigned the sky in royal blue and her King surveyed the western front beyond the horizon. The sun would soon disappear beyond the hills and the sunset would unfurl like a tapestry over the water. Twilight fell softly, almost reluctantly. With a ripple the surface of the water changed from silk to velvet, with the vast silence of the sea reposing in that rocking cradle of civilization.
There was a man sitting alone near the water that evening, I remember, his back was to me, his head was down. I always feel a certain solidarity with other solitary souls. I was tempted to go to him, to say hello, to join our two solitudes and make us one, but I didn’t disturb his silence. Solitude is as precious as a polished stone. And I am so alone here.
I watched the waves and I wanted them to caress me, to roll over me, to envelop me in their watery embrace. I watched the waves and I thought about desire, what it meant. I thought of the people that I had desired, and the few I had actually loved.
That night I dreamt of Romain, my landlord Josy’s son. He is older than me, but not by too much. He has a life in Paris and he says he likes it better there. I can’t understand why. Josy said that once Romain had a serious girlfriend and somehow that makes me jealous because I’ll never know him like she once did.
In my dream he came into my bedroom during the night and he watched me while I slept. Beneath my eyelids, I knew he was there. I kept my eyes closed but I let my lips twitch into the thin smile that good dreams always inspire. I imagined him watching me and wondering what dream had made me smile so. When I did open my eyes he was there in the doorway and he wasn’t embarrassed to have been watching me sleep, like a father who stands at the door of his baby daughter’s bedroom. He was bare-chested in my dream and stronger than I had remembered and his hair was wet and long around his ears. We didn’t speak but we went out together to walk along Avenue de la Lanterne in the dawn. We walked slowly, never talking, never touching, but close enough that we could feel each others’ heat and it was as though he were caressing me from all sides, holding me tightly like the waves embrace the shore.
He wasn’t there in the morning when I truly woke up alone in bed with the dawn. I never really know where he sleeps at night, perhaps at a girl’s place, in her bed, under her sheets, his arm around her waist and her hair on the pillow that they shared.
On that day in July with the rain, I didn’t return to the house until the sun was going down. It felt like a morning with a hangover. My head pounded with the waves. Children cried leaving the beach. Men watched me as I walk, like they always do. A group of students was walking down the street as I climbed the hill. There were seven of them and they made me upset, the way they clung to one another, they way they speak loudly in English, the way their hips swayed with alcohol. They must have been only a few years younger than me, two perhaps, no more than four, but I found their youth suddenly abrasive, ignorant.
No one was home. There are people that come and go here but this is a house that no one truly lives in. It can’t be. There is a vase of decorative umbrellas in the hall. The white leather couches have no dents. There are no towels in the bathroom. There are no streaks on the stove. There is a pile of antique baggage next to the door, like some ancient voyager is perpetually trying to leave but never quite succeeds. The boys come and go but they leave no fingerprints. My sheets are stretched so tightly across the bed that no crease or hollow proves that a body has slept there.
I’m not afraid of the silence. It excites me. It has a certain electric charge. It is filled with secrets. Josy says that her sons miss their father, that ever since the affair their family has been invaded by a void that now shrouds them and silences them. Two years ago, Josy’s husband was in a moto accident that left him paralyzed in a hospital bed for months. Several surgeries later, he ran away with his nurse. A bad soap opera drama. Josy says that Damien, the youngest son, misses his father the most, and he continues on like nothing ever happened. Roman, the eldest son, now hates his father, and refuses to speak to him, to acknowledge him, to respect him. I’m not sure how Audré feels.
I rarely see the boys, but I hear Damien sometimes when he comes home late at night. Josy says he has a wild side, something in his silence that troubles her. I hear him shuffling through the halls and closing the doors softly after him, like Josy always asks him to do. I hear the faucet in the bathroom, the flush of the toilet, the muffled tones of a phone conversation out on the balcony where he smokes a pétard. While his mother was away in Rennes for her July vacation, I would sometimes find Damien sitting alone in the white salon in the evenings, burning down a block of Moroccan kif to roll a joint. He doesn’t know that I know. Josy doesn't know either. He has a timid smile, Damien does, and short curly hair that frames his thin face, making him look younger than he is.
He used to be chubby, Josy told me. We were standing in the living room one night until well after midnight and she was showing me pictures of her beloved family, of her sons, of her daughter Audré and her fiancé. They can’t have children, and Audré sometimes hates her fiancé for it, for the fact that her finite life force that bleeds out with her every month.
Josy calls me ma puce, ma belle, ma chérie, ma coquinette. Out of the wounds of her divorce she shows affection for a stranger. Her adopted, fertile daughter. She is affectionate but her home is sterile. She asks that I wipe out the washing machine with a sponge after I use it so the excess water doesn’t get stagnant and musty. She provides a squeegee in the shower so the walls and doors don’t get streaks She asks that I empty the Nespresso machine after each use so the espresso capsules don’t stick. Her refrigerator is organized but nearly empty. She is never home for dinner. She unplugs all of her appliances after she uses them. She arranges my shoes in the hallway closet. She keeps all of her makeup evenly spaced on the shelf in her bathroom. I wonder what she is afraid of.
I look for evidence of life in this silent house like an archaeologist digs for bones in the dirt. Two toothbrushes in a tin cup on the sink. Two bottles of men’s cologne. Two skateboards lined up by the door. A pair of shoes on the balcony. A pair of pants set out on the back of a chair to dry. Open doors that used to be closed. Closed doors that used to be open. Lingering humidity on the shower door. A new roll of toilet paper. A fresh bar of soap. One less yogurt in the refrigerator. A box of sugar cubes left ajar. An ashtray on the counter. An empty dishwasher. I fabricate a false intimacy with the fleeting traces of their presence. I track their movements like ghosts. The clinking of keys in the hall. The sound of a scooter idling on the street.
It is the silence that drives me down to the shore. The sea belongs to the men at night, and I would not be safe there on the rocks, buffeted by the waves, but sometimes in the afternoons after class I would get off the bus five stops before Arcadia and walk to the Promenade that stretches along the sea. I open my book but the water is too blue to read. Men look at me as they pass behind me, I know they do. They stare at my neck, my shoulders, my thighs, my hair—not because they are particularly lovely, but because I am a woman alone. That’s all that matters. And sometimes, I admit it, I turn and look back at them. It excites me, not because I desire them—no, not their bodies, their thighs thick from soccer, their collarbones under their polos, their big hands that smell like cigarettes, their strong lips that bruise the soft skin on girls’ necks, their coarse hair—but because my gaze excites them in return. And I like to have that sense of control. I look just long enough to feel their eyes between my shoulder blades as they pass.
I look out over the water where low cumulous clouds collect on the horizon in the afternoons like a fleet of flagships lost at sea. On the rocky beach, bodies bronze, burn. I keep myself at a distance, always, but sometimes I want to reach out and touch their skin, let it warm my own. And sometimes I want sex like I want cigarettes, something strong to fill my empty, lonely spaces, to infiltrate my lungs, my deepest caverns. I have never been a smoker but sometimes I crave it, but only in the rain, in the evenings, on my balcony that overlooks the sea. And sometimes I just want to be close enough to smell a cigarette burning. But more than anything the thought of sex makes me feel lonely. Like a child who just wants to be held.
For now, France will be my lover. For now, I have Romain’s cologne on my wrist, stolen from the shelf in the bathroom just to see what it smelled like. He leaves for Paris tomorrow, Romain does. One less toothbrush. One less bottle of cologne. One less load of laundry drying on the line. One less backpack posed on the table. One less skateboard lying on the floor. One less pair of lungs breathing in the bedroom next door. A half-full ashtray, a half-smoked blunt, a bed with only one body, a pillow left unused.
He will take a train from Nice towards Marseille, skirting the Mediterranean, screaming past the graveyard industries of ugly Miramas, winding up through the barren Calanques and past Martigues and its canals and its pastel streets all lined with rowboats instead of cars, then north through dry Avignon and its fields of lavender and sunflowers long past their season, around Carpentras and its view of Mont Ventoux with its windy memories of Petrarch and his beloved Laura, through Lyon and over its bridges, past the stubborn castles that speckle the Loire valley, across the great bread belly of France, and finally to Paris, to the bright lights of the big city, a city that only exists in fashion magazines and romantic dreams, a city where people fuck and drink and smoke and shop and flaunt and maybe even fall in love, but where no one actually seems to live. Five hundred and seventy nine miles away from his first love, from his mother, from his brother, from his sister, from the sea, from me.
A key in the lock, a sudden urgency, a self-conscious fear of indecency. The rhythm of footsteps on the tile floor, not syncopated, he’s alone. He’ a shadow, a pair of pants drying on the laundry line, a door that mysteriously opens and closes, a bookshelf that tells me that sometimes he tries to cook, that he has explored Monaco, that he knows the French penal code upside-down and backwards, that he watches old films by Tarantino, that when he was young he listened to U2 and the Beatles, that he has a fleeting interest in French poetry and theater, that he visits le Louvre from time to time. He rolls his own cigarettes. He drives a scooter. He loves a woman, and he’s leaving her tomorrow.
* * *
This last week has been nothing but departures. It hums with goodbyes. I can see the airport from my balcony where I eat breakfast in the morning. It is situated just next to the sea, the runway built on a peninsula that juts out into the water. When the planes take off towards destinations as anonymous as their passengers, they bank out over the sea, the coastline opening up below like a great oyster with an ochre-red gem tucked inside. Sometimes in the afternoons after class, we would lie on the beach with our bellies to the sun and our toes buried in the rocks, and we would watch the planes come and go and try to guess where they were from, where they were going. I always imagined the row of portholes lining the side of the planes all filled with pale faces still eager for the sun, jealous of the waves, longing for the beat of the baked stones that replace the sand on the niçois shore.
Once Michelle and I swam out into the sea as far as we could, but I wanted to go even further into the waves, out to the yellow buoys that floated off in the distance, an unobtainable finish line to a race from which I knew I would never return. The salt wouldn’t keep me afloat forever. But I floated on my back with my eyes closed for as long as I could, letting myself be carried off by the current’s whims. When I opened my eyes the water was so blue that I wanted to cry. My face was so streaked with salt that no one would have known.
On that afternoon I remember that sitting on the beach behind us was une famille métissée—a white woman and a North African man and their beautiful, brown children. I watched them through my sunglasses. The woman was covered from head to toe, a towel balanced on her head to protect her face from the sunlight, a towel spread out over her legs, a thin white blouse covering her neck and shoulders. Her husband left her alone and sat on the edge of the shore, his feet and chest bare in the sunlight, his hair black, his back brown, his toes touching the water every time a wave rolled in. The children ran and shouted into the waves and out again, past their father and towards their mother. I watched them and wondered if they would have the same complexes as my beloved Nina Bouraoui, the tomboy daughter of an Algerian man and a French woman. Will their hearts and skin ache for the fiery shores of the North African coast? Will they ever learn Arabic? Will they remember the violence of their father’s own childhood? Will they be able to reconcile their métissage? Will they hold a grudge against the soil of their mother’s country? Will they care about neocolonialism? Will they eat couscous or duck? Will they ever hate their parents for their skin? Will they regret their childhood? Will they ache for their innocence? Or will their generation learn to accept them, to tolerate their parents’ love, to reconcile a violent colonial past? Somehow I doubt it. It means so much to know where home is.
Now that all of my classmates are gone—back to Milan, to Chicago, to Vienna, to Slovakia, to London—I walk and I walk and I walk. I wander until my shins hurt and my arches buckle. To Cannes, to Monaco, to Menton, to St. Paul de Vence, to Mont Baron. I roam like Rimbaud, shambling after some bohemia along Petrarch’s path across the south of France; like Rousseau, composing carnets full of confessions in his head as he wandered; like Woolf, haunting the alleys of London, from Westminster, past Buckingham Palace, through St. James Park, up to Regent’s Park and back again. I wander because I’m afraid to stay put, because my shadow gives me company, because I don’t know what else to do.
And what can I say of my wanderings? Only so much as a lonely traveler can say. Monaco is heartbreaking and immaculate, with untouchable lawns but touchable women for a certain price, full of Christian hypocrisy and palm trees and yachts. Cannes has real sand beaches, children with chins sticky with ice cream, a castle on a hill, a park with palms, a port, and a promenade, like all towns on the French Riviera. Menton’s hills are covered with villas and cemeteries, its buildings brilliant in a sun soaked pastel palette, its streets lined with orange trees. Antibes has an aura of Picasso, a harbor filled with foreign yachts, sea banks built up with boulders, a castle with consecutive weddings and a square perpetually covered with rice and rose petals, a market, and a public fountain where children splash and mothers watch. St. Paul de Vence is populated by hunchbacked white heads with eyes too recessed and fragile for the Mediterranean sun, wandering among galleries upon galleries where businessmen and women parade as artists with paintbrushes and unkept hair tucked behind their ears. Cimiez has a park filled with olive trees where monks wander and a hotel where Queen Victoria once stayed. And everywhere I wandered, the salty salty sea kept the whole coastline afloat, the great bulging belly of mother Mediterranean, cradling civilization along her violent and dazzling coast.
And what of Nice? A new postal code to add to my growing list of lovers. I loved the port the most, at night, alone, out along the embankment the whole way to the lighthouse, where the ferries to Corsica docked in the dark. The vast stillness of the water. The waves tugging at the dock like impatient children. The great watery inkwell where, if I jumped and held my breath, I could so quickly disappear, as quietly and beautifully as the Little Prince vanishing from the desert, in search of his sunset.
Je sais la tristesse du regard pour l’horizon, une ligne sans limites. Je sais l’impuissance. Je sais le désir, parfois, d’un autre pays, une illusion. La mer est une promesse.
Nice, FRANCE
Summer in the city, and I’m so lonely, lonely, lonely. There is no solitude comparable to that of a suitcase, or watching the sunrise over the Mediterranean alone. I went to Antibes one Saturday just to rub up against strangers, I admit it. There was a white wedding parading out of the cathedral there, and the shower of rose petals and the lace and the cameras and the ochre of the steeple against the azure of the sea all left me close to tears. I have become sensible, unstable. The sight of the sea alone makes me cry.
I spent my Saturday afternoon in Antibes at the Picasso museum, housed in his old studio with tall uncurtained windows that overlooked the sea. I stood in the center of a gallery of his sketches and I felt him there. I did. In the mid-1940s Picasso’s mind was filled with fawns playing lutes and flutes, centaurs wielding tridents, big-hipped women stretched out on rocks like mermaids, or sometimes dancing, hands raised, breasts bared, eyes closed, hair flowing as wild as Medusa’s. I didn’t have the drugs to sort it out. I stood in the center of Picasso’s studio and looked out the window like he once did. The cloudless sky floated in the Mediterranean depths and a bright white cruise ship floated by in the sky.
The Mediterranean inspires a certain madness, not the cold madness of my winters, no, it is a warm madness, the madness of a girl alone on the sea; it is the folly of youth, of passion, of waves, of loneliness, of love, of sunlight so bright that it burns the sky to a bleached blue. It is a madness that I feel when I am home alone; when I cook couscous and vegetables and listen to Jimi Hendrix; when I walk the length of la Baie des Anges along the Promenade des Anglais late at night; when I open drawers and cupboards and closets just to see what’s inside; when I wander until I’m lost on a hill overlooking the bay; when I eat breakfast on the balcony with a view of the sea and feel so immensely overwhelmed by the beauty of my solitude.
Nice could be the saddest of all cities. It burns. Summer is its greatest tragedy.
I am mourning my departure in advance, as always. It’s my most morbid habit. Where has my time gone all of a sudden? What will I do with my body that stings with salt and sunshine once back in the aching fields of Ohio? My body is forbidden there. They judge me down to my bones.
Sometimes I am convinced that I won’t be buried there. I hope hibiscus will grow near my grave. I want an olive tree planted in my backyard. I want a courtyard with walls where ivy climbs. I want my gardens to be lined with lavender. I hope to hear cicadas outside my windows at night. I hope one day my children will want to see the country I came from. I want them to be bilingual, like me. I want to tell them the stories that my mother and my grandmother told me. I want to hold them and tell them “je t’aime.”
And if I never go home? If I abandon the work that I have started there? If I promise to my friends that I’ll write? If I sell my car and my furniture? If I pack my library of literature into a big box labeled “Anglophone” and store it in my closet until it’s dusty? I’d be no better off than before—adrift, aloof, alone. As for happy I cannot yet say. My greatest fear is that one day I’ll stop loving this country, that I’ll grow old with it no happier than I would have been elsewhere.
We ambiguously aspiring expatriates are a lonely bunch. We just don’t know where we belong. We’ve stretched the cord to the mother country but we haven’t quite severed it. We’re licking at our open wounds. We shop and drive and read and make love in a foreign tongue, but we will always count to ten and cuss in our native language until the day that we die.
* * *
The most beautiful day that I remember in Nice, it rained. It was cloudy in the morning, stifling, the humidity as high as the sky was low and the bus was late as usual. I listened to The National on the bus to school because I was lonely among people. It began drizzling by the time I got to school. Our grammar review of adverbial clauses and gerunds was punctuated by rain but by the time we paused for lunch the city was again whitewashed like an overexposed photograph. Painfully bright, le soleil brûlant, the ochre buildings of la Place Masséna standing like sunburned guards of the blinding sea surging beyond the Promenade des Anglais. But by mid-afternoon the clouds were back to menace the sky and I sat at the back of the bus with my book and my brain all clouded over by the newest novel by Nina Bouraoui.
Chez moi, I sat on the balcony to read. I didn’t notice the rain until I heard what I thought was the beat of soft percussion coming from the garden below, but it was just the rain tap tap tapping on a plastic gutter like a hollow African drum. The rain was sudden and claustrophobic. The mountains veiled themselves in fog and the sea disappeared into the horizon. Claps of thunder came from nowhere and everywhere all at once. A bolt of lightening over the water illuminated a hole in the sea and the thunder ricocheted off of the invisible mountains to the north like a boomerang. The palms drooped like weeping willow trees in the rain.
And then as subtly as it started, the tap tap tapping on the gutter slowed to a steady, lethargic beat. The smells returned all at once, wet, sensual, rich: sweet silver pine, hints of lavender, eucalyptus, hibiscus. The apricot and lemon trees in the garden glimmered with citrus gems. I could see the sea begin to move again, a sleeping giant groaning under a thin sheet, deep and dark and black and blue as a new bruise. The clouds lumbered out to sea like the ferries that depart for Corsica from the port and a rainbow took their place, a great arching gate to the fiery, forbidden continent across the salty belly of mother Mediterranean.
A cool breeze from the sea sighed with the scent of salt and the recent rain. The sky was clear all at once and from the balcony I watched a sailboat skirt the shore. Ever since the summer solstice—when I was still hundreds of kilometers away, isolated in the French Alps—the evening has been creeping up earlier and earlier, a sunlight thief. The shadows slink up the sides of the buildings, one story of balconies and awnings after another. There are more gardens on the balconies in this city than there are on the ground. On their balconies, my thousand anonymous neighbors grow orchids and morning glories. But I didn’t come to Nice to see gardens and parks; I wanted to stand at the edge of a continent and feel the waves around my ankles pulling me out to sea like watery manacles.
There is something about the Mediterranean that makes me fall in love with everything. After the rain that day I was drawn from my balcony and down to the sea. It was the color of slate, or a magnet, the color of the roof of my parents’ house, surging under the low clouds after the storm. As I walked along Rue Robert Latouche and down to the water I was fascinated by the flowers and the trees and all I wanted was to know what they were called. I wanted to name them all, to cultivate my own garden of Eden. I know that Paradise no longer exists because I admit that I am sometimes ashamed of my sex and because now I bleed on the moon’s schedule and not my own. But no angel or god could tell me not to eat from the tree of knowledge and taste its fruits of passion.
As I walked down to the shore I crushed leaves between my fingers as I pashed bushes along the sidewalk just to smell them. I ran my hands through the juniper bushes that spilled over the walls of the villas on the hill and I remember that their odor was sweet like the mountains yet salty like the sea.
I put my earbuds in because suddenly I felt all alone there on the street but I couldn’t stand the thin digital sound and I took them out again just to listen to the people around me speak. The tongues of the Mediterranean are too sweet to taste. The Italians sing when they speak. The French kiss when they meet. The Arabic of the Algerians and the Moroccans is as windswept and sunburned and infinite as the great shifting dunes south of the Atlas mountains.
That evening I was hungry I remember but I preferred the smell of salt after a sudden storm to a thin dinner of rice and zucchini. I am too poor to be living in the French Riviera, really, I know it, but the Mediterranean is gold every evening at sunset. The rocks where I sat that evening down by the shore felt alive. They had kept the heat of the sun long after the sky had lost its brilliant light and they warmed my palm when I touched them. On the rocky beach, people sat in little groups of two, three, four, with their umbrellas, their fishing rods, their picnic baskets, their beer. The children no longer ran the length of the beach, shrieking in the waves. It was the sitting hour. I sat and waited while the sun and the moon exchanged thrones. The round, powdered face of the full moon reigned the sky in royal blue and her King surveyed the western front beyond the horizon. The sun would soon disappear beyond the hills and the sunset would unfurl like a tapestry over the water. Twilight fell softly, almost reluctantly. With a ripple the surface of the water changed from silk to velvet, with the vast silence of the sea reposing in that rocking cradle of civilization.
There was a man sitting alone near the water that evening, I remember, his back was to me, his head was down. I always feel a certain solidarity with other solitary souls. I was tempted to go to him, to say hello, to join our two solitudes and make us one, but I didn’t disturb his silence. Solitude is as precious as a polished stone. And I am so alone here.
I watched the waves and I wanted them to caress me, to roll over me, to envelop me in their watery embrace. I watched the waves and I thought about desire, what it meant. I thought of the people that I had desired, and the few I had actually loved.
That night I dreamt of Romain, my landlord Josy’s son. He is older than me, but not by too much. He has a life in Paris and he says he likes it better there. I can’t understand why. Josy said that once Romain had a serious girlfriend and somehow that makes me jealous because I’ll never know him like she once did.
In my dream he came into my bedroom during the night and he watched me while I slept. Beneath my eyelids, I knew he was there. I kept my eyes closed but I let my lips twitch into the thin smile that good dreams always inspire. I imagined him watching me and wondering what dream had made me smile so. When I did open my eyes he was there in the doorway and he wasn’t embarrassed to have been watching me sleep, like a father who stands at the door of his baby daughter’s bedroom. He was bare-chested in my dream and stronger than I had remembered and his hair was wet and long around his ears. We didn’t speak but we went out together to walk along Avenue de la Lanterne in the dawn. We walked slowly, never talking, never touching, but close enough that we could feel each others’ heat and it was as though he were caressing me from all sides, holding me tightly like the waves embrace the shore.
He wasn’t there in the morning when I truly woke up alone in bed with the dawn. I never really know where he sleeps at night, perhaps at a girl’s place, in her bed, under her sheets, his arm around her waist and her hair on the pillow that they shared.
On that day in July with the rain, I didn’t return to the house until the sun was going down. It felt like a morning with a hangover. My head pounded with the waves. Children cried leaving the beach. Men watched me as I walk, like they always do. A group of students was walking down the street as I climbed the hill. There were seven of them and they made me upset, the way they clung to one another, they way they speak loudly in English, the way their hips swayed with alcohol. They must have been only a few years younger than me, two perhaps, no more than four, but I found their youth suddenly abrasive, ignorant.
No one was home. There are people that come and go here but this is a house that no one truly lives in. It can’t be. There is a vase of decorative umbrellas in the hall. The white leather couches have no dents. There are no towels in the bathroom. There are no streaks on the stove. There is a pile of antique baggage next to the door, like some ancient voyager is perpetually trying to leave but never quite succeeds. The boys come and go but they leave no fingerprints. My sheets are stretched so tightly across the bed that no crease or hollow proves that a body has slept there.
I’m not afraid of the silence. It excites me. It has a certain electric charge. It is filled with secrets. Josy says that her sons miss their father, that ever since the affair their family has been invaded by a void that now shrouds them and silences them. Two years ago, Josy’s husband was in a moto accident that left him paralyzed in a hospital bed for months. Several surgeries later, he ran away with his nurse. A bad soap opera drama. Josy says that Damien, the youngest son, misses his father the most, and he continues on like nothing ever happened. Roman, the eldest son, now hates his father, and refuses to speak to him, to acknowledge him, to respect him. I’m not sure how Audré feels.
I rarely see the boys, but I hear Damien sometimes when he comes home late at night. Josy says he has a wild side, something in his silence that troubles her. I hear him shuffling through the halls and closing the doors softly after him, like Josy always asks him to do. I hear the faucet in the bathroom, the flush of the toilet, the muffled tones of a phone conversation out on the balcony where he smokes a pétard. While his mother was away in Rennes for her July vacation, I would sometimes find Damien sitting alone in the white salon in the evenings, burning down a block of Moroccan kif to roll a joint. He doesn’t know that I know. Josy doesn't know either. He has a timid smile, Damien does, and short curly hair that frames his thin face, making him look younger than he is.
He used to be chubby, Josy told me. We were standing in the living room one night until well after midnight and she was showing me pictures of her beloved family, of her sons, of her daughter Audré and her fiancé. They can’t have children, and Audré sometimes hates her fiancé for it, for the fact that her finite life force that bleeds out with her every month.
Josy calls me ma puce, ma belle, ma chérie, ma coquinette. Out of the wounds of her divorce she shows affection for a stranger. Her adopted, fertile daughter. She is affectionate but her home is sterile. She asks that I wipe out the washing machine with a sponge after I use it so the excess water doesn’t get stagnant and musty. She provides a squeegee in the shower so the walls and doors don’t get streaks She asks that I empty the Nespresso machine after each use so the espresso capsules don’t stick. Her refrigerator is organized but nearly empty. She is never home for dinner. She unplugs all of her appliances after she uses them. She arranges my shoes in the hallway closet. She keeps all of her makeup evenly spaced on the shelf in her bathroom. I wonder what she is afraid of.
I look for evidence of life in this silent house like an archaeologist digs for bones in the dirt. Two toothbrushes in a tin cup on the sink. Two bottles of men’s cologne. Two skateboards lined up by the door. A pair of shoes on the balcony. A pair of pants set out on the back of a chair to dry. Open doors that used to be closed. Closed doors that used to be open. Lingering humidity on the shower door. A new roll of toilet paper. A fresh bar of soap. One less yogurt in the refrigerator. A box of sugar cubes left ajar. An ashtray on the counter. An empty dishwasher. I fabricate a false intimacy with the fleeting traces of their presence. I track their movements like ghosts. The clinking of keys in the hall. The sound of a scooter idling on the street.
It is the silence that drives me down to the shore. The sea belongs to the men at night, and I would not be safe there on the rocks, buffeted by the waves, but sometimes in the afternoons after class I would get off the bus five stops before Arcadia and walk to the Promenade that stretches along the sea. I open my book but the water is too blue to read. Men look at me as they pass behind me, I know they do. They stare at my neck, my shoulders, my thighs, my hair—not because they are particularly lovely, but because I am a woman alone. That’s all that matters. And sometimes, I admit it, I turn and look back at them. It excites me, not because I desire them—no, not their bodies, their thighs thick from soccer, their collarbones under their polos, their big hands that smell like cigarettes, their strong lips that bruise the soft skin on girls’ necks, their coarse hair—but because my gaze excites them in return. And I like to have that sense of control. I look just long enough to feel their eyes between my shoulder blades as they pass.
I look out over the water where low cumulous clouds collect on the horizon in the afternoons like a fleet of flagships lost at sea. On the rocky beach, bodies bronze, burn. I keep myself at a distance, always, but sometimes I want to reach out and touch their skin, let it warm my own. And sometimes I want sex like I want cigarettes, something strong to fill my empty, lonely spaces, to infiltrate my lungs, my deepest caverns. I have never been a smoker but sometimes I crave it, but only in the rain, in the evenings, on my balcony that overlooks the sea. And sometimes I just want to be close enough to smell a cigarette burning. But more than anything the thought of sex makes me feel lonely. Like a child who just wants to be held.
For now, France will be my lover. For now, I have Romain’s cologne on my wrist, stolen from the shelf in the bathroom just to see what it smelled like. He leaves for Paris tomorrow, Romain does. One less toothbrush. One less bottle of cologne. One less load of laundry drying on the line. One less backpack posed on the table. One less skateboard lying on the floor. One less pair of lungs breathing in the bedroom next door. A half-full ashtray, a half-smoked blunt, a bed with only one body, a pillow left unused.
He will take a train from Nice towards Marseille, skirting the Mediterranean, screaming past the graveyard industries of ugly Miramas, winding up through the barren Calanques and past Martigues and its canals and its pastel streets all lined with rowboats instead of cars, then north through dry Avignon and its fields of lavender and sunflowers long past their season, around Carpentras and its view of Mont Ventoux with its windy memories of Petrarch and his beloved Laura, through Lyon and over its bridges, past the stubborn castles that speckle the Loire valley, across the great bread belly of France, and finally to Paris, to the bright lights of the big city, a city that only exists in fashion magazines and romantic dreams, a city where people fuck and drink and smoke and shop and flaunt and maybe even fall in love, but where no one actually seems to live. Five hundred and seventy nine miles away from his first love, from his mother, from his brother, from his sister, from the sea, from me.
A key in the lock, a sudden urgency, a self-conscious fear of indecency. The rhythm of footsteps on the tile floor, not syncopated, he’s alone. He’ a shadow, a pair of pants drying on the laundry line, a door that mysteriously opens and closes, a bookshelf that tells me that sometimes he tries to cook, that he has explored Monaco, that he knows the French penal code upside-down and backwards, that he watches old films by Tarantino, that when he was young he listened to U2 and the Beatles, that he has a fleeting interest in French poetry and theater, that he visits le Louvre from time to time. He rolls his own cigarettes. He drives a scooter. He loves a woman, and he’s leaving her tomorrow.
* * *
This last week has been nothing but departures. It hums with goodbyes. I can see the airport from my balcony where I eat breakfast in the morning. It is situated just next to the sea, the runway built on a peninsula that juts out into the water. When the planes take off towards destinations as anonymous as their passengers, they bank out over the sea, the coastline opening up below like a great oyster with an ochre-red gem tucked inside. Sometimes in the afternoons after class, we would lie on the beach with our bellies to the sun and our toes buried in the rocks, and we would watch the planes come and go and try to guess where they were from, where they were going. I always imagined the row of portholes lining the side of the planes all filled with pale faces still eager for the sun, jealous of the waves, longing for the beat of the baked stones that replace the sand on the niçois shore.
Once Michelle and I swam out into the sea as far as we could, but I wanted to go even further into the waves, out to the yellow buoys that floated off in the distance, an unobtainable finish line to a race from which I knew I would never return. The salt wouldn’t keep me afloat forever. But I floated on my back with my eyes closed for as long as I could, letting myself be carried off by the current’s whims. When I opened my eyes the water was so blue that I wanted to cry. My face was so streaked with salt that no one would have known.
On that afternoon I remember that sitting on the beach behind us was une famille métissée—a white woman and a North African man and their beautiful, brown children. I watched them through my sunglasses. The woman was covered from head to toe, a towel balanced on her head to protect her face from the sunlight, a towel spread out over her legs, a thin white blouse covering her neck and shoulders. Her husband left her alone and sat on the edge of the shore, his feet and chest bare in the sunlight, his hair black, his back brown, his toes touching the water every time a wave rolled in. The children ran and shouted into the waves and out again, past their father and towards their mother. I watched them and wondered if they would have the same complexes as my beloved Nina Bouraoui, the tomboy daughter of an Algerian man and a French woman. Will their hearts and skin ache for the fiery shores of the North African coast? Will they ever learn Arabic? Will they remember the violence of their father’s own childhood? Will they be able to reconcile their métissage? Will they hold a grudge against the soil of their mother’s country? Will they care about neocolonialism? Will they eat couscous or duck? Will they ever hate their parents for their skin? Will they regret their childhood? Will they ache for their innocence? Or will their generation learn to accept them, to tolerate their parents’ love, to reconcile a violent colonial past? Somehow I doubt it. It means so much to know where home is.
Now that all of my classmates are gone—back to Milan, to Chicago, to Vienna, to Slovakia, to London—I walk and I walk and I walk. I wander until my shins hurt and my arches buckle. To Cannes, to Monaco, to Menton, to St. Paul de Vence, to Mont Baron. I roam like Rimbaud, shambling after some bohemia along Petrarch’s path across the south of France; like Rousseau, composing carnets full of confessions in his head as he wandered; like Woolf, haunting the alleys of London, from Westminster, past Buckingham Palace, through St. James Park, up to Regent’s Park and back again. I wander because I’m afraid to stay put, because my shadow gives me company, because I don’t know what else to do.
And what can I say of my wanderings? Only so much as a lonely traveler can say. Monaco is heartbreaking and immaculate, with untouchable lawns but touchable women for a certain price, full of Christian hypocrisy and palm trees and yachts. Cannes has real sand beaches, children with chins sticky with ice cream, a castle on a hill, a park with palms, a port, and a promenade, like all towns on the French Riviera. Menton’s hills are covered with villas and cemeteries, its buildings brilliant in a sun soaked pastel palette, its streets lined with orange trees. Antibes has an aura of Picasso, a harbor filled with foreign yachts, sea banks built up with boulders, a castle with consecutive weddings and a square perpetually covered with rice and rose petals, a market, and a public fountain where children splash and mothers watch. St. Paul de Vence is populated by hunchbacked white heads with eyes too recessed and fragile for the Mediterranean sun, wandering among galleries upon galleries where businessmen and women parade as artists with paintbrushes and unkept hair tucked behind their ears. Cimiez has a park filled with olive trees where monks wander and a hotel where Queen Victoria once stayed. And everywhere I wandered, the salty salty sea kept the whole coastline afloat, the great bulging belly of mother Mediterranean, cradling civilization along her violent and dazzling coast.
And what of Nice? A new postal code to add to my growing list of lovers. I loved the port the most, at night, alone, out along the embankment the whole way to the lighthouse, where the ferries to Corsica docked in the dark. The vast stillness of the water. The waves tugging at the dock like impatient children. The great watery inkwell where, if I jumped and held my breath, I could so quickly disappear, as quietly and beautifully as the Little Prince vanishing from the desert, in search of his sunset.
Je sais la tristesse du regard pour l’horizon, une ligne sans limites. Je sais l’impuissance. Je sais le désir, parfois, d’un autre pays, une illusion. La mer est une promesse.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Southward Bound
Tuesday–Sunday 5–10 July
Grenoble, Avignon, Marseille, FRANCE
Getting out of Paris was harder than we had imagined. So was crossing the great bread belly of France. We didn’t get into Grenoble until nearly eleven at night on Tuesday, after a missed train, a stop in Dijon, a delayed arrival, and a 7.5 hour trip. Eventually, Ben and I resorted to playing Rummy, the classic card game that entertained us across the great expanses of Nebraska and Kansas in our youth.
I must admit—there’s not much happening in Grenoble. Although it is nestled in a prime location in the French Alps, Grenoble itself is a somewhat sleepy university town the only really wakes up in ski season. We had the chance to arrive in the town on a bustling evening; on Tuesday, the results for the BAC (an intense exam required to graduate high school in France) were released, and the streets were packed with reveling high schoolers. An outdoor cinema festival in Grenoble also collected decent crowds in the downtown squares, where short French films were projected onto large screens. As for organized “tourist” activities, though, I can’t say that we did much. I have the impression that people come to Grenoble for the mountains, not the city itself. On Wednesday, Florian, our Couchsurfing host, accompanied us to the summit of la Bastille—an impressive fort built on the mountain overlooking the Grenoble valley, the Drac and Isère rivers, and the surrounding mountain ranges (Vercors, Chartreuse, Belledone). At the foot of la Bastille, Florian left to run errands and Ben and I decided to explore the Musée de Grenoble. For the 2€ entrance fee, the museum was hardly a disappointment, but it paled in comparison to art museums in Cleveland, New York, Paris, etc. There was, however, an impressive collection of paintings from l’Ecole Dauphinée that depicted breathtakingly realistic landscapes from the Alps surrounding Grenoble. We take what we can get.
As usual, the real excitement in Grenoble didn’t start until we exhausted our patience for tourism. After le Musée de Grenoble, Ben and I decided to rent bicycles and explore a bit more of what the town had to offer. We stopped by a supermarket for nibbles and wine, and set off on our bright yellow bicycles towards the central campus of l’Université de Grenoble. About halfway there, were attracted by what sounded like trance/electronic music coming from a park. We found a crowd of full-grown adults dressed in bright, vibrant colors, dancing on a platform with a DJ stand outside of a bar. We’re still not entirely sure what was going on, but the detour led us to a magnificent park where we enjoyed our pre-dinner aperitif on a bench in a shady grove. Eventually, our bicycle wanderings tooks us along the Drac again, and then to l’Université de Grenoble main campus, which was surprisingly underwhelming. The architecture lacked a certain coherency and aesthetic, which of course affected the entire atmosphere of the campus. I suppose I’m just incurably spoiled by Athens. There’s nothing quite like brick streets and hills, even in the French Alps.
Our bellies drew us back into town as the sun was turning the mountains violet (Oh! purple mountains’ majesty . . . ), and we stopped in a wokbar downtown right next to an English Pub that looked promising. It was less promising than it had appeared. Regardless, the evening turned out to be more exciting than we had planned for. At the pub, we met up with Amine (the childhood best friend of my OU friend Mohammed; they both emigrated from Algeria to pursue their studies elsewhere) and his friend Edouard. Networking is amazing. Edouard eventually convinced us to accompany him to a nearby bar that served specialty wines (raspberry? peach? mint?) and treated us all to a round of Chartreuse—a liqueur brewed by a small order of monks in the Alps, not far from the farm where I was WWOOFing only a week ago.
A successful evening, but an unsuccessful morning. We had to return our bikes then take a roundtrip on the painfully slow intracity tram to pick up our bags at Florian’s apartment, and ended up missing our train to Avignon. After the Paris —> Grenoble transportation debacle, I was somewhat upset, but thankfully we were able to catch the next train to Avignon, where Sylvaine was waiting with Constance and her best friend Ambre to pick us up at the train station.
What a JOY it was to see them again. The details are hardly worth it, because they could never capture the emotion. The house was as I left it. The pool was at 27°. My pool towel was laid out to dry. Tara (and the new puppy, Lancelot) barked. Courgette (my zucchini-colored Suzuki Samurai jeep) was covered with a tarp and pigeon poop. The roof was still missing tiles. The net around the trampoline was still stretched out. The mosquito net canopy protected the bed in my room. Cosette, the housekeeper, was finishing up laundry. Virgil and Alban were playing video games in the library, as though I had never left. Constance and Ambre swam. Montaine walks now, and babbles, and calls me “Selle.” Rodrigue and Gauthier were at the coast, sail boating with their godmothers, Catherine and Françoise. Eric gave me at least three hugs when he saw me. We sat on the white leather couch under the parasol and drank cocktails and ate cherry tomatoes while the children finished up their dinner. Sylvaine made ratatouille and salmon for our dinner because she remembered my favorite meals. Eric insisted upon dames blanches for dessert. We drank wine and ate cheese and Eric laughed because like me, Ben never says no. Oh how nice it is to be home!
On Friday, we swam in the morning and then went into Avignon around lunchtime. I took Ben to the Bistro à Tartines just inside le portail St. Michel, where I used to walk to get from Isabelle’s house in Montclar to Place Pie. Unlike Grenoble, Avignon was alive and animated with swarming crowds for le Festival d’Avignon—the biggest theater festival in the world. We saw what we needed to see—le Palais des Papes (and Tommy, my security-guard friend), le Pont d’Avignon, l’Ile Bartlelass, le Rhône (from the overlook at Rocher des Doms), l’Université d’Avignon, la Rue Carnot and le Palais des Glaces (best ice cream in town, hands down), Place Pie and Red Sky (no Xavier, unfortunately), les Halles, la Zone piétonne, and la Rue de la République. Not bad for an afternoon. We took a bus back to the house, where Catherine, Françoise, Gauthier, and Rodrigue were awaiting their “surprise.” We played Uno without a hesitation. For dinner, Eric treated us to homemade, authentic Belgian fries, just like I like them.
Saturday morning was filled with promises that I would be back in August to see them and we set off for Marseille, much to Eric’s chagrin. We did not miss our train this time, and I even had enough time to run to the bakery at the end of la Rue de la République to pick up some pain au chocolat and un gourmand au mozzarella for the train.
We received a warm welcome in the Mediterranean heat of Marseille, and found our hotel agreeable, clean, and in a perfect walking distance of la Canebière (Marseille’s version of les Champs Elysées). Our adventures took us down la Canebière to le Vieux Port and up to Notre Dame de la Garde. La Bonne Mère (the affectionate name that the Marseillais have given to their cathedral) overlooks the city, the surrounding mountains (les Calanques), the islands in the port (including l’Ile d’If, where the Count of Monte Cristo was fictionally imprisoned in Alexandre Dumas’ famous novel), and the Mediterranean. Ben and I had planned to take the bus out to a beach a bit east of the city, but public transportation proved to be more obnoxious than we had foreseen. The bus we needed to take inexplicably never arrived, which delayed us significantly, and we didn’t arrive at the beach until nearly 8:30pm. We couldn’t swim, but we picnicked in the sunset as the sun slipped into the watery horizon. Having given up on buses, we took the metro back downtown, where we stumbled on another electronica/dance music festival happening all along le Vieux Port. I wasn’t about to let Ben visit Marseille without getting a bit of the local flavor, so I made Ben try some of my kebab (North African lamb sandwich) and bought him a pastis (a typically southern French drink made anis liqueur).
Today, I write from the train to Nice. And from what I can tell thus far (we’re currently crossing through Cannes), Nice will be nice. Tomorrow, I start class, but tonight, I better get my toes in the Mediterranean.
Grenoble, Avignon, Marseille, FRANCE
Getting out of Paris was harder than we had imagined. So was crossing the great bread belly of France. We didn’t get into Grenoble until nearly eleven at night on Tuesday, after a missed train, a stop in Dijon, a delayed arrival, and a 7.5 hour trip. Eventually, Ben and I resorted to playing Rummy, the classic card game that entertained us across the great expanses of Nebraska and Kansas in our youth.
I must admit—there’s not much happening in Grenoble. Although it is nestled in a prime location in the French Alps, Grenoble itself is a somewhat sleepy university town the only really wakes up in ski season. We had the chance to arrive in the town on a bustling evening; on Tuesday, the results for the BAC (an intense exam required to graduate high school in France) were released, and the streets were packed with reveling high schoolers. An outdoor cinema festival in Grenoble also collected decent crowds in the downtown squares, where short French films were projected onto large screens. As for organized “tourist” activities, though, I can’t say that we did much. I have the impression that people come to Grenoble for the mountains, not the city itself. On Wednesday, Florian, our Couchsurfing host, accompanied us to the summit of la Bastille—an impressive fort built on the mountain overlooking the Grenoble valley, the Drac and Isère rivers, and the surrounding mountain ranges (Vercors, Chartreuse, Belledone). At the foot of la Bastille, Florian left to run errands and Ben and I decided to explore the Musée de Grenoble. For the 2€ entrance fee, the museum was hardly a disappointment, but it paled in comparison to art museums in Cleveland, New York, Paris, etc. There was, however, an impressive collection of paintings from l’Ecole Dauphinée that depicted breathtakingly realistic landscapes from the Alps surrounding Grenoble. We take what we can get.
As usual, the real excitement in Grenoble didn’t start until we exhausted our patience for tourism. After le Musée de Grenoble, Ben and I decided to rent bicycles and explore a bit more of what the town had to offer. We stopped by a supermarket for nibbles and wine, and set off on our bright yellow bicycles towards the central campus of l’Université de Grenoble. About halfway there, were attracted by what sounded like trance/electronic music coming from a park. We found a crowd of full-grown adults dressed in bright, vibrant colors, dancing on a platform with a DJ stand outside of a bar. We’re still not entirely sure what was going on, but the detour led us to a magnificent park where we enjoyed our pre-dinner aperitif on a bench in a shady grove. Eventually, our bicycle wanderings tooks us along the Drac again, and then to l’Université de Grenoble main campus, which was surprisingly underwhelming. The architecture lacked a certain coherency and aesthetic, which of course affected the entire atmosphere of the campus. I suppose I’m just incurably spoiled by Athens. There’s nothing quite like brick streets and hills, even in the French Alps.
Our bellies drew us back into town as the sun was turning the mountains violet (Oh! purple mountains’ majesty . . . ), and we stopped in a wokbar downtown right next to an English Pub that looked promising. It was less promising than it had appeared. Regardless, the evening turned out to be more exciting than we had planned for. At the pub, we met up with Amine (the childhood best friend of my OU friend Mohammed; they both emigrated from Algeria to pursue their studies elsewhere) and his friend Edouard. Networking is amazing. Edouard eventually convinced us to accompany him to a nearby bar that served specialty wines (raspberry? peach? mint?) and treated us all to a round of Chartreuse—a liqueur brewed by a small order of monks in the Alps, not far from the farm where I was WWOOFing only a week ago.
A successful evening, but an unsuccessful morning. We had to return our bikes then take a roundtrip on the painfully slow intracity tram to pick up our bags at Florian’s apartment, and ended up missing our train to Avignon. After the Paris —> Grenoble transportation debacle, I was somewhat upset, but thankfully we were able to catch the next train to Avignon, where Sylvaine was waiting with Constance and her best friend Ambre to pick us up at the train station.
What a JOY it was to see them again. The details are hardly worth it, because they could never capture the emotion. The house was as I left it. The pool was at 27°. My pool towel was laid out to dry. Tara (and the new puppy, Lancelot) barked. Courgette (my zucchini-colored Suzuki Samurai jeep) was covered with a tarp and pigeon poop. The roof was still missing tiles. The net around the trampoline was still stretched out. The mosquito net canopy protected the bed in my room. Cosette, the housekeeper, was finishing up laundry. Virgil and Alban were playing video games in the library, as though I had never left. Constance and Ambre swam. Montaine walks now, and babbles, and calls me “Selle.” Rodrigue and Gauthier were at the coast, sail boating with their godmothers, Catherine and Françoise. Eric gave me at least three hugs when he saw me. We sat on the white leather couch under the parasol and drank cocktails and ate cherry tomatoes while the children finished up their dinner. Sylvaine made ratatouille and salmon for our dinner because she remembered my favorite meals. Eric insisted upon dames blanches for dessert. We drank wine and ate cheese and Eric laughed because like me, Ben never says no. Oh how nice it is to be home!
On Friday, we swam in the morning and then went into Avignon around lunchtime. I took Ben to the Bistro à Tartines just inside le portail St. Michel, where I used to walk to get from Isabelle’s house in Montclar to Place Pie. Unlike Grenoble, Avignon was alive and animated with swarming crowds for le Festival d’Avignon—the biggest theater festival in the world. We saw what we needed to see—le Palais des Papes (and Tommy, my security-guard friend), le Pont d’Avignon, l’Ile Bartlelass, le Rhône (from the overlook at Rocher des Doms), l’Université d’Avignon, la Rue Carnot and le Palais des Glaces (best ice cream in town, hands down), Place Pie and Red Sky (no Xavier, unfortunately), les Halles, la Zone piétonne, and la Rue de la République. Not bad for an afternoon. We took a bus back to the house, where Catherine, Françoise, Gauthier, and Rodrigue were awaiting their “surprise.” We played Uno without a hesitation. For dinner, Eric treated us to homemade, authentic Belgian fries, just like I like them.
Saturday morning was filled with promises that I would be back in August to see them and we set off for Marseille, much to Eric’s chagrin. We did not miss our train this time, and I even had enough time to run to the bakery at the end of la Rue de la République to pick up some pain au chocolat and un gourmand au mozzarella for the train.
We received a warm welcome in the Mediterranean heat of Marseille, and found our hotel agreeable, clean, and in a perfect walking distance of la Canebière (Marseille’s version of les Champs Elysées). Our adventures took us down la Canebière to le Vieux Port and up to Notre Dame de la Garde. La Bonne Mère (the affectionate name that the Marseillais have given to their cathedral) overlooks the city, the surrounding mountains (les Calanques), the islands in the port (including l’Ile d’If, where the Count of Monte Cristo was fictionally imprisoned in Alexandre Dumas’ famous novel), and the Mediterranean. Ben and I had planned to take the bus out to a beach a bit east of the city, but public transportation proved to be more obnoxious than we had foreseen. The bus we needed to take inexplicably never arrived, which delayed us significantly, and we didn’t arrive at the beach until nearly 8:30pm. We couldn’t swim, but we picnicked in the sunset as the sun slipped into the watery horizon. Having given up on buses, we took the metro back downtown, where we stumbled on another electronica/dance music festival happening all along le Vieux Port. I wasn’t about to let Ben visit Marseille without getting a bit of the local flavor, so I made Ben try some of my kebab (North African lamb sandwich) and bought him a pastis (a typically southern French drink made anis liqueur).
Today, I write from the train to Nice. And from what I can tell thus far (we’re currently crossing through Cannes), Nice will be nice. Tomorrow, I start class, but tonight, I better get my toes in the Mediterranean.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
The Pursuit of Jim Morrison’s Ghost
Paris, France
Saturday—Tuesday 2–5 July 2011
A year ago, my brother and I were nine time zones apart—he was in Los Angeles working for Boeing, and I was in France, working as an au pair. My brother had the good fortune to find an apartment in a house designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, where Jim Morrison had once lived. Meanwhile, I was exploring the cemeteries of Paris, paying my respects to the famous dead: Edgar Degas, Eugène Delacroix, Molière, Edith Piaf, Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, and of course, Jim Morrison. At the time, I joked to my brother that we were following Morrison’s ghost from coast to coast—or perhaps he was following us. This summer, my brother and I are both in the same time zone and on the same continent—a significant improvement over years past. It was only appropriate, though, that our hotel in Paris should be located in the 20th arrondissement, a mere 10-minute walk from Cimetière Père Lachaise, the final resting place of our dearest Jim Morrison. The Doors just won’t leave us be.
Ben’s arrival in Paris on Sunday morning was much less eventful than my own. Back in the Alps, an error on my part caused me to nearly miss the only bus from La Mure to Grenoble on Saturday morning, where I had to then catch a bus up to Paris. Perhaps quick goodbyes are easier than long ones. As I climbed into Benoit’s car, breathless and panicked, I remarked that he was listening to the Beatles’ White Album. He says he always listens to the Beatles when he is sad. Happiness is a warm gun.
After getting stuck behind a tractor toting hay bales up the steep, narrow, winding road to La Mure, we luckily zoomed up behind the bus to Grenoble just as it was pulling into the bus stop. Chance was kind to me. I got to Grenoble, and later Paris, without any more transportation complications, but a heavy heart.
My couchsurfing host, Amina, met me at the Gare d’Austerlitz in Paris. It was both of our first experiences with couchsurfing, and I must say, I couldn’t have asked for a better host. Amina (26) moved to Paris from Algeria two years ago to continue her studies in material science engineering, with a specialization in ceramics. She was a fascinating and friendly host, and our conversations ranged from relationships to foreign relations, educational institutions to television shows. Her brother had just returned from a three-week business trip to Texas, where he was working with subterranean cartography for an oil country, and all three of us stayed in his apartment, in the 13th arrondissement near the Gare d’Austerlitz. After conversation, gin, and pizza, we joined two of Amina and Tarik (her brother)’s friends and went out to a super swanky nigh club in le Palais des Congrès, in the 17th arrondissement, a hair northwest of les Champs-Elysées and l’Arc de Triomphe. Stay classy, Paris.
Even though we arrived there at about midnight, the club was still empty; the real crowds didn’t start showing up until around one in the morning. I admit to being somewhat intimidated. Beautiful Parisians travel together, and they all showed up at the club with their heels and hair and high class. But music and sweat and dancing cure all (except sleazy French boys—those never quite go away, like shadows or chronic STDs). When we left the club at about 4:30am, with worn out feet and flat hair, the dancing showed no signs of stopping any time soon. Paris before dawn is an empty, neon world.
After a much too short sleep, I slipped out of Amina and Tarik’s apartment to take the metro up to the airport to pick up my brother. I successfully found him at the arrival gate, alive and limping. Ben’s potentially broken (or at least sprained) foot and/or toe did not stop our Parisian adventures. We picked up my lunch and had lunch/breakfast at Amina’s, found our hotel (Mary’s Hotel—a quiet, quaint, clean, and cheap hotel with a huge bathroom, fresh towels, and a balcony), took a quick nap, and then embarked upon the city.
It was only natural to start our Parisian adventures in the heart of the city—la Concorde, the central location between the 1st and 8th arrondissements. We wandered east from la Concorde, strolled through le Jardin des Tuileries towards le Louvre. This was my sixth time in Paris (technically), but I have never been in the city when it was quite so sunny and alive. The beautiful weather and the fact that all Parisian museums are free on the first Sunday of the month produced incredible crowds. After admiring le Louvre, we turned north to search for le Centre Pompidou, a modern art museum and an architectural wonder realized by Georges Pompidou. Our path went slightly out of the way, but took us through a bustling district just off la Seine, filled with clothing shops, brasseries, bars, restaurants, and a crowd of fashionable Parisians. We doubled back at le Centre Pompidou towards la Seine to complete the last stop of our tourist circuit—Notre Dame. The past three times I have been in Paris, I have had the chance to admire the cathedral in what I like to call “magic light”—the hour of the evening when the setting sun casts the white stones of Paris in liquid hues of bronze and gold. We paused in the garden behind Notre Dame to figure out where were should go to satisfy our stomachs. We decided on l’As du Falafel, recommended by my WWOOFing friend Emilie as “the best falafel in the world.” She was absolutely right. Our walk took us through a hip, bohemian neighborhood in the Jewish district just north of la Seine in the 4th arrondissement. We took our falafel and Heineken to go, and went to la Place des Vosges (one of Louis XIII’s private bourgeois estates and gardens) to watch runners and pigeons. Amina had proposed an outing to the bars with Tarik, but at the end of the day we were too exhausted to do anything but sleep.
Like Sunday, our Monday involved much walking (probably too much for Ben’s poor, swollen foot). After a lunch of tartines at the brasserie le Houblon du Vin-ième, we went to la Gare du Nord to figure out just how we were going to get to Grenoble. Our trip to la Gare du Nord taught us two things: first of all, do not wait until the last minute to buy Eurail tickets. Absolutely all of the direct trains from Paris to Grenoble (about a 3hr trip) were full for Eurail holders (my brother’s European train pass), so we had to settle for a ~7hr trip with a stop in Dijon. Second of all: never walk from la Gare du Nord up Montmartre to get to Sacre Coeur. The neighborhood is terribly dirty and clogged with beggars and poor immigrants clustered under bridges and along streets selling trash. Paris is more than lights and gold.
After the piss and pigeon encrusted neighborhoods of Montmartre, les Champs-Elysées were quite a shock. Our metro spit us out right under l’Arc de Triomphe, with an impressive view not only of les Champs-Elysées, but of les grands boulevards that stretch away from l’Arc de Triomphe in a giant, urban star. We took a cross-street to cross la Seine and get to le Champ de Mars and la Tour Eiffel on the other side. I had a brief moment of French pride: a French woman hailed us for help, then noticed that we were speaking English and apologized and continued on her way. I caught up to her, told her that I could speak French, and proceeded to help give her direction to drive from le Pont de l’Alma to l’Opéra. Impressed and grateful, she went on her way, and I felt satisfied that my years of French study were able to help out a lost Frenchwoman.
At la Tour Eiffel and le Champs de Mars, however, French is perhaps spoken less than English, Italian, Spanish, German, and an assortment of other languages that I couldn’t quite place. The crowds were phenomenal, and we ended up having to wait an hour on the second floor to be able to gain access to the third and highest level. Even though I already climbed to the very top la Tour Eiffel two years ago when I first came to France in the spring of 2009, I decided to accompany my brother anyhow. It was a perfectly clear evening, and although the crowds were stifling at the summit, the golden view of Paris was worth it. And the 670 steps that I climbed for the third in order to satisfy my brother’s insatiable obsession with architectural heights.
By the time we got down from la Tour Eiffel and walked by l’Ecole Militaire, l’Hôtel des Invalides, and le Musée Rodin, it was nearly 10:00pm, and we had not yet eaten. Emilie recommended that we eat and go out for drinks in the 5th arrondissement, the student district, near la Sorbonne. A giant sign for Guinness attracted us to the first bar/restaurant we saw on a side street outside of our metro stop. It was an extremely intelligent, though completely uninformed, chance decision. Ben decided on an omelet filled with meat (of course), and I had huge salad with hardboiled eggs, tomatoes, and thin slices of salmon on miniature, buttered tartines with a mustard sauce. Our English attracted the attention of an American student, Dan, who was studying Thomian philosophy (an obscure 20th century philosophical movement that stems from the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas) at la Sorbonne. Our conversation started out like most conversations—with pleasant small talk and introductions over a round of delicious house-brewed beer: Delirium Tremens. Our quickly conversation gained weight; Dan admitted that he had never known someone that was NOT philosophy student at the graduate level who could correctly reference and discuss Heideggerean “Thingliness” in conversation. I was flattered. We soon turned to current events: the drug wars in Mexico, the so-called Arab spring, the suppression of revolutionary sympathizers in Algeria, the banning of the burqa in France, and the economic motivations of many civilizing neocolonial missions. A fleeting sidenote about the legalization of gay marriage in New York led us into one of the most philosophically profound conversations about the role of marriage in society that I have ever had. I have never heard someone give such a well-articulated and rational argument against gay marriage. I still don’t agree with his conclusion, but I completely respect his argument. Around 1:00am, we decided that we should wrap up our conversation to make sure we could catch the last train before the metro closed. We got into the station without a problem, but once we got down to the tracks, a homeless woman informed us that last train had just passed, and that we should hurry out of the station before they closed the gates. We climbed back over the gate only to find the exit completely barred off. We ran around the station, only to find all the possible exits similarly locked. In such situations, my brain involuntarily begins concocting various solutions to the pressing issue at hand. The most plausible, it seemed at the time, was spending the night in the metro station. After my night of homelessness at the beginning of this summer’s European adventure, it only seemed appropriate. Thankfully, we found a worker sweeping up, who informed us that there is an emergency button just on the inside of the exit gates that will let trapped travelers get out. We ended up having to give in and take a taxi home. One night of homelessness per trip is certainly enough.
After checking out of the hotel in the morning, we thought about going up to the park at Butte-Chaumont (highly recommended for its stupendous view of the city and its salmon-colored quarry rocks landscaping), but we decided that we wouldn’t have enough time for lunch and the park before our train left Paris at 1:40pm. We stopped on la Rue des Pyrénées at a corner café that appeared to be rather promising. Both Ben and I were pleased by our meals and coffee, but were surprised to note that it was already 1:00pm. For the second time in less than a week, transportation panic ensued. To make a long story short, we missed our train and ended up having to exchange our ticket for a later but equally long trip to Grenoble, again with a stop in Dijon. We are about three-quarters of the way there now. Tomorrow, we have planned for mountain climbing (if Ben’s injured appendages cooperate) and Grenoble exploring. By the end of the week, I’ll be back in the south, far away from Jim Morrison’s ghost, and back with my beloved Mediterranean.
Saturday—Tuesday 2–5 July 2011
A year ago, my brother and I were nine time zones apart—he was in Los Angeles working for Boeing, and I was in France, working as an au pair. My brother had the good fortune to find an apartment in a house designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, where Jim Morrison had once lived. Meanwhile, I was exploring the cemeteries of Paris, paying my respects to the famous dead: Edgar Degas, Eugène Delacroix, Molière, Edith Piaf, Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, and of course, Jim Morrison. At the time, I joked to my brother that we were following Morrison’s ghost from coast to coast—or perhaps he was following us. This summer, my brother and I are both in the same time zone and on the same continent—a significant improvement over years past. It was only appropriate, though, that our hotel in Paris should be located in the 20th arrondissement, a mere 10-minute walk from Cimetière Père Lachaise, the final resting place of our dearest Jim Morrison. The Doors just won’t leave us be.
Ben’s arrival in Paris on Sunday morning was much less eventful than my own. Back in the Alps, an error on my part caused me to nearly miss the only bus from La Mure to Grenoble on Saturday morning, where I had to then catch a bus up to Paris. Perhaps quick goodbyes are easier than long ones. As I climbed into Benoit’s car, breathless and panicked, I remarked that he was listening to the Beatles’ White Album. He says he always listens to the Beatles when he is sad. Happiness is a warm gun.
After getting stuck behind a tractor toting hay bales up the steep, narrow, winding road to La Mure, we luckily zoomed up behind the bus to Grenoble just as it was pulling into the bus stop. Chance was kind to me. I got to Grenoble, and later Paris, without any more transportation complications, but a heavy heart.
My couchsurfing host, Amina, met me at the Gare d’Austerlitz in Paris. It was both of our first experiences with couchsurfing, and I must say, I couldn’t have asked for a better host. Amina (26) moved to Paris from Algeria two years ago to continue her studies in material science engineering, with a specialization in ceramics. She was a fascinating and friendly host, and our conversations ranged from relationships to foreign relations, educational institutions to television shows. Her brother had just returned from a three-week business trip to Texas, where he was working with subterranean cartography for an oil country, and all three of us stayed in his apartment, in the 13th arrondissement near the Gare d’Austerlitz. After conversation, gin, and pizza, we joined two of Amina and Tarik (her brother)’s friends and went out to a super swanky nigh club in le Palais des Congrès, in the 17th arrondissement, a hair northwest of les Champs-Elysées and l’Arc de Triomphe. Stay classy, Paris.
Even though we arrived there at about midnight, the club was still empty; the real crowds didn’t start showing up until around one in the morning. I admit to being somewhat intimidated. Beautiful Parisians travel together, and they all showed up at the club with their heels and hair and high class. But music and sweat and dancing cure all (except sleazy French boys—those never quite go away, like shadows or chronic STDs). When we left the club at about 4:30am, with worn out feet and flat hair, the dancing showed no signs of stopping any time soon. Paris before dawn is an empty, neon world.
After a much too short sleep, I slipped out of Amina and Tarik’s apartment to take the metro up to the airport to pick up my brother. I successfully found him at the arrival gate, alive and limping. Ben’s potentially broken (or at least sprained) foot and/or toe did not stop our Parisian adventures. We picked up my lunch and had lunch/breakfast at Amina’s, found our hotel (Mary’s Hotel—a quiet, quaint, clean, and cheap hotel with a huge bathroom, fresh towels, and a balcony), took a quick nap, and then embarked upon the city.
It was only natural to start our Parisian adventures in the heart of the city—la Concorde, the central location between the 1st and 8th arrondissements. We wandered east from la Concorde, strolled through le Jardin des Tuileries towards le Louvre. This was my sixth time in Paris (technically), but I have never been in the city when it was quite so sunny and alive. The beautiful weather and the fact that all Parisian museums are free on the first Sunday of the month produced incredible crowds. After admiring le Louvre, we turned north to search for le Centre Pompidou, a modern art museum and an architectural wonder realized by Georges Pompidou. Our path went slightly out of the way, but took us through a bustling district just off la Seine, filled with clothing shops, brasseries, bars, restaurants, and a crowd of fashionable Parisians. We doubled back at le Centre Pompidou towards la Seine to complete the last stop of our tourist circuit—Notre Dame. The past three times I have been in Paris, I have had the chance to admire the cathedral in what I like to call “magic light”—the hour of the evening when the setting sun casts the white stones of Paris in liquid hues of bronze and gold. We paused in the garden behind Notre Dame to figure out where were should go to satisfy our stomachs. We decided on l’As du Falafel, recommended by my WWOOFing friend Emilie as “the best falafel in the world.” She was absolutely right. Our walk took us through a hip, bohemian neighborhood in the Jewish district just north of la Seine in the 4th arrondissement. We took our falafel and Heineken to go, and went to la Place des Vosges (one of Louis XIII’s private bourgeois estates and gardens) to watch runners and pigeons. Amina had proposed an outing to the bars with Tarik, but at the end of the day we were too exhausted to do anything but sleep.
Like Sunday, our Monday involved much walking (probably too much for Ben’s poor, swollen foot). After a lunch of tartines at the brasserie le Houblon du Vin-ième, we went to la Gare du Nord to figure out just how we were going to get to Grenoble. Our trip to la Gare du Nord taught us two things: first of all, do not wait until the last minute to buy Eurail tickets. Absolutely all of the direct trains from Paris to Grenoble (about a 3hr trip) were full for Eurail holders (my brother’s European train pass), so we had to settle for a ~7hr trip with a stop in Dijon. Second of all: never walk from la Gare du Nord up Montmartre to get to Sacre Coeur. The neighborhood is terribly dirty and clogged with beggars and poor immigrants clustered under bridges and along streets selling trash. Paris is more than lights and gold.
After the piss and pigeon encrusted neighborhoods of Montmartre, les Champs-Elysées were quite a shock. Our metro spit us out right under l’Arc de Triomphe, with an impressive view not only of les Champs-Elysées, but of les grands boulevards that stretch away from l’Arc de Triomphe in a giant, urban star. We took a cross-street to cross la Seine and get to le Champ de Mars and la Tour Eiffel on the other side. I had a brief moment of French pride: a French woman hailed us for help, then noticed that we were speaking English and apologized and continued on her way. I caught up to her, told her that I could speak French, and proceeded to help give her direction to drive from le Pont de l’Alma to l’Opéra. Impressed and grateful, she went on her way, and I felt satisfied that my years of French study were able to help out a lost Frenchwoman.
At la Tour Eiffel and le Champs de Mars, however, French is perhaps spoken less than English, Italian, Spanish, German, and an assortment of other languages that I couldn’t quite place. The crowds were phenomenal, and we ended up having to wait an hour on the second floor to be able to gain access to the third and highest level. Even though I already climbed to the very top la Tour Eiffel two years ago when I first came to France in the spring of 2009, I decided to accompany my brother anyhow. It was a perfectly clear evening, and although the crowds were stifling at the summit, the golden view of Paris was worth it. And the 670 steps that I climbed for the third in order to satisfy my brother’s insatiable obsession with architectural heights.
By the time we got down from la Tour Eiffel and walked by l’Ecole Militaire, l’Hôtel des Invalides, and le Musée Rodin, it was nearly 10:00pm, and we had not yet eaten. Emilie recommended that we eat and go out for drinks in the 5th arrondissement, the student district, near la Sorbonne. A giant sign for Guinness attracted us to the first bar/restaurant we saw on a side street outside of our metro stop. It was an extremely intelligent, though completely uninformed, chance decision. Ben decided on an omelet filled with meat (of course), and I had huge salad with hardboiled eggs, tomatoes, and thin slices of salmon on miniature, buttered tartines with a mustard sauce. Our English attracted the attention of an American student, Dan, who was studying Thomian philosophy (an obscure 20th century philosophical movement that stems from the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas) at la Sorbonne. Our conversation started out like most conversations—with pleasant small talk and introductions over a round of delicious house-brewed beer: Delirium Tremens. Our quickly conversation gained weight; Dan admitted that he had never known someone that was NOT philosophy student at the graduate level who could correctly reference and discuss Heideggerean “Thingliness” in conversation. I was flattered. We soon turned to current events: the drug wars in Mexico, the so-called Arab spring, the suppression of revolutionary sympathizers in Algeria, the banning of the burqa in France, and the economic motivations of many civilizing neocolonial missions. A fleeting sidenote about the legalization of gay marriage in New York led us into one of the most philosophically profound conversations about the role of marriage in society that I have ever had. I have never heard someone give such a well-articulated and rational argument against gay marriage. I still don’t agree with his conclusion, but I completely respect his argument. Around 1:00am, we decided that we should wrap up our conversation to make sure we could catch the last train before the metro closed. We got into the station without a problem, but once we got down to the tracks, a homeless woman informed us that last train had just passed, and that we should hurry out of the station before they closed the gates. We climbed back over the gate only to find the exit completely barred off. We ran around the station, only to find all the possible exits similarly locked. In such situations, my brain involuntarily begins concocting various solutions to the pressing issue at hand. The most plausible, it seemed at the time, was spending the night in the metro station. After my night of homelessness at the beginning of this summer’s European adventure, it only seemed appropriate. Thankfully, we found a worker sweeping up, who informed us that there is an emergency button just on the inside of the exit gates that will let trapped travelers get out. We ended up having to give in and take a taxi home. One night of homelessness per trip is certainly enough.
After checking out of the hotel in the morning, we thought about going up to the park at Butte-Chaumont (highly recommended for its stupendous view of the city and its salmon-colored quarry rocks landscaping), but we decided that we wouldn’t have enough time for lunch and the park before our train left Paris at 1:40pm. We stopped on la Rue des Pyrénées at a corner café that appeared to be rather promising. Both Ben and I were pleased by our meals and coffee, but were surprised to note that it was already 1:00pm. For the second time in less than a week, transportation panic ensued. To make a long story short, we missed our train and ended up having to exchange our ticket for a later but equally long trip to Grenoble, again with a stop in Dijon. We are about three-quarters of the way there now. Tomorrow, we have planned for mountain climbing (if Ben’s injured appendages cooperate) and Grenoble exploring. By the end of the week, I’ll be back in the south, far away from Jim Morrison’s ghost, and back with my beloved Mediterranean.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Pagans and Vagabonds
Saturday–Sunday 25–26 June 2011
Ferme de la Salamandre, Les Rives, France
At a certain point last evening at the Fête de la Saint-Jean here at the farm, Brian (another one of the WWOOFers) leaned over and asked quite seriously, “Is this really happening? How did we end up in the Middle Ages in France?” It was a legitimate question. We concluded that the year was not 2011, but 1237 A.D.
La Fête de la Saint-Jean is a popular summer holiday, celebrated primarily in the countryside on June 24, three days after the summer solstice. In the Christian tradition, the holiday celebrates the birth of the saint the Jean the Baptist. The celebration conveniently coincides with the summer solstice, one of the primary holidays in the pagan tradition. Frustrated by failed attempts to suppress “pagan rituals” in the countryside, la Fête de la Saint-Jean was eventually declared an official Christian holiday. As is the case in many (if not all) common Christian holidays, many of the rituals of la Fête de la Saint-Jean are appropriated from the pagan tradition. The festivities at the farm Saturday evening were no different.
The evening started with lentils, rice and corn salad, spinach quiche, bread and cheese, pâtés vétégaux, cherries, fruit salad, couscous, locally brewed fruit and honey beer, and plenty of wine to go around. While the adults ate, drank, and chatted, the children went out into the surrounding fields to pick des millepertuis—small, yellow flowers that are used in oils as a relief for severe sunburns (similar to the effects of aloe). Later, the women sat around a table to pluck the fragile yellow flowers off of the stems and filled little pots with petals and olive oil. The pots will be left out in the sun for about a month and then the infused oil will be drained and kept for use throughout the year.
As twilight began to fall, the children disappeared to the woods to build a lean-to, and Dani and I set up the bonfire. By the time the fire was roaring, the children were called to help perform an annual flower ritual under a teepee made out of logs in the yard behind the WWOOFers caravans. When I joined them, they had set up a bed of flowers with a candle in the center, and the little children were dancing in circles around the flowers. Gabrielle set the mood with melodic and mysterious airs on a wooden flute, and Sophie accompanied her on a small drum. After we had set up candles in each of the four cardinal directions, Gabrielle (an older woman) recounted us a traditional tale: http://rachelmgrimm.blogspot.com/2011/06/once-upon-time.html
After Gabrielle’s tale, we gathered around the campfire, where the children were roasting bread dough on sticks. After some chanting and singing (it was only appropriate), Nel (9) urged his father (Benoit) to jump over the fire. Apparently, if you jump over a bonfire on la Fête de la Saint-Jean, you will have good luck for a year. As it were, nearly everyone jumped over the fire to much clapping and cheering. And yes, I jumped over the bonfire too. There is nothing that can stop my bonne chance now.
Ferme de la Salamandre, Les Rives, France
At a certain point last evening at the Fête de la Saint-Jean here at the farm, Brian (another one of the WWOOFers) leaned over and asked quite seriously, “Is this really happening? How did we end up in the Middle Ages in France?” It was a legitimate question. We concluded that the year was not 2011, but 1237 A.D.
La Fête de la Saint-Jean is a popular summer holiday, celebrated primarily in the countryside on June 24, three days after the summer solstice. In the Christian tradition, the holiday celebrates the birth of the saint the Jean the Baptist. The celebration conveniently coincides with the summer solstice, one of the primary holidays in the pagan tradition. Frustrated by failed attempts to suppress “pagan rituals” in the countryside, la Fête de la Saint-Jean was eventually declared an official Christian holiday. As is the case in many (if not all) common Christian holidays, many of the rituals of la Fête de la Saint-Jean are appropriated from the pagan tradition. The festivities at the farm Saturday evening were no different.
The evening started with lentils, rice and corn salad, spinach quiche, bread and cheese, pâtés vétégaux, cherries, fruit salad, couscous, locally brewed fruit and honey beer, and plenty of wine to go around. While the adults ate, drank, and chatted, the children went out into the surrounding fields to pick des millepertuis—small, yellow flowers that are used in oils as a relief for severe sunburns (similar to the effects of aloe). Later, the women sat around a table to pluck the fragile yellow flowers off of the stems and filled little pots with petals and olive oil. The pots will be left out in the sun for about a month and then the infused oil will be drained and kept for use throughout the year.
As twilight began to fall, the children disappeared to the woods to build a lean-to, and Dani and I set up the bonfire. By the time the fire was roaring, the children were called to help perform an annual flower ritual under a teepee made out of logs in the yard behind the WWOOFers caravans. When I joined them, they had set up a bed of flowers with a candle in the center, and the little children were dancing in circles around the flowers. Gabrielle set the mood with melodic and mysterious airs on a wooden flute, and Sophie accompanied her on a small drum. After we had set up candles in each of the four cardinal directions, Gabrielle (an older woman) recounted us a traditional tale: http://rachelmgrimm.blogspot.com/2011/06/once-upon-time.html
After Gabrielle’s tale, we gathered around the campfire, where the children were roasting bread dough on sticks. After some chanting and singing (it was only appropriate), Nel (9) urged his father (Benoit) to jump over the fire. Apparently, if you jump over a bonfire on la Fête de la Saint-Jean, you will have good luck for a year. As it were, nearly everyone jumped over the fire to much clapping and cheering. And yes, I jumped over the bonfire too. There is nothing that can stop my bonne chance now.
Once Upon a Time
Once upon a time, a mother lived with and her three sons in a small, modest house on the edge of a village in the mountains. One night, a bright light awakes the mother. When she goes to investigate, she is surprised to see the familiar village transformed into an idyllic paradise, full of gardens bursting with fruit bushes and flowers, rolling hills populated by kind animals and twittering with songbirds, and a clear stream that ran through the center of the magnificent village.
In the morning, the mother was so moved by the night’s dream that she started immediately embroidering a tapestry to recreate the paradise that she had seen in her beautiful dream. She worked incessantly from sunup to sundown, lighting candles in the evening so she could continue her work after dark. She was an older woman, and after the first year of embroidering, she became tired, but she was determined to finish her work. In the second year, she often became sad, and the tears from her tired eyes that fell on the tapestry became the clear water of the stream. In the third year, her tired eyes began to bleed, but the tears that fell on the tapestry were transformed into the luscious fruits in the overflowing gardens of the idyllic village.
Late in the night on the last day of the third year, she finished her tapestry. In the morning, she reveled in her work and called her three sons to come admire the paradise that she had created out of thread. They were amazed, and declared that they should lay the tapestry outside in the sun as to better admire the work. They lay the tapestry out in front of the humble hut and the sun illuminated the beautiful threads. Suddenly, a gust of wind lifted the tapestry from the ground and carried it over the ridge and far into the valley below. The three sons set off immediately in search of their mother’s tapestry. They searched all day and all night but came back to their mother’s house empty handed.
In her depression, the mother’s healthy quickly waned. The three sons tried to cheer the mother up, but they were unsuccessful. Finally, the mother declared that she would die if they could not retrieve her tapestry. She sent her first son off in search of the tapestry, telling him that if he could not find it in a year, he would not see her again alive. A year passed, but the first son did not return. Disappointed, the mother sent her second son off in search of the tapestry, telling him the same as she had told the first son. A second year passed, and the last remaining son watched as his mother’s health and morale continued to fade. The second son did not return.
Finally, the mother sent off her final son, and like his brothers, he promised that he would bring back his mother’s beautiful tapestry. He searched all throughout the mountains, descending into the deepest valleys and ravines and climbing the highest peaks, stopping in villages and farms and asking everyone he saw if they had heard anything about a tapestry of unequaled splendor. Finally, the third son came upon a little cottage nestled in the mountains. Outside, a magnificent horse stood perfectly immobile, as if paralyzed. Curious, he approached the cottage but found that the horse that he had seen from the road was made out of stone. He knocked on the cottage door to inquire about the horse and his mother’s missing tapestry.
Inside, he found an ancient woman living alone. “I know why you are here, my son,” she said to him. “You have come in search of your mother’s tapestry, yes?” He nodded. “Your two brothers have passed by here, asking after the very same tapestry,” she continued. “I told them that I knew how to find it, but it would be a very difficult and dangerous journey. I gave them a choice: either they could learn the whereabouts of the tapestry and promise to undergo the journey, or they could accept a bag of gold and disappear into the village, never to return to their mother. Both accepted the bag of gold. I have not heard from them since. But you, my son, which will you choose?” the old woman asked.
Without hesitation, the third son said he would like to know where the tapestry was. He had no need for wealth, or material success, or towns. He only wanted to see his mother again, happy and healthy.
“Very well,” the old woman said, “I will tell you how to find the tapestry. You must take the horse that stands outside my house and cross three treacherous obstacles, and then you will find the tapestry. You will have to cross a mountain of fire, a mountain of ice, and a stormy sea, and beyond you will come upon a beautiful and golden land, and there you will be able to find the tapestry.”
“You see,” she continued, “when Nature saw your mother’s tapestry, She was jealous of the beauty of the creation. It was so beautiful that Nature sent the Wind to carry the tapestry off so that She could study and reproduce it for Herself.”
“I am ready and willing to go, but your horse is made of stone,” the third son said.
“Yes, he has stood there immobile for so long that his teeth have fallen out and he has forgotten how to eat, and he has turned to stone waiting for someone to take care of him. You must give him new teeth and teach him how to eat, and then he will prove to be the fastest and strongest mare you will have ever seen,” she said.
Straight away, the third son braced himself and knocked out his own teeth and delicately placed them in the horse’s mouth. He then collected grains and placed a bucket just below the stationary horse’s muzzle so the scent would waft into the horse’s nostrils. And just as the old woman had promised, the horse began to shake and tremble and broke out of its stony immobility.
After the horse had eaten and regained its strength, the third son said goodbye to the old woman and set off on his journey. He crossed mountains and valleys until he came upon a black and singed plain. Sure enough, as he crossed the plain he came up on a mountain engulfed in flame. He spurred the sturdy horse on and they sped through the flames of the fiery peaks. Suddenly, the flames died down and the third son saw stretched out before him a shimmering, white field and an icy peak beyond. The third son and the horse skidded across the icy plain and climbed the slippery paths buried in heavy snow. Finally, they emerged from the mountainous winter and found themselves on the banks of an angry sea. Although the third son and his horse were tired and singed and shivering, they plunged into the waves and swam until they thought they would be engulfed by the valleys and peaks of churning water. But the third son and his horse did not drown, and they eventually reached the other shore, where they collapsed, exhausted.
When the third son looked up, he could not believe his eyes. He saw before him the tapestry of his mother: the golden hills where animals pranced and birds sang; the nestled village where a clear stream gurgled; the gardens filled with berry bushes and flowers. And by the clear stream in the quaint village, a golden-haired girl stood alone, looking more like a fawn than a girl. The third son approached her, but he did not have to speak.
“I know why you have come,” she said. “You are looking for your mother’s tapestry. Look what Nature has done with her beautiful pattern!” She motioned to the gilded hills and the crystal liquid of the stream.
“Nature is not quite done yet,” she continued, “but she will be in the morning. Come, walk with me along the stream and then sleep and in the morning you will find your mother’s tapestry.”
The third son walked with the fawn-girl along the stream until the sun set behind the hills. He slept well, and in the morning, he found his world even more beautiful than he had the night before. As promised, the golden-haired girl returned with the tapestry whose absence had so long plagued his mother’s fragile and aged heart.
“Go back to your mother,” she said. “Make her heart glad again. But before you go, let me add something small to her creation.” The fawn-girl took a spool of thread from her pocket and with a slender needle embroidered a little golden figure standing next to the stream onto the tapestry. The third son thanked the girl and set off with his horse to return at last to his mother, mountains and valleys and miles away.
When the third son finally returned to his mother’s house, her smile and the beautiful tapestry illuminated the room of their small house.
“Come, let us lay it outside to better admire its color,” he said.
They lay the tapestry outside the house, and again, a breath of air from the mountains again stirred the fabric. But this time, the tapestry did not fly away. Instead, it seemed to get bigger. It covered the doorway of the little house, and then the whole house, and began to stretch down the street to the village beyond, and then climbed the hills and the mountains beyond. Fruits and flowers bloomed in the gardens and a clear stream gushed from a hidden spring. The mother cried with happiness. She was once again standing in the paradise of her dream!
But something small had changed. Standing by the banks of the clear stream was a golden-haired girl who looked more like a fawn than a girl. She approached them slowly but confidently, and when the third son saw her he ran to her and embraced her. They were married three days later, and they all lived happily ever after.
Once upon a time, a mother lived with and her three sons in a small, modest house on the edge of a village in the mountains. One night, a bright light awakes the mother. When she goes to investigate, she is surprised to see the familiar village transformed into an idyllic paradise, full of gardens bursting with fruit bushes and flowers, rolling hills populated by kind animals and twittering with songbirds, and a clear stream that ran through the center of the magnificent village.
In the morning, the mother was so moved by the night’s dream that she started immediately embroidering a tapestry to recreate the paradise that she had seen in her beautiful dream. She worked incessantly from sunup to sundown, lighting candles in the evening so she could continue her work after dark. She was an older woman, and after the first year of embroidering, she became tired, but she was determined to finish her work. In the second year, she often became sad, and the tears from her tired eyes that fell on the tapestry became the clear water of the stream. In the third year, her tired eyes began to bleed, but the tears that fell on the tapestry were transformed into the luscious fruits in the overflowing gardens of the idyllic village.
Late in the night on the last day of the third year, she finished her tapestry. In the morning, she reveled in her work and called her three sons to come admire the paradise that she had created out of thread. They were amazed, and declared that they should lay the tapestry outside in the sun as to better admire the work. They lay the tapestry out in front of the humble hut and the sun illuminated the beautiful threads. Suddenly, a gust of wind lifted the tapestry from the ground and carried it over the ridge and far into the valley below. The three sons set off immediately in search of their mother’s tapestry. They searched all day and all night but came back to their mother’s house empty handed.
In her depression, the mother’s healthy quickly waned. The three sons tried to cheer the mother up, but they were unsuccessful. Finally, the mother declared that she would die if they could not retrieve her tapestry. She sent her first son off in search of the tapestry, telling him that if he could not find it in a year, he would not see her again alive. A year passed, but the first son did not return. Disappointed, the mother sent her second son off in search of the tapestry, telling him the same as she had told the first son. A second year passed, and the last remaining son watched as his mother’s health and morale continued to fade. The second son did not return.
Finally, the mother sent off her final son, and like his brothers, he promised that he would bring back his mother’s beautiful tapestry. He searched all throughout the mountains, descending into the deepest valleys and ravines and climbing the highest peaks, stopping in villages and farms and asking everyone he saw if they had heard anything about a tapestry of unequaled splendor. Finally, the third son came upon a little cottage nestled in the mountains. Outside, a magnificent horse stood perfectly immobile, as if paralyzed. Curious, he approached the cottage but found that the horse that he had seen from the road was made out of stone. He knocked on the cottage door to inquire about the horse and his mother’s missing tapestry.
Inside, he found an ancient woman living alone. “I know why you are here, my son,” she said to him. “You have come in search of your mother’s tapestry, yes?” He nodded. “Your two brothers have passed by here, asking after the very same tapestry,” she continued. “I told them that I knew how to find it, but it would be a very difficult and dangerous journey. I gave them a choice: either they could learn the whereabouts of the tapestry and promise to undergo the journey, or they could accept a bag of gold and disappear into the village, never to return to their mother. Both accepted the bag of gold. I have not heard from them since. But you, my son, which will you choose?” the old woman asked.
Without hesitation, the third son said he would like to know where the tapestry was. He had no need for wealth, or material success, or towns. He only wanted to see his mother again, happy and healthy.
“Very well,” the old woman said, “I will tell you how to find the tapestry. You must take the horse that stands outside my house and cross three treacherous obstacles, and then you will find the tapestry. You will have to cross a mountain of fire, a mountain of ice, and a stormy sea, and beyond you will come upon a beautiful and golden land, and there you will be able to find the tapestry.”
“You see,” she continued, “when Nature saw your mother’s tapestry, She was jealous of the beauty of the creation. It was so beautiful that Nature sent the Wind to carry the tapestry off so that She could study and reproduce it for Herself.”
“I am ready and willing to go, but your horse is made of stone,” the third son said.
“Yes, he has stood there immobile for so long that his teeth have fallen out and he has forgotten how to eat, and he has turned to stone waiting for someone to take care of him. You must give him new teeth and teach him how to eat, and then he will prove to be the fastest and strongest mare you will have ever seen,” she said.
Straight away, the third son braced himself and knocked out his own teeth and delicately placed them in the horse’s mouth. He then collected grains and placed a bucket just below the stationary horse’s muzzle so the scent would waft into the horse’s nostrils. And just as the old woman had promised, the horse began to shake and tremble and broke out of its stony immobility.
After the horse had eaten and regained its strength, the third son said goodbye to the old woman and set off on his journey. He crossed mountains and valleys until he came upon a black and singed plain. Sure enough, as he crossed the plain he came up on a mountain engulfed in flame. He spurred the sturdy horse on and they sped through the flames of the fiery peaks. Suddenly, the flames died down and the third son saw stretched out before him a shimmering, white field and an icy peak beyond. The third son and the horse skidded across the icy plain and climbed the slippery paths buried in heavy snow. Finally, they emerged from the mountainous winter and found themselves on the banks of an angry sea. Although the third son and his horse were tired and singed and shivering, they plunged into the waves and swam until they thought they would be engulfed by the valleys and peaks of churning water. But the third son and his horse did not drown, and they eventually reached the other shore, where they collapsed, exhausted.
When the third son looked up, he could not believe his eyes. He saw before him the tapestry of his mother: the golden hills where animals pranced and birds sang; the nestled village where a clear stream gurgled; the gardens filled with berry bushes and flowers. And by the clear stream in the quaint village, a golden-haired girl stood alone, looking more like a fawn than a girl. The third son approached her, but he did not have to speak.
“I know why you have come,” she said. “You are looking for your mother’s tapestry. Look what Nature has done with her beautiful pattern!” She motioned to the gilded hills and the crystal liquid of the stream.
“Nature is not quite done yet,” she continued, “but she will be in the morning. Come, walk with me along the stream and then sleep and in the morning you will find your mother’s tapestry.”
The third son walked with the fawn-girl along the stream until the sun set behind the hills. He slept well, and in the morning, he found his world even more beautiful than he had the night before. As promised, the golden-haired girl returned with the tapestry whose absence had so long plagued his mother’s fragile and aged heart.
“Go back to your mother,” she said. “Make her heart glad again. But before you go, let me add something small to her creation.” The fawn-girl took a spool of thread from her pocket and with a slender needle embroidered a little golden figure standing next to the stream onto the tapestry. The third son thanked the girl and set off with his horse to return at last to his mother, mountains and valleys and miles away.
When the third son finally returned to his mother’s house, her smile and the beautiful tapestry illuminated the room of their small house.
“Come, let us lay it outside to better admire its color,” he said.
They lay the tapestry outside the house, and again, a breath of air from the mountains again stirred the fabric. But this time, the tapestry did not fly away. Instead, it seemed to get bigger. It covered the doorway of the little house, and then the whole house, and began to stretch down the street to the village beyond, and then climbed the hills and the mountains beyond. Fruits and flowers bloomed in the gardens and a clear stream gushed from a hidden spring. The mother cried with happiness. She was once again standing in the paradise of her dream!
But something small had changed. Standing by the banks of the clear stream was a golden-haired girl who looked more like a fawn than a girl. She approached them slowly but confidently, and when the third son saw her he ran to her and embraced her. They were married three days later, and they all lived happily ever after.
In the morning, the mother was so moved by the night’s dream that she started immediately embroidering a tapestry to recreate the paradise that she had seen in her beautiful dream. She worked incessantly from sunup to sundown, lighting candles in the evening so she could continue her work after dark. She was an older woman, and after the first year of embroidering, she became tired, but she was determined to finish her work. In the second year, she often became sad, and the tears from her tired eyes that fell on the tapestry became the clear water of the stream. In the third year, her tired eyes began to bleed, but the tears that fell on the tapestry were transformed into the luscious fruits in the overflowing gardens of the idyllic village.
Late in the night on the last day of the third year, she finished her tapestry. In the morning, she reveled in her work and called her three sons to come admire the paradise that she had created out of thread. They were amazed, and declared that they should lay the tapestry outside in the sun as to better admire the work. They lay the tapestry out in front of the humble hut and the sun illuminated the beautiful threads. Suddenly, a gust of wind lifted the tapestry from the ground and carried it over the ridge and far into the valley below. The three sons set off immediately in search of their mother’s tapestry. They searched all day and all night but came back to their mother’s house empty handed.
In her depression, the mother’s healthy quickly waned. The three sons tried to cheer the mother up, but they were unsuccessful. Finally, the mother declared that she would die if they could not retrieve her tapestry. She sent her first son off in search of the tapestry, telling him that if he could not find it in a year, he would not see her again alive. A year passed, but the first son did not return. Disappointed, the mother sent her second son off in search of the tapestry, telling him the same as she had told the first son. A second year passed, and the last remaining son watched as his mother’s health and morale continued to fade. The second son did not return.
Finally, the mother sent off her final son, and like his brothers, he promised that he would bring back his mother’s beautiful tapestry. He searched all throughout the mountains, descending into the deepest valleys and ravines and climbing the highest peaks, stopping in villages and farms and asking everyone he saw if they had heard anything about a tapestry of unequaled splendor. Finally, the third son came upon a little cottage nestled in the mountains. Outside, a magnificent horse stood perfectly immobile, as if paralyzed. Curious, he approached the cottage but found that the horse that he had seen from the road was made out of stone. He knocked on the cottage door to inquire about the horse and his mother’s missing tapestry.
Inside, he found an ancient woman living alone. “I know why you are here, my son,” she said to him. “You have come in search of your mother’s tapestry, yes?” He nodded. “Your two brothers have passed by here, asking after the very same tapestry,” she continued. “I told them that I knew how to find it, but it would be a very difficult and dangerous journey. I gave them a choice: either they could learn the whereabouts of the tapestry and promise to undergo the journey, or they could accept a bag of gold and disappear into the village, never to return to their mother. Both accepted the bag of gold. I have not heard from them since. But you, my son, which will you choose?” the old woman asked.
Without hesitation, the third son said he would like to know where the tapestry was. He had no need for wealth, or material success, or towns. He only wanted to see his mother again, happy and healthy.
“Very well,” the old woman said, “I will tell you how to find the tapestry. You must take the horse that stands outside my house and cross three treacherous obstacles, and then you will find the tapestry. You will have to cross a mountain of fire, a mountain of ice, and a stormy sea, and beyond you will come upon a beautiful and golden land, and there you will be able to find the tapestry.”
“You see,” she continued, “when Nature saw your mother’s tapestry, She was jealous of the beauty of the creation. It was so beautiful that Nature sent the Wind to carry the tapestry off so that She could study and reproduce it for Herself.”
“I am ready and willing to go, but your horse is made of stone,” the third son said.
“Yes, he has stood there immobile for so long that his teeth have fallen out and he has forgotten how to eat, and he has turned to stone waiting for someone to take care of him. You must give him new teeth and teach him how to eat, and then he will prove to be the fastest and strongest mare you will have ever seen,” she said.
Straight away, the third son braced himself and knocked out his own teeth and delicately placed them in the horse’s mouth. He then collected grains and placed a bucket just below the stationary horse’s muzzle so the scent would waft into the horse’s nostrils. And just as the old woman had promised, the horse began to shake and tremble and broke out of its stony immobility.
After the horse had eaten and regained its strength, the third son said goodbye to the old woman and set off on his journey. He crossed mountains and valleys until he came upon a black and singed plain. Sure enough, as he crossed the plain he came up on a mountain engulfed in flame. He spurred the sturdy horse on and they sped through the flames of the fiery peaks. Suddenly, the flames died down and the third son saw stretched out before him a shimmering, white field and an icy peak beyond. The third son and the horse skidded across the icy plain and climbed the slippery paths buried in heavy snow. Finally, they emerged from the mountainous winter and found themselves on the banks of an angry sea. Although the third son and his horse were tired and singed and shivering, they plunged into the waves and swam until they thought they would be engulfed by the valleys and peaks of churning water. But the third son and his horse did not drown, and they eventually reached the other shore, where they collapsed, exhausted.
When the third son looked up, he could not believe his eyes. He saw before him the tapestry of his mother: the golden hills where animals pranced and birds sang; the nestled village where a clear stream gurgled; the gardens filled with berry bushes and flowers. And by the clear stream in the quaint village, a golden-haired girl stood alone, looking more like a fawn than a girl. The third son approached her, but he did not have to speak.
“I know why you have come,” she said. “You are looking for your mother’s tapestry. Look what Nature has done with her beautiful pattern!” She motioned to the gilded hills and the crystal liquid of the stream.
“Nature is not quite done yet,” she continued, “but she will be in the morning. Come, walk with me along the stream and then sleep and in the morning you will find your mother’s tapestry.”
The third son walked with the fawn-girl along the stream until the sun set behind the hills. He slept well, and in the morning, he found his world even more beautiful than he had the night before. As promised, the golden-haired girl returned with the tapestry whose absence had so long plagued his mother’s fragile and aged heart.
“Go back to your mother,” she said. “Make her heart glad again. But before you go, let me add something small to her creation.” The fawn-girl took a spool of thread from her pocket and with a slender needle embroidered a little golden figure standing next to the stream onto the tapestry. The third son thanked the girl and set off with his horse to return at last to his mother, mountains and valleys and miles away.
When the third son finally returned to his mother’s house, her smile and the beautiful tapestry illuminated the room of their small house.
“Come, let us lay it outside to better admire its color,” he said.
They lay the tapestry outside the house, and again, a breath of air from the mountains again stirred the fabric. But this time, the tapestry did not fly away. Instead, it seemed to get bigger. It covered the doorway of the little house, and then the whole house, and began to stretch down the street to the village beyond, and then climbed the hills and the mountains beyond. Fruits and flowers bloomed in the gardens and a clear stream gushed from a hidden spring. The mother cried with happiness. She was once again standing in the paradise of her dream!
But something small had changed. Standing by the banks of the clear stream was a golden-haired girl who looked more like a fawn than a girl. She approached them slowly but confidently, and when the third son saw her he ran to her and embraced her. They were married three days later, and they all lived happily ever after.
Once upon a time, a mother lived with and her three sons in a small, modest house on the edge of a village in the mountains. One night, a bright light awakes the mother. When she goes to investigate, she is surprised to see the familiar village transformed into an idyllic paradise, full of gardens bursting with fruit bushes and flowers, rolling hills populated by kind animals and twittering with songbirds, and a clear stream that ran through the center of the magnificent village.
In the morning, the mother was so moved by the night’s dream that she started immediately embroidering a tapestry to recreate the paradise that she had seen in her beautiful dream. She worked incessantly from sunup to sundown, lighting candles in the evening so she could continue her work after dark. She was an older woman, and after the first year of embroidering, she became tired, but she was determined to finish her work. In the second year, she often became sad, and the tears from her tired eyes that fell on the tapestry became the clear water of the stream. In the third year, her tired eyes began to bleed, but the tears that fell on the tapestry were transformed into the luscious fruits in the overflowing gardens of the idyllic village.
Late in the night on the last day of the third year, she finished her tapestry. In the morning, she reveled in her work and called her three sons to come admire the paradise that she had created out of thread. They were amazed, and declared that they should lay the tapestry outside in the sun as to better admire the work. They lay the tapestry out in front of the humble hut and the sun illuminated the beautiful threads. Suddenly, a gust of wind lifted the tapestry from the ground and carried it over the ridge and far into the valley below. The three sons set off immediately in search of their mother’s tapestry. They searched all day and all night but came back to their mother’s house empty handed.
In her depression, the mother’s healthy quickly waned. The three sons tried to cheer the mother up, but they were unsuccessful. Finally, the mother declared that she would die if they could not retrieve her tapestry. She sent her first son off in search of the tapestry, telling him that if he could not find it in a year, he would not see her again alive. A year passed, but the first son did not return. Disappointed, the mother sent her second son off in search of the tapestry, telling him the same as she had told the first son. A second year passed, and the last remaining son watched as his mother’s health and morale continued to fade. The second son did not return.
Finally, the mother sent off her final son, and like his brothers, he promised that he would bring back his mother’s beautiful tapestry. He searched all throughout the mountains, descending into the deepest valleys and ravines and climbing the highest peaks, stopping in villages and farms and asking everyone he saw if they had heard anything about a tapestry of unequaled splendor. Finally, the third son came upon a little cottage nestled in the mountains. Outside, a magnificent horse stood perfectly immobile, as if paralyzed. Curious, he approached the cottage but found that the horse that he had seen from the road was made out of stone. He knocked on the cottage door to inquire about the horse and his mother’s missing tapestry.
Inside, he found an ancient woman living alone. “I know why you are here, my son,” she said to him. “You have come in search of your mother’s tapestry, yes?” He nodded. “Your two brothers have passed by here, asking after the very same tapestry,” she continued. “I told them that I knew how to find it, but it would be a very difficult and dangerous journey. I gave them a choice: either they could learn the whereabouts of the tapestry and promise to undergo the journey, or they could accept a bag of gold and disappear into the village, never to return to their mother. Both accepted the bag of gold. I have not heard from them since. But you, my son, which will you choose?” the old woman asked.
Without hesitation, the third son said he would like to know where the tapestry was. He had no need for wealth, or material success, or towns. He only wanted to see his mother again, happy and healthy.
“Very well,” the old woman said, “I will tell you how to find the tapestry. You must take the horse that stands outside my house and cross three treacherous obstacles, and then you will find the tapestry. You will have to cross a mountain of fire, a mountain of ice, and a stormy sea, and beyond you will come upon a beautiful and golden land, and there you will be able to find the tapestry.”
“You see,” she continued, “when Nature saw your mother’s tapestry, She was jealous of the beauty of the creation. It was so beautiful that Nature sent the Wind to carry the tapestry off so that She could study and reproduce it for Herself.”
“I am ready and willing to go, but your horse is made of stone,” the third son said.
“Yes, he has stood there immobile for so long that his teeth have fallen out and he has forgotten how to eat, and he has turned to stone waiting for someone to take care of him. You must give him new teeth and teach him how to eat, and then he will prove to be the fastest and strongest mare you will have ever seen,” she said.
Straight away, the third son braced himself and knocked out his own teeth and delicately placed them in the horse’s mouth. He then collected grains and placed a bucket just below the stationary horse’s muzzle so the scent would waft into the horse’s nostrils. And just as the old woman had promised, the horse began to shake and tremble and broke out of its stony immobility.
After the horse had eaten and regained its strength, the third son said goodbye to the old woman and set off on his journey. He crossed mountains and valleys until he came upon a black and singed plain. Sure enough, as he crossed the plain he came up on a mountain engulfed in flame. He spurred the sturdy horse on and they sped through the flames of the fiery peaks. Suddenly, the flames died down and the third son saw stretched out before him a shimmering, white field and an icy peak beyond. The third son and the horse skidded across the icy plain and climbed the slippery paths buried in heavy snow. Finally, they emerged from the mountainous winter and found themselves on the banks of an angry sea. Although the third son and his horse were tired and singed and shivering, they plunged into the waves and swam until they thought they would be engulfed by the valleys and peaks of churning water. But the third son and his horse did not drown, and they eventually reached the other shore, where they collapsed, exhausted.
When the third son looked up, he could not believe his eyes. He saw before him the tapestry of his mother: the golden hills where animals pranced and birds sang; the nestled village where a clear stream gurgled; the gardens filled with berry bushes and flowers. And by the clear stream in the quaint village, a golden-haired girl stood alone, looking more like a fawn than a girl. The third son approached her, but he did not have to speak.
“I know why you have come,” she said. “You are looking for your mother’s tapestry. Look what Nature has done with her beautiful pattern!” She motioned to the gilded hills and the crystal liquid of the stream.
“Nature is not quite done yet,” she continued, “but she will be in the morning. Come, walk with me along the stream and then sleep and in the morning you will find your mother’s tapestry.”
The third son walked with the fawn-girl along the stream until the sun set behind the hills. He slept well, and in the morning, he found his world even more beautiful than he had the night before. As promised, the golden-haired girl returned with the tapestry whose absence had so long plagued his mother’s fragile and aged heart.
“Go back to your mother,” she said. “Make her heart glad again. But before you go, let me add something small to her creation.” The fawn-girl took a spool of thread from her pocket and with a slender needle embroidered a little golden figure standing next to the stream onto the tapestry. The third son thanked the girl and set off with his horse to return at last to his mother, mountains and valleys and miles away.
When the third son finally returned to his mother’s house, her smile and the beautiful tapestry illuminated the room of their small house.
“Come, let us lay it outside to better admire its color,” he said.
They lay the tapestry outside the house, and again, a breath of air from the mountains again stirred the fabric. But this time, the tapestry did not fly away. Instead, it seemed to get bigger. It covered the doorway of the little house, and then the whole house, and began to stretch down the street to the village beyond, and then climbed the hills and the mountains beyond. Fruits and flowers bloomed in the gardens and a clear stream gushed from a hidden spring. The mother cried with happiness. She was once again standing in the paradise of her dream!
But something small had changed. Standing by the banks of the clear stream was a golden-haired girl who looked more like a fawn than a girl. She approached them slowly but confidently, and when the third son saw her he ran to her and embraced her. They were married three days later, and they all lived happily ever after.
She's So Heavy
Sunday 26 June 2011
Ferme de la Salamandre, Les Rives, France
In the words of Arundhati Roy in The God of Small Things, it all goes back to “the days when the Love Laws were made. The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how.”
Someone, somewhere, told me what I should love. Whom. Where. When. How. How much. Preferably an upstanding gentleman, close to my own age, English speaking (although a second language or a pleasant accent can hardly hurt), with a clean criminal record or a damn good explanation, perhaps with a family business to inherit or a boat off the coast of New England. No one told me what to do if I fell in love with a country, or the ruins of a fallen city from another epoch, or a dead author, or a woman, or a field of sunflowers. And no one told me what to do with joy.
Joy can be lonely. Back in the states, I could watch others experience it but when I ran through they scattered and the joy dispersed with them. Like pigeons on a square in Italy. So I took my joy hostage and stowed it in the overhead bin on a transatlantic flight.
At one point, I thought that I was only happy when I moved, traveled, ran. Alec evoked one of my most feared musical artists (i.e.: David Bowie, who was ruined for me by the movie Labyrinth) and designated my personal anthem as “Born to Run.” It’s a simple explanation, easily defended and rarely questioned. I have found that people are much more willing to believe that you are happy as a wandering vagabond than to accept that you are happy somewhere that happens to be far away from them.
There is a particular sentiment that I have when I travel abroad, but I haven’t quite succeeded in explaining it either to myself or to others when they ask what continually draws me back to France year after year. Rousseau, in the fourth book of his Confessions says it better than I perhaps can. He writes:
“ . . . l’éloignement de tout ce qui me fait sentir ma dépendance, de tout ce qui me rappelle à ma situation, tout cela dégage mon âme, me donne plus grande audace de penser, me jette en quelque sorte dans l’immensité des êtres pour les combiner, les choisir, me les approprier à mon gré, sans gêne et sans crainte.”
(A poor, modified translation: “Distancing myself from all that makes me feel dependant, from all that reminds me of my situation in life, engages my very soul, gives me greater audacity to think, throws me into the immensity of Beings to combine them, choose them, appropriate them to my liking, without care and without fear.”)
I deeply value something in that distance that Rousseau evokes, that perspective shift, that immense emptiness that forces me to reconsider who, what, and where I am. But it’s not the distance that matters the most; it is the joy that comes creeping up out of that void, surprising at first, but soft and delicious and profound once I let it penetrate my skin, the spaces between my toes, my eyelids, my fingernails. I lie flat on my back in the middle of a field of carrots. I allow myself to share and listen and learn about the people around me, and I love them even with the knowledge that I will leave them in a week, or a month, or at the end of the fleeting summer. I have begun to say yes. I walk instead of run. I float instead of swim. I read instead of work. I write instead of research. I eat my dessert, and my vegetables too. I drink my wine. An ocean away from the family and friends and land that I do love very much, I am happy. Je suis.
It’s not that French cuisine unquestionably trumps American food; it’s quite simply that we take the time to actually enjoy it here, dessert and wine and all. It’s not that the French landscape has so much more to offer than the sprawling geography of America; it’s that here I have the time explore it on foot instead of merely seeing it pass by the open window of a speeding car or under the shadow of an airplane far above. It’s not that the French language is more eloquent than the American tongue; it’s that I am forced to truly listen and engage with the words that stream into my ears and out of my mouth. It’s not that the technological difficulties of rural France (internet, cell phones, easily accessible cars or public transportation) make life simpler and thereby better than in America; it’s that in reconsidering my modes of communication and transportation, I am forced to build genuine, personal relationships with the people that surround me.
Three months ago, on a stage with lights and an audience, I said: “Qui suis-je, vous me demandez. Ben, je suis comme une copine en train de tromper mon amante. Ou bien, je suis comme une sale métèque, enterrée jusqu’aux chevilles au rivage étranger. Ou je suis comme la fille de parents divorcés, qui hurlent l’un à l’autre à travers des vitres opaques et fermées ; qui ne se comprendront jamais ; qui ne se réconcilieront jamais ; qui déversent en invectives un océan menaçant entre les deux. Et moi ? Moi je noie là-dedans. Oui, je m’y noie. Venez me cherchez avec un gilet de sauvetage. Mettez-le autour de mon cou comme la corde de potence. Sauvez-moi-en.’’
Three months later, a translation: “Who am I, you ask me. Well, I’m like a girlfriend cheating on her lover. Or I’m like a dirty immigrant buried up to my ankles on a foreign shore. Or I’m like the daughter of divorced parents who scream at one another through opaque and closed windows; who will never understand one another; who will never reconcile their differences; whose insults gape like a menacing ocean between the two of them. And me? I drown in their angry sea. Come search for me with a lifesaver. Put it around my neck like the executioner’s cord. Save me from it.”
I refuse to drown anymore in the ocean that perpetually separates me from home, regardless of the continent I find myself on. It is time that I reconcile my two identities, my two lives, my summers and my winters. I can’t continue like this, condensing my life to airport regulation size and compacting my joy to three months a year, thousands of miles and an ocean away from whatever I am supposed to call home.
* * *
At this morning’s Café Philo—a monthly round table philosophy discussion group hosted here at the farm—we decided to take a Promenade Philo instead of sitting around the picnic tables under the tilleul tree. We spent a few hours discussing the human experience of movement via walking and examined how mobility influences society, for better or for worse. We were enjoying a picnic of pâté végétal, fourgasse, and chocolate fudge cake when the question of travel came up. The discussion leader, a local philosopher named François, invoked the provocative image of traveling across the American Great Plains. I know from personal experience that driving across Nebraska (especially in a car without air conditioning) oftentimes seems like a complete void of motion. The utter lack of distinguished landscapes and the featureless horizon make all motion seem illusionary, as if the car were stationary and the flat, straight road were just an endless conveyor belt going in circles around the globe but arriving nowhere. Even on a map, the car hardly appears to move. The state of Nebraska seems to stretch once you’re inside its borders, prohibiting you from leaving, from reaching the other side. That empty space seems to break all ties with civilization, with the people that wait for news back home, with the eventual destination shimmering on the Pacific on the other side of the Nebraska plains and the Nevada desert and the California mountains. America! Whither goest thou in thy shiny car in the night?
In my three years of traveling abroad, I have felt in many ways like that car traveling at 75mph on a pin-straight path through the endless expanses of Nebraska. I search for the words to explain my experiences here in France but I find none in a horizon too wide and too beautiful to describe. To my friends and family back home in America, my movement often seems illusionary, fleeting, as if I am fleeing their reality and plunging myself into a territory that a map or a photograph or a letter can never quite capture, and I can never quite leave.
Please, leave me at peace with my joy. With my love. With my cicadas and wine and sunflowers and poppies and mountains and olives and goat cheese. With my tongue too sweet to taste. With my afternoon Cezanne sun that will shine over America six hours from now. With my coffee and sugar and tiny spoons. With my loneliness sometimes, and my fear. With the waves and the salt of the Atlantic that I know from both shores.
I love you all. I miss you. I think of you often. Steph, I wish we could bake key lime pie in our brand new kitchen. Alex, I wish we smoke hookah and eat cheese and drink wine on our porch. Rachel, I wish I could take a swim to the other side of Dow Lake with you. Alec, I wish you could teach me how to throw a football. Adam, I wish we could climb a roof and look at the stars like we used to. Jesse, I wish we could drink ginger beer on Radar Hill and wander the Ridges until we’re lost under the new moon. Jess, I wish we could drive to a cemetery or a new state or a tiny Appalachian town and talk everything out. Mama, I wish I were around to pick blueberries and grapes and zucchinis and beans with you. Dad, I wish we could go for a bike ride and stop for ice cream. Ben, I wish I could go for a motorcycle ride to someplace new with you. Athens, your hills shimmer under the humidity of southern Ohio humidity. Kidron, your wheat fields turn golden and your sweet corn tassels burst with or without me.
And I wish you could all be here with me, to go for walks in the mountains, to sell vegetables at a farmer’s market, to swim in the Drac river, to drink wine and fruity beer around a bonfire, to weed onions and pick black currents, to talk philosophy over fresh salad at lunch, to sleep in a caravan and wake up with a view of the Alps, to deliver bread to local food co-ops in Grenoble, to meet the people that I know, to see the towns that I cherish, to share this part of the world that somehow feels like my own. To love what I have come to love.
She’s so heavy, France, just like love, liberty, choice. She weighs an ocean.
Ferme de la Salamandre, Les Rives, France
In the words of Arundhati Roy in The God of Small Things, it all goes back to “the days when the Love Laws were made. The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how.”
Someone, somewhere, told me what I should love. Whom. Where. When. How. How much. Preferably an upstanding gentleman, close to my own age, English speaking (although a second language or a pleasant accent can hardly hurt), with a clean criminal record or a damn good explanation, perhaps with a family business to inherit or a boat off the coast of New England. No one told me what to do if I fell in love with a country, or the ruins of a fallen city from another epoch, or a dead author, or a woman, or a field of sunflowers. And no one told me what to do with joy.
Joy can be lonely. Back in the states, I could watch others experience it but when I ran through they scattered and the joy dispersed with them. Like pigeons on a square in Italy. So I took my joy hostage and stowed it in the overhead bin on a transatlantic flight.
At one point, I thought that I was only happy when I moved, traveled, ran. Alec evoked one of my most feared musical artists (i.e.: David Bowie, who was ruined for me by the movie Labyrinth) and designated my personal anthem as “Born to Run.” It’s a simple explanation, easily defended and rarely questioned. I have found that people are much more willing to believe that you are happy as a wandering vagabond than to accept that you are happy somewhere that happens to be far away from them.
There is a particular sentiment that I have when I travel abroad, but I haven’t quite succeeded in explaining it either to myself or to others when they ask what continually draws me back to France year after year. Rousseau, in the fourth book of his Confessions says it better than I perhaps can. He writes:
“ . . . l’éloignement de tout ce qui me fait sentir ma dépendance, de tout ce qui me rappelle à ma situation, tout cela dégage mon âme, me donne plus grande audace de penser, me jette en quelque sorte dans l’immensité des êtres pour les combiner, les choisir, me les approprier à mon gré, sans gêne et sans crainte.”
(A poor, modified translation: “Distancing myself from all that makes me feel dependant, from all that reminds me of my situation in life, engages my very soul, gives me greater audacity to think, throws me into the immensity of Beings to combine them, choose them, appropriate them to my liking, without care and without fear.”)
I deeply value something in that distance that Rousseau evokes, that perspective shift, that immense emptiness that forces me to reconsider who, what, and where I am. But it’s not the distance that matters the most; it is the joy that comes creeping up out of that void, surprising at first, but soft and delicious and profound once I let it penetrate my skin, the spaces between my toes, my eyelids, my fingernails. I lie flat on my back in the middle of a field of carrots. I allow myself to share and listen and learn about the people around me, and I love them even with the knowledge that I will leave them in a week, or a month, or at the end of the fleeting summer. I have begun to say yes. I walk instead of run. I float instead of swim. I read instead of work. I write instead of research. I eat my dessert, and my vegetables too. I drink my wine. An ocean away from the family and friends and land that I do love very much, I am happy. Je suis.
It’s not that French cuisine unquestionably trumps American food; it’s quite simply that we take the time to actually enjoy it here, dessert and wine and all. It’s not that the French landscape has so much more to offer than the sprawling geography of America; it’s that here I have the time explore it on foot instead of merely seeing it pass by the open window of a speeding car or under the shadow of an airplane far above. It’s not that the French language is more eloquent than the American tongue; it’s that I am forced to truly listen and engage with the words that stream into my ears and out of my mouth. It’s not that the technological difficulties of rural France (internet, cell phones, easily accessible cars or public transportation) make life simpler and thereby better than in America; it’s that in reconsidering my modes of communication and transportation, I am forced to build genuine, personal relationships with the people that surround me.
Three months ago, on a stage with lights and an audience, I said: “Qui suis-je, vous me demandez. Ben, je suis comme une copine en train de tromper mon amante. Ou bien, je suis comme une sale métèque, enterrée jusqu’aux chevilles au rivage étranger. Ou je suis comme la fille de parents divorcés, qui hurlent l’un à l’autre à travers des vitres opaques et fermées ; qui ne se comprendront jamais ; qui ne se réconcilieront jamais ; qui déversent en invectives un océan menaçant entre les deux. Et moi ? Moi je noie là-dedans. Oui, je m’y noie. Venez me cherchez avec un gilet de sauvetage. Mettez-le autour de mon cou comme la corde de potence. Sauvez-moi-en.’’
Three months later, a translation: “Who am I, you ask me. Well, I’m like a girlfriend cheating on her lover. Or I’m like a dirty immigrant buried up to my ankles on a foreign shore. Or I’m like the daughter of divorced parents who scream at one another through opaque and closed windows; who will never understand one another; who will never reconcile their differences; whose insults gape like a menacing ocean between the two of them. And me? I drown in their angry sea. Come search for me with a lifesaver. Put it around my neck like the executioner’s cord. Save me from it.”
I refuse to drown anymore in the ocean that perpetually separates me from home, regardless of the continent I find myself on. It is time that I reconcile my two identities, my two lives, my summers and my winters. I can’t continue like this, condensing my life to airport regulation size and compacting my joy to three months a year, thousands of miles and an ocean away from whatever I am supposed to call home.
* * *
At this morning’s Café Philo—a monthly round table philosophy discussion group hosted here at the farm—we decided to take a Promenade Philo instead of sitting around the picnic tables under the tilleul tree. We spent a few hours discussing the human experience of movement via walking and examined how mobility influences society, for better or for worse. We were enjoying a picnic of pâté végétal, fourgasse, and chocolate fudge cake when the question of travel came up. The discussion leader, a local philosopher named François, invoked the provocative image of traveling across the American Great Plains. I know from personal experience that driving across Nebraska (especially in a car without air conditioning) oftentimes seems like a complete void of motion. The utter lack of distinguished landscapes and the featureless horizon make all motion seem illusionary, as if the car were stationary and the flat, straight road were just an endless conveyor belt going in circles around the globe but arriving nowhere. Even on a map, the car hardly appears to move. The state of Nebraska seems to stretch once you’re inside its borders, prohibiting you from leaving, from reaching the other side. That empty space seems to break all ties with civilization, with the people that wait for news back home, with the eventual destination shimmering on the Pacific on the other side of the Nebraska plains and the Nevada desert and the California mountains. America! Whither goest thou in thy shiny car in the night?
In my three years of traveling abroad, I have felt in many ways like that car traveling at 75mph on a pin-straight path through the endless expanses of Nebraska. I search for the words to explain my experiences here in France but I find none in a horizon too wide and too beautiful to describe. To my friends and family back home in America, my movement often seems illusionary, fleeting, as if I am fleeing their reality and plunging myself into a territory that a map or a photograph or a letter can never quite capture, and I can never quite leave.
Please, leave me at peace with my joy. With my love. With my cicadas and wine and sunflowers and poppies and mountains and olives and goat cheese. With my tongue too sweet to taste. With my afternoon Cezanne sun that will shine over America six hours from now. With my coffee and sugar and tiny spoons. With my loneliness sometimes, and my fear. With the waves and the salt of the Atlantic that I know from both shores.
I love you all. I miss you. I think of you often. Steph, I wish we could bake key lime pie in our brand new kitchen. Alex, I wish we smoke hookah and eat cheese and drink wine on our porch. Rachel, I wish I could take a swim to the other side of Dow Lake with you. Alec, I wish you could teach me how to throw a football. Adam, I wish we could climb a roof and look at the stars like we used to. Jesse, I wish we could drink ginger beer on Radar Hill and wander the Ridges until we’re lost under the new moon. Jess, I wish we could drive to a cemetery or a new state or a tiny Appalachian town and talk everything out. Mama, I wish I were around to pick blueberries and grapes and zucchinis and beans with you. Dad, I wish we could go for a bike ride and stop for ice cream. Ben, I wish I could go for a motorcycle ride to someplace new with you. Athens, your hills shimmer under the humidity of southern Ohio humidity. Kidron, your wheat fields turn golden and your sweet corn tassels burst with or without me.
And I wish you could all be here with me, to go for walks in the mountains, to sell vegetables at a farmer’s market, to swim in the Drac river, to drink wine and fruity beer around a bonfire, to weed onions and pick black currents, to talk philosophy over fresh salad at lunch, to sleep in a caravan and wake up with a view of the Alps, to deliver bread to local food co-ops in Grenoble, to meet the people that I know, to see the towns that I cherish, to share this part of the world that somehow feels like my own. To love what I have come to love.
She’s so heavy, France, just like love, liberty, choice. She weighs an ocean.
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