It has been brought to my attention (by Quincy, lovingly) that some of the things I say in these postings may not be readily meaningful to all readers. You know, like when I riff, in French, on the opening lines of a Camus novel, or refer obliquely to some particular piece of ornate architecture, or make some obscure allusion to someone like T. S Eliot or Richie Brockelman. "Nobody's gonna get that reference," Quincy says, "Nobody's gonna know who that is." And when I assure her that there may be someone out there for whom those lines from Camus ring a distant but fondly-remembered bell, or who might actually recall that Richie Brockelman, Private Eye debuted on NBC in the spring of 1978 and ran for all of six episodes, she (Quincy) just looks and me and nods and says, "Uh-huh." And when I mention that it's all okay anyway because anybody reading this blog is just two mouse-clicks away from a full deciphering courtesy of websites like Wikipedia or IMDb or KnowYourMeme.com, she just closes her eyes and exhales slowly to show me how much it pains her when I insist on using words like "meme" [1] in ordinary household conversation.
"Maybe you need to add footnotes," she says. It's possible that is was a joke. I mean, I don't think Quincy really wants our blog to resemble some semiotics essay published in PMLA [2]. But still. Footnotes. Hmmm. Okay, I'll try it.
It turns out, though, that this Blogger interface doesn't make footnoting all that easy. Clearly, the software code wasn't written for T. S. Eliot [3]. So, okay, here's how I'm going to handle it. I'll indicate foonote numbers in square brackets like the ones you just ran into after "meme" and "PMLA" and "T.S. Eliot." The explanatory notes themselves will appear in separate post below. (That separate post will be titled, simply, "Footnotes," to distinguish it from the more prolix – but deceptively straightforward – title than this one has [4]). Got it? Okay, let's proceed.
But wait. There is one more issue that I'm struggling with here: The question of just what exactly needs a footnote. Does T. S Eliot really need a footnote? Does Camus? And if I worked in some timely allusion to Epic Beard Man [5], would I need a footnote there? And what about when I conclude this post with the words "Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih" – does that need a footnote too? Well, actually, that last one's easy. "Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih": That's pretty transparent stuff, isn't it; no explanation needed.
Whew, that's a long preamble. I'm exhausted. And I still have the footnotes to write. I'd better get the point of this post. The point is this: What, if anything, does any of this have to do with France? Why am I even posting this stuff here, on our blog about France, instead of on our blog about blogging about France? Well, smarty-pants, it's cross-posted. (See: Click here.) [6] So there.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih. [7]
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Footnotes
[1]. The word "meme" was coined by Dawkins (1976). But it's now in common parlance, at least in some circles. So there's really no need for Quincy to give me that pained look.
[2]. Proceedings of the Modern Language Association. (Again: pained look.)
[3]. The allusion here is to T. S Eliot's poem The Waste Land which is so famously abstruse that Eliot himself added footnotes. There was a time (back when I was a parody of a 19-year old University student, so please prepare to roll your eyes) when I fetishized T. S. Eliot's opaque oeuvre. I can always elicit a particularly pained expression from Quincy simply by bringing up the fact that, in 1982, I attended a Halloween party dressed as the title character in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. "I'm so glad I didn't know you then," she says.
[4]. The phrase "a practically meaningless collection of phrases, learned allusions, quotations, slang, and scraps in general" is not just an apt description of this particular post. It's also the exact phrase that another writer (H. P. Lovecraft, of all people) used to describe The Waste Land. It's true. And, yes, Quincy is making that face at me again. Oh, but you should've seen the original title I'd put on this post before I changed it to that H. P. Lovecraft line. The actual title may be footnote-worthy, but the original title – of which I was embarrassingly proud – is the verbal equivalent of me going out in public dressed up as J. Alfred Prufrock. When I read it out loud to Quincy she ... well, you can just imagine the pain behind her eyelids. [i] To spare you, I've buried it in a footnote. Or more exactly, it's in a footnote to this footnote. I'm signifying footnotes-to-foonotes with little italicized i's in square brackets -- like what you saw after "eyelids" a couple of sentences ago. These foonotes-to-footnotes themselves appear in the post immediately below this one. (You suggest footnotes to me, you get footnotes. In fact, you don't just get footnotes; you get an over-the-top exercise in self-refential silliness. You're welcome)
[5]. Oh yes, I've been going on and on about Epic Beard Man recently, waving my laptop at Quincy and blathering madly about video mash-ups and Amber Lamps and the whole weird cultural power of camera-phones and the Internet. It's entirely the fault of Epic Beard Man and all those millions of YouTube enthusiasts that I've been using the word "meme" a lot recently, and causing Quincy so much pain. (You don't know about Epic Beard Man? Well, look it up. I recommend KnowYourMeme.com.)
[6] Yep, I actually created an entirely new blog simply so that that I could take this ludicrous exercise to whole new level of hackneyed self-referential post-modern pain.
[7] Nope, sorry; I told you I wasn't going to offer an explanatory footnote for this. Besides, if I did, it'd just be painful. [ii]
[2]. Proceedings of the Modern Language Association. (Again: pained look.)
[3]. The allusion here is to T. S Eliot's poem The Waste Land which is so famously abstruse that Eliot himself added footnotes. There was a time (back when I was a parody of a 19-year old University student, so please prepare to roll your eyes) when I fetishized T. S. Eliot's opaque oeuvre. I can always elicit a particularly pained expression from Quincy simply by bringing up the fact that, in 1982, I attended a Halloween party dressed as the title character in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. "I'm so glad I didn't know you then," she says.
[4]. The phrase "a practically meaningless collection of phrases, learned allusions, quotations, slang, and scraps in general" is not just an apt description of this particular post. It's also the exact phrase that another writer (H. P. Lovecraft, of all people) used to describe The Waste Land. It's true. And, yes, Quincy is making that face at me again. Oh, but you should've seen the original title I'd put on this post before I changed it to that H. P. Lovecraft line. The actual title may be footnote-worthy, but the original title – of which I was embarrassingly proud – is the verbal equivalent of me going out in public dressed up as J. Alfred Prufrock. When I read it out loud to Quincy she ... well, you can just imagine the pain behind her eyelids. [i] To spare you, I've buried it in a footnote. Or more exactly, it's in a footnote to this footnote. I'm signifying footnotes-to-foonotes with little italicized i's in square brackets -- like what you saw after "eyelids" a couple of sentences ago. These foonotes-to-footnotes themselves appear in the post immediately below this one. (You suggest footnotes to me, you get footnotes. In fact, you don't just get footnotes; you get an over-the-top exercise in self-refential silliness. You're welcome)
[5]. Oh yes, I've been going on and on about Epic Beard Man recently, waving my laptop at Quincy and blathering madly about video mash-ups and Amber Lamps and the whole weird cultural power of camera-phones and the Internet. It's entirely the fault of Epic Beard Man and all those millions of YouTube enthusiasts that I've been using the word "meme" a lot recently, and causing Quincy so much pain. (You don't know about Epic Beard Man? Well, look it up. I recommend KnowYourMeme.com.)
[6] Yep, I actually created an entirely new blog simply so that that I could take this ludicrous exercise to whole new level of hackneyed self-referential post-modern pain.
[7] Nope, sorry; I told you I wasn't going to offer an explanatory footnote for this. Besides, if I did, it'd just be painful. [ii]
Footnotes to the footnotes
[i]. "He Do the Police in Different Voices." Yep, that was the working title of this particular post. Why? Do you really want to know? Really? Okay, you asked for it: It's because that exact title – "He Do the Police in Different Voices" – was T. S. Eliot's working title for The Waste Land. Hey, don't blame me for the intense pain you're experiencing behind your eyes. I warned you.
[ii] No. Absolutely not. I refuse to torture you any more. If you're that kind of masochist, you can just look it up for yourself. No more footnotes.
[ii] No. Absolutely not. I refuse to torture you any more. If you're that kind of masochist, you can just look it up for yourself. No more footnotes.
Monday, February 22, 2010
La Seculara Familia
As some of you know, I am (or, at least, insufferably pose as) an architecture buff. So let's play a game, shall we. Let's pretend for a moment that you're a brilliant modernist Catalonian architect, and that Quincy and I are your wealthy patrons, and we have charged you with the task of designing a feverishly detailed cathedral in Barcelona. But, at our behest, instead of embellishing its facades with lavish representations of the Nativity and the Passion, you have instead decorated it with a more mundane sort of iconography – a set of images that depict our five-day family holiday in Spain last week.
Just what tales do these tableaux tell? Ah, what tales indeed...
One facade of this mythical building might be adorned with a set of panoramic panels depicting the banal beauty of Our Home Away from Two Homes. "Our home away from two homes" is exactly the phrase that Jasper used as we returned to a plastic cabin in the southernmost section of a vast parc de vacances outside of the coastal town of Vilanova i la Geltrú. Ours was one of hundreds of prefab structures parked alongside hundreds of trailers and RVs, around which prowled dozens of mewling homeless housecats. The entire "camping" complex was like a weird pan-European mini-city comprised by linguistic ghettos of people speaking French and English and German and Dutch, all energetically pursuing a leisure lifestyle largely isolated from Spain itself. It addition to its playgrounds and swimming pools, the complex had its own supermarket and shops and restaurants, and even its own mini-zoo. We explored them all, and – because it was unseasonably cold and wet – we also occupied ourselves indoors a lot. A lot of mad-libs and art projects. (Maddox has largely abandoned abstract expressionism and is now producing representational art with surreal flourishes, such as his habit of drawing stick-figure people with unusually long feet that curl and swirl and circle around their entire bodies.) Also a lot of games of twenty-questions. Which could've become tiresome but never did, despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that Maddox's first question was invariably "Is it a goat?"
We also spent time in the indoor swimming pool. So much time, in fact, that some extravagant depiction of the swimming pool deserves to dominate an entire wall of the shrine that you, the eccentric architect, have designed to commemorate our Spanish holiday. But, in this sculptural masterpiece of yours, it's not the pool itself that grabs the eye; it's the people splashing within it. And, specifically, it's what they are all wearing on their heads: Swim caps. Everyone has a swim cap on. It's the law. Well, okay, it's not exactly etched into the Catalonian penal code, but the parc de vacances did have a strict policy requiring everyone to wear a swim cap in the swimming pool. Now, as many of you know, I just don't do headwear – because caps and hats always look ridiculous on my tiny head. But rules are rules, and so I was compelled to find a store that sold Speedo-style swim caps for all of us. I tried to be optimistic. I hoped that maybe it'd make me look like some angular Australian backstroke bronze-medallist or something, or at least not look completely laughable. No such luck. When I slipped that lycra cap over my nut-sized noggin, I looked less like an Olympian, and more like some pasty Russian cosmonaut in awkward orbit around the Earth.
The kids would've been happy to spend their entire holiday swimming in the pool and cuddling up to half-feral housecats, but we did venture occasionally outside the "camping" complex. So maybe a third and final facade of your ornate architectural masterwork should depict the highlights of these excursions. For instance, we spent some time on the beach in Vilanova i la Geltrú, where the kids took great delight in climbing onto a statue of muscular naked woman curled up inside an enormous bull, and took equal delight in watching a big bulldog take a crap on a miniature railway.
And we took a daytrip to Barcelona too. I've already forced you to recall that I am (or, irritatingly, pretend to be) an architecture enthusiast. So it won't surprise you to learn that Jasper and Maddox were forced to participate in a Barcelonian walking tour dictated almost entirely by my desire to see some of the modernist architectural marvels for which the city is so famous. It'll surprise you even less to learn that this was decidedly not the highlight of their holiday. My own lasting memory of Barcelona won't have anything to do with the intricate organic forms of the Casa Batlló or the hallucinatory magnificence of the Sagrada Familia. It'll probably be the half-hour we spent in a very ordinary playground directly in the shadows of the glorious soaring towers of Gaudí's famously-unfinished masterwork, watching Maddox happily slide on a slide, while Jasper sat on a bench with her nose buried in a book about a magic school-bus and butterflies.
Just what tales do these tableaux tell? Ah, what tales indeed...
One facade of this mythical building might be adorned with a set of panoramic panels depicting the banal beauty of Our Home Away from Two Homes. "Our home away from two homes" is exactly the phrase that Jasper used as we returned to a plastic cabin in the southernmost section of a vast parc de vacances outside of the coastal town of Vilanova i la Geltrú. Ours was one of hundreds of prefab structures parked alongside hundreds of trailers and RVs, around which prowled dozens of mewling homeless housecats. The entire "camping" complex was like a weird pan-European mini-city comprised by linguistic ghettos of people speaking French and English and German and Dutch, all energetically pursuing a leisure lifestyle largely isolated from Spain itself. It addition to its playgrounds and swimming pools, the complex had its own supermarket and shops and restaurants, and even its own mini-zoo. We explored them all, and – because it was unseasonably cold and wet – we also occupied ourselves indoors a lot. A lot of mad-libs and art projects. (Maddox has largely abandoned abstract expressionism and is now producing representational art with surreal flourishes, such as his habit of drawing stick-figure people with unusually long feet that curl and swirl and circle around their entire bodies.) Also a lot of games of twenty-questions. Which could've become tiresome but never did, despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that Maddox's first question was invariably "Is it a goat?"
We also spent time in the indoor swimming pool. So much time, in fact, that some extravagant depiction of the swimming pool deserves to dominate an entire wall of the shrine that you, the eccentric architect, have designed to commemorate our Spanish holiday. But, in this sculptural masterpiece of yours, it's not the pool itself that grabs the eye; it's the people splashing within it. And, specifically, it's what they are all wearing on their heads: Swim caps. Everyone has a swim cap on. It's the law. Well, okay, it's not exactly etched into the Catalonian penal code, but the parc de vacances did have a strict policy requiring everyone to wear a swim cap in the swimming pool. Now, as many of you know, I just don't do headwear – because caps and hats always look ridiculous on my tiny head. But rules are rules, and so I was compelled to find a store that sold Speedo-style swim caps for all of us. I tried to be optimistic. I hoped that maybe it'd make me look like some angular Australian backstroke bronze-medallist or something, or at least not look completely laughable. No such luck. When I slipped that lycra cap over my nut-sized noggin, I looked less like an Olympian, and more like some pasty Russian cosmonaut in awkward orbit around the Earth.
The kids would've been happy to spend their entire holiday swimming in the pool and cuddling up to half-feral housecats, but we did venture occasionally outside the "camping" complex. So maybe a third and final facade of your ornate architectural masterwork should depict the highlights of these excursions. For instance, we spent some time on the beach in Vilanova i la Geltrú, where the kids took great delight in climbing onto a statue of muscular naked woman curled up inside an enormous bull, and took equal delight in watching a big bulldog take a crap on a miniature railway.
And we took a daytrip to Barcelona too. I've already forced you to recall that I am (or, irritatingly, pretend to be) an architecture enthusiast. So it won't surprise you to learn that Jasper and Maddox were forced to participate in a Barcelonian walking tour dictated almost entirely by my desire to see some of the modernist architectural marvels for which the city is so famous. It'll surprise you even less to learn that this was decidedly not the highlight of their holiday. My own lasting memory of Barcelona won't have anything to do with the intricate organic forms of the Casa Batlló or the hallucinatory magnificence of the Sagrada Familia. It'll probably be the half-hour we spent in a very ordinary playground directly in the shadows of the glorious soaring towers of Gaudí's famously-unfinished masterwork, watching Maddox happily slide on a slide, while Jasper sat on a bench with her nose buried in a book about a magic school-bus and butterflies.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
A new set of wheels
So, this is going to be a very short, and potentially boring blog, so dial back any expectations. I mostly want to get a message out there to those of you who cry in your Cheerios on those mornings where there is no post: save your tears for at least a week. We are going on our first trip as European residents. You got it….. Road Trip!!! Wahoo!
Now, you might sensibly be wondering what the hell we are thinking, with the notion to hit the road in the famously unreliable, ancient, and full-of-sticks-and-moss car we have been tooling around in for the last month. Well, getting stuck on the side (middle?) of a shoulder-less narrow road with the kids last month was eye opening for me (even though it did, thankfully, only last about 10 minutes). For Mark too, I think. I was actually quite pleasantly surprised at how easy it was for me to convince him that we needed to find a more alternative mode of transport while we are here.
So, after a fair amount of research, considering various options and doing some painful math, we pulled the trigger on a purchase-repurchase car here. It is an option that is rather like renting a car, but somewhat cheaper. You “buy” a new car for a set length of time (has to be less than 6 months, more than 3 weeks, and it is only offered to non-Europeans) and the company guarantees to re-purchase it from you at the end of the set term. It comes with FULL insurance, with no deductible and excellent road-side assistance (not that we would likely need it!) etc etc. This was ultimately much more attractive than the stress of buying-reselling-insuring etc.
Yesterday I went to Marseille to pick up our new Renault Grand Scenic. It is a (gasp) 7-seater, though does not look huge or handle huge. In fact, I don’t think its “foot print” is much bigger than our Prius. It’ll be great when we have folks visiting to be able to all pile in together. The trip to Marseille went without a hitch. Mark and the kids took me to the bus station in Brignoles (a 30 min drive from here) and dropped me off in the wee morning hours. I then bussed to Marseille via Aix train station. Anyhoo, it was shocking to me how blissfully easy it went. I even got an (undeserved I assure you) ego boost when the guy I got the car from complemented me on my French. It made me seriously wonder what sort of awful transactions he must have had in the past! I was just delighted I managed to get where I wanted to go, managed to leave with the car, and get home all without a hitch. Well, I did experience some embarrassment at the Petrol station, but I won’t pain you with those details.
So, tomorrow morning bright and early we will set off in our new car and put some much needed miles on it! I shudder a little bit at the thought of trying to pull some rusty Spanish out of my language drawer. Right now it is just too full of bad French to really contemplate. I hope that between English and French and a teeny tiny bit of Spanish we’ll get by. Rest assured we will come back with some stories and some blogs to amuse you when you tire of the relentless Olympics coverage.
Now, you might sensibly be wondering what the hell we are thinking, with the notion to hit the road in the famously unreliable, ancient, and full-of-sticks-and-moss car we have been tooling around in for the last month. Well, getting stuck on the side (middle?) of a shoulder-less narrow road with the kids last month was eye opening for me (even though it did, thankfully, only last about 10 minutes). For Mark too, I think. I was actually quite pleasantly surprised at how easy it was for me to convince him that we needed to find a more alternative mode of transport while we are here.
So, after a fair amount of research, considering various options and doing some painful math, we pulled the trigger on a purchase-repurchase car here. It is an option that is rather like renting a car, but somewhat cheaper. You “buy” a new car for a set length of time (has to be less than 6 months, more than 3 weeks, and it is only offered to non-Europeans) and the company guarantees to re-purchase it from you at the end of the set term. It comes with FULL insurance, with no deductible and excellent road-side assistance (not that we would likely need it!) etc etc. This was ultimately much more attractive than the stress of buying-reselling-insuring etc.
Yesterday I went to Marseille to pick up our new Renault Grand Scenic. It is a (gasp) 7-seater, though does not look huge or handle huge. In fact, I don’t think its “foot print” is much bigger than our Prius. It’ll be great when we have folks visiting to be able to all pile in together. The trip to Marseille went without a hitch. Mark and the kids took me to the bus station in Brignoles (a 30 min drive from here) and dropped me off in the wee morning hours. I then bussed to Marseille via Aix train station. Anyhoo, it was shocking to me how blissfully easy it went. I even got an (undeserved I assure you) ego boost when the guy I got the car from complemented me on my French. It made me seriously wonder what sort of awful transactions he must have had in the past! I was just delighted I managed to get where I wanted to go, managed to leave with the car, and get home all without a hitch. Well, I did experience some embarrassment at the Petrol station, but I won’t pain you with those details.
So, tomorrow morning bright and early we will set off in our new car and put some much needed miles on it! I shudder a little bit at the thought of trying to pull some rusty Spanish out of my language drawer. Right now it is just too full of bad French to really contemplate. I hope that between English and French and a teeny tiny bit of Spanish we’ll get by. Rest assured we will come back with some stories and some blogs to amuse you when you tire of the relentless Olympics coverage.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Super Bowl Sunday
On Sunday morning I drove down to the Kroger's for some Doritos and a half-rack of Bud Lite so that I wouldn't show up empty-handed to the Super Bowl party over at Philippe and Étienne's place. Also, because I knew that their friend Laurent was a huge Saints fan, I figured I'd balance things out by cheering extra-loud for the Colts while wearing a throwback Johnny Unitas jersey. But, damn it, the local Foot Locker and even the NFL memorabilia outlet store in Avignon were all sold out of Unitas, and Art Schlichter too, so I had to settle for a pair of Mike Pagel pants instead. That put me in a bad mood. And then I drank way too much of Philippe's sister's Jägermeister-and-grape-juice punch. By the time the fourth quarter started, I'd already broken one of Étienne's commemorative Little League World Series mugs, chipped another, and spilled a pitcher of strawberry daiquiris all over his cousin Pascal's taco salad. It still might've been okay, I think, until I told that crude joke about Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and the guy who played Horshack on "Welcome Back Kotter." That was it. Étienne cut me off. Philippe started yelling at me. His sister damn near punched me. They wouldn't even let me stick around for the end of the game. At about the time that Peyton Manning threw that comeback-killing interception and the "Who Dat!" cheers started echoing through the cobbled streets, I was stumbling to my knees in an ancient alleyway and vomiting all over the back bumper of somebody's Citroën.
Okay, actually, that's a lie. All of it. Even the vomiting part. Especially the vomiting part. Total fiction. Nobody here cares about the Colts or the Saints or the Super Bowl. They don't even care about "Welcome Back Kotter," as near as I can tell.
What I really did was this: I walked with Jasper down the street to the local cinema to catch a Sunday afternoon showing of "Max et les Maximonstres."
The movie theatre (although it'd be more accurate to call it a "movie room") is in a sort of multi-purpose municipal building called La Grainage. We'd been there once before to investigate one of the elaborate and long-lasting bingo events that seems to happen every weekend. Yes: bingo. It seemed suddenly like I was spending a sabbatical at a senior center in Boca Raton. Darn near the entire population of Cotignac was there, filling out their 5-Euro-apiece cards with the hope of winning computer equipment or electric animals or baskets full of wine and cheese. I left quickly, but Quincy and Maddox and Jasper stuck around for several hours. Jasper managed two cards at a time, and then a third, and then five at a time after Maddox turned over his cards to her. She's precocious, Jasper is, with the enthusiastic bingo skills of someone 10 times her age. Didn't win anything though.
Actually, given the time difference, the Super Bowl didn't even start until it was already after midnight and into Monday morning here in France. So, what'd we do on Super Bowl Monday? We went for a little family hike – through the village, past the soccer field and the skate park, along the path of the penitents through the woods to the top of the hill, to la Santuaire Marial Notre-Dame de Grâces. It's been around ever since the Virgin Mary appeared in a vision to some local lumberjack back in 1519, and it's a very big deal place for pilgrimages – especially pilgrimages by women who are keen to conceive. Some lady from Austria famously made her way here in the 1600's and then proceeded to give blessed birth to Louis XIV. There's now a whole wall adorned with tiles – hundreds of them – engraved with thanks from parents whose prayers have been similarly answered. I may be an atheist, but I'm also I'm a sucker for heartfelt piety and uplifting architecture. It's a pretty cool place.
There was some sort of Monday morning mass going on inside the church, while nearby a couple of guys with chainsaws noisily destroyed a dying tree. We sat outside and ate a picnic lunch (baguette, goat cheese, dried sausages and apples; also pretzel stix). At one point during our picnic some old guy in flowing robes – the local Bishop, I believe – ambled by accompanied by a cat. "He is my friend," the Bishop said in French, and he hopped up onto Quincy's lap and she stroked him lovingly behind his ears. (I'm talking about the cat here, by the way; not the Bishop.)
The Bishop seemed to be in an exceptionally upbeat mood and when I asked him why, he said that he'd placed a big bet on the Saints the day before and so had won a ton on the Super Bowl. Not only that, he'd also cleared a tidy profit on a ridiculous prop bet involving the halftime show, Pete Townshend, and a porkpie hat. He was such a good-natured fellow that one thing led to another and before you knew it I was telling him my raunchy existentialist / Horshack joke. He laughed like a hyena, which is more than I can say for that jackass Étienne and Philippe and his goddam mirthless sister.
Okay, yeah, I made up that last bit. That whole last paragraph isn't true. But the rest of it is. And the good folks at Notre-Dame de Grâces really do appear to be a culturally savvy lot. They have a surprisingly sophisticated website, for instance, on which the latest Message from the Bishop starts off like this: "Today the internet is an indispensable means for the apostolate."
Okay, actually, that's a lie. All of it. Even the vomiting part. Especially the vomiting part. Total fiction. Nobody here cares about the Colts or the Saints or the Super Bowl. They don't even care about "Welcome Back Kotter," as near as I can tell.
What I really did was this: I walked with Jasper down the street to the local cinema to catch a Sunday afternoon showing of "Max et les Maximonstres."
The movie theatre (although it'd be more accurate to call it a "movie room") is in a sort of multi-purpose municipal building called La Grainage. We'd been there once before to investigate one of the elaborate and long-lasting bingo events that seems to happen every weekend. Yes: bingo. It seemed suddenly like I was spending a sabbatical at a senior center in Boca Raton. Darn near the entire population of Cotignac was there, filling out their 5-Euro-apiece cards with the hope of winning computer equipment or electric animals or baskets full of wine and cheese. I left quickly, but Quincy and Maddox and Jasper stuck around for several hours. Jasper managed two cards at a time, and then a third, and then five at a time after Maddox turned over his cards to her. She's precocious, Jasper is, with the enthusiastic bingo skills of someone 10 times her age. Didn't win anything though.
Actually, given the time difference, the Super Bowl didn't even start until it was already after midnight and into Monday morning here in France. So, what'd we do on Super Bowl Monday? We went for a little family hike – through the village, past the soccer field and the skate park, along the path of the penitents through the woods to the top of the hill, to la Santuaire Marial Notre-Dame de Grâces. It's been around ever since the Virgin Mary appeared in a vision to some local lumberjack back in 1519, and it's a very big deal place for pilgrimages – especially pilgrimages by women who are keen to conceive. Some lady from Austria famously made her way here in the 1600's and then proceeded to give blessed birth to Louis XIV. There's now a whole wall adorned with tiles – hundreds of them – engraved with thanks from parents whose prayers have been similarly answered. I may be an atheist, but I'm also I'm a sucker for heartfelt piety and uplifting architecture. It's a pretty cool place.
There was some sort of Monday morning mass going on inside the church, while nearby a couple of guys with chainsaws noisily destroyed a dying tree. We sat outside and ate a picnic lunch (baguette, goat cheese, dried sausages and apples; also pretzel stix). At one point during our picnic some old guy in flowing robes – the local Bishop, I believe – ambled by accompanied by a cat. "He is my friend," the Bishop said in French, and he hopped up onto Quincy's lap and she stroked him lovingly behind his ears. (I'm talking about the cat here, by the way; not the Bishop.)
The Bishop seemed to be in an exceptionally upbeat mood and when I asked him why, he said that he'd placed a big bet on the Saints the day before and so had won a ton on the Super Bowl. Not only that, he'd also cleared a tidy profit on a ridiculous prop bet involving the halftime show, Pete Townshend, and a porkpie hat. He was such a good-natured fellow that one thing led to another and before you knew it I was telling him my raunchy existentialist / Horshack joke. He laughed like a hyena, which is more than I can say for that jackass Étienne and Philippe and his goddam mirthless sister.
Okay, yeah, I made up that last bit. That whole last paragraph isn't true. But the rest of it is. And the good folks at Notre-Dame de Grâces really do appear to be a culturally savvy lot. They have a surprisingly sophisticated website, for instance, on which the latest Message from the Bishop starts off like this: "Today the internet is an indispensable means for the apostolate."
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Joyeux Chandeleur!
Joyeux Chandeleur!Boy, I’ll tell you, the French sure have it right about holidays. We have just learned about La Chandeleur and we have been celebrating in earnest ever since. And frankly, if the kids have any say in it, we will never stop. La Chandeleur is Candlemas, but in France it is basically known as the crêpe holiday (at least to those more secularly minded). And while it is officially on February 2, really the whole month of February is sort of crêped up. Gotta love it! Big stores have entire aisles filled with everything you need to make crêpes.
There are a variety of traditions and mythology around the holiday. First, there are some weather predictions a la Groundhog Day. I have seen a number of versions of these, here is an example:
“ Quand la Chandeleur est Claire,
l’hiver est par derriere,
Chandeleur couverte
Quarante jours de perte”
(If Feb 2 is clear, winter is past. If la Chandeleur is overcast, 40 days of winter is to last.)
Like many holidays, the tradition dates back to Pagan worship. The first record of the festival dates back to the Romans and their celebrations of Pan at this time of year. This was connected to the coming Spring, fecundity, and the desire for a healthy harvest. Apparently the Romans would dance through the night in Pan’s honour, being careful to keep their torches alight all night to welcome Pan back.
Christians (Pope Gelase in 472) renamed it “Candlemas” and proclaimed it the day of the presentation of Baby Jesus 40 days after his birth. Back then there was a custom of sequestering mothers and babies for 40 days, so this made some sense to the masses.
As time went on people believed if they didn’t feast on crêpes (their round shape evoking the sun, and therefore spring etc, after the dark of winter) they would not have a bountiful harvest that year.
At some point a tradition developed to “predict” whether one would have a bountiful year. The tradition involves flipping the crêpe with one hand, while holding a coin in the other hand. If you successfully flip the crêpe perfectly, you guessed it, you would have a bountiful year. If you failed, watch out!
Fearing the wrath of the children, if not the Gods, thus far I have chosen not to partake in any such risky behaviour. I chose to carefully flip mine. We ate them with a squeeze of lemon and a sprinkle of Icing Sugar. Mmmm mmm!! (or in french, “Miam, miam!”) So I am sure it comes as no surprise that we are enthusiastically embracing this holiday. In fact, I have a feeling we may be celebrating it almost daily during the kids’ l’hiver vacance. Lord knows I won’t complain and maybe, just maybe, I’ll even scrape up the nerve to try a one-handed flip.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Le Docteur
So, after waxing poetic on my last blog about how much I love, love, love the market, I didn’t even get to go last week! Poor me. Well, maybe ‘poor Maddox’ would be a more motherly sentiment. I do try to be motherly sometimes. As Mark mentioned, Maddox was sick. But, Mark went to the market because we did need some supplies. And Mark assured me when he got home that it was an extra small market, so I didn’t miss much. It was a rather miserable day and the “Mistral” wind was blowing. This tends to be a strong wind that blows down from the north. The local mythology is that the wind tends to blow in sets of 3 days – 3, 6, 9 days etc. I have heard this from locals and read it in a guide book. Who knows how true it is. Anyway, apparently the local vendors will choose to not show up if it seems too yucky. And cold and yucky it was.
Back to Maddox. It is true, he did have blood dribbling out of his ear at one point (see Mark’s previous post). And it was alarming, indeed. But, with the support of the internet (hooray for medical websites!) and email (hooray for a brother with medical training and the patience to deal with my emails!) I was able to calm myself about it. Yes, his eardrum probably had ruptured, but the good news was that the pain would probably be gone now and the eardrum would heal over time, with no long-term hearing deficit or the like. So, we soldiered on and did nothing about it. Except, of course, keeping him home from school and dosing him up with Vitamin I (Ibuprophen).
But, a few days later Maddox was clearly getting sicker rather than improving. He started spiking a fever again and was wheezing and coughing more. It seemed it was time to figure out how to navigate the medical system. And again, our friend Nathalie was a font of information. In a previous conversation she had rattled through when which doctor was available etc. But of course I hadn’t written it down and couldn’t remember it. Anyway, she seemed quite happy to verbally walk me through it again. So, with the information that a particular office would be open and that it would be OK to just walk in without an appointment, off we went. I do my darndest, like Mark, to avoid French phone conversations.
Before going I did a little homework and wrote myself some notes with important vocabulary (earache, eardrum, asthma, fever, vomiting and the like). I was surprised when we walked in that there was no receptionist or nurse to check in with. So Maddox and I took a seat near the other mother and child and figured we would just do what she did. Well, in a little bit the door to the examining room opened and another kid-and-mother pair came out (it turns out l’ecole maternelle was hit pretty hard by this virus), and the other pair went in. Having seen how it worked, we took up a position by the door to await our turn.
We went in to a large room that was both the physician’s office and the examining room. We started by sitting at her large desk. I introduced myself, and Maddox and explained that I did not speak in French very well. Mostly for my sake, so I could relax about it. Because, it is not like it wouldn’t be readily apparent to her in a minute! She listened quietly until she heard the bit about the blood in the ear. She looked a little alarmed at that and marched us over to the examining bed. After checking him out she told me that you-name it, it was infected – ears, lungs etc. She wrote out a prescription for a number or things including antibiotics & some steroid for his lung inflammation. I was surprised to find that at the end of our visit she printed me out a bill and I paid her directly (in cash – 25 euros, not bad). In North America I think most physicians would somehow find it beneath them, or abhorrent somehow to have to have a straight forward financial exchange at the end of a consult. At the end of the appointment I was relaxed enough to notice what the doctor was wearing. It was quite the get-up, and somehow very French. Black boots and tight jeans with complicated leather laces lacing up the sides. The French are nothing if not stylish - and rarely straight-laced! I have been a bit surprised at all the very sexy outfits that walk through the little village. And there I go, blithely marching around in my Merrells & fleece... I wonder what they think of me? It is probably best to not consider that too deeply.
All in all, the whole thing went incredibly well. Strangely enough that trip to the doctor turned out to be the highlight of my day. During dinner we have a little tradition of naming a highlight or two of each of our days. I was a little surprised to find myself choosing the trip to the doctor. It was a relief to have successfully navigated a foreign medical system. But more than that, I think I was a bit proud of myself for having been able to adequately handle la belle langue in the course of an important exchange.
By the way, after 3 days of antibiotics Maddox is literally zooooming around the house amid a constant stream of chatter, sound effects & song. He is clearly feeling much, much better.
Back to Maddox. It is true, he did have blood dribbling out of his ear at one point (see Mark’s previous post). And it was alarming, indeed. But, with the support of the internet (hooray for medical websites!) and email (hooray for a brother with medical training and the patience to deal with my emails!) I was able to calm myself about it. Yes, his eardrum probably had ruptured, but the good news was that the pain would probably be gone now and the eardrum would heal over time, with no long-term hearing deficit or the like. So, we soldiered on and did nothing about it. Except, of course, keeping him home from school and dosing him up with Vitamin I (Ibuprophen).
But, a few days later Maddox was clearly getting sicker rather than improving. He started spiking a fever again and was wheezing and coughing more. It seemed it was time to figure out how to navigate the medical system. And again, our friend Nathalie was a font of information. In a previous conversation she had rattled through when which doctor was available etc. But of course I hadn’t written it down and couldn’t remember it. Anyway, she seemed quite happy to verbally walk me through it again. So, with the information that a particular office would be open and that it would be OK to just walk in without an appointment, off we went. I do my darndest, like Mark, to avoid French phone conversations.
Before going I did a little homework and wrote myself some notes with important vocabulary (earache, eardrum, asthma, fever, vomiting and the like). I was surprised when we walked in that there was no receptionist or nurse to check in with. So Maddox and I took a seat near the other mother and child and figured we would just do what she did. Well, in a little bit the door to the examining room opened and another kid-and-mother pair came out (it turns out l’ecole maternelle was hit pretty hard by this virus), and the other pair went in. Having seen how it worked, we took up a position by the door to await our turn.
We went in to a large room that was both the physician’s office and the examining room. We started by sitting at her large desk. I introduced myself, and Maddox and explained that I did not speak in French very well. Mostly for my sake, so I could relax about it. Because, it is not like it wouldn’t be readily apparent to her in a minute! She listened quietly until she heard the bit about the blood in the ear. She looked a little alarmed at that and marched us over to the examining bed. After checking him out she told me that you-name it, it was infected – ears, lungs etc. She wrote out a prescription for a number or things including antibiotics & some steroid for his lung inflammation. I was surprised to find that at the end of our visit she printed me out a bill and I paid her directly (in cash – 25 euros, not bad). In North America I think most physicians would somehow find it beneath them, or abhorrent somehow to have to have a straight forward financial exchange at the end of a consult. At the end of the appointment I was relaxed enough to notice what the doctor was wearing. It was quite the get-up, and somehow very French. Black boots and tight jeans with complicated leather laces lacing up the sides. The French are nothing if not stylish - and rarely straight-laced! I have been a bit surprised at all the very sexy outfits that walk through the little village. And there I go, blithely marching around in my Merrells & fleece... I wonder what they think of me? It is probably best to not consider that too deeply.
All in all, the whole thing went incredibly well. Strangely enough that trip to the doctor turned out to be the highlight of my day. During dinner we have a little tradition of naming a highlight or two of each of our days. I was a little surprised to find myself choosing the trip to the doctor. It was a relief to have successfully navigated a foreign medical system. But more than that, I think I was a bit proud of myself for having been able to adequately handle la belle langue in the course of an important exchange.
By the way, after 3 days of antibiotics Maddox is literally zooooming around the house amid a constant stream of chatter, sound effects & song. He is clearly feeling much, much better.
Les adventuriers de l'arche perdue
Maddox has been sick pretty much all week. He's had that ugly cough for a while, and a runny nose; and then, a few days ago, blood seeping out of his ear. Not much fever, though, so I wasn't particularly worried. As I write that, I realize that you might wonder exactly what sort of secretions could actually pique my parental concern, if ear-blood (ear-blood!) isn't up to the task. You might wonder also whether to characterize me simply as "optimistic," or whether a better word would be "negligent" or "nuts." But we're getting off topic here. Besides, Quincy's here, and she decided to take him to a doctor, just to make sure.
Doctors are like bakeries here, in that there are several of them, but never all open for business at once. We've been told that they – bakeries and doctors alike – maintain some sort of strategically staggered schedule to ensure the greatest possible coverage of the public need for fresh bread and occasional health care. Still, it's a bit of a crap-shoot predicting exactly which one might be open on any particular day or time. As you might imagine, I was happy to let Quincy take charge the situation, since she's so much more sensible than I about things like this (see ear-blood, above). Anyway, Maddox is fine. He's taking some antibiotics and he spent a few days at home.
Jasper was home from school on Wednesday too. Not because she was sick, but because there's never any school on Wednesdays here. So while Maddox fell asleep after lunch (listening, for a change, to something other than Neil Young; he's been especially into Neil's jammin' electric early work with Crazy Horse – Down by the River, Cowgirl in the Sand, that kind of stuff), Jasper and I went for a walk to the waterfall.
It's a shockingly lovely waterfall – higher and louder and more impressive than I'd expected – and it's just a short walk through the forest at the edge of town.
Before we reached the waterfall though, we prowled through the overgrown remains of a ruined building (a long-abandoned mill maybe) that appeared suddenly in the middle of the woods across the stream. We first had to traverse a slippery tree-branch that had fortuitously fallen across the torrent, and then scramble through the thorny underbrush. And then the crumbling walls of the ruins themselves loomed above us like something you'd expect to find in a Cambodian jungle somewhere, like something out of Apocalypse Now or Tomb Raider, perhaps, only without any Marlon Brando or Angelina Jolie to liven things up. Although maybe this is a good time to mention that, actually, if we'd gone for a longer walk through these same woods, we might've substantially increased our odds of running into Angelina Jolie for real. Turns out that she and her pretty-boy husband rent a wine chateau in the neighboring village. It's the same chateau in which Pink Floyd, many years ago, recorded part of The Wall.
Unlike me, Jasper wasn't pondering pop-cultural references or over-wrought rock-operas about metaphorical walls. She was focused entirely on the real-life crumbling rocky walls in front of us – walls covered in wrist-thick vines that offered an irresistible temptation to climb. So she and I spent a good long time prowling through the derelict structure with its roof long gone and a thicket of trees grown up inside and an uneven earthy floor that gave way, in several places, to crevasses plunging down to a dark and mysterious cellar deep below.
I was reminded of those times when I was Jasper's age and my brother Eric and I roamed the wooded hills of Vermont. There was nothing more thrilling than the discovery, deep within the forest, of some junk-pile of old tin cans and wagon parts overgrown with wild blackberries, or some ancient automobile with a birch tree grown up where its engine used to be. Or that time when I was 11 and we were living in Pakistan. It was the Islamic Summit of 1974, and emirs and prime ministers from all over the Muslim world were in Lahore and security was super-tight, and a friend and I spent a day wandering past police lines and military barricades, peering with a homemade periscope into compounds patrolled by men with machine guns. It's the sort of thing I'd never do as a grown-up. But kids, you know, always think that they can get away with anything.
Okay, I admit it: As much as I want to encourage my own kids to experience the unmatched excitement of exploration, that wasn't the only reason that Jasper and I were skulking around these ruins. I was indulging my own inner Indiana Jones as well.
I also saw it also as an opportunity to demonstrate that, even though Maddox's ear-blood barely registers on my parental radar screen, I can sometimes be a responsible dad. Like last year when I showed Jasper how to use a magnifying glass to start a fire. "Responsible?" you scoff. "Isn't that just Mark being an incurable pyromaniac?" No. Hear me out. Sure, I'm a bit of a firebug. But all kids are too. So it's not a bad thing to offer a little grown-up instruction on how to indulge those dangerous tendencies in a semi-safe manner. On Wednesday, for instance, I made a point to tell Jasper that no matter how much fun it was to do what we were doing, it's the sort of thing that's best not to do alone.
"Imagine if these vines broke and I fell," I said. "Or imagine if this floor gave way suddenly, plunging me down into that dark pit below. I'm be a lot better off with you here to help me out."
"Yeah," she said. "And you should probably always carry a cell phone too."
Smart-alecky kid. Me carry a cell phone? I'm certainly open to serious suggestions, but come on! A cell phone? Really? That's just nuts.
Doctors are like bakeries here, in that there are several of them, but never all open for business at once. We've been told that they – bakeries and doctors alike – maintain some sort of strategically staggered schedule to ensure the greatest possible coverage of the public need for fresh bread and occasional health care. Still, it's a bit of a crap-shoot predicting exactly which one might be open on any particular day or time. As you might imagine, I was happy to let Quincy take charge the situation, since she's so much more sensible than I about things like this (see ear-blood, above). Anyway, Maddox is fine. He's taking some antibiotics and he spent a few days at home.
Jasper was home from school on Wednesday too. Not because she was sick, but because there's never any school on Wednesdays here. So while Maddox fell asleep after lunch (listening, for a change, to something other than Neil Young; he's been especially into Neil's jammin' electric early work with Crazy Horse – Down by the River, Cowgirl in the Sand, that kind of stuff), Jasper and I went for a walk to the waterfall.
It's a shockingly lovely waterfall – higher and louder and more impressive than I'd expected – and it's just a short walk through the forest at the edge of town.
Before we reached the waterfall though, we prowled through the overgrown remains of a ruined building (a long-abandoned mill maybe) that appeared suddenly in the middle of the woods across the stream. We first had to traverse a slippery tree-branch that had fortuitously fallen across the torrent, and then scramble through the thorny underbrush. And then the crumbling walls of the ruins themselves loomed above us like something you'd expect to find in a Cambodian jungle somewhere, like something out of Apocalypse Now or Tomb Raider, perhaps, only without any Marlon Brando or Angelina Jolie to liven things up. Although maybe this is a good time to mention that, actually, if we'd gone for a longer walk through these same woods, we might've substantially increased our odds of running into Angelina Jolie for real. Turns out that she and her pretty-boy husband rent a wine chateau in the neighboring village. It's the same chateau in which Pink Floyd, many years ago, recorded part of The Wall.
Unlike me, Jasper wasn't pondering pop-cultural references or over-wrought rock-operas about metaphorical walls. She was focused entirely on the real-life crumbling rocky walls in front of us – walls covered in wrist-thick vines that offered an irresistible temptation to climb. So she and I spent a good long time prowling through the derelict structure with its roof long gone and a thicket of trees grown up inside and an uneven earthy floor that gave way, in several places, to crevasses plunging down to a dark and mysterious cellar deep below.
I was reminded of those times when I was Jasper's age and my brother Eric and I roamed the wooded hills of Vermont. There was nothing more thrilling than the discovery, deep within the forest, of some junk-pile of old tin cans and wagon parts overgrown with wild blackberries, or some ancient automobile with a birch tree grown up where its engine used to be. Or that time when I was 11 and we were living in Pakistan. It was the Islamic Summit of 1974, and emirs and prime ministers from all over the Muslim world were in Lahore and security was super-tight, and a friend and I spent a day wandering past police lines and military barricades, peering with a homemade periscope into compounds patrolled by men with machine guns. It's the sort of thing I'd never do as a grown-up. But kids, you know, always think that they can get away with anything.
Okay, I admit it: As much as I want to encourage my own kids to experience the unmatched excitement of exploration, that wasn't the only reason that Jasper and I were skulking around these ruins. I was indulging my own inner Indiana Jones as well.
I also saw it also as an opportunity to demonstrate that, even though Maddox's ear-blood barely registers on my parental radar screen, I can sometimes be a responsible dad. Like last year when I showed Jasper how to use a magnifying glass to start a fire. "Responsible?" you scoff. "Isn't that just Mark being an incurable pyromaniac?" No. Hear me out. Sure, I'm a bit of a firebug. But all kids are too. So it's not a bad thing to offer a little grown-up instruction on how to indulge those dangerous tendencies in a semi-safe manner. On Wednesday, for instance, I made a point to tell Jasper that no matter how much fun it was to do what we were doing, it's the sort of thing that's best not to do alone.
"Imagine if these vines broke and I fell," I said. "Or imagine if this floor gave way suddenly, plunging me down into that dark pit below. I'm be a lot better off with you here to help me out."
"Yeah," she said. "And you should probably always carry a cell phone too."
Smart-alecky kid. Me carry a cell phone? I'm certainly open to serious suggestions, but come on! A cell phone? Really? That's just nuts.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
In which Mark falls prey once again to self-parody, and France barely makes an appearance at all
Like most mornings, I woke up at 6:00, while Quincy and the kids were still asleep and the sun had yet to rise. I spent the next hour or so sitting on the couch with my computer on my lap, drinking coffee, and reading The New Yorker. Riveting reading, as always. A lot of stuff about J. D. Salinger who'd died just a few days before.Laptop computer. New Yorker. Salinger. Yeah, I know: I'm not exactly ripping off A Year in Provence here. I'm not exactly inviting any lawsuits from goddam Peter Mayle. That's the thing about digital technology, I guess. We're living in a house that's hundreds of years old, but it's outfitted with a high-speed wireless internet connection. So, with a computer on my lap, I could just as easily be back in Vancouver, or anywhere else in the world.
Anyway, I got to thinking about Salinger and his writing that I like so much. I was reminded of how I was inspired to write a couple of Holden Caulfield parody pieces back in the 1980s, which actually found their way oddly into print (in the Daily Tar Heel and the Journal of Polymorphous Perversity – not exactly The New Yorker, of course, but, as Richie Brockelman might have said, what the hey), and which I wrote mostly to amuse myself and a few friends. I was reminded of how, when Quincy and I were first living together in Vancouver many years ago, I discovered that she'd somehow never read The Catcher in the Rye, and so I proceeded to read the whole book out loud to her as we lay in bed at night, with the rain failing softly outside.
And, naturally, I got to thinking about the very first time I read the book myself, on the banks of the Rio Paraguai in Brazil, when I was fourteen years old. It's pretty cool, of course, to have spent months living in the wilds of Brazil, and there was no internet then, that's for sure; so you'd think that the stuff I remember from that particular time would be unique to that particular place. Fishing for piranha. Leaning over the bow of a boat to lasso alligators at night. Eating a dinner my dad made from day-old capybara meat scavanged from a jaguar kill. That sort of thing. And I do remember those things. But I also remember, just as meaningfully, that I spent that summer lying in a lazy hammock reading and re-reading the same three books over and over again. One of those books was The Catcher in the Rye, and I read it the most of all. I must have read it about a hundred times that summer, if you want to know the truth. I'm not kidding.
It makes me wonder what exactly Jasper and Maddox will end up remembering most fondly from their half-year here in France. I'd like to think it'll be something uniquely Provençal. The local sacristains maybe, or stumbling upon vine-covered ruins in the middle of the forest, or our walks down the narrow alleyways of Cotignac, sidestepping dogshit while the church bells ring and the swallows and swifts dart in and out of the caves in the cliffs overhead. But I'm sure I'm wrong. They'll probably remember watching Speedy Gonzalez and Tom & Jerry over and over and over again on DVD.
So, really, much as I like to emphasize the exotic elements of life in France, life here is pretty mundane too. In fact, I'm tempted to make that point in a full-on Holden Caulfield kind of way. You know, something like: "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where we're living, and what the food is like, and where to find all the famous fountains that tourists are always breaking their goddam necks to take pictures of, and all that Lonely Planet kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. That stuff always ends up sounding phony as hell. I'll just tell you instead about all this crumby stuff that happened the morning that Maddox woke up with the grippe, stumbling around like a madman, and coughing on my computer about a hundred times while I was trying to read the goddam Talk of the Town..."
But I won't. It sounds less like a loving homage to Salinger and more like a garish parody of myself trying to sound like Salinger. And, you know, given that I'm an Anglophone academic spending a sabbatical in the south of France, I'm already working the self-parody angle pretty hard.
I'll just say instead that, while reading The New Yorker online that morning, with pre-dawn light just beginning to illuminate the cliffs outside, I liked especially something that Adam Gopnik wrote, which reminded me in some weird way of something that John Cheever wrote many years ago when he heard the news that Hemingway was dead. Hemingway, who, like Salinger, I fetishized for a while; especially when I was a sophomore at Chapel Hill. It was in the spring of that year when I camped alone one night without a tent at the edge of a resevoir outside of town. The ground was uneven and at night it was cold but I didn't mind very much. In the morning the sun rose and it was warmer then. I sat in the sun and I ate many pieces of bread and cheddar cheese that I sliced with a pocket knife, and as I ate my bread and cheese I also narrated what I was doing in a manner that was as careful and exact as the way I wiped the blade of my knife clean on the tuft of grass beside the place where I sat. If a man was to have walked by and overheard me then he might have guessed that I was making a poor parody of Hemingway whose stories I had read many times and liked very much. And of course I was. Kinda like what I'm doing right now. See, I just can't resist the temptation.
Anyway, here's what Cheever had to say about Hemingway: "He put down an immense vision of love and friendship, swallows and the sound of rain. There was never, in my time, anyone to compare to him."
And here's what Gopnik said about Salinger: "no American writer will ever have a more alert ear, a more attentive eye, or a more ardent heart than his."
Monday, February 1, 2010
food, glorious food
La marché.
Mark has blogged a wee bit about the market. I will fill in a little bit more. It is my favorite weekly event. It comes every Tuesday morning, and so far Mark has been willing to drag himself away from his work to join me each week. I think he loves it too, and will continue to come with me every week. It is a nice time for us to stroll through the village and then up and down the aisles of vendors. We have already learned that you can’t rely on any particular vendor to be there, which makes it a little extra fun. Except our favorite vegetable vendor, who seems to be there each week. There is one fellow who works there who seems to enjoy practicing his English on us while we fumble through our French with him. That is how I choose to see it, anyway. Surely he does not find our French so bad he feels like he has to speak in English! In any case he does so with a lovely grin and a sweet disposition.
One of my favorite things at the market, oddly enough, has been the act of buying eggs. A woman there has a large basket, lined with straw, with dozens of eggs laid out. Next to it are a pile of 6-egg cartons and you pick your own. I just love that. Talk about farm-fresh!
There are many cheese vendors each week, and usually an odd assortment of folks selling jams, butters, pesto (in all sorts of flavours) and more types of dried sausage than you can shake a stick at. There are also quite a few vendors selling prepared food, paella and the like. We have not yet bought any, but we eye it each time and talk about it.
And, if you feel like you would like to purchase a furry poncho, you are in luck. There are always folks selling clothes, often pretty chic-looking stuff, though not always my, ahem, style. The furry outerwear is just one example.
Cooking in Cotignac
We have an oven with more options than I know what to do with: heat above, heat below, convection, heat above with convection, heat below with convection etc etc. The possibilities are almost endless. Meanwhile, I struggle with the simple conversion of Fahrenheit to Celsius. And the stove-top is based on some sort of fancy induction principle. Sadly, it only works if the burner is completely covered by a pot so our stove top espresso maker has been useless here.
Baking has it’s own set of challenges. Firstly, I find the stores here organized in a relatively inscrutable manner. There is not a “baking aisle”, which it turns out I was kind of banking on. That is, if things are organized categorically like that it cuts down on one’s need for baking-appropriate vocabulary. Which it turns out I don’t have, but am learning. So, instead of all the baking stuff all in one spot, cutting down on my confusion, I find flour in one aisle, sugar in another. And SO many sugar options (various shapes and sizes of cubes, super-fine, confectioners, raw, plus many faux-sugars) but no brown sugar as I have come to expect it. But that is OK. It turns out you can make chocolate chip cookies without it. Whew. Anyway, I’m getting distracted. So, I finally found a little trove of baking stuffs (separate, of course, from the flour and the sugar). In this aisle I found a bazillion different bags of almond flour, but no straight up cocoa powder. And I could find nothing that translated to “baking soda” or “baking powder”. I found “levure du pain” and “levure chemique”. These were both packaged in little individual packets, the kind I associate with instant yeast. So I figured that the “levure du pain” was yeast, but I really had no clue what the other was. It seemed like it had little pictures of muffins on it, so I bought it hoping it would look white and powdery when I got home. I was a little concerned when I looked up levure chemique in our French-english dictionary and it said “brewers yeast”. But when I opened it up it looked white and powdery (makes me wonder what else that dictionary has led me astray on!). Anyhoo, since it is white and powdery, I have been using it like baking soda to good effect. While I was puzzling this out I realized that I don’t really know what the difference is between baking powder and baking soda. So, while I am here I am going to pretend there IS no difference and soldier on.
Despite my failures and confusions in the grocery store and being perplexed by the many options on our oven, I have successfully made chocolate chip cookies (I learned that the French don’t really make cookies, so I thought it would make a nice treat for us to bring to Nathalie & Ollie’s for that meal they invited us to a couple of weeks ago). And yesterday I made Annette’s famous lemon bread. It was pretty successful, but I clearly have some things to learn from Annette about it. I think I will blame the inferior product on my equipment. Not the oven. But clearly, it couldn’t be the cook!
Yesterday we had Ollie, Nathalie and their kids (Claire, Thomas, & Victor) over for Sunday lunch. We did it French-style with the lunch being huuuuge. Since I didn’t want to try to make something French and fail, I decided to make some Indian food. I was inspired by the “Spice Girl” (our name for her) who comes to the market every week and who was selling some yummy looking tandoori spice mix. The meal was quite successful (tandoori chicken, dahl, spicey green beans, rice, raita & mango salsa). Oh, and of course, we had to have a green salad and a cheese plate after that. Oh, and then dessert after that. Oh, and did I mention that we started with some appies & champagne? And of course beaucoup du vin during the meal. As I am sure you have no trouble imagining, I had no need for dinner when 6pm rolled around. But, it was a success, and I was glad to have finally, finally had a chance to do something nice for Ollie & Nathalie!
A quick amusement for those of you who know about my reputation for refusing to believe there is anything out there that isn’t actually better with lemon on it. Well, it turns out that Jasper is following in my footsteps. And sadly, I can’t even really take the credit for it! Well, except perhaps, genetically. In fact, she was surprised to hear that not only am I famous for being a bit crazy for lemon, but am mercilessly teased for it by my family. In any case, between me, and her, and now Maddox (because he doesn’t want to be left out) we are going through somewhere between 7 and 10 lemons per week!
Lastly, I didn’t want to close today without assuring everybody that Maddox is doing fine. Today was Monday morning and he had no trouble. And no tears last night. Perhaps he has gotten over some hump, or perhaps last week he was a little extra low. He did have a cold and ended up pretty sick by the end of the week. Today Maddox told me that there is a girl who plays with him at recess. He said, “…but, I don’t know her name. But that is OK.”
Mark has blogged a wee bit about the market. I will fill in a little bit more. It is my favorite weekly event. It comes every Tuesday morning, and so far Mark has been willing to drag himself away from his work to join me each week. I think he loves it too, and will continue to come with me every week. It is a nice time for us to stroll through the village and then up and down the aisles of vendors. We have already learned that you can’t rely on any particular vendor to be there, which makes it a little extra fun. Except our favorite vegetable vendor, who seems to be there each week. There is one fellow who works there who seems to enjoy practicing his English on us while we fumble through our French with him. That is how I choose to see it, anyway. Surely he does not find our French so bad he feels like he has to speak in English! In any case he does so with a lovely grin and a sweet disposition.
One of my favorite things at the market, oddly enough, has been the act of buying eggs. A woman there has a large basket, lined with straw, with dozens of eggs laid out. Next to it are a pile of 6-egg cartons and you pick your own. I just love that. Talk about farm-fresh!
There are many cheese vendors each week, and usually an odd assortment of folks selling jams, butters, pesto (in all sorts of flavours) and more types of dried sausage than you can shake a stick at. There are also quite a few vendors selling prepared food, paella and the like. We have not yet bought any, but we eye it each time and talk about it.
And, if you feel like you would like to purchase a furry poncho, you are in luck. There are always folks selling clothes, often pretty chic-looking stuff, though not always my, ahem, style. The furry outerwear is just one example.
Cooking in Cotignac
We have an oven with more options than I know what to do with: heat above, heat below, convection, heat above with convection, heat below with convection etc etc. The possibilities are almost endless. Meanwhile, I struggle with the simple conversion of Fahrenheit to Celsius. And the stove-top is based on some sort of fancy induction principle. Sadly, it only works if the burner is completely covered by a pot so our stove top espresso maker has been useless here.
Baking has it’s own set of challenges. Firstly, I find the stores here organized in a relatively inscrutable manner. There is not a “baking aisle”, which it turns out I was kind of banking on. That is, if things are organized categorically like that it cuts down on one’s need for baking-appropriate vocabulary. Which it turns out I don’t have, but am learning. So, instead of all the baking stuff all in one spot, cutting down on my confusion, I find flour in one aisle, sugar in another. And SO many sugar options (various shapes and sizes of cubes, super-fine, confectioners, raw, plus many faux-sugars) but no brown sugar as I have come to expect it. But that is OK. It turns out you can make chocolate chip cookies without it. Whew. Anyway, I’m getting distracted. So, I finally found a little trove of baking stuffs (separate, of course, from the flour and the sugar). In this aisle I found a bazillion different bags of almond flour, but no straight up cocoa powder. And I could find nothing that translated to “baking soda” or “baking powder”. I found “levure du pain” and “levure chemique”. These were both packaged in little individual packets, the kind I associate with instant yeast. So I figured that the “levure du pain” was yeast, but I really had no clue what the other was. It seemed like it had little pictures of muffins on it, so I bought it hoping it would look white and powdery when I got home. I was a little concerned when I looked up levure chemique in our French-english dictionary and it said “brewers yeast”. But when I opened it up it looked white and powdery (makes me wonder what else that dictionary has led me astray on!). Anyhoo, since it is white and powdery, I have been using it like baking soda to good effect. While I was puzzling this out I realized that I don’t really know what the difference is between baking powder and baking soda. So, while I am here I am going to pretend there IS no difference and soldier on.
Despite my failures and confusions in the grocery store and being perplexed by the many options on our oven, I have successfully made chocolate chip cookies (I learned that the French don’t really make cookies, so I thought it would make a nice treat for us to bring to Nathalie & Ollie’s for that meal they invited us to a couple of weeks ago). And yesterday I made Annette’s famous lemon bread. It was pretty successful, but I clearly have some things to learn from Annette about it. I think I will blame the inferior product on my equipment. Not the oven. But clearly, it couldn’t be the cook!
Yesterday we had Ollie, Nathalie and their kids (Claire, Thomas, & Victor) over for Sunday lunch. We did it French-style with the lunch being huuuuge. Since I didn’t want to try to make something French and fail, I decided to make some Indian food. I was inspired by the “Spice Girl” (our name for her) who comes to the market every week and who was selling some yummy looking tandoori spice mix. The meal was quite successful (tandoori chicken, dahl, spicey green beans, rice, raita & mango salsa). Oh, and of course, we had to have a green salad and a cheese plate after that. Oh, and then dessert after that. Oh, and did I mention that we started with some appies & champagne? And of course beaucoup du vin during the meal. As I am sure you have no trouble imagining, I had no need for dinner when 6pm rolled around. But, it was a success, and I was glad to have finally, finally had a chance to do something nice for Ollie & Nathalie!
A quick amusement for those of you who know about my reputation for refusing to believe there is anything out there that isn’t actually better with lemon on it. Well, it turns out that Jasper is following in my footsteps. And sadly, I can’t even really take the credit for it! Well, except perhaps, genetically. In fact, she was surprised to hear that not only am I famous for being a bit crazy for lemon, but am mercilessly teased for it by my family. In any case, between me, and her, and now Maddox (because he doesn’t want to be left out) we are going through somewhere between 7 and 10 lemons per week!
Lastly, I didn’t want to close today without assuring everybody that Maddox is doing fine. Today was Monday morning and he had no trouble. And no tears last night. Perhaps he has gotten over some hump, or perhaps last week he was a little extra low. He did have a cold and ended up pretty sick by the end of the week. Today Maddox told me that there is a girl who plays with him at recess. He said, “…but, I don’t know her name. But that is OK.”
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