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Esprit du Lieu

One of the things that I admire most in Remi’s photography is his ability to express a sense of place,  l’esprit du lieu. Even if that idea is completely subjective, it is tangible, covering what we see with a fine film. Last Sunday, Remi and I were out with Ben and found ourselves in the seaside port of Cassis. Cassis, where I had gotten my first glimpse of the Mediterranean ten years ago. A friend had recommended the tiny hotel “Le Jardin d’Emile”, perched above a little known pebble-covered bay. That evening we sipped rosé on a private terrace overlooking the million shades of blue. Miraculously, even though it was July, the beach wasn’t crowded and the sole sound was the scream of the cigales. Of course it has changed since then. I had heard that Cassis had become quite the chic spot and so was prepared when the view from the terrace was blocked by an outdoor cocktail bar, full of studiously louche hipsters. A large part of the bay has been taken over by the “Same Same Same Club” with bikini babes decorating it’s tropically fluorescent pool chairs. It is “their” Cassis just as before, for one evening, it was “ours”. The spirit has changed even if that magnificent view has not. As Ben was with us, we couldn’t descend down to the beach and so remained slightly outside of the experience, which was somehow appropriate.
Remi surprised me by suggesting that we drive back right through the heart of Marseille, a town that we barely know, despite its being only an hour from Arles. Traffic is notoriously difficult in this city, the second in France but he felt that, being a Sunday evening, it could be the opportunity to discover it under less stress. He was right. I noticed this panel proposing “free expression”, even if, really, that just meant an area where anyone could hang up posters. How different that one idea was from the dangerous, dark environment that Marseille is reputed to be. And so I opened my eyes a little wider and sure enough, was bathed in light. 
Golden light, actually. On the buildings that line the Vieux Port, which laps up against the skyscrapers and in the Belle Epoque architecture that has remained elegant even though it is more often than not in disrepair. Reflecting off the skin of the many families out strolling, reminding me of the throngs of Bombay. Mapless, we followed signs in a zig zag, for a while crossing a cartier or neighborhood where I could see struggling and emptiness. So many layers then, many personalities and not necessarily what we think that they should be. Clichés are so easily leaned on in that they don’t force people to make up their own minds. 
Or to try and puzzle it out. We get the keys to our new apartment tomorrow morning even though we won’t be making the actual move until next month. I am preparing for the change and so have been thinking more than usual about my personal sense of place, what my environment means to me. Some of my ideas on the subject that I have been throwing about on the blog are a bit awkward, hopefully not too cringe-worthy for the professionals that are reading along. I am still working it out. 
Only a year after our last move, I will be taking a cold eye towards our possessions and am determined to give the heave ho to what is just taking up space. We have been talking excitedly about what we want to do with the new apartment and I have come to see that the shifts in our tastes are linked with changes in ourselves, or at least who we hope to be. Perhaps that is why I was so dismayed yesterday. I was working as a stylist and assistant for a photo shoot of a house in the Luberon for Remi. I couldn’t find any connection to the houses décor and its magnificent setting. Every surface was covered with objects, as if to distract, to take you somewhere else. I know that everyone has different priorities but it seemed like such a lost opportunity.
Coming back to Arles from Marseille, for once, I was struck by its softness. How the patina of time has taken some of the hardness out of those solid stones. History worn on the sleeve. We fell in love with Arles exactly for son esprit du lieu, now that I think of it. It will be interesting to see how our sense of that evolves as we do.

Taking time, time taken

Technically, today is the longest of the year but I will make a strong case for yesterday evening. Frederique had sent off a quick email: “Drinks on my terrace?” and I instantly shot back “That would be lovely!” Fred, as I call her, is the type of friend that extends herself towards others when she is having an off day, wanting to make them happy. Something, I think that says a lot about her character. Is that just a ridiculously old-fashioned thing to say? Maybe. In France, we talk about les bonnes manières, or manners (or these days have increasing conversations about the lack of it) but not what the core of who someone is or can be. Maybe we assume that we all know each other by now, in this capitalistic industrial world that we have all morphed into a uni-being. I shouldn’t exaggerate but sometimes it seems like so many of us spend more efforts getting ahead than being true. 
Heavy thoughts to take into such a light evening. Luckily, climbing the stairs to Fred’s rooftop terrace is like being shot out of a cannon filled with feathers. Lifted out of the wear and tear into a realm that is just this side of different. To have a view, a subtle shift in perspective and a bottle of rosé–what more can you ask for? Remi, Fred and I settled in while our dogs whipped and rolled around us. Me on the sagging Indian daybed that had been a cast off from our garden and not quite comfortable. Popping tiny cherry tomatoes in my mouth that were still warm from the vines sneaking up a trellis. None of us were in a hurry to make conversation and what a luxury that is in any friendship.
We let the evening settle in around us. The sun gaped out an open-mouthed yawn. Nobody moved. We had been warned that we were invited “just for one drink” as Fred had things to do but at some point she popped downstairs and came back with a bunch of little plates on a tray. Saucisson, chorizo, cubes of cream cheese dusted with herbs. And so of course we stayed. I shifted on to a stack of thick cushions on the floor and mainly listened. Occasionally lost in my own thoughts while the others talked over and around me.
I had spoken to my friend Brooke on the phone for the first time earlier in the day. I think that it is going to be too complicated for us to meet during her upcoming holiday in France. For her to drag her entire family down here would be hard work and that certainly isn’t the experience that I would hope them to have in Provence. But something that she said during our brief but full conversation (this despite an annoying international cell phone lapse that left me feeling as if I were stepping on her toes) got me thinking about the importance of the time that we have in our lives: how we perceive it, how that shapes how we see, then how we go through the world. Does it weigh on us like wet clothes or does it buoy us forward? I have experienced both, or otherwise I would say that the answer lies in our character. An answer that is trop facile. I have made some unusual choices in my life and currently I have an ample amount of it. Something has shifted in me in that I don’t feel so afraid or greedy about that. So maybe I will meet Brooke next year or the year after that. Suddenly, everything doesn’t have to be now.
We didn’t know what hour it was when we finally got up, stretching and smiling at the same time. The birds swishing past at eye level, making their last dive before nightfall. The red at the last of its run. Lost in the heart of Arles. And yet no, not lost, not at all.

A walk around Arles, Part Two



I haven’t forgotten about you, left to wander the corridors of the Roman Arena, looking nervously over your shoulder for stray bulls. Mais bien sûr que non! Built in 70-80 AD, this stone couronne, with its two levels of 60 arches each, was drawn to scale as half the size of Rome’s Colosseum and became the epicenter of popular entertainment. Here, gladiators pulverized their opponents, the throngs sucked down oysters, servants pulled elaborate sails over the top to provide shade and incense wafted through the air to cover the scent of blood. When violence surrounded the exterior of Arles in the Middle Ages, the Arena was transformed into a fortress that contained over two hundred houses and two churches. It is hard to imagine, isn’t it? The facade has been scrubbed clean, in sections entirely replaced as part of a lengthy renovation. I preferred it as it used to be but am content in the knowledge that it now will stand for centuries to come.

Directly behind us are the remains of the Amphitheatre, one of the largest in Roman Gaul. Of the hundred columns believed to have comprised the proscenium only two remain. Pink and black marble slabs dust the orchestra. A third of the seating–that which wasn’t carted off to build the surrounding houses–rises up to the sky. The Venus d’Arles has long since been hauled off to the Louvre and chunks of broken capitals creep towards the stage as if seeking the limelight once more. But the space is still very much alive and I love that it is used for everything from local dance school presentations to the dramatic evenings during the Rencontres Photography Festival. I will be swaying in the aisles to a crooning Bryan Ferry next month!

Down the Rue du Cloître, past mansions with hidden gardens to the Place de la Republique, our main square, with the town hall (and it’s Mansart-designed ceiling) holding court over what was previously the Place Royale. The obelisk was originally a marker in the Roman circus (think chariot races, not dancing monkeys) that was topped with a golden sun during the time of Louis XIV, then a rooster during the French Revolution and an Imperial eagle for Napoleon. I have been told that the tip of it was missing for years and was discovered in a nearby garden where it was being used as a bench but that could be just gossip. Folks in the South are not beyond telling tall tales. My personal favorite is the one where a Van Gogh painting was found in the back of a hen house. It was being used to patch up a hole in the wall.

More on all that lines the square another time. Or if you are just too curious, here is a post on the magnificent cloister of Saint-Trophime: Hometown beauty. As lunch is fast approaching, I need to pop into Soulier for a baguette. Don’t worry about Ben, he has been trained to sit out front (no doggies in the boulangerie especially not slobbering Golden Retrievers) and if he has been good, will get the tip of the bread.

Next, we’ll just turn off of the Rue de la Republique towards the intersection of the Rue Balze and the Rue Frédéric Mistral for it is one of my favorite spots in Arles. From the distinctive hôtel particulier on one side with its wrought iron balcony (I want to live there someday!) to the building en face whose corner edge was shorn off by years of passing carriage wheels yet is graced with a faceless angel. The sky opens here just so and the contrast of the blue against the cream stone never ceases to take my breath away. It is the condensed form of Arles at its finest.

Not so the end of the block, which has been tagged with layers upon layers of graffiti. The old and the new blending into oblivion. Well, that is Arles too. Both wanting to be remembered and forgotten, simultaneously. And finally with Ben tugging at the leash, in through the front doors and past the corkscrew winding stair, cross the courtyard and into the apartment. One that will not be ours for much longer as the first person to visit it said, “I’ll take it.” Of course she did! No matter where we live, we will always have our interesting town to discover, for small as it is, on no two days does it look the same. Ben and I roam these streets willingly. As I mentioned previously, this was just one of the paths that we often take. More soon…

It’s not me, it’s Baudelaire

Correspondences
The pillars of Nature’s temple are alive
and sometimes yield perplexing messages;
forests of symbols between us and the shrine
remark our passage with accustomed eyes.
Like long-held echoes, blending somewhere else
into one deep and shadowy unison
as limitless as darkness and as day,
the sounds, the scents, the colors correspond.
There are odors succulent as young flesh,
sweet as flutes, and green as any grass,
while others — rich, corrupt and masterful –
possess the power of such infinite things
as incense, amber, benjamin and musk,
to praise the senses’ raptures and the mind’s.
— Charles Baudelaire
Wondering where we are going and am glad to know que je ne suis pas seule. Please feel free to take a look at Dominique Browning’s post and a grateful thank you to David Terry for putting me in such fine company: Slow Love Life.

Bloom

Pay attention. Pay attention, nature seems to be saying to me as of late. Take in all the beauty surrounding you and within your life. All that costs nothing save for a little looking, hope and honesty. For as detached as I can sometimes feel as an American living in a small town like Arles, I am very fortunate to be connected to such beauty and to some pretty amazing human beings as well.

I will admit that I was as nervous as I was excited to see Wesley Fata again. It took me awhile to untangle why. True, Wesley is something of a legend. He danced under Martha Graham, was in the original Broadway production of “Hair” and then went on to teach movement at the Yale School of Drama for over thirty years, coaxing everyone from Meryl Streep to Angela Bassett to Liev Schreiber to inhabit their best selves. I know Wesley from my time there. He taught me more than anyone and saw something in me that he did his best to pull up and out. Luckily along the way, a friendship developed. A rarity, which I knew then and still do. 

And yet he was incredibly supportive when I decided to change lanes by putting the unimaginably hard world of acting aside to have a life and a love in France. When he wrote last February that he would be spending a week in Provence this summer, my heart leapt! It is a rarity for me to have visitors from the States and more so from my “past life”, one that has been largely buried under the new. No one here knows me in that previous context at all. 

I launched into a lengthy exchange with Wesley’s fantastic, brilliant partner Christopher to help make their planning as worthy as it could be. I can tell you, if I may be smug, that their itinerary–whether they stick to it or not–is a spectacular one (and anyone that would like ideas for future visits should not hesitate to ask). It was decided that we would meet the day after their arrival on the steps of Saint-Trophime church.

And here is where the nerves started to vibrate, but not for long. Because I have had an interesting life even if it is not the one that I had bargained for, a really good one. And at 41, it is more than beyond time to embrace that. 

When I crossed the Place de la Republique and fell into his welcoming embrace, I knew that my worries had been for nothing. I have had the experience already in my life of seeing a friend after a long absence and picking up right where we had left off as if no time has passed but this was different. Because neither of us were exactly the same people that we had been before and yet we were still able to have that connection, moving forward. Yes I know, people are always changing but it can be surprising how many from our past want us to stay who we were, which leads to disappointment for all involved. Not the case here, at least on my part. Remi pulled out the stops yesterday evening for a dinner that could not have been lovelier. Out in the garden with the candles lit. Enjoying his stuffed cannette and squash gratin and fine, quiet conversation. Strolling through town afterwards and passing the gates of the church just in time to ring in what I hope is a very Happy Birthday for Christopher. Walking back to the house, my hand in Remi’s, I felt lucky.

I couldn’t stop giggling when I saw my face, a grinning Ben and my living room on the latest post of Brooke Giannetti’s perennially inspiring blog, Velvet & Linen. What on earth was I doing there? Alongside the likes of famed interior designer Axel Vervoordt? Well, Brooke is heading over to this side of the pond with her entire family and we are hoping to meet. Though I must say that it is requiring Herculean efforts on her part to make it happen. Something I am very much aware of and have repeatedly begged her to let it go if it is just too complicated. We’ll see. I don’t need to meet her to know that she is a good egg through and through but it would be fun to make the jump from virtual to “Hello“. And, I admit it, I would love for all of them to see just a tiny bit of this gorgeous region. Certainly now, right on the cusp before the heat starts to wilt the flowers that are gracing my friends gardens that I have featured here. We are making the most of this last month before we leave our own behind. Craning our necks upward to watch the martinets race through the same golden light that Van Gogh admired. It is right now. And perhaps always if you want it. Full bloom.

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