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Perfect timing

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. 

Occasionally Remi and I jumped up to get a better view, leaving Ben below as a brave lookout. What was going on with the clouds? They were what I refer to as UFOesque as they were more than slightly suspicious in their perfect hoveringness. 

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.

Just a thought

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.

My dream house in Provence

“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. 

“Over here, ” Remi calls out as I carefully pick my way down the path. I turn past the ivy and let out a gasp. 

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.

Enough of the past. There are no ghosts here and the faded beauty of this batiment is still very pertinent in the present. I inhale it like a perfume. 

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. 
Remi and I are both such dreamers. Soon the conversation falls away and imagination takes over. What we would do if we could somehow buy the property and make it ours? I know that I would clear out the fountains that have been nearly crushed by the surrounding vegetation. Remi suggests putting a small pool, a bassin, under the arches. Lovely.

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. 

Fallen Giants

It seems that the Monsters of yore have been slain. Not to worry, I am not talking about the neighbor’s children! 🙂 No, this morning I woke up to find one of the Love-lies-bleeding sleeping behind the Buddha. Its stalk bent in two and its leaves wilted, the pom-poms shedding tiny grains that the Thai use as a spice. Although I only had these beauties in fine form for only one day, I appreciated them enough for weeks worth of carnations. Everything is always, always changing.
Remi and I were invited to a dinner party yesterday evening. Our host had just returned from a business trip to the United States where he had purchased a book on Autumn in New England. Oh, those glorious colors made me so homesick! On one of the first pages was an Emily Dickinson poem, that although it has been read a hundred times, never loses its appropriateness for this time of year…

As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away—
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy—
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon—
The Dusk drew earlier in—
The Morning foreign shone—
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone—
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful. 




Little Monsters

Ah, the monsters that we invite into our life. That phrase pricks the cross-wires in my brain, blipping me back to my twenties and my attraction to that dirtily handsome band of friends, each astride their vintage British motorcycles. “Break my heart! Here it is!” I was so eager to love and yet so far removed from it, wrapped up in the armour of my own sartorial choices. Leather jackets, winged eyeliner, silver skulls on every finger. Tiny, personal sized monsters. No lasting harm was inflicted by any of them thankfully, just the pangs of youth. Such contractions between wonder and fear. As little as I would show it, I was so impressed by New York City and its residents. Having grown up in small towns, I couldn’t help but wonder, “How did we all manage to get here?” and be rather proud that I had. Rather natural then with that outlook that I would attract some bad eggs along the way.

Isn’t it amazing that at some point dangerous people just naturally become less attractive? Out of nowhere, to remember, to dig up a distant memory of trust. And to find that beautiful and for beautiful to suddenly become much more attractive than “cool”. Typical end of twenties, early thoughts. But I remember wondering if it was even still possible at one point, to trust fully. Living in Manhattan from such a young age can take its toll. But of course it is, it always is. Our tender hearts. And then, I got lucky, I know that too. 

For the past few years that longing for trust has spread out beyond Remi and my family to my friendships. I find it a more slippery slope somehow. Or that I am not as good of a judge as I would like to be, especially as I would prefer not to judge in the first place. And if they are not monsters, the pain of realizing that I have trusted where I should not is monsterish, as it is for us all. 
The ghoul that I brought home from the market this morning is, fortunately, of the vegetal kind. When I saw it, I gave out a little “eee” of delight. What on earth? I had never seen anything like it! Much to my flower seller’s disappointment, I insisted on only buying two branches (very bad taste indeed as flowers should only be displayed in odd numbers) but I was purposefully after a Punky Brewster/ Pippi Longstocking effect. And sadly, despite a million attempts, my photos do not begin to show how ginormous they are. Really, I am ready at any moment for them to crack out like a whip at me when I pass or sneak towards Ben’s ear as he lay sleeping. Delightfully creepy, these. So I suppose that I shouldn’t be so surprised that their common name is “Love-lies-bleeding”(!) nor what I ended up typing when I sat down to write about these odd flowers. A desperate bid for normalcy is scattered elsewhere about the apartment: Stargazer’s for my Balinese friends, cream roses for the Chinese Buddha and one last bit of lavender for the kitchen window sill. And yet, the eye goes directly to the Amaranthus Caudatus nonetheless. 

Now, on to the other side of the proverbial coin. The monsters that we do NOT invite into our lives but that intrude on our well-being nonetheless. In this case, I am talking about the neighbors and especially, their children. Now, don’t get your hackles up, I am not some sort of Slugworth kid-hater. But these not so little ones are driving me insane. Today they were throwing some kind of mini firecrackers under the feet of passer-by, undeterred even when one woman shouted out “ça va pas, non?!” Their skateboards resound against the building walls. I have been told that their family is linked with well, if not the actual Mafia then something similar. Sigh. Really most of the time, it truly is the noise factor that is driving me mad. So my dear friends here, such a wise bunch, any suggestions on how to deal with unwanted sound? Yes, I know, we chose to live in the center of town. We did. And yes winter is coming soon but not soon enough. Any thoughts? 
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