Two of a kind

“I like your style…you don’t take yourself too seriously.” It was a great compliment about my blog, especially as it came from Mr. W, who is not only our Ange Guardian in this village (who, along with his companion, the lovely Ms. L are responsible for our renting this house) but he is also one of the original Mad Men who rocked out the advertising world of Manhattan in real-time. 
His words gave me the inner yep to go ahead with this post, one that several of you have been asking for…and you know who you are. While there will be a second part to my previous post, this qualifies as well for it is just about…the puppers. Parfois, je ne veux pas prendre la tête…simple photos et mots…et c’est très bien comme ça…

So, as to that title? Eh non…et beh oui. Ben and Kipling are so very different in many, many ways. Don’t be fooled by Kipling’s sweet demeanour, he can be one tough customer. We have had a surprisingly difficult time with him since we have moved here. This previously abandoned dog has a new territory to conquer and claim it he has. He continues to challenge all that cross his path. We have had to be more vigilant than I have ever experienced with a dog. But…after a few hard incidents, I think, I hope that he is beginning to trust the here of Home.

Ben, however, is everyone’s friend. He is unbelievably smart, wise even – with lessons that we can all learn from – and gets along with anyone and their complicated dogs…

…such as Kipling.

Who could resist that face? He is great company and a good friend.

But here is the interesting thing. Each one has slowly – and I do mean slowly – had his effect on the other. Kipling has made Ben a little more daring, a dash more masculine “dog” while Ben has certainly calmed Kipling and show him the importance of using manners and charm to get what you want..
And while they still don’t play together as I had initially hoped, they are definitely now a team (shown above at the airport where they were my Official Welcoming Committee). They lay closer together and somehow communicate without a sign passing between them – whether it is the moment to convince me  to feed them or take them out. It is amazing to watch. So while they remain uniquely different, in their connection and affection they express for us, they are two of a kind.
Have a wonderful weekend. Today is Remi’s birthday…

…and we are all enjoying it quietly. C’est ça la grande luxe…

Happy Birthday Honey, I love you and our doggies do too.

Sometimes simple

In a haze of jet-lag, I grabbed my camera and headed outside with a determined gait in order to try and stay awake. And to remember where I was and why. My little village. It looked so scruffy and simple.

 But we all know that sometimes simple is best.

I mentioned that recently and sans doute due to a stray-dog memory, I will most likely say it again.

I tumbled around with a propped-up eye…

…to rediscover all of the details and feelings that made me fall in love with this odd corner of Provence for the first time.
My gaze was radically hungry – down, across and certainly, uppity up. 

For as soon as Remi picked me up at the airport – with les chiens in tow – I started exclaiming about the light. That autumn shift that brings a brighter blue, a softer gold.

And it scratches the sides of surfaces to make them sing.

Architectural traces of better times…

…still give proof to something good.
Colors blend…
…lines sway…

…and I feel plenty of calm just looking out my window.

I feel a hidden promise of doors yet to open…
…and yes, friends (Why does that word now have a corny context? Says who? Banish that! It is a good word!) are still to be made.
Cheers to you. Thank you for all of your kindness and for being here…


PS. Apparently, “sometimes cloudy days are best” too. Woof woof! 😉

Limbo vertigo

The color of the roses is making me dizzy. Leonard, my Mom’s former fiancé and now husband, buys them for her every week. It is a habit that hasn’t changed just because they have said, “I do.” They are grocery store roses but that doesn’t make the meaning behind them any less beautiful nor the curves of their petals any less fluid. My Mom lets me arrange them. “You are good at that…You get roses a lot don’t you?” I look at her for a moment and then reach into the drawer for the big scissors.

Air France was on strike. When I mention it to people here in Michigan, I am met with an “Oh, really?” for it has barely bounced on the American news. And yet tens of thousands of people (according to Air France, the New York Times went for the more dramatic hundreds of thousands) have been stranded. I am one of them.

Of course, we knew about the impending strike before it happened, Remi and I. But still I had no choice but to take the plane for my Mom’s wedding to Leonard, just as Remi had no choice but to stay behind. We couldn’t afford to be two. And yes, it is France so there were jokes about the frequency of les grêves and the greediness of French workers, depending on who was doing the joking but in the end, the strike went on for fourteen days. No solutions were reached between the two parties.

Two weeks may not sound like much but I wonder about the many stories of what happened for others like myself. How many lives were somehow utterly changed because of not being able to get back to a place called “Home.” I have been lucky, of course, in that I have the guest room to inhabit, not the blank walls of a hotel to shut me down and in. “This is your second home,” Leonard often says. It is as generous as he is and he means it. Their love and kindness – along with that of my Sister, Robin, who lives a half hour away – is as profuse as the perfume from a technicolor bouquet. I lean in instinctively to catch the ghost scent in remembrance.

I prick my thumb while cutting the stems. A grimace and a swear escape. I should know better for I do love roses. My mind must be wandering. Back to Provence I suppose, back to Remi and the dogs and that other Home, the first one, that I was only just beginning to know three weeks ago.

On my cell phone are little pictures that I return to, something like memory paintings. Olive trees, tails wagging. Instagram talismans. I realize that it isn’t the color nor the thorns prick that are making me dizzy, it is the pull. Of limbo vertigo. If Air France behaves, tonight I will take the plane. And I will cry to leave this part of my family (age doesn’t shame me into doing otherwise) just as I will crumble with relief into Remi’s arms at the other end.

This is just how it is within an expat’s life. It is full and complex and confusing and I chose it. But for me, this aspect of it doesn’t ever get any easier. There are parts of my heart in many places and I can feel them beating boom, boom, boom.

Our first vendange

One of the most romantic elements at our new home is the vine-covered trellis that takes up a third of the courtyard. It charmed me immediately. In the mornings, I would be bathed in a soft green light in the kitchen while my tea brewed…

…this after having pushed back the shutters in our bedroom to sail on a sea of green below. Such a lovely start to my day.
The vine’s branches twist under and over each other like happy snakes and the grapes grew downwards with a lush promise…
…until they didn’t. 
Oh, dear. 
Remi and I watched with consternation as our beautiful bunches turned sour. Within a week, they were shrivelled with disease and began to fall in moldy clumps to the ground. While we scrambled to pick them up, the dogs soon learned the hard way that those left behind were not exactly the tasty treat that they had expected. The sickly sweet odor was attracting a steadily increasing swarm of bees that would dive bomb us throughout the day. Ben is very allergic to bee stings.
Something needed to be done.
The owner had already assured us that as the vine is so old (one friend estimated that it is seventy years of age) that it only produces a decent crop every other year. It was clear that a good pruning job was definitely in order as well. 
Remi and I had already helped a friend pick the grapes for his wine and know what back-breaking work it is. But what to do when the branches are far overhead? We headed to our trusty Mr. Bricolage, the hardware store, for the longest cutter that they had. It was an investment but one that would also be useful for trimming the olive tree in the courtyard at the end of autumn.
 Remi angled the instrument in-between the leaves as best as he could and then with a tug on the red cord to pull the blades shut…snip! snip!…
…the grapes fell to the ground. My job was sweep them into a pile as best as I could. I chased after the rebel rollers with determination. The fruits of our first vendange – or harvest – left little to be desired!
As the hours passed, more of the sky peeked through our previously shaded canopy.
I kept turning my head upwards, missing both the privacy and the touch of character that the grapes had represented.
Eh, oui. Sometimes what is beautiful needs to be sacrificed for practicality. That is just how it goes.
And besides, there is always next year… 🙂
Have a wonderful week ahead everyone.

The Disappearance of the Fireflies – Avignon

I spent my birthday in prison.

Now hold on there, before you hit “delete” and then “unsubscribe”, let me explain for it is not what you think.

I have mentioned that I like to see an art exhibition on my birthday whenever possible. It is just one of the things that gives me the most sparks for the year ahead. And while summer is often the time for many big shows in Provence, I was most intrigued by “The Disappearance of the Fireflies,” which came about as a means to transfer elements of the truly amazing Collection Lambert (each a donation by Enea Righi) during the museum’s current renovations into one of France’s oldest prisons, the Prison Saint Anne.

I felt my skin prickle as I passed the entry, shielded with thick glass riddled with bullet holes. Even though I was walking into prison on my own decision, I immediately felt Barbara Kruger’s demanding, “Who do you think you are?” destabilizing me and challenging my will.

The Prison Sainte Anne is located in the heart of Avignon, directly behind the Palais des Papes – aka the Pope’s Palace – and is an unusual example of “purpose-built” architecture from the late 18th century.
This building was not a conversion of another site. It was created from the ground up for the specific use to be a prison. There is no respite in the architecture.
It was only closed down in 2003. The ghosts are recent. For the exhibition, nothing of its condition was altered.
At the entry, signs clearly warn that a thorough visit can take up to three hours as there are numerous video and sound installations. Remi and I plunged in willingly, giggling nervously at first and then quickly falling silent.
Art can be found throughout the prison, lining the corridors and courtyards but it was in peeking into the over 200 cells that held specific works that I was especially moved.

Each contains a little world…

…just as it had for the prisoner’s that had inhabited them. 
Both direct and indirect expressions of the themes are presented.
The patina on the walls, the history present was at times quite beautiful but was also capable of invoking in me a feeling bordering on fright or disgust.
The currencies of darkness and light clank and ching…
How deeply they must have been both cherished and detested.
The name of the exhibition was taken from a quote by the Italian poet and film-maker Pier Paolo Pasolini in which he used the disappearance of fireflies in the countryside as a metaphor for both the fading light of a bygone society and a past sense of “youth” that can’t be conveyed to the “new” generation – or of as a lost youth, if you will.
 Each piece presented is meant to be a firefly, a fragment glowing tenuously and yet with determination. Within its resistance can be found something akin to a feverish hope.

Walking through the halls, I was chased by the sneaking suspicion of a whisper evaporating two steps ahead of me…
…and yet was also confronted with the solidity of being forced to endure. The day after day, the year after year, the decade after decade. Without choice and yet evolving or sliding, slowly.

Several different worlds are presented over three levels..
…representing not only “imprisonment” but also “the passage of time”, “solitude” and yes, “love.”
I have visited the Collection Lambert several times before in its original location but seeing such works as Andy Warhol’s “Electric chair” was an entirely different experience in such an environment. One that heightened meaning…
…and shocked my vision into seeing anew. In another cell, my eye drifted between a framed Cy Twombly and “another” that I could also see traced into the wall. The two were nearly indiscernible.

The exhibition has been conceived to play on the senses and it does, strongly. Despite the fact that the prison had been cleaned for a month before the shows opening, the odours were at times very strong, the sounds and lack of horizon stifling.
Although we started out together, Remi and I eventually and wordlessly separated, each in our little cells of thought and emotions.

By the end of the exhibition, I felt utterly exhausted. I mentioned it to one of the guards and he told me with a short laugh that, “Many people turn straight around to the exit after the first floor!” But I was glad that I pushed through the sense of chaos, past the ragged strips of pinup girl posters and scratched graffiti, to understand so poignantly what it must have been like to have been imprisoned, in the many senses of the term…
…all the better to finally step outside under the great open sky and appreciate what it is to be free.

The Disappearance of the Fireflies
Prison Sainte Anne
55 rue de la Banasterie
84000 Avignon
Running until November 25th
Open everyday
Until Sept. 29th from 11am to 7pm
From Sept. 30th to Nov. 25th from 11am to 6pm
Last entry is one hour before closing time
Admission: 10 Euros
I know that it has been kind of a heavy week here at Lost in Arles but I really wanted to present this before it closes, in case there are those of you in Provence that haven’t seen it yet. For Remi, it was perhaps the most important exhibition that he has ever seen and I can’t stop thinking about it. I am so glad that we went. Plus, I feel like it is fitting companion to my previous post (thank you so much for your amazing responses!) as when it comes down to it, both are ultimately about the importance of finding freedom, something never to be taken for granted…
Have a wonderful weekend,
Heather

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