Month: October 2011

We are out the door–a surprise invitation to spend the day with friends in Aix. Who doesn’t love spontaneous moments like this? It is so wonderful to be thought of, to be appreciated. An issue which I have been thinking too heavily on as of late so this is the Universe’s way of saying, “Oh be quiet, everything is fine you silly goose.” Speaking of, will you take a look at that regal fowl of an armrest? Ah, antiques such as these means one thing and one thing only–the Deballage, or unwrapping of Montpellier. Yes, I have already posted about it…somewhere but can’t find the link! Too prodigious, this one, eh? Why I love this event is that it is a gathering of hundreds of dealers from all over Europe, not to mention buyers from all over the world. The number of Russians was staggering and I can tell you, they weren’t looking at nicknacks, they were more in the market for the man-sized chandelier as seen below.

We, being of zero budget, mainly come to be inspired and dream. But were tempted by this gorgeous, if cracked altar piece. Insane patina.

I was frankly, scared by this ginormous cello case and had images of Houdini using it in a magic trick of some sorts. It looks like the sort of thing that if you stepped into, you could exit in another dimension.

The trend for this go round? Regency and especially anything with arrows. We took a gander at this inexpensive floor lamp from the 50s but found it a bit too…or not enough…

Look at these gorgeous girls waiting to find new lives. A bunch of maidens at a dance–pick me! Pick me! If I could afford to, I most certainly would have brought a pair home. But alas, we have other priorities right now…

…Which means finding a chandelier for the living room. Oh, my. And were there ever some beaut’s to choose from. Remi was taken with this baroque Catalonian one from a dealer out of Barcelona…

And me? Oooh, the Italians always have the best choices. We actually were seriously considering this rather traditional piece but all of the wiring had to be redone. Um, that just made the price go out of our reach. As we were pacing back and forth, trying to decide, trying to communicate in Italian with the dealers we spied…

…this gorgeous and very real, very antiquo, winner. Well, it might be a winner. We are still thinking about it but I think that it is love. We would have to drive to Lyon to pick it up in December but it could be worth the effort. I have seen so many reproductions of this type on the market but the genuine article? Nope. Not to mention one with the tiniest, most delicate beads…Sigh.  We shall see…

All of this dreaming makes one hungry! And truly, I swear that I go to the deballage for the one thing that I know that I will find at the end of the morning: lunch on a huge magret de canard sandwich with fries…and for once, just because I could, a glass of champagne!

On my morning walk with Ben, I was taking in the crunch of my feet on the leaves when I realized that I was hearing something else…floating notes of a disjointed tune and they were coming out of…me. It wasn’t even a song, something solid to identify with to place my mood here or there, “Stormy Weather” or “The Man I Love” but just pure, unadulterated randomness. How lovely to find myself whistling. That has to be an example of a simple joy if ever there was one.

My Mom likes to tell a story from when I was about three years old. She was out, a baby-sitter left in charge. Said young lady suddenly became terrified when she heard someone in the next room. She reached for a kitchen knife (ok, maybe I have made that part up in my memory) and burst in to find little curly topped me sitting on the floor, whistling away, totally lost in my music. 

Have you ever heard a sad whistler? A tragic one? I didn’t think so.

And as if this post isn’t random enough already, a teaspoon more of sugar to make the medicine go down. Further along on our walk, Ben decided that he had had enough. I did not agree and, ah-hem, being the supposed leader of the two, insisted he follow. He refused. I pulled. He pulled back. I finally pointed at him and said, “If you don’t get your act together mister, I am going to give you a kick in the pants!” His ears perked up. I added, “Ok, I know that you don’t actually wear pants but you know what I mean.” He considered for a moment and then kept walking. Yes, it is official then. I am the crazy lady who has conversations with her dog in public. Soon I will be making little outfits for him to wear. I think I need an intervention. 

“I am definitely wandering, not only these streets of Arles that I have come to love so much since moving here in 2005, but also looking for that next step, that sign of the direction of what is next for me. A good a day as any, then to start a blog and share my experiences of living in Provence that I find along the way…”

I have always wanted to visit India during Holi, the Hindu spring festival where colored powders are thrown at passer-by with a jubilance verging on mania. The force of the act, covering someone–a lover, a friend, a stranger–with one gesture resonates with me. I had a similar experience once in Phonm Penh, Cambodia during Full Moon celebrations where white powder is used. Young girls, normally shy, would run up and smear my cheeks with it, locking eyes joyfully with mine as they did so.

And yet, we have these types of interactions all the time, every day. We are constantly moving amongst others and they too leave their marks on us, on our eyes, our hearts, albeit invisibly. How many times have I come home from a walk with Ben in foul mood because another dog tried to attack him or conversely, buoyant after having witnessed the small act of a father lifting his giggling daughter into his arms for a kiss?

Like a pinball in the machine, I know that I am too sensitive, too susceptible to these moments but prefer it than to be utterly closed off. I can’t stop looking even if sometimes I see more than I would like–thoughts, hopes and deceptions. Nor can I stop thinking about the seemingly random comings and goings in our lives. Why we invite certain people to be friends, to come into our private circle at certain points rather than others. And how we know when to let them drift away. Because they will inevitably, laisse des traces. And sometimes, unfortunately, wounds. It takes courage to open our hearts.

Digging down a little deeper, I have become increasingly aware of how flexible our personalities are, those outer traces of our inner spirit. I might be nearly unrecognizable to some of my companions of years gone by. How would I see them now and they me? For we see what we want to, we pick and choose and turn a blind eye. Would we still find the desire to be a part of each other’s lives? Continuity in relationships can be a blessing as it necessitates that a certain flexibility is built in, one that involves seeing beyond personality and the temporary swoosh of life. Being fairly nomadic, I haven’t experienced that type of long-standing connection as much as many but that doesn’t prevent me from appreciating it when I do.

We are heading into winter, so maybe that is why I am wondering about what remains, what is solid inside us while all around me the leaves are falling from the trees. A real autumn, finally. Certainly so in the golden light writing secrets in the sky, running over rooftops, pressing on upturned faces that are all too eager to inhale the last of its warmth. A contact as certain as the powders of Holi. And when those revellers return home and wash off the vibrant colors, what traces remain? Everyday we bump along, as day follows night and season follows season, finding our way, through others and ourselves, clutching the cord of life that connects us.

So I will instead keep shopping because isn’t that something that all of us do virtually in perpetuity anyhow? I originally took these photos for my lovely friend Brooke Giannetti. Yes, she of the Velvet & Linen blog fame, she the co-author of the “sold out on Amazon for three months” super-seller book “Patina Style” that is alas, still unavailable to many of us in Yee Olde Europe (and no Brooke, that isn’t any sort of sneaky plea for a special delivery!). But I don’t think that she will mind if I share them with you. They were taken on just a whim actually.

But how can one look at such worn cabinets and armoires and not appreciate their patina? All of the hands passing over their handles, pastries pushed out on their surfaces, the best china carefully handed up to the top shelf. Pieces that have lived and are still living for us if we only give them the attention that they deserve.

All of these objets were found at one antiques shop that I adore, the Galerie de la Gare, located in Molleges, beyond St. Remy but before Eygalieres. Now, I truly don’t necessarily love this shop for the antiques (even though they are fantastic and we did buy our one “good” piece here in better times) but and oh, how hopelessly American this sounds, for the experience. Trust me, I am wincing as well. But Remi and I have the best conversations here. Either with the owner, who has been in business for around twenty-five years or his Zen Buddhist nephew, from whom we recently bought a light fixture for our bedroom. There is none of the posturing “Monsieuuur, may I help you?” here but smart talk about the economy and certainly, politics. Taboo at the dinner table but apparently not in certain antique shops. We are usually there for at least an hour chatting or, at least, until a more important customer strolls in.

The shop was emptier than usual when we went to pick up our little alabaster light. A sign of the times. Business has dropped drastically for all of the antique dealers in the region–even on the lower end of the scale according to a friend in Arles. But what lovely things remained–especially those from a dealer on the Côte d’Azur who rents out a corner of the gallery. Photos are not usually permitted so I am being a bit…sneaky. I had asked to take them specifically to take to share with Brooke so please, no Pinteresting, no pinning. One thing very worth mentioning is that the doors inside of the white cabinet are plastered with letters and photographs from long, long ago. I did not have light or time enough to read those forgotten words but hope they were old love letters. Well, they are for me, no matter what they were.

Remi is what he is, that is, a photographer and a brilliant one at that. I was so touched that when we stepped out of the shop, he took the image below, just so I could share with a far-away friend, one that I haven’t even met yet, how glorious our light is here. So, just a little side trip but hopefully one that kept your interest–I would hate to lose you! And so, in the buoyancy of imaginary shopping, I will ask–did anything catch your eye? And if any of you actually did have a true coup-de-coeur, I jotted down most of the prices, just in case!

 

We all have our favorite weekend activities and I have read about several on the net that have left me tinged with jealousy–apple-picking in the States, gardening in Normandy (I actually enjoy the grunt-work), and simply nesting all over the world. Sigh. Personally, nothing says weekend more to me than heading out to browse at an antique shop. It doesn’t have to be fancy, actually I prefer a dépôt-vente or consignment shop, where all manner of items can be found.

Does that mean that there is always something to take home? Of course not! But the fun is as much in the hunt, as any brocanteur or brocanteuse can attest. Hmmm, so what was to be had for the offerings on our last trip? I was fascinated by this over the top Rococo cabinet (note the small skull on the fronton) that held a stuffed white cobra and a screeching owl within its doors as if to keep them from attacking the public.

Don’t be fooled by the German Shepherd, he isn’t there to guard but sneak up and give bisous on your hand! I thought that the pair of colonial style low-slung chairs behind him were similar to things that I have been seeing in several design magazines and blogs. I could easily picture them on a stone veranda in California.

I would have been tempted by this chair, sorely tempted if those gorgeous arms would only fit under my desk. I am a sucker for a worn animal print–in chenille no less. Just imagine the fine prose this could inspire me to? Alas, no.

This pair seemed to me to be the buy of the day at 80€. Beautifully sculpted, I believe out of Rosewood, nor could I see any nails, so probably more ancient than one would think. Do we have any place for them, chez nous? Absolutley not!  The same can be said for the romantic lithograph and the golden applique below but it doesn’t stop me from redecorating in my mind.

Drawn by the insanely kitschy photograph of a very literal interpretation of Coq en pâte, we bought the massive tome, “L’Art Culinaire Français” and were delighted to find that the photographs were the only thing dated about it. “This is the kind of book that my Mother had,” Remi assured me. The recipes are written simply in paragraph form and cover absolutely every French basic that you could ever wish to whip up. I have casually left it out, just laying around, so that Monsieur le Chef can be inspired at will.

“You aren’t going to write about this are you?” Remi has locked eyes with me to make the point. I lower the camera clutched in my hand back down into my bag. No, I don’t need to write about everything. I don’t have blogger fever. It is his birthday and some things are best left in the realm of the personal.

And so we lingered. My back was to the rest of the tables but I could hear the bubble of conversation starting to fade. Having waited tables (something that every member of the population should be forced to do at one time or another), I dread being the hated ‘last table that won’t leave’ so we offered to settle the bill so that our waiter could go. No need to vex a man who offers free bubbly, now is there?

We left behind our private little kingdom for another. The exhibition “Le Temps Retrouvés” featured the works of Cy Twombly as well as a selection of complimentary masterworks. I am a Twombly fan and was grateful to see the last exhibition curated before the artist’s death. It was lovely to slide in between the layers of his paintings but also to watch the light play off them and the architecture as well.

We wandered from room to room gazing at stark Cindy Shermans, moody Louise Lawlers and a haunting series by Sally Mann. 

At every turn, the light played as much of a role as the art in charming us. Softness, whispers and again the absence of noise. It wasn’t until we had reached one of the final rooms that we realized that we had seen the entire exhibit alone. We hadn’t crossed another person save for occasional security guards that would nod at us, each in varying stages of a seeming Zen like state. 

A fight was brewing. Remi and I could both feel the little sparks of crankiness flowing between us. It had been a long weekend full of work and planning. Even our little idea to return to one of our favorite antique shops had been spoiled, we were too late. Nothing was working out right. We had hopped in the car in hopes of forcing things into shape but no. Crazy drivers seemingly attached to our bumper only made things worse. Sparks threatened to flame into fires. 

Luckily for us both, we just out and out fessed up to what was happening and whoosh–all of that stress just flew out the window like a balloon. Funny that, how giving bad behavior a name can make it look so foolish that it runs away with its tail between its legs.

So we let go of the throttled fun and just took a look at where we were. Well, happily we were in the heart of the Alpilles. Remi suggested a fail-safe idea, to take a walk along the cliff facing Les Baux des Provence, one of the most picturesque villages in France (that I wrote about here). Ooof. I must have still had a couple of neutrons of nastiness zigzagging through me as I was ready to whine about the wind being too strong, too cold. I took a quick mental inventory of Francine Gardner’s recent post about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and felt foolish. We all know that the very first rule of travelling is no whining.

Soon enough, we pulled over, Ben, our gorgeous Golden, was freed from the back and we were scraping along over a trail that is not a trail but stone marked with wagon wheels of who knows when. 

Remi has more of a hunter instinct than our Golden. His head lifted up and with a turn of the head he mumbled to himself “Is the light going to descend below the cloud?” or something to the effect. I lost the end of his phrase as he had broken out into a run, chasing the light. I have to say, I love when he does this, I find it so hopelessly attractive.

Ben kept returning to find me on the trail as if to say “Hurry up!” When I finally descended down towards our favorite spot, I saw that the light had expanded into a giant flaming veil hovering across the village. And with a nearly full moon, rising just above, well, well, well.

Like Remi, I started shooting like mad–however with my tiny, forever disappointing Pentax. Ah, save for when the light is absolutely perfect. For some mysterious reason, then it seems to snap to and try and deserve its place in my hands. So alive, so alive the light…gorgeous and then…gone.

Now, when you are the companion to a photographer, it is best to learn about timing. And time. Because, as you have already most likely understood, all of the delays, the miniscule hesitations delivered us to right where we needed to be at exactly the right moment. We saw something extraordinary. Remi kept seeing it, as he always does and I leaned up against trusty Ben to stay warm.

The sky waxed violet and gray, what an elegant combination. Very Oscar Wilde. I paid attention to the pulling at my ear to finally hear the pines telling me to shut up. I promise that it wasn’t more polite than that! Shut up all of those thoughts rocking through your head. Just be patient and wait. Because a photographers day isn’t finished until the very last ray slicing across the horizon (and sometimes not even then), so just be happy to be where you are. There isn’t anything better than this, just this. Remi’s birthday is tomorrow. I felt this experience was a little gift, in advance from the Powers that Be. 

Happy Birthday, sweetheart.

At the end of my yoga practice today, a sentence popped into my head: “you can’t change your past but you can change how your past controls you.” It is pretty unusual that I have something concrete like that arrive–I am usually thinking about what I am going to make for lunch! Oops!–so I thought that I would just put it out here. I know that most of my readers (and especially my friends that I interact with regularly) are mainly older than I am and probably wise enough to know this but then again, we all know that unfortunately age and wisdom do not always go hand in hand…

Now that I am definitely into my forties, perhaps it is time to re-examine some of the ideas that have defined me, shine a light on a different type of Little Monsters crouching in the dark and let them go. As if on cue, Remi brought in the mail and waiting for me is a big envelope from the Yale School of Drama. It is most likely the annual directory that lists which of my fellow actors are working, where they have gone. Now usually this is the quickest route imaginable towards reducing me to a sobbing Marlon Brando in the back of a taxi cab. The whiplash of “could haves”. But instead I will remember, actively remember, that all of those past choices lead me to exactly where I am today: sitting at my antique desk in front of a 19th century window open on to a rose-streaked Provençal sky with my sweet dog sleeping on my feet and the man that I love in the next room.

Own your life, no matter what it is.

I know that at times I sound like a broken record and actually it is the essence of good acting, “being in the moment” but to know these things in our heads and in our hearts are not always the same, are they?

Wishing you all a lovely weekend.

“I want to show you something.” Remi makes a swift right onto a tiny lane in the middle of the Alpilles. As often as we have traversed these roads, this one is somehow unknown to me. I am left to wonder where we are headed and why now. The sun has already started its descent and I am hungry, thinking ahead to the time remaining for the drive home, what I can rustle up for dinner. We wind around corner after corner to spy olive grove after olive grove, each ghostly in the waning light. 

He pulls over at a seemingly random spot and unloads Ben from the back. “Come on.” I follow him down a rock-strewn path. The point of a terracotta tiled roof raises up like a cowlick over the hillside. And soon, we were standing in a clearing gazing at an ancient stone farmhouse, or mas with a massive diagonal stone fortification reaching up on one side and a pebbly garden wall rolling down the other. 

This mas was certainly something more, at least it had been, long ago. A series of arches extend off of the main structure into nowhere. No roof above, no form remaining to give a clue as to its origins. Was the home built onto the remains of a chapel? Possibly. A sculpted column in the loggia makes me wonder if it was a cloister.

The roof looks as though it could fly off with the next gust of Mistral but there are little clues that this home has not been abandoned, not entirely. Certain windows have been replaced. A wicker chair is placed in front of the arched entryway with a shirt slung over it, left out to dry. An extension cord snakes through the grasses to a generator hidden in a dried out well. Someone is living here à la Robinson Crusoé. My guess is not all the time, perhaps just in the warmth of summer. 

I am sure that both of us have a hard time understanding the whys of the mas being left to slide in to such a state, even if we find it all the lovelier for it.

We linger and let the last of the light pull across us. A speck of moon pops over the olive trees. 

“Have you ever tasted figues de barbarie?” Remi asks he spies the fruit exploding out of a group of cacti at the base of the house. I admit that I haven’t so, gentleman that he is, he gathers one for me, getting pricked in the process. I take a tiny nibble. The fruit is as soft as the sun and the magenta juice stains our hands.

The desiccated trunk of a tree fascinates me. “How did it get like that Remi?” It smells warm, the wood. “It has just been left to rot, that’s all, maybe for twenty years, maybe more.” I can’t imagine just leaving something be for so long. 

Perhaps the mas is more alone than we think. 

As we head back towards the car, we can hear snatches of song echoing through the hills. “Algerian”, Remi confirms, workers of North African origin. Joyous notes bob and fade. Perhaps it is a celebration for the récolte, the end of harvesting the grapes. We stop to listen for a moment before heading home. There is always music in the best dreams.