Aix Marks the Spot

Last weekend Elly and Jean-Hughes took a little holiday and I found myself alone in Aix. I got the chance to walk around in my underpants until 2PM drinking coffee, one of my favorite activities. A little rejuvenating solitude is always just the thing to restore my spirits.

The city of Aix-en-Provence is an old Roman town, originally a military station connecting the empire with the wilderness of Gaul. Everywhere you look there are Roman fountains, an old aqueduct, an underground catacomb. Laid on top of this structure is the provençal lifestyle with its simple, country cuisine, big markets and slow pace. The final layer of the town is newly acquired prosperity and chic facade: the stylish and attractive young people, the Dior shop on every corner and the white, modern restaurants. It seems like a resort town that could be in any number of Western countries, but there's a certain charm to the town...like a little layer cake of unique cuteness.

While Elly and Jean-Hughes were away I took an afternoon to wander around, and was swept up in the enchanting moment of being alone in Provence. I indulged my little girl fantasies of France one night by having a dinner of cheeses, foie gras, chocolate and pink wine while watching Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette. After the movie was over, I went out to sit on the patio. Our apartment is on the top floor of an old building on a narrow street. From there I have a wonderful view of the neighbors, especially if I climb onto the tiled roof. It was like getting a bonus reel. One of my favorite past-times has always been to walk around neighborhoods at dusk. At this time of night people usually have their lights turned on but haven't yet closed their drapes, so you can peer into their private world. You see a couple making dinner, a woman talking on the phone and picking at her toes, or someone just sitting in front of the television. Usually people aren't doing anything terribly interesting, but there is a certain twilight calmness that I find in seeing these mundane moments. You also just get to see the insides of their houses or apartments. I'm always surprised by how many folks live with bare white walls...no posters, pictures or paint...just unadorned sheet rock. It's depressing, but an interesting peek into the mind of most of humanity. So as I was sitting on the little porch in Provence I was able to see the woman two floors down sitting at her computer, typing something, her lax face blue from the glow of the screen. I also saw a man in his Euro-brief undies hopping around on one foot trying to make dinner for himself. It's moments like these that make me delighted to be alone, to just watch and smile and not need to try communicating with anyone why something so insignificant as a nearly-naked and limping man brings me so much joy.

I also took a little adventure over the weekend to see an event called "Transhumance." In a small town called Eguilles, about 11 kilometers from Aix, they hold a yearly festival celebrating the moving of their sheep herds to summer pastures. The shepherds parade their flocks through the village, do some dancing, break some bread and get a blessing from the local priest. Apparently, this is fairly common practice in rural Europe. I arrived by bus on Sunday morning for the mass. I'll spare you the comedy-of-errors portion of the tale and just skip right to the details of the event. It was a traditional service, highlighted with music from the local "peasant" band: a group of people in head-scarves and vests who played flutes, drums and other rustic instruments. They brought one symbolic sheep inside for the mass and after communion the whole procession moved into the square where they joined the rest of the flock. The priest said a prayer for the health and safety of the sheep and sprinkled some holy water in their general direction. The ewes seemed a little freaked out and the music played on.

Overall, the event was nothing to write home about, but there was a moment during the mass that so clearly exemplified why I love being alone. I have to preface this by saying that I was raised deep in the church...going to church three times a week, marrying a youth pastor at 19, being exorcised twice kind of raising. My earlier anger and rebellion from this upbringing has mellowed, much to my surprise. What remains is a calm, soft place inside of myself that feels awe and mystery at very unexpected moments. I had such a moment at the church service for the sheep. The priest was transforming the communion. He took first the wafer and raised it to the heavens, concentrating and incanting. Then he took the cup of wine and did the same. After lifting both the wafer and the wine, this powerful, beautifully robed, old man bent his knees and bowed before the communion table. His posture when he knelt said that this kneeling was neither ritualistic nor obligatory. I have felt this same overwhelming moment before; when you kneel and prostrate yourself not because you have to but because you must. Your knees and head bow of their own accord in the face of an overwhelming feeling of smallness. This priest asked for a miracle, the miracle of turning a dry cracker and some cheap wine into something divine, and, even though he had done it thousands of times before, he still felt overwhelming awe.

I know many people who gravitate towards partnership for the magic that it affords even the most mundane moments. Drinking coffee each morning becomes an act of communion. Going to bed each night becomes a quiet, perfect moment for confession of the day's trials. I have felt this perfect peace in union. I also wonder why all of my moments of true transcendence are alone, why my feelings are amplified in the vacuum of solitude. Is this a paradox?

It'ly

My friend Stephanie makes diagrams of people's story-telling styles, an attempt to graphically depict their individual narrative arcs. She's never made one of mine, but I think if she did it would be an arrow, sliding downhill and ultimately ending in a burning pile of poo. Most of my stories, I'm realizing, are about personal disaster and my negotiations with it. Sorry to ruin the ending, but this one will be no different.

As most of my stories begin, Elly and I made grand plans for the day; we decided to go to Italy. Our plans were rather undefined. In the spirit of the classic American road-trip, we packed some necessities (cheese, bread, blankets, wine, music) and headed in the general direction of the border. Both luckily and unluckily, we did not get more than 2 kilometers outside of Aix. Elly and I have found ourselves in perilous, gas-less situations before while in France, so we made the responsible decision to fill up the tank before we left town. I am no expert on motors, but I did know our car preferred diesel gasoline and we scrutinized our choices at the pump to figure out which one fit the bill. Elly seemed perfectly confident in her choice, so I went inside the station to peruse their chilled beverage selection. We paid and took off for our adventure, chatting about something (which I cannot remember) that seemed both important and totally engrossing at the time. So I didn't really pay much attention when Elly casually mentioned that there was something wrong with the gas pedal. Neither did it really register when she began to look more than a little worried that the car was losing power. Just when Elly was asking me if we should pull over, the car lost power completely and we found ourselves stopped on the shoulder of an off-ramp.

That is when the dream of sleeping on an Italian beach died a sudden and brutal death. Our first instinct was to call Jean-Hughes, Elly's French boyfriend and the owner of the car. He had just left for London the day before and was not available. So we started walking and eventually found a bright orange call box on the side of the freeway. This begins the Shakespearian comedy of errors portion of the tale. It turns out that our terrible French, which thus far had managed to get us by surprisingly well, did not translate AT ALL over the traffic noise from the highway and the horrible connection of the call box. After about six or seven attempts (an hang-ups) to explain our situation to the man on the other end of the line, we finally managed to get across that we needed assistance and he told us to wait by the car. Neither of us was convinced that help was really on the way, but we trudged back to car anyway, mostly out of a lack of other options and the promise of snacks.

We sat for a while on the grassy shoulder, counting the cars that passed by us, (including more than one police vehicle) honking and yelling but not stopping. Finally we got desperate and were able to wave down a taxi. We explained the situation to the man, and he offered to take us to a mechanic so that we could get some help. We got a couple of kilometers down the road when Jean-Hughes called back. He instructed us to return to the car and call the insurance company, whose number was posted on the windshield and which we had repeatedly overlooked while searching for a number to call for help. So back we went to the broken car. The taxi driver was nice enough to talk with Jean-Hughes and let us use his cell phone to call first the insurance company and then the police. I thought, "What a great fella." What I didn't realize was that he was running the meter. 25 euro later, he left us with promises that the police would be there soon to tow the car. So apparently there is a $40 fee in France for someone to call the police.

Elly and I tried to make the best of it and set out a little picnic in the grass and played UNO until the police arrived. We had thought that the police vehicle had come to tow our car out of the way, but this clearly was not their intention. Sections of the highway are contracted to different private companies and only the police really know which section belongs to which mechanic's garage, so their only reason for coming out was to radio the appropriate person. They also put out some orange cones "for safety" and rolled our car backwards a bit and slightly further into the road. They left with assurances that a mechanic was on his way. I watched the whole time and never saw them radio anyone with our location, so I was a little skeptical. One baguette, three blocks of cheese and seven hands of UNO later, a tow truck appeared. He towed us to the garage, but at this point, it was about 15 minutes til closing time and they would not be able to fix the car until the morning. Just when we were feeling like the worst was over, the secretary also informed us, after having gotten a hold of the insurance company, that the tow and repairs would not be covered by the policy because "the car is too new." The insurance seemed to feel that such things should be covered by the manufacturer's warranty, but, the secretary told us, the manufacturer probably wouldn't cover it either because it was our own stupidity in choosing the wrong fuel that has caused this mess. This was a real low point. We asked if anyone was headed towards Aix for the night and would give us a ride. They simply pointed the direction of the bus station.

What do you do when life gives you lemons? I eat lemon glacé with raspberry foam at a two star Michelin restaurant. Some turn to retail therapy for solace, Elly and I turn to cuisine therapy. That night we ate at Le Formal, a quite little underground restaurant in the heart of Aix-en-Provence that served us a wonderful seven course meal and a chilly bottle of champagne. Like my friend Ana told me this morning, "I felt really bad about spending too much money yesterday on a taxi, so when I got back I went to H&M and bought a bunch of clothes to make myself feel better." It makes no sense, but it works. With each tiny course that was brought to our table, each time the server refilled my champagne flute, I felt the waves of anxiety melt away. When the final course was served, I had completely forgotten the events of the day. All I thought about was the way that the vanilla ice cream with orange zest exploded on my palate (literally, there were Pop-Rocks in it) and made me imagine that it was the fourth of July in my mouth.

Pyranees, Attempt #1

We really did try to make cheese in the Pyranees, but let me tell you, it was not in the cards. After Elly and I left Chateau Brandeau last week, we went directly to our next farm...our first cheese-making farm! But that's the thing about traveling with the WWOOF program, it's a gambling man's way to see the world. We wanted to bet on this "traditional," "rustic" operation as an idyllic spot, high in the mountains, perfect for learning the old-fashioned way to craft fromage. We really were betting on the wrong horse, though. When we entered the house of our new hosts, it was like stepping back in time 100 years, but not in a romantic way.

Our first red flag was the smell of the house. One of the blessings and curses of inhabiting my body is a very sensitive nose. When I entered our hosts' home that day, my nose was screaming, "There is a male goat sleeping under my new bed and he smells like all the worst parts of a barnyard and a brothel!" I thought that I might gag. Our second scarlet banner was what appeared to be a hoard of sick, screaming children running rampant through the house. There were actually only three of them, but sometimes children have the singular ability to appear to be in all places at once, their tiny voices around you on all sides at once, the affect multiplied by each child added to the mix. Our third giant flashing red light was the filth. I have seen some dirty places and am not easily deterred by a little bit of untidiness, but when I used the bathroom, I can honestly say that the last time it was cleaned was sometime last century. I thought to myself, "It's okay, I can just use the little creek outside to wash up every day;" I could not imagine anything akin to cleaning of one's self happening in that room...my brain said, "Error, error! Clean cannot happen in this room." The fourth pillar of fire in that dark night of our discontent was the cheese making operation itself. When we went outside (mostly to escape the stink), we saw their animals, sheep mostly, all of whom looked like they were in deep negotiations with the Grim Reaper. They all looked so sick and ill-tended, I just wanted to open their little pen and yell, "Be free, little sheep! Get out of here while there's still time!" Elly also saw the cheese making molds floating in a muddy hole next to the creek, covered with green fur. I felt like I was getting food poisoning just hearing about it.

And that's when we decided: no amount of trying or attitude-adjusting is going to make this into an educational or pleasant experience. So, in our very broken French, we politely explained that we would like to go back to the train station, "nous sommes desolee," and apologized for wasting their time. The family was actually quite nice about it and offered to drive us back down the big hill to town so we could find a train to somewhere, anywhere but there. It was at this moment that I had a moment of self-doubt. After all, the family was well-meaning and clearly kind...they were going to take us back to the station and not make a big stink about it. Maybe I had judged too quickly. Maybe I could learn to appreciate with the randy goat odor living under my bed, maybe I would commune with nature in unexpected ways each morning while I bathed in the shivery creek. Maybe I was just being a prissy American.

And then this happened:
The daughter of our hosts was mother to two of the three aforementioned sick and crying children. She was going to take us down to town to catch a train. She simply asked that we watch her children for a moment while she made a phone call. She indicated that her youngest, referred to simply as "bebe," was outside and could we please keep an eye on him for a moment. Elly and I went out to the garden to check in on him, but he simply was not there. We started wandering further and further in circles around the house calling, stupidly, "bebe, bebe!" The kid was nowhere in sight. It was then that I had a mild panic attack, and in the flash of a second I saw with sudden clarity the scene unfold before me: the swift creek by the house, the little child washed downstream, the angry French family blaming us for this tragedy, the imprisonment in the Bastille. At this point the other child wandered out of the house and I swoooped her up, clamping her tightly onto my hip, and thinking, "I am NOT losing this one." I kept asking the little girl, "Ou est ta frere? Ou est ta frere?" She had no idea. I ran down to the creek. Then I hear the mother and grandmother join the fray, screaming "bebe, bebe!" in voiced of clear and awful distress. At the exact moment that my panic was starting to rise up out of my chest into my throat, I heard a cry of relief from the mother. I looked behind me and saw her by the car, holding her child. She explained that before she went into the house to make a phone call, she had put the child into his car-seat, but had simply forgotten she'd put him there. "J'ai oubliee...." she kept saying.

And then I knew with complete clarity that leaving was exactly the right thing to do.

So Elly and I ended up back at the train station a few hours later and considerably more shaken. It was still early afternoon, so I stayed at there to figure out our train options for the day and Elly wandered up to the Tourism Office to try to figure out some lodging for the night and use the phone. She returned with a very small French woman who owned the kindest eyes I've ever seen. Karine was from the Tourism Office and had offered to have us stay at her house for the night while we sorted out our next step. At first Elly and I were a little apprehensive, mostly because of our awful luck just hours before, but this woman was so sweet and nice, we thanked her and got into her little station wagon. She took us to her house, introduced us to her husband Jerome and her son Theo and stuck a beer in each of our hands. Her little house was beautiful and she made up a bed for us in the guest room. Karine is the single most hospitable person I have ever encountered in my life. She shared her homemade foie gras and saucison, refilled our glasses with wine, and insisted that we treat her house as if it were our own. She offered to let us stay longer if we liked to enjoy the Pyranees, and we sat on her porch in the warm evening air, admiring the view of the snowy mountains in the distance. Elly and I decided to go back to our home-base in Aix the next morning and Karine deposited us at the station in the morning, helped us speak to the fellow behind the counter and actually cried when we got on the train. I wanted to put her in my suitcase and take her with me. Because of Karine, I know that this is simply my first attempt as discovering the Pyranees....she's like a promise of gold buried in the hills.

Leaving Bordeaux

Last week we left Chateau Brandeau...so sad! In looking through my previous blog posts of the place, I realized that I had mentioned very little about the actual work and learning that happened there. I suppose I was simply too tired to post after a day in fields. Here, I will make up for that omission and tell you a bit about what we were doing during the day. We came to the vineyard during the time when the grapes were just beginning to fruit and set on the vines. This is the time to trim and tie the vines and get rid of the weeds of the excess weeds. At non-organic vineyards weed control is pretty easy--you just spray the base of the vines with Round-Up and call it a day. At organic vineyards, you have to get old-school about it. What this means is a process called décavaillonage: basically this means plowing in between the vines and then hoeing what is missed by the plow. It takes a really long time.

Ana is the hero of this story. God bless her, she just got her drivers' license two months ago, but she manned that tractor for a solid two weeks and took to it like a duck to water. I started calling her the Flash since she would speed through the vineyard in 6th gear. Actually, that's a bit of misnomer...6th gear is still only like 15 miles/hour. I just wanted to give a cool nickname. She was a good sport about it. She did really own that rusting beast of a tractor though.

Eddie and Phil manned the plows, which take a whole lot of caressing and cajoling so that the vines aren't either a) missed by a mile, which means lots of back-breaking hoeing, or b) run over and pulled clean out of the ground. Its intensive, but Eddie, of course, managed to make it chic.

Below is a little video of the plow at work. It gives you an idea of exactly how low tech the operation is.

Elly and I were super enthused, as usual, to be working the plow. Mostly we were just ecstatic to have a break from hoeing and pruning. When we weren't doing the décavaillonage, we were doing épamprage. Here, the French word makes it sound far more glamorous than it actually was. Epamprage is pruning away all of the new shoots from the vine. This allows the vine to give all of its energy to the main, fruit producing branches. Basically, this involves bending over for seven hours a day, while moving very slowly down the row. But, let me tell you, the backs of my thighs are rock solid these days. No pain, no gain.

I also gotta give some serious props to our hosts, Fearn and Andrea. They consistently provided the most wonderful, huge meals for us while we were there. Delicious soups, cheeses, bread (always) wine, fresh fruit and yummy salads every day for lunch and dinner. I didn't think I could eat that much on a daily basis, but I did and was grateful for the abundance. When it wasn't raining buckets, we sat outside and looked at the sheep and pretty fields of vines.

Here is one of the few photos I have of myself (thank you Anna), just because I so rarely include them here.

On a minor foodie side-note, Elly and Ana got totally into cake baking while we were there. It all started with a totally posh cake book from the grocery store and evolved into two masterpieces. I gotta share them here since they were so spectacular. The one above is a lemon cake with candied rose petals and the one below is a ridiculously rich chocolate cake with hand-made truffles. I don't know how either of them had the energy to bake for three hours after spending all that time in the vines, but they did and we were all blown away.

Our last night at Chateau Brandeau was a regular fest, Phil made a traditional English roast with hand-made gravy and yummy roasted vegetables and Fearn broke out some great bottles from his cellar so we could taste the differences that come out in the aging process. And we finished it all with the rose petal cake. A beautiful vineyard, beautiful new friends and a beautiful farewell.

L'Omlette Geante (a.k.a. the giant omlette)

There are certain experiences that you cannot have without the following combination: lots of time, little inhibition and loads of wine. Case in point, yesterday my fellow WWOOFers and I went in search of a giant omelette in Libourne. We saw a sign a couple weeks back promising an omelette with 3011 eggs. This simple quest blossomed into a grand adventure. Let's start at the beginning.

Any great day must begin with a great outfit. Eddy led the way with his fabulous red feathered cap and Elly joined in with an amazing fur one that necessitated a photo shoot for posterity. Somehow she managed look like an old Russian woman, a feat that I'm still not sure how she pulled off. It really did set the tone for the day.

Our first stop was the beautiful, beautiful town of Saint Emilion. I'd heard a lot about how perfect and lovely it was, but it didn't really register until we arrived. It has lovely cobbled streets, a great view of the surrounding valley and lots of charming shops. It also happens to be in a grand cru appellation, which means that the wine from there is extraordinarily expensive ($500 a bottle and up), so the townsfolk have got some bucks to beautify the place. We stopped in to take a peek and have a coffee on our way to the omelette geante.

We drove on to Libourne and tried to find the omelette, which turned out to be much more challenging than we had thought. We assumed that such an amazing culinary feat would be prominently displayed in the center of town, the pride of Libourne. Not so. First we were guided to a dog show in a park, then to a track meet/swap meet in the stadium, finally to a botanical garden, all to no avail. No one seemed to know where the omelette was located. Eventually we followed the trail of some small, out of date signs found ourselves at what was basically the coolest block party ever. Situated in a courtyard for some low-income apartment buildings was the promised omlette. There was an emcee doing karaoke, a huge rummage sale, cheap booze, face painting and lots of colorful area residents. My favorite was a couple of French greasers in leather jackets; I'd swear that the fella was Hugh Jackman's twin. Clearly, we were the only folks in attendance who did not live in that neighborhood.


We did our part to fit in and contribute to the local economy by purchasing bottle after bottle of the 2 euro wine, pilfering through the rummage sale and buying some real gems (a gold sequin purse, a spindle, leather pants, a killer nautical sweater, etc.), and dancing with some men in berets. All in all, I think we blended seamlessly into the crowd.


Let me tell you about the star attraction: 3011 eggs, five men stirring, countless old ladies dicing, slicing and serving, and hundreds of full, happy people. It was an overwhelmingly successful production. The emcee serenaded the men circling the omelette pan, an old dude stoked the fire with old grape vines. It was magic.






Here I will introduce you to Ana. She's a fellow WWOOFer from Chateau Brandeau and seriously might be one of the more amusingly photogenic people I've ever known. Let's just scroll through this little collection for a moment...




And that pictorially sums up how the omelette festival progressed.

And this was the result...we went to Bordeaux, rode a carousel, danced in the street at a cafe, and I fell asleep on the sidewalk from too much wine.

And apparently this is the face that I make after too much wine...

Teaser

3011 + eggs = amazing

Photos and text coming soon....

Daily Prayer

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Mary Oliver