Category: Uncategorized

We have been peeking into secret gardens adorned with mysterious staircases that climb heavenwards blindly…

…while wondering what the view might be from above to below.

We have cat-scratched at patinas…

…and followed light’s traces from east to west, or is it north to south? To see where her elegant tresses fall…

…and where they remain pulled up chignon tight. 

For what we have realized, is that it is less about falling in love with one particular house…

…but more about the “how” of where we will live next.

We both feel a rousing need for quiet…

…and a speck of order.

Something that Arles with its casual abandon may no longer give us.

And so we are roaming, returning to villages like St. Hilaire d’Ozilhan…

…looking with eyes and hearts wide open until we are sure of what is next.

Have a lovely weekend everyone…

It was a Sunday and we all knew it and needed it. Remi and I had picked up our hard-working friends Marc and Bettina in Nimes and then headed up through the winding hills to Uzès. Uzès, how I love thee! Ben knows. He loves it too. But it is in Winter when I prefer it as the town, one of the most beautiful in the South of France, is positively empty. 

Ah, save for at Terroirs, where we grabbed the last outdoor table on the terrace. The gentlemen gave the ladies the view on the Place aux Herbes and backs against the (very much needed) space heaters. We did our best to settle in the dogs and then it was time to consider with anticipation how to give ourselves over to a similarly floppy relaxed abandon.

We puzzled and bantered over the simple yet tempting menu with the charming waiter who leaned on our table and wished that he could join us for a glass of the very nice local wine that he had just poured into our ready glasses. Decisions were made, then changed until promises of shared bites were offered.

I was tired, coming off of a week of not sleeping well. But one of the many aspects of being with our long-time friends is that they take us as we are. There is no need to put on a show or to pretend to be other. So I felt free to be quiet. 

The conversation burbled on around me like little musical notes dancing off the staff. I let my eyes do the talking, taking little snapshots of the view from our table, my camera resting otherwise in my lap. Our food arrived just as my stomach was starting to rumble and I enjoyed my delicious gratin du jour, the cheese bubbling over smoky eggplant to warm me up from the inside so that I no longer needed the polar fleece blanket placed with consideration on the arm of my chair.

We all knew our good fortune at being able to eat outside in February and so we stayed. A second bottle of wine was ordered as it was sold à la ficelle, literally by the string so that you paid only for the level of how much you drank. Because honestly, we just wanted to linger, to pull the moment like the sweet taffy it was.

We were amongst the very last to leave (that was our table at far left) and certainly no one rushed us to go. How quiet the Place was now. Full of Winter.

All the better to take a post-dining stroll, an institution in France.

And when that perambulation happens to be in Uzes…

…well, your eyes will feast as well as your belly has.

Sunday, sweet Sunday…

…I always find a home in you.

Terroirs Restaurant

5 Place aux Herbes

30700 Uzès

Tel. : 04 66 03 41 90

http://www.terroirs-uzes.com/le-restaurant.html

I have something really fun to share with you. As of today, you can walk into any French post office and buy a stamp portraying a bust of Julius Caesar that was made from a photograph taken by my love, Remi Benali.  

There are one million of these stamps available for sale!

For any stamp collectors out there, you may not be surprised to learn that only the stamps bought on the first day of their publication are marked with a special seal, which gives them extra worth. This morning, 500 people lined up at the Musée départemental Arles Antique, which is home to the bust, in order to have the special seal.

As always, I am exceptionally proud of Remi. When we stopped by this evening to buy our stamps, he was not only congratulated but was also asked to autograph the set by many savvy collectors! To see more of his archaeological work (of which I will have news in the months to come), please click here.

And so for my sweetheart on this Valentine’s Day weekend, one of his favorite tunes:

And speaking of this very sweet holiday, I was delighted to have been asked by my friend D.A. Wolf at Daily Plate of Crazy to participate in her series on Food and Love. What I wrote, as with the piece that I wrote for my Mom, comes from the heart. 

To read “Love in the terroir” please click here.

Keep sending out the Love for everyday is Valentine’s Day!

The mystery of the in-between…

… an hour when one doesn’t know whether they are coming or going…

…whether it is the end…

…or just the beginning.

And then we choose, we choose together, to continue on.

Although the light is fading…

…making the path uncertain…

…we trust in our internal guide…

…and the bedrock solid shoulders of loved ones…

…to steer us straight into the new beyond.

One can linger in such moments…

…the dreaming and pondering can be delicious…

…or one can buckle down, dig in and do.

In the twilight, everything seems possible. Details grow, becoming crisp.

And then the moon and stars appear…

…as reassuring as old friends.

In the beautiful village of Gordes in the heart of the Luberon…

…I walked the high-wire through the gloaming…

…until I crossed into the deep true of night.

Step by step, without looking back…

…and dazzled by believing’s shining light.

This post was written as a little Happy Birthday sonata for a lovely woman who writes under the nom de plume of Vickie Lester at one of my very favorite blogs, Beguiling Hollywood. Vickie has been hard at work on her novel, It’s in his kiss, which takes place in, “A camera-ready world of fantasy fulfilled, artifice and bone-deep glamour.” Now, doesn’t that grab your interest? It should. Each chapter that I have read had my heart racing, leaving me hungry for the next. For you see, Ms. Lester is not only a brilliant writer but the real deal who writes about Hollywood, it’s wonders and foibles, from the deep insider point of view. And some of the scandalous tidbits? Well, they very well might be a slightly disguised truth, which we all know is stranger than fiction. 

But not so long ago, after the final edit had been sealed and the book cover designed, Vickie discovered that the publishing team that she had been working so hard with had been dissolved. Just like that, quicker than a sunset. Can you imagine? Years of work. So what to do? In the in-between, we have to make a choice. And rather than lie down on the floor and sob for a few weeks – which is frankly, what I would have done most likely – she kept going. Yes, just like a heroine in one of those old movies that we love and that Vickie knows like the back of her hand (her knowledge of Hollywood, old and new, is positively encyclopedic). And so now, she is bravely stepping forward into the world of self-publishing, a high-wire if there ever was one. She is surrounded and supported by all who know her because she is that kind of woman. So when our mutual friend George Kaplan asked if I would participate in a virtual birthday celebration for Vickie, I said, “Oui” in a heartbeat. 

Now, let’s get this party started:

I believe in you Vickie and you truly inspire me. May this year ahead be as great of an adventure as I feel it will be for you, I am sure of it…

Happy Birthday!

To read another tribute to Vickie, please see the very moving testimony on the power of friendship, beautifully written (as always) by Lanier at Scents Memory: here.

For The Perfumed Dandy’s tribute, please click here.

To read Beguiling Hollywood, please click here.

And to learn more about “It’s in his kiss” and to listen the the lead character’s soundtrack, please click here.