The Rest of It

There were some bumps on the flight, but they served me some sparkling water and it was a smooth landing in Bristol. As I approached the customs desk, my mask and snorkel fell out of my backpack (I think I mentioned that I had to hastily reduce the weight of my baggage in La Rochelle? That included putting all my books and snorkeling equipment in my carry-on). I picked them up and carried them to the customs agent, who told me I needed to have filled out landing card.

A few minutes later I walked out to the main concourse and thought about stopping to put my snorkel and mask away. Nah… Enchanted by the absurdity of walking out to meet Matt and his family with snorkel à la main. Matt and his family and girlfriend were waiting in the lobby. I shook Steve’s hand and he asked me if I’d had to swim from France. I raised my snorkel hand slightly and told him that I just wanted to be prepared just in case god forbid.

I wasn’t sure whether to shake hands with the ladies or give them one kiss on each cheek like in France. I think I did the latter with Matt’s mother Sue. Two years of meeting new people of different nationalities had left me confused about what to do with whom. French do the two kiss thing (the bise), British people… shake hands? Finally, Matt introduced his petite amie, Hannah.

My hangover resurfaced upon landing, just in time for the car ride to the restaurant. As that battery acid taste crept into the corners of my mouth I started to worry that I’d have to ask Steve to pull over. What a first impression. Well, I’m sure he’d understand. Still.

Monday morning, I awoke early in the morning and decided to go back to sleep. Reawakening a few hours later. I submitted three photos to a National Geographic photo contest.

We went to the vet’s office that morning. I am leaving most of this one unexplained.

Welsh is a fantastic language. The vowels are round and the consonants scrape past the sides of the tongue in a way that doesn’t sound like any other language I’ve heard. You don’t hear much Welsh in Wales: Apparently the largest percentage of fluent Welsh speakers is kids aged 12 and down. The Government of Wales is trying to establish a revival in the language, which is being met with, as far as I can tell, tepid enthusiasm.

Still the Welsh accent is the most gorgeous thing to happen to English.

Later on, we went to the local Botanical Gardens and my camera ran out of batteries. So, we decided to sojourn to Verdi’s; an ice cream shop, and a Mumbles institution.

Mumbles is a seaside town just next to Swansea. Hometown of Catherine Zeta-Jones. At Verdi’s we had some tea, ice cream and a milk shake and I plugged my camera battery into a wall outlet.

Wednesday night out on Swansea. An evening that was destined to emerge later on in hazy pieces at random moments. Not from the drinking. Just the disorienting, improvisational way we lived it. I didn’t really drink that much. But it was raining and I remember covering my head because it’s my deeply held conviction that when the rain smoothes my hair down against my head I look bald. Ing. Otherwise let the rain come.

I had to get to an ATM. Out into the rain, back into the pub.

“Where is it again?” I asked Hannah. She told me.

There was a dickish guy with an impossible accent to place in line behind me while I held an umbrella for another guy… Polish? Maybe. His friend was asking everyone where we were from, or I thought ‘everyone’ until I turned to see two girls under an umbrella, figures in my quick glance made blurs of pink, black, and fishnet. Just as well, I remember thinking. I don’t want to have the conversation about why a Floridian is here in Wales.

Later on, exhausted at the bar. I hadn’t seen Matt for a while… Glancing around, I saw him standing with Hannah by the bar. As I write this, I feel the cold stab of remorse that I didn’t give him any shit about that – disappearing for… however long. The truth was, I might have done the same, and I didn’t mind. Still… I missed an opportunity. Anyway, Matt: Here’s the shit I should’ve given you.

Honestly though, I was content to sit and cast my eyes around the bar and out the window. I was tired. The bar seats were so high that you had to jump to get on them, and the table was so far from the stool that to lean across the chasm between seat and table to rest your head in your arms left you in danger of falling if you fell asleep. I leaned back against the chair and looked out the window, grateful for a lot of things: To Matt’s parents for putting me up and feeding me, to Matt and Hannah for showing me around Swansea, to Matt’s mates for coming out (although I gather that if they hadn’t come out for my last night they’d have found an occasion). Outside, women walked like weary refugees through the rain in that ungraceful plodding tip-toe that announces a lady in heels. Their skirts and hair clung to them. The effect was comical. Out hiccoughs a laugh: The rain is making a mockery of your designs on grace and sexiness. Still, it makes me cower beneath my jacket, anxiously shielding my scalp from public view. What are you gonna do?

Steve picked us up just before two… what a mensch. We stood around chatting for a few minutes, then the bus pulled up. I went right away to put away my suitcase under the bus so I could stand around for a few more minutes, but the bus driver let me know I should board immediately. Shit. Hasty goodbyes from Matt’s friends… it was really fucking good of them to come out. Then Matt and I were standing there, like last year in Saintes, neither quite prepared for the goodbye. Oh well… Mec, it was real, and we seriously have to do this again. In America. Seriously.

It was a long ride, but mercifully I was able to sleep through most of it. The next morning, I did some things I’m not proud of, and I took to the air only an hour or so late. That was the end of my European adventure.

The Last Few Hours in Franceland

I just want to go home and sleep but it’s my last night in Royan. I have to go look at the Atlantic Ocean again from my customary vantage point. There went I on my first full day in Royan, and there I go again now, on my last full day. The romantic in me is a slave to symmetry. So, I’m tired, but I accept that there’s no real alternative, and down to the coast I go. I tell myself there’s no real choice, and there’s freedom in the thought.

I hadn’t really expected to become attached to this place. Royan. In the way that France is beautiful, Royan is not. All the buildings are new, all of them built in the 1950’s and 60’s; decades that were to architecture what the 80’s were to music: Pure indulgence in all the wrong impulses. If you think of architecture as a reflection of the times, you’d have to look on the buildings in Royan with the same uncomfortable feeling that you feel when you find your old, melodramatic poetry scribbled onto pages of old notebooks. You guess it’s all right, but you would not write that kind of shit now.

Still, right now I’m riding through the town in a haze of alcohol (partly) and nostalgia (mostly). Sounds reach me through a bubble, a thin curtain of air that’s following me and vibrating with memories from the past two years. I think of the times I’ve ridden with friends through streets that looked like these. That time we almost had a fight and the fucker attacked with a golf club and we retreated. Then riding home, we found a bike and I carried it with me on my bike in a pointless feat of strength to salve the dull throb of a bruised ego.

I arrived at the coast and called dad. He answered after a few rings. We talked about a lot of things, but one thing really stuck with me. I said,

“Well, I’m here looking out to sea in your direction.”

He said,

“Well, I’m looking in your direction. Well, down at the ground. I have to look down at the ground to look in your direction.”

I had forgotten about that. The world still is round.

***

Smash-cut to the present. My flight is delayed by half an hour. This is not a terrible thing: I had just been thinking that...

I worked until the morning of my last full day in Royan… Between packing and finishing work and selling my guitar (I sold my guitar) and going out with people I had not really contemplated the fact that I was leaving behind, indefinitely, the country that I had called home for two years.

David and I met Marcus, and then Salah, in town for a last night on the town sort of thing. We started out at the Phare, a bar I didn't know that well on the Old Harbor. Pints and Mojiti. Apparently there's a craze on in the United States called "icing" someone - in other words presenting him or her with  a Smirnoff Ice, which he or she is then required to chug. Marcus iced me, and since I didn't have a Smirnoff Ice to counter his (I don't quite remember the rules) I chugged. We chatted for a while about, as I recall, mostly "guy stuff" and then Marcus took off. Work in the morning. Afterward, David and Salah and I went to another place called the General Humbert's for a pint. We spent most of the rest of the evening making fun of an idiosyncratic hand gesture of the French. Now I wish I had a picture of that. It was a really good evening.

I woke up some time last night and ran into the kitchen and vomited forcefully into the sink. This morning, I woke up with a hangover, which is now technically a tradition; The last time I left La Rochelle I was feeling about the same. If we encounter a lot of turbulence, I will consider myself duly punished, and hopefully chastened, but who can tell?

This morning I got ready to go. Unpacked and repacked my suitcase.

La Rochelle airport is the smallest airport I’ve ever flown out of. It feels better, somehow. I do like the bustle of big airports – specifically I like to find little tranquil pockets to reflect and write – but now I know there’s something more welcoming, or intimate, about small ones. Normal (as the French would say).

My bag was overweight. In the end I threw away my shoes, left two bottles of wine with David, and finally got my baggage down to an acceptable weight. The place was full of English people speaking English to the airport workers. I felt annoyed. I’m not ready to leave France, and I’m not ready to no longer need to speak French. I know that because I feel a need to keep reminding myself that I’m going to see friends soon and get back to my chèrie. Still I know that because of all these other fuckers the workers are going to speak English to me. Well… I’ll keep going in French if they do.

David and I sat around and shot the breeze over cups of coffee. Talked about… nothing special – all the things we usually chat about. Then we left the bar, I joined the line, and David said he thought might bounce. A big hug, and handshake, a check-in, and a security checkpoint later and here I am.

I just checked my camera. The last picture that was taken of me in France was taken by Marcus as I chugged a Smirnoff Ice. Part of me enjoys that, but most of would prefer that I had a different last picture. So here’s me typing this:

To this truly beautiful country, and to the people I’ve met while living here: I miss you already, and I’ll see you again soon.

The plane just arrived. I thought: This is the plane that will kill me. I’m a nervous flyer. It’s weird though: The same part of me that is horrified of looking like a fool in public wants to know whether this is the plane that will kill me. So that I’ll be able to think as I’m falling “Yep. I knew it.” I’d like to be afforded the opportunity to be cynical about it. I’d like to somehow know in advance, so I wouldn’t be finding out and wrong-footed in front of everyone. Of course, I know that in the event of a crash landing my little seat on the plane would be the most perfectly anonymous place in the world, as terror tunneled our vision and we came to care so much more about our imminent death than about what the person in the seat next to is doing. I wondering if everyone is isolated in this way when they die; preoccupied with the fact of their death, a process that it is innate in us to avoid.

Anyway… time to get on the plane!

Tina's Café

I learned a new word: Anatopism. I have heard of anachronisms, but never of anatopisms - Something that's out of its proper place. Last night, I was taken to one.

- You were asking about the Toulouse accent?

I had been asking.

- Here you go. She's from Toulouse. T'es pas Toulousaine? Baptiste asked her in French. He (meaning me) was asking about the difference between the Toulouse accent and the Paris accent.
- Okay. The différence, she started, is... ...say "bread", she instructed Baptiste.
- Pain, said he, using the typical nasal vowel. Paa.
- Pain, she countered, making a sound much closer to the English word "pain."

That cleared that up, although it was a little bit strange to hear a Toulouse accent on a girl in Meschers. Baptiste and I had come down to Meschers from Royan to play guitar and ukulele in an American bar. The bar, called Tina's Café, was hidden in the corner of a beach that was itself hidden among chalk cliffs in the Gironde Estuary, an almost comically idyllic place for a delightfully ramshackle and charming bar/buffet/juke joint. I had seen plenty of places like it in North Florida, but never in France. It took me back, and it made me feel at home in a way that, mercifully, did not exacerbate the homesickness I've been feeling lately. It was, simply, wonderful to see so many things that I had not seen in a long time. It was wonderful and strange to see a Home Depot apron on the waitress with the strong Toulouse accent. It made me think of my father, and how much I hated it when he would drag me through that god-forsaken store. Souvenirs from America were everywhere. The definition of a "Florida Cracker" in the bathroom made me swell with statal pride (I meet the criteria, apparently, though I wouldn't call myself a Florida Cracker), and there was a sticker on the door warning me and others off of treating Texas in any way that could be considered dérangeant.

Baptiste introduced me to Tina in French, and we continued that way. It's always weird to meet a fellow countryperson and speak to him or her in what is a second language for both of you, but I was unwilling to switch to English before she did. As a foreigner in France trying to make your French work for you, you learn to hate it when you speak French to someone and they hear your accent and switch to English. Especially when their English is much poorer than your French.

Having met Tina, Baptiste and I clicked our beer glasses together and planned our set. Moving to an adjacent room in the bar, and sheltered somewhat from the sound of old blues standards pouring from the establishment's speakers, we rehearsed. Briefly. Then Baptiste went to find Wayne, the music guy for  Tina's. He told Wayne that we were ready. We had not actually played a song through in its entirety, but such things to tend to work themselves. One way or another, you reach the end of the song.

I don't know why this is... I'm fairly shy, I guess... but I don't really suffer from stage fright. I'm not front-man material, but if I find myself in front of an audience, I don't really get nervous.

When we reached the end of our set, someone shouted for one more song. Wayne arched his eyebrows and shrugged in the way that says "Why the hell not? If you guys want to, it's way more than cool with me". We played "I Will Survive". Started slow, sped up and dropped into a mariachi groove, slowed down. I thought the song was over until Baptiste, who was singing while I played the guitar, waved and clapped me into a bizarre, syncopated coda that would not have been out of place at some kid's Bar Mitzvah. Good fun, a set "sans prétension" as Baptiste described it. I would chalk up the lack of pretension to the improvised nature of the set more than to any artistic or aesthetic choice on our part, but... six of one...

We sat with Molly and Kim, a couple of gals from Nashville and New Orleans, respectively. Molly was, I gather, a session fiddle player who was playing for Kim, who was in the middle of a European tour with her honky tonk band. They complimented Baptiste and I on our set, and I was taken aback when Molly told me that I had kind of a French accent. Later on, when the girls were scheduled to go on stage and play before their band had arrived, I stepped in on guitar - one of the highlights of my evening.

Some of my coworkers had showed up to watch me play, and I went and sat with them. We discussed work politics, and I remembered abruptly that I had a bag of salad in my backpack, which I then produced and dug into, to the amusement of everyone at the table.

Before I left, I played a song with Tina, the eponymous owner of the café. She asked me if I knew this and that song, which I invariably didn't. In the end, she said "We'll just make something up" and announced it to the audience. So, as I strummed the twelve bar blues in an easy swing rhythm, Tina improvised a song about her life. Afterward, she asked me if I was on vacation. I wasn't, I told her.

- I live here, but I'm actually leaving in two weeks or so.

- Oh... well you gotta come down again before you leave. Come by and sit around and have a beer with us... you'll be an honored guest.

I felt honored, and I felt grateful to have found a piece of home in such an unlikely place.

Ten Boobs, Eight Nipples - A Retrospective

Part 1

Finally.


Part 2

He steps, giant steps like he's walking through grass. Waves swirl and water snakes up toward his junk. You do have to wonder why the fuck the water is this cold in mid-summer. I'll assume that it's the two mountain-born rivers that flow into this estuary, assume that they didn't have time to warm up before they ended. So they're still cold; and so he walks outward, seaward, more or less homeward bound in thick astronaut steps, urinating all the while so that the salty searching fingers have to work against the warmth of the urine. Ease into it. It's a basic strategy. He walks outward, narrating it to himself.

Forcing casualness in school cafeterias, walking amongst the rows paying too much attention to his gait praying it comes across as unconcerned about what others think. Or he pretends that he's acting for the camera sometimes and watches while his actions become inexplicably wooden and forced for the benefit of a camera that isn't there. This is kind of like that. Narrating to himself as he walks, because... When people walk outwards into cold oceans, moving homeward but never reaching home, it's a big moment. Aware of himself in a way that probably obviates the big moment - and indeed, nothing much comes. This is no big deal.

I don't walk self-consciously through school cafeterias today. Well, maybe I do, but I don't care about myself. In a good way. I don't care any more than anyone else ever did. There's a guy from Iraq who eats breakfast at the next table over. His English is excellent for having studied three years. When he's teaching, he says "why" as a statement and not as a question.

"What you're eating is not good for you. Why. Because it makes you... the bad gas. But it's also full of vitamins."

He's probably right, I tell him. About it not being good for me.

Part 3

I should've written about it a few months ago. The reunion. The 3M reunion as we're calling it in honor of Matt, Mitch and Mara. Two or so weeks that snaked in somewhere between the months of March and April. A really beautiful time. I didn't write about it then, and now a lot of the viscera has faded, leaving the lasting memories: The walk out to the beach at midnight or thereabouts with beers. We discussed girlfriend stuff and personal insecurities and how we need to fucking do this again. Seriously.

And we do.

...The showing up in Bordeaux with lodging not worked-out. Crashing on the floor of Mitch's former roommate and getting a hotel the next day. The resolution not to sleep on our last night, then the realization that you can't get beer anywhere at this time of night and if we can't not-sleep and stagger around drunk then we might as well go sleep. Three on a bed, laying sideways instead of longways - heads on the bed, feet dangling. Four hours, one REM cycle. Ersatz, the only right way to do anything. The Ferris wheel, and the fair. Rain, and how I don't give a fuck about it as a matter of both personal pride and yes-to-life-ism.

Speaking of which, I forgot about the only thing that I wrote during the whole week - scribbled in my journal in a despondent moment alone in my room. Amidst the dull ache and numbness that comes from rushing around all over Southwestern France to see people and have a fun and lighthearted-but-poignant time... What I wrote. In a moment.

Part 4

I invited my brother and his wife to Seattle. I didn't invite Isaac, but I meant to. Then I thought about all the times I stepped away from my computer and came back to see he had messaged me and since logged off. Wall posts that he and other people wrote to me telling me that they missed me and how I said "I need to write them back" and never did. Fuck man. I'm a shitty friend, but it's not because I don't care. It's because I'm waiting for the right words.


It's also because, and this is a bit weird... I feel kind of despondent. Why. Because I don't want people to miss me, because I don't want those times to be over. I feel somehow paralyzed again, so that everything requires deliberation. Movement comes slowly, like walking eastward into the Atlantic against the incoming tide or doing karate forms in molasses. There's a heaviness in the limbs again, and a numbness in the extremities. There's a conspicuous lack of the impulse to say "yes" to life. I don't want to say "no" to life, but there's a strong desire to say "Hang ON! Jesus I can't hear you when you all talk at once! I just got home, can't I chill for a second!?" to life. This is why I don't answer. And this also explains...

Part 3

...what I wrote in my journal back in March/April, which was this:

"This is a moment I want to grab, smother, suffocate, live in. I can't listen to songs brimful with excitement about the future, songs that say 'Yes' to life or 'Bring it on; I'm ready!' There's a smell of decay like the soft smell of leaves after a rain, and it makes me miss this moment before it's gone. We need to do this every year."

So, I guess what I'm saying while I'm feeling brave enough to write it is that I fucking miss everyone. People from last year, this year. Everyone from my time in France. Other people too, but in the ocean right now, as I turn back having not had my big moment and walk back toward the beach where Lee and Laura and I came last year, I miss people that I met in France and haven't seen in a while. Remembering that first time, and how we saw five women with no tops on, and how one of them was tanned, all over, to the exact color of her nipples so that they were perfectly camouflaged against her body.

And right now, walking into the ocean and not having a big moment is fine with me. I'm feeling nostalgic, but for the first time in my life I don't really want to return to those times. I want new times. I'm happy where I am, and happy about where I'm going. I need to see everyone that I'm missing so much right now, but I don't need the time back. We'll do new shit, and it will be righteous. And I'm looking forward to it.

Part 2

I don't know why I mentioned the ocean. Maybe it's just that walking out into the freezing water reminded me of that time with Lee and Laura, and that memory launched me ping-ponging through dozens of others in minutes. Maybe the memories swirl and pierce in a way exactly like the icy water at the mouth of the Gironde Estuary, and that try as you might to wade through them and move forward, it will be slow going and giant ginger steps. Maybe.  

Part 5

We fucking need to do this again. Seriously.

What I remember about driving in Tunisia

Inauspicious. We were less than five minutes into our adventure on the streets of Sousse when the car ran out of fuel. Our rental agent had given us the car, empty of fuel, and explained that you can't leave cars sitting around with full tanks of gas. He had advised us to get to the nearest gas station before we set out, but before we could get there the car sputtered and died right where the side road spat cars into the anarchy of a Tunisian main street. I stepped out of the car, apologetic, hands out, supplicating. I was nervous to be where I was, in the situation I was in. In your home country, you never hear anything but the horror stories about other countries; the reasons to stay home. I think now I'd rather break down in Sousse than in parts of Jacksonville. Helping hands descended on the car from all directions; one man filled my gas tank with fuel he'd siphoned from his own. He asked for 4 dinars for the trouble and the fuel - more would have been fair. Another man approached me as I wrung my hands on the side of the road, asking me where I was from. I was from America. This news delighted, and I was welcomed heartily to his country.

A few minutes later, we were fully fueled and climbing the pock-marked hill to our rented apartment. As I was in France, I was nervous about driving here. Nervous about having signed over 1000 dinars as a deposit in a city with such a high incidence of scratched and dented vehicles. Our car, however, was pretty shitty in its own right... the shocks were shot - I can only imagine that this is a common problem in Sousse.

 We drove past a half-starved waif of a cat scavenging from a dumpster. Ooh, kitty! Rebecca purred.

Oh... donkey! I replied. An ass-drawn cart was parked in front of our apartment. I'll have to be careful about those.

***

In the cities, the lines on the road are suggestions. The direction of traffic is taken in the same spirit. You drive on the right, as in America, as in France. But you should expect to see the occasional car or moped speeding toward you in your own lane. The rightmost side of the road seems to be reserved for these; salmon traveling upstream. If you're used to driving in a high school parking lot after school, you're ready. The roads in Tunisia are like the markets: It's anarchy, with everyone out for his or herself. Unregulated, unbridled. The only intervention from the police seems to be at the roundabouts or on the highways, when you may be stopped as you pass, presumably to be checked for papers. We were stopped once, as we traveled back from Hammamet.

- Est-ce que vous êtes français? The officer asked.
- Non, Américain. The officer's face brightened. He continued in French.
- I've never met an American before. When I've spoken to Americans on chat rooms and things, none of them seem to know where Tunisia is!
- Well, we are living in France at the moment.
- Oh! Well, I wish you a good day, and a good stay in our country.
- Thank you.

***

- I'm trying to think of how I'd describe this if I were to write about it, like maybe later for my blog.
- Okay.
- I feel like, the lanes are polite suggestions but it's up to you sorta thing.
- Yeah.
- Even the direction of traffic.

Rebecca and I are driving along the coastal highway in Sousse. The Mediterranean sparkles impossibly blue. Yesterday, Monday, we drove south to El Djem, then inland to Kairouan. Today, we are following the coast northwards. In my mind, a half formed quest to capture the olive groves of Northeast Tunisia in their glory. This part of the world is beautiful, with gently rolling hills, and groves of olive trees with their curious silvery-green color.

We drove up the coast to Hammamet, a town gently dismissed by our landlord as "touristique". It was, and beautiful. I helped some fishermen pull their boat to shore, and learned and then forgot the Arabic word for "C'mon!" as it was shouted to galvanize the group to collective effort. We changed into our bathing suits in the shelter of the Hammamet fishing boats and plunged into the Mediterranean.

I lost my wallet on the beach in Hammamet. I would have driven away without it, but the parking monitor approached to demand a dinar for having parked where I did. Annoyed, I fumbled for my wallet. Annoyance turned quickly to panic as I realized I couldn't find my wallet. I ransacked the car, then stumbled blindly onto the beach, retracing our footprints. I searched among the boats, and finally came to where we had gone swimming. Rebecca went back to the restaurant where we'd shared a bottle of rosé. Finally, on the point of tears, I spotted my sand-colored wallet lying in the sand. Back at the car, the parking monitor laughed at my relief and gave me a hug.

Good thing I came, huh? How about a dinar for helping you find the wallet?

I gave him four. It was a good thing he came along.

Tunisia, Part 1: Getting There

- She's wearing a black jacket; I'm wearing a white shirt and two backpacks.
- Okay, I'll tell my father.

I hung up. I had been making these quick phone calls to the son of our Tunisian landlord all afternoon. 

I made the first call around 4:00PM, when the airline announced over the intercom that our flight was delayed. "Suite à un mouvement social..." We had planned our trip a couple of months before, and our departure date just happened to coincide with a massive nationwide strike. Trains had been canceled, buses, flights... and we would need to use all of these before the day was out. I was up until after 2:00AM planning alternate routes just in case our simple direct train was canceled. La Rochelle-Poitiers-Tours-Nantes. La Rochelle-Poitiers-Tours-Le Mans-Nantes. At around 2:30 I went to bed. The alarm rang at 5:00. As it turns out, the train and the buses were perfectly on time.

In the airport in Monastir, we bought two bottles of water, and paid in euros. We didn't have any dinars yet. Then we went back to the most obvious spot we could find in the center of the room. After a few minutes, we were approached by a cheerful looking older gentleman with bright eyes. It was probably him. I wasn't sure what to say - we had been communicating with his son in English, but we weren't sure if he knew any English. Fortunately, he broke the ice.

"Are you Rebecca?" he asked me in French.

I wasn't.

"Eu... non, c'est elle," I replied, pointing to Rebecca. She had arranged the apartment and done most of the corresponding. We shook hands, and then we followed him out to his car.

I didn't hear the pilot say exactly when we were taking off. But in the airport they had said 5 'til 9. Ten minutes from now. This was four and a half hours late. Okay. I tuned in to the end of his speech.


"Nobody is more unhappy than me about having to delay you by 5 hours." 

Now it was 5 hours. Okay. Another hour in the plane.

Patches of Tunisia were emerging from the darkness; Gas stations, train-tracks and road signs all floating by in the small, yellowy circles of light cast by the headlights of our landlord's car. The signs were bilingual, with French and Arabic marching across the green signs in opposite directions, saying - one could assume, one DID assume - the same thing. I was enthralled. The earth that I could see was dry, with occasional patches of a low, tough plant clinging to it. It was different. It felt different. We were on the African continent! I suddenly wondered whether this kindly old man was going to drive us somewhere and rob us. You hear stories... And it would have been easy, now that I was thinking about it. Now I feel stupid to have worried. The guy never stopped giving.

It would be charitable to assume that the people who put together the playlists of pre-flight muzak are pretty sure that you won't be waiting very long to take off. There's something endearing about that kind of optimism, even if it does inspire them - whoever - to assemble a collection of the most mediocre shit ever inflicted upon a captive audience. In the hour and a half we waited, we heard the entire collection. And several encores.


Now we know the words to Louie Austen's "Glamour Girl".

We arrived in Sousse a little before midnight, Tunisian time. (Tunisia and France are in the same time zone, but they don't observe daylight savings time here.) Our host gave us a brief driving tour of the city, pointing out the medina as we passed.

I had been wondering about the medina, and whether we would be able to find it. Whether it blended seamlessly into the surrounding neighborhoods. Whether we would know for sure when we were in it.

We would. It's surrounded by high, ancient walls. Hard to miss. We would explore it more closely on Friday, our first full day in Tunisia.

Our apartment was two blocks from the main street that ran along the Mediterranean. Outside, the street was littered with trash and litters of stray cats. After a few days, we would no longer consider it messy.

In the apartment, Rebecca took a shower and I went downstairs to conclude our business with the landlord; sign contracts, exchange money.

I had been exhausted all afternoon. Two and half hours' sleep last night. I had tried to sleep on the waiting room floor in the airport. Now, as the darkish mass of the North African coast materialized below the airplane, I felt my tiredness slide away. We would be landing soon, and meeting our host. We would be landing on a new continent. I couldn't have slept if I wanted to.

A little after midnight, I fell into bed. It had been a long day. Tomorrow the adventure would begin.

The Eternal Sideways-Slanting Sun

There was a night just recently when a had a series of dreams that melted into one another beautifully and seamlessly without logic, or with logic and without symmetry. There was a dream where I was rushing to correct a scheduling error. They scheduled my vacation for the wrong week! I'm not going to Tunisia next week, but the week after. I need to correct that.

I'm going to Tunisia. Next week. This is exciting.

In another dream, I moved fluidly between Jacksonville and France. In Jacksonville, I was leaning against the driver's side door of my uncle Tom's truck, telling him and my uncle Mark that there was a place in France that made me think of them and everyone back home. Then I remembered the place, and in a flash I was there. Not in a flash... There was no transition. As quickly as I could remember the spot, I was there. Even in my dream I couldn't describe it: A mountainous river-mouth, on which the sunlight shone in eternal sideways-slanted rays - a perpetual dawn, or dusk. Everyone's idea of heaven. A peaceful, meditative vantage point, which in waking life I realize was an idealized portrait of the Gironde Estuary, which is a two minutes' walk from my front door. Windy and grassless in the real world I share with others, in my dream it is a peaceful, grass-covered and breezy place, golden in the light of a perpetual sunset-sunrise.

The rush of emotion, and the strength of the memory, left me nostalgic when Rebecca stirred beside me.

"We could probably turn the heat off," she said.

We. You mean I could, I thought. I didn't say it, but chuckled inwardly, snarkily. Keeping inside the mild chauvinism that likes to dote even as it grumbles about doting. It was a little warm. It was very early in the morning, and I stumbled into the kitchen. I can't believe how strong the memory of that place was. But it doesn't exist. Not as I envisioned it in dreaming. Was I, in a dream, remembering a place I visited in another dream? Or was I wrong about remembering it; did my mind create a feeling of déjà vu ex nihilo, tailor-made for this dream?  

I thought of John Locke, whose work I read in college. I remembered that he thought that what is essential in forming an idea of personal identity is unity of consciousness over time, and that what unites my consciousness today with my consciousness yesterday is memory. I thought about that and I wondered about unity of unconsciousness. Such a strong memory of a place that I could never have been to in real life. I'm not the first person to wonder whether waking life is the dream and dreams are the waking life, but does the fact that my dreams seem connected (sometimes) by memories of other dreams mean that I have, in a Lockean sense, unity of unconsciousness?


Is there a me that goes about my days, and another who dreams, both of whom persist, endure, persevere, whatever in separate spaces in my mind: Two separate, or mostly separate entities, whose paths occasionally cross, who occasionally see through each other's eyes?

I turned off the heat and went back to bed. As I climbed into bed and the bedsprings creaked, Rebecca protested mildly at being awakened. I had a strange thought:

- Hey lady?
- Mmmmm? She hummed, half-asleep.
- Did you just ask me to turn off the heat?
- Mmm... no...
- Oh... I'm going to turn it back on, then.

It was a little cold.

In the morning, I woke up  happy to be in France; missing everyone back home.

Canta Y No Llores/A Free Association Day-in-the-Life

A strange day. In retrospect, a turning point. Don't get too excited... Times we turn just a little bit - the barest hint of a course change, or none at all. Course correction. The head-shake to shake off a three glass drunk. Today, we worry about teeth rotting from the inside, we wonder if we can pay for it; how long we can put off paying for it. We wonder whether and when we went along a path that made us into a man that needs his teeth intact. Whether one day we'll sit witless spouting obscenities by a railway station, forgetting our teeth and remembering every injustice, every blind snubbing of an indifferent... This all sounds very melodramatic. Mine's not a bad mood... it's a thoughtful and weird mood.

Here's why... This morning I woke up at 4 AM thinking about dark oily and toxic clouds bearing down on my state. I thought about the times I've run my fingers at night through the cool Gulf waters to see how the bubbles trailed, glowing, in their wake. I wondered if that will disappear soon. In a few days, I mean. I felt an impotent rush of hatred for people who think we should drill off the shores of my beloved home state. Then I felt a measure of self-loathing; Who am I? I drove a damn truck. Drove anywhere, as often as I liked. Mine was armchair activism. A trust-fund hippie's preaching, all talk no action. Now my state...

Here's also why... There was the conversation with the old lady I tutor:

I:       Tomorrow's the Cinco de Mayo!
She:  The...
I:       The Cinco de Mayo.
She:  The cinq...
- ...de mai, I finished. It's a Mexican Holiday.
-(Surprise) Why do you celebrate the Holiday?
-(Shrugs) There are a lot of Mexicans in the United States, motioning with my hands, silently placing handfuls of Mexicans into an invisible United States in front of me (Hand signals are a trick I picked up teaching foreigners English. It tends to confuse rather than enlighten.).
-(Interest) "That's insteresting, she says, slightly mispronouncing the long words. That you... searching... identify... What do you feel?" She finishes. I didn't quite follow. 
Confusion showed. 
She continued.
-What do you feel, about your nationality? Your origins?
-Oh! Southern. Confusion from her. Southern United States. Like... not SOUTH American, but... in the United States... drawing circles with curled fingers in the air... in the South.
-Ah! So the United States, of course.
-Yes, but... the South.
-Pauses... If you were to ask me... As I am not French... As I am Jewish... As I am from Poland... I would say that I am without origin. I lived in the East with Russian speakers... I can't remember everything she said... And the Germans came, and of course exasperated the problem...

The problem. Of her identity. I remember someone telling me she lost most of her family in the Holocaust. When I think about that I think about how slowly she's moving through The Snows of Kilimanjaro and how studiously she teases meaning - layers of meaning - from every sentence. The slight smirk that she wore without maliciousness when she tied an invisible scarf around her neck, rolling her eyes at the sometimes dandyish dress of French men - A moment of bemused comprehension between immigrants... I feel grateful for that moment. I think of her nimble mind, of her bright interest and the light in her eyes when she grasps a strange twist of English intuitively. I think of how she takes the stairs, asks me "See how sporty I am?", and I wonder that anyone should ever want her dead who did not know her. Then, I suppose, if they knew her it would be more mysterious still. Bigotry thrives for want of experience, and suffocates from seeing too much.

I'm Southern, but I don't know when I'll see the South again. On the first warm day of the year I sat in the park in La Rochelle and told Rebecca about a dream I had where she told me she loved me.


-And I was glad, but also sorry. Sorry that I hadn't told you first. Not because I'm competitive, but because I'd been wanting to say it for a while.


So I told her I loved her. It was a perfect day for it.

Now I'm going to Seattle.

I think I'm inclined to be more sentimental than the lady I tutor is about her past... When she tells her story, and when she tells of the effect it's had on her, it's academic. Interested, dispassionate. Another exegesis, like she's talking again about The Snows of Kiliminjaro. Not as though she doesn't care about it. It's the present that occupies her.

***

Then speaking of the present... Today ended in furious pedaling. In skies streaked in cobalt and violet, and flame-orange. In photographs of a silhouetted tree stump like the dessicated claw of a hand reaching skyward in a dying breath. A sobering memento mori at the end of the day. A day that started in worrying; that added new worries, or the same worries anew.  That ended in sobriety, not worry. That ended in me thinking I should get out more... watch for moments like these with impossible light that drenches everything in sunflower yellow. Fucking beautiful. Thinking I should figure out where my life is going, get my resumé polished.

Then there was the message from David, advising me to take part in "something both ancient and perennial: Lose [my]self in fuck." Then the half-hour trading Forgetting Sarah Marshall references. Fucking beautiful.

Happy Cinco de Mayo.

Part 5: Paris in the Last Moments of 2009

My last day of 2009 was spent largely in forced penitence; in genuflection before a large porcelain urn, into whose depths I consecrated the ashes of my prodigal, penultimate Parisian evening. That all sounds nicer to me than saying that I awoke on the 31st December with la tête de bois, which in turn sounds nicer than hungover, horking, selling Buicks, or any of these, which in their turn sound literary and florid next to the bare reality of the situation, in which I was brought to my knees - retching and sweating, stomach twisting painfully - spitting out tiny amounts of yellowy bile. It took long minutes of painful exertion to produce even that meager yield, and the product never seemed worth the effort. It was New Year's Eve, and I knew that many people would be repeating my experience the following morning. It seemed fitting: The New Year is often symbolically pictured as an infant; What better way, then, for ex-revelers to enter 2010 than curled up helplessly in the fetal position?

All of this is to say that I don't have too much to say about New Year's Eve. I was able to rally for a party that evening where I, chastened by an unpleasant morning, pursued a middle path of moderation. Tant mieux... I remember the party, and next morning was miles more pleasant than the previous one.

But that's not really what I remember about New Year's in Paris.

Two days before the dawn of the New Year, I was in a giant cemetery. On the cusp of a grand and conspicuous beginning I was contemplating a thousand ends, and the monuments those ends inspired. Père Lachaise cemetery is the final resting place of thousands, whose names range from the illustrious (Wilde, Chopin, etc.) to the hilarious (Sextoy), all of whom have a attained a certain kind of immortality, and perhaps the only kind we can hope for. Anyway, to be remembered is good enough, I suppose, though I often wish I could live forever. This I wish because I find that life is precious,

...and never more so than now as we,
my love, in disregard, in hubris, in our youth,
whisper like the wind between the
gaunt, immobile forms of ghosts.

How they must envy us, or would if they could!

"What oppotunities have they, who lay to waste
vast stretches of their days, and wait
for things to come, which come and pass, and they
while tremble-ing debate
both sides - every side - and wait
while chances pass that I would seize
if I were in their place!"

That's how I imagine a ghost would feel, anyway, though I doubt they exist. There's a song by one of my favorite bands, the Dismemberment Plan, which reflects the same sentiment:

"I dishonor the past being so loose with my time.
I could stand accused of high crimes, in the court of the dead."

On the other hand, I start to wonder walking among monuments erected for the likes of Wilde, Balzac, Chopin, etc... Perhaps they know that to waste time, as I do too often, is punishment in itself - though the lesson be ever learned too late. Perhaps they are resting peacefully, glad to be dead, having fully lived their lives. I mean, Jesus: Will I ever learn to approach the conviction of an Heloïse or Abelard, or compose a tune as serene as a Chopin Nocture? I hope I will. But one must learn by doing, and I can't be timid. Anyway, I'll keep you posted.

I offer you, with in-discriminant love and affection, belated well-wishes for your New Year. I hope it has been going well for you, and that it continues to do so. 

That was my vacation in several parts. Thank you, as always, for reading.

Here's Rebecca, with flowers for Chopin. 

Coming soon... something more current...

Part 4: Christmas in the Pyrenees

Here, The Pyrenees: A few feet of serpentine roadway in your headlights, LED display warnings of black ice and yawning occasionally to clear the pressure in your ears. Wryly, think I: Somehow I always wind up driving through areas of breathtaking natural beauty at night. En plein milieu de la nuit. Oh well… now I have to think about finding this place. Call Phillipe, directions, key under mat, get in, heat on, dinner(!), make self at home. My sympathies to you who are stuck behind a Floridian driving in the mountains at night. Make self at home, to bed, wake up and survey the mountains that you can’t see now. I am fully prepared to be dazzled by them. Sharp, young mountains… and snow? I will be dazzled, I’m sure. I’m actually planning on it. Getting my emotions ready beforehand. An outfit I lay out in advance for tomorrow. Church clothes, ironed the night before, ready to wear when you wake up.  

The lights of homes across the valley are floating disembodied through the darkness. The Pyrenees: Patterns on a windshield. Areas of deeper black against the black of the night sky; the succession of peaks is a jagged line that floats upwards and stretches in a smooth fluid motion across my darkened windshield as we get closer to the mountains then pass them by. 

I call Philipe. Hello, sorry. So the place is before, or after, the Carrefour Market? After. Turn around, look for a ski rental place. This place is not exactly hurting for ski rental places. There it is. The sign’s broken… well, why wouldn’t it be? You have a note of world-weariness in your voice that you never earned. Your entire generation has. And now you’re here. The key’s under the mat, and the heaters are already on. 

The kitchen had two tiny burners and no oven; a serviceable, if not well-appointed, kitchen. Making bricks with little clay, Rebecca immediately set about preparing our dinner in that tiny kitchen. Turkey with a mustard sauce, bread, salad. Red wine. Petit Basque cheese. Perfect. I don’t remember dinners, but I’ll remember that one. There's a picture somewhere.

***

I sleep uneasily, and at a certain point I'm done. At six in the morning I'm awake, and I'm turning my head to the window to watch the sky grow light. Just like in the car the night before, mountains loom in the darkness as irresolute patches of a deeper black. In France, the light gathers at a much slower pace than I'm used to back in Florida. Florida is closer to the horizon, further from the center. Like on a bicycle wheel; Florida spins faster than France. The light grows, and I creep quietly around the apartment. We are situated in the middle of a large valley, surrounded by snow-frosted peaks. 

Breakfast was muësli. Muësli, bananas, honey, milk, coffee. Two sugars in mine, half of one in Rebecca's. I feel gratitude. Powerful, overwhelming gratitude. Today, we will drive into town to explore. Haunt the doorway to the pizza place where the one girl holding down the fort will get more and more annoyed with our persistence, but what else are we going to do? Oh, right: Next door for a beer/coffee.

***

We drove around for an hour on Christmas Eve scouring the valley for a small church of gray ancient stone to hear Midnight Mass from an earnest country priest. Finding nothing like that, we ended up at a place we'd hoped to avoid: the Catholic church in St. Lary: an uninspiring, utilitarian structure in a land awash in churches that are monuments to architectural beauty. No organ, no choir: Only a man, his guitar, and his midi backing track. I had been looking forward to Catholic pageantry, but oh well. The priest was a friendly man who heckled us warmly during the ersatz rehearsal thirty minutes before the Mass. Come on, I can't hear you! You call that singing!? Before Mass a friendly heckler, in his robes he was a kind and sober shepherd. As Mass started, Rebecca whispered "happy birthday" to me. Quarter-century. Twenty-five on the twenty-fifth. Golden birthday. I was baptized as a Catholic, but never confirmed, so I slipped out during communion to bring the car around. Walking out into the freezing night, I encountered a man manning a giant vat of hot wine. Yes! I do get wine at church tonight!

On Christmas morning, we exchanged presents. That evening, we tried to skype our families, but with very little signal we had to settle for short calls on our French phones. Later that evening, we made our way to a nearby restaurant, "Le Pic'Assiette". Looking at the menu, I noted that they offered many specialties from the Charente-Maritime départment, where Rebecca and I both lived.

To the friendly proprietress:
- I was wondering... I saw that you offer many Charente specialties here.
- Oh you know the region? Because you don't have a Charente accent! she needled.


As it turns out, the owners come from Île de Ré, an island in the Atlantic connected by bridge to La Rochelle, where Rebecca lives. Small world. I made my father proud that evening by eating everything on my plate, then polishing the plate with the country bread set out for us. The waitress took note. When she returned, and offered my desert to Rebecca, Rebecca pointed to me, and the waitress said "Ah, pour Monsieur le gourmand (Ah, for Mr. Glutton!)!" It took me a moment to interpret, a moment in which I grinned stupidly up at the waitress. Once she left, charming, suave rejoinders occurred to me en masse, but it was too late. It was a great dinner.

***

The next day we took the narrow, winding road that threaded its way through the mountain pass to Loudenvielle, a small town in an adjacent valley. I had met the owner of our apartment through a coworker, and she had told me about a health spa in Loudenvielle called Balnéa. While Rebecca was inside, getting the last of her Christmas presents in the form of a massage, I took the car and found a way up to the small castle we had passed on our way in. This castle was perched next to an old church atop a large hill overlooking a large mountain lake and, at the other end, Loudenvielle. I wandered around for the better part of an hour, snapping photographs. Then, around the time when Rebecca was supposed to finish, I left, vowing to return in a few minutes with a human subject for my pictures. I mean, I left vowing to bring Rebecca back to show her the beautiful view. In the pouring rain.

A few minutes later, we were back in the car. I was happy with the picture I'd taken, and as we passed the large crucifix standing against a backdrop of incredible mountain scenery, I thought of my Aunt Jan, my mother, my Aunt Donna... all people of deep and profound religious faith. I can't honestly claim to share their faith anymore, but passing that crucifix, I thought back fondly on my churchgoing days, remembering the lessons, the stories, and about how faith - despite some of its crazed and evil spokespeople, despite some of its intolerance and excess - can be an exaltation of the the good in humanity. I drove away in a faint glow of something like faith. I murmured a soft prayer, telling God I didn't know if he existed, but thank you if this is all your doing. A few minutes later, I would expend all of this spiritual capital when a dog ran out to intercept my car.

"AAHH! GODDAMMIT!" I said, braking and fumbling for the horn.

- Stupid fucking dog, I said. I should've smacked him with my door.

- Yeah, he needs to know not to run out in front of you.

- Oh God... it's snowing.

We were climbing back up the narrow road that we had come in on. The snow was falling more thickly now, and I was white-knuckling the steering wheel. Our fuel was on empty, and I was burning more of it than usual to climb the steep sides of the mountain. As we climbed higher, snow covered the road completely. There was no guardrail, and only a narrow shoulder (we're talking inches) separated our wheels from a precipitous drop. Everything past a few feet was veiled in a thick curtain of snow. I was nervous, trying to make myself think that if I died right now it was okay. Heights are not something I'm used to.

- We have to get to the summit before we run out of gas. Once we get to the summit, we can just coast. Rebecca agreed. She did not seem as nervous as I felt.

We made one wrong turn on the way up. Backtracking, I was even more worried about running out of gas, and now slightly annoyed: This road is straight, with no forks whatsoever apart from the one where I'd gone the wrong way. Ended up at a damn ski lodge. No gasoline pumps. Finally, we reached the summit, and began a long, nerve-wracking decent. The LED screen warned of black ice, and I rode the brakes the whole way down. Finally, when we got to a point where the snow turned to rain, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was all downhill, so to speak, from there. I was determined to break into one of my Christmas/birthday presents when I got back to the apartment: Rebecca, very thoughtfully, had given me a small bottle of cognac.

***

The next morning, we were sorry to leave. We got up early, only to find that the car was covered in a thick coat of ice. The snow that had avoided our little apartment for the entire week arrived on our last morning, and the field next to us lay beneath a thin blanket of it. There was a lot to do before we left, and we had to get the car back on time, or pay for an extra day. So...turn the heat to the suitcase setting... out with the recycling, trash out, key under mat, lights off. I had to climb in through the back door of the car - the only door on which I could break the seal of ice.

As we left the Pyrenees, we had a chance to see what we missed when we came in a few days ago. On the radio, Joe Cocker wondered whether I was glad I had nothing to say and nowhere to pray, but then conceded that it was my business now. We joined the autoroute connecting Pau to Toulouse. On our right, the Pyrenees slowly receded as we traveled gradually Northward. 

Please check out this site for more pictures from the trip.

Coming soon: Paris! Then I'm done with the Vacation! Thank you for your patience.

Part 3: Remembering to be an asshole

I have to keep reminding myself to be an asshole.

Thank God for stop-and-go traffic. Something to cut your teeth on. Approaching the cluster of merging cars, I put the car into second, very consciously. It's been a little while. Both for the car-driving and for the manual transmission. So far so good though; no stalls. I am confidence. What was I nervous about?  So far, I had only ever ridden as a passenger in cars in France. Or, as a pedestrian, almost been killed by cars in France. French people seem to drive like they walk - step first, look later. Or maybe just more aggressively than in the United States. Like a high schooler; Brand new license ...in public, French people seem to move so... myopically? Aggressively? It's a mystery to me that I don't see people on the sidewalk run into each other more often. Two people, walking toward each other, not acknowledging each other, not willing to adjust course... and then just bump into each other. Then awkwardly shuffle past. A tiny, bizarre moment then move on.

When Americans drive like that, I think they are assholes. Not in general - just on the road.

***

I grin closed-mouthedly over at Rebecca. It's a road trip. We're moving, and I say where and how fast. What freedom means. I really do love public transportation, but... Maybe I'll tell Rebecca that.

"I really do love public transport, but..." Inhaling for effect.

About two hours earlier we had left Jonah's apartment trailing all our luggage and a bag of recycling. Doing our part. We stepped out into the rain and turned right, hugging the awningless buildings for cover. With no wind the rain was falling straight down, and we were getting soaked. I saw the squat, half-dome shaped recycling containers across the street, and coming to a crosswalk I glanced up at the signal to see if the green man symbol was illuminated. It was not... I plodded on. There was sure to be a place to unload the recycling before we got on the tram.

***

I can't remember what it's like to ride a tram in Bordeaux without being minutes from missing whatever it is I'm trying to catch. Teeth gritted, jaw muscles twitching. Fists clenched and unclenched. Curse words muttered, muted; Rushed, harried. Stressed. I'm not used to being so stressed, and I'm silently holding it against my guileless fellow passengers. Where are YOU trying to go? I'm in a hurry here! You... possessed of neither so important a destination as mine, nor so dire a need to arrive there quickly! 

***

We spilled out of the tram dragging our luggage and the recycling through the sea of people behind us. It was time to talk strategy. I'm really hoping that this card will work. If not... Dramatic ellipses. Or a phone call to my bank. But that would involve speaking French, which is apparently(?) not something I came to this country, this France, to do. Rebecca hitches up her gigantic backpack, and I grab the suitcase.

***

- Oui.... eu... j'ai un reservation sous le nom de Boyette.

- nD'accord... Looking... looking.... Oui, Mr. Boyette. First sigh of relief, don't overdo it: I still don't know if the card will work.

- Pourriez-vous me donner votre carte bancaire pour que je puisse verifier qu'elle va bien marcher? Here goes.

In what seems like seconds, the clerk returns my bank card, and hands me the keys to the car and my rental contract. Rebecca and I thank her, exit the building, and take our luggage (and the recycling) out to the parking lot. I reach the car first, then turned to look at Rebecca with exaggerated bemusement. Like I was wearily looking "to camera". Like Jim on The Office.

- We got a soccer-mom car, I said. Bemusedly. She didn't hear me.

- What's wrong, does the key not work?

- Oh no, it wor... well, I think so. I hastily pressed the button, and the locks clicked.

- Oh, well, what's wrong? She: Slightly annoyed by the delay for dramatic bemusement in the pouring rain.

- Nothing's wrong. Weirdo.

We threw our bags in the trunk. I stood for a moment, irresolute, grasping the recycling bag. I went to put it in the truck, then stopped. I shut the trunk. We are not bringing this fkn thing with us.

Back across the station.

- So, we need a map, and we need to get some food.

- Are you going to get your Prince cookies? Rebecca teases.

- No, I say, witheringly. Lip-curlingly. The tiny newsstand is packed.

- Can I have that map of France, s'il vous plaît? I looked to my left. The lady behind me was stretching her hand full of euro bills toward the counter.

- Ma'am, I can't reach you; you'll have to wait a moment.

- Well, I can't get any closer because there's a sac down here, she fumes. Looking down, I see the offending sac: My bag of recyclables. Gently I nudge it farther along.

- I'm sorry sir, we can't use a card for purchases of less than five euros. Looking... looking... I need something to make up the difference. My eyes alight on a pack of Prince cookies. Sighing, I reach for it.

- Et cela aussi. This too.

***

Before we left for good, I had to pull the car around to a garage so that the technician could give it a good looking-over. We walked around the car, and then he glanced over my contract. Pointing to a part of it, he went over something very important, in very serious tones.

- ....Do you understand? he finished.

- Oui, tout à fait. Yes, totally.

- What did he say about the contract? Rebecca asked as I climbed into the car.

- I'm not sure.

***

French for "detour" is détour. French for "France by car" is labyrinthe.

***

Having a car for those four days never got old, and it was exhilarating at the very beginning. I kept grinning and glancing over at Rebecca. Then, turning my eyes dutifully back to the road, I piloted the vehicle gingerly yet confidently. I was stoked. There was more to it than just the feeling of freedom. There was another feeling. Contentment. A domestic feeling; In a safe, practical car. It was easy for me to forget the month-ends spent flirting with poverty and ruin. At the start of our drive, I felt... responsible, and mature. Like this was my car, which I'd earned through some successful - though indeterminate - activity. I was a successful twenty-something without having gone through the trouble of being a success. That was my life for four days. Feeling mature, domestic, successful. A rental identity. Rental car, rental feeling.

***

As it turns out, the French are good drivers. At least, they're no better or worse than Americans. Still, as I maneuvered onto the motorway, I clung to my preconceptions of how to survive as a driver in France.

"I have to keep reminding myself to be an asshole," I told Rebecca.

Then again, as someone who indulges as freely as I do in stereotypes about French people, and their driving habits, perhaps it was mere self-flattery to think that I needed any reminding.

Here's our car, and Rebecca, in the mountains:

Next Part: The Pyrhenees!

Vacation Part 2: Bergerac, and the Ballet

Benji saw me whisper to Rebecca, and saw her laugh indulgently.

"What was the joke?" he asked.

"Oh..." Eyes turned to me. I didn't really want to tell it. If I refused, of course, they would insist and thus, exalt the joke. Then it would be a disappointment when I finally did tell it.

"Je ne sais pas la dire en francais..." I pleaded.

"That's okay, say it in English." I wondered if Benji was actually British. He wasn't. His accent was. I told the joke. What happened to the cannibal that was late for dinner. Baptiste translated the joke into French for the rest of the party, then translated the chorus of "quoi?" back into English for me.

"He got the cold shoulder."

Translation. Explanation. English expression meaning battre froid à quelqu'un. Or maybe tenir à l'écart. Also a cut of meat.

Baptiste is a friend that I met through a mutual friend. Rebecca and I are staying with him in Bergerac for a few days before we take off for the Pyrenees. We will see him again in Paris. Tall. Dreadlocked. Music enthusiast and avid reader. And excellent cook. I am still picking errant bits of duck out of the greasy pan. This is rapidly becoming gross; the pan is cooling and the grease is beginning to... the only honest word is "congeal." I am struggling vainly to follow the threads of conversation around the table. From the general hum themes emerge now and then and I understand them, well enough to comment on them. But by the time I've worked out the grammar, I've been distracted by another conversation, and the first conversation has sunk back in. Disappeared. Seamless, drop of water in a puddle. Every so often, someone gets the attention of the rest of the dinner party and tells a joke. We are fourteen at a tiny table. The guests vastly outnumber the wine glasses. We pour our wine into any old cup, heedless; the bold and unconventional. Emancipated. Some people worry about wine glasses. We do not.

After dinner, Baptiste and I will grab a ukulele or a guitar and learn "Take Me Home, Country Road." It takes every one of the four chords I know on the ukulele. We play country songs from O Brother Where Art Thou. We try to play the George Brassens songs I promised I'd learn but haven't quite yet. We don't play a lot, because this isn't that kind of night.

Baptiste offers to show us around the Christmas Market tomorrow. Vegan food. Organic food. Local beer producer... your beer handed to you by the man who brewed it. Je suis producteur. On est producteur. Hot wine. Strange, loquacious man selling vegan food. Should've sat elsewhere, because the aforementioned will not shut up. "Don't talk while you're eating!" It's my life, man, and your food is... well it's okay. Stinging nettle soup. Artisanal soap. Man chipping flint into arrowheads, making fire. Bookshop, back home. Singing in the Rain tomorrow evening.

We agree to the Christmas Market, and to things we do not yet know about - it's your town, we'll follow you. Then we descend to our basement guest room. The space heater works. Tant mieux; In spite of the sunshine today there are still pockets of snow clinging to shadowy patches outside. We'll have to change places in the night when one of us gets too hot.

I must have heard a round dozen or so jokes in French tonight. I can't remember a single one of them.

***

Our last day in Bergerac was spent almost entirely in one of Baptiste's favorite restaurants: The Bodega. Spanish style food. Rebecca and I shared a tapas plate. Then the main course. Washed down with Sangre del Torro. Out on the front porch under the awning. The rain... pleasant when it doesn't make you wet.

After lunch, we went inside for coffee. Baptiste disappeared for a few minutes, then reappeared with a deck of cards. We played a game (the name escapes me) in which you place cards on top of other cards, looking for a... repetition of some kind... when you see it, you slap your hand down on the deck. I don't really remember. I won a couple of times. I don't usually do well with fast-thinking and observing sorts of games. I was the President. That was part of the game. President, Vice-President.

After the card game, when we still had over an hour to kill, Baptiste and his cousine showed us card tricks.

On the way back to the station, we stopped by Benji's residence, a house that he is restoring. Beautiful, and old. God knows how old. It's like that with a lot of things in France. We walk inside. There's a wide doorway leading to a living room on the left and a stairway on the right. Ben leads us back to what must be a den of some kind, where he's laid out a makeshift bed on the floor. There's an overgrown garden behind the house; this will be tilled, groomed, replanted. We retrace our steps and climb the stairs. At the top of the stairs, we saw a large room filled with bookcases filled with books. Then, up a narrow spiral stair to the attic. He'll completely redo this whole area. Talking and motioning with his hands, he levels walls, installs doors, raises handrails. Interesting guy, Ben. An artist. His work is stacked against the walls of a sunlit upstairs room. Salt and pepper hair. His face still seems young. Sharp eyes. Always seem to be observing the scene from just above or beyond it. And perfect English, I'm sure I've already mentioned. At the party two days ago, he observed:

"The cat never eats the dog's food, but as soon as the dog arrived he immediately ate all of her food. Dogs are quite ecumenical in that way."

That's an example. Not everyone uses the word ecumenical, and to use it to say that a dog will eat anything was a stroke of brilliance, I thought.

***

For the second time in almost as few days, I found myself on the tram in Bordeaux, drumming on the vertical aluminum handles, with very limited time to get to where I needed to go and do what I needed to do. Arrive. Get to Jonah's. Upstairs, shower? (probably no time), change, walk over.

We were going to see Swan Lake. I knew the music - everyone does - but I had never seen a full ballet before. I have wondered, a few times on this trip, to find myself enjoying things that I might not have even thought much about a few months earlier. Wine is one of these things. I have opinions about wine now. I wonder if my new taste for wine is anything to do with Rebecca. The timing is, I can't argue... suspicious. Let see, how long have I liked wine? A few months... and when did I meet Rebecca? Oh well... I like to think that I'm open to new experiences. That's why I'm here, after all. In France. In Europe. At the ballet tonight. In my new outfit.

I had been genuinely surprised, a few days ago, to discover that old, loose-fitting jeans and graying tennis shoes were not considered appropriate opera-wear. I think Rebecca finds my lack of polish and savoir-faire amusing... cute, maybe? This is what I hope, anyway. God you're beautiful, I thought, standing in front a mirror. I called to Rebecca in the other room, apologizing for looking so good, for raising the bar so high. I needn't have bothered. When she stepped into the room, many thoughts occurred to me, each one sounding more stilted than the rest. "Picture of elegance": True. Lame-sounding. You look beautiful, I told her reverently. She did.

"Deux billets, s'il vous plaît."

Apparently, this request did not plaît: The woman behind the counter attended to us with thin-lipped impatience before stepping away and leaving us at the counter. I looked around, theatrically confused, until another, much sweeter, clerk motioned us over and sold us tickets for the best seats she could manage to find us. Then, stepping into the hall, we bought a program and went to find our seats.

There's no point in trying to describe the beauty of the ballet that evening. Part of the reason is that we only saw half of it. Next time, better seats. Tickets in advance. Still, what we saw and heard left my chest aching dully. At intermission, the woman next to us asked us if we were English. We told her we were American, and she told us that she has a son in America. Had married an American girl. She told us she had left her husband and little niece behind to see tonight's show. Wanted to see the ballet, those philistines of a niece and a husband be damned! Later, as we sat in a nearby restaurant called the Bodega (second of the day if you're counting), Rebecca confided that she wanted to be just like that old lady, and go to ballets and things even if her husband didn't feel like it.

"So what did you think of the ballet?" She asked.

"I... I liked it." (Much more than that, but talking about it wouldn't add anything to it. It was beautiful.)

We sat in the noisy bar, thinking about the show, humming the themes. There is a beautiful kind of solitude in disappearing into a noisy bar. In my memory our high, round table was an island -  peaceful, isolated - in a sea of the self-absorbed and raucous. Our thoughts were still on the spectacle we had just left; we were savoring the aftertaste and enjoying each other's company. Around us people were shouting jokes, trying to be the last to say something apt or witty or intelligent about whatever topic. I looked at Rebecca, and did not tell her I thought she was beautiful. You tell her too much, it probably doesn't mean much anymore.

"I liked it," I finished.

Rebecca, in front of the Grand Théâtre, where we saw Swan Lake.

Soon... Part 3: The Pyrenees

The Vacation, First Part

The afternoon before I was set to depart on a two-week vacation, I stood anxiously before the ATM at my bank, Credit Agricole, awaiting my receipt and holding my breath. I was down to ten euros and a generous Christmas gift from my mother, which was currently unavailable; seeping through the regulatory maze of two different banks, in two different countries, in two different languages. And after a week of trying to shepherd my mom’s generous Christmas stipend across this electronic frontier, I had the impression of trying to bottle molasses, or that someone, somewhere was counting my money with stiff, cold fingers.

With the burst of the mechanical chatter that printers make, the white slip appeared. I extended a furtive hand, flipped over the receipt, and knew my fate: Salvation.

Hallelujah! The money had made it!

God, the relief. I had left myself no other recourse than to “somehow get money before tomorrow”. Now I could get through the first two stages of my winter travels. Stage three… well, I had a few days before I needed to worry about that. I set out to give my last English lesson before the Holidays, sobered by my recent poverty and determined to exercise good money management from now on. Thriftiness… that’s who I was. My father was thrifty, my grandfather was thrifty… Now I would don the mantle, take up the torch… I walked through town, passing with studied indifference the shops that sell my favorite things, with the contentment and self-assurance of a man who knew who he was; who had taken control of his destiny.

It was going to be a good vacation, but a modest one.

A month later, I’m broke again. I’m asking God for a second chance, and I know that this time I can really manage my money. Now I know my weaknesses. I can do better. For now, however, there’s nothing to do but make do; to spend with care the little I have left in my bank account, supplemented on a weekly basis with the money I manage to raise teaching English on the side. I look back ruefully on the profligacy of the holidays; on trains, rental cars, apartments, ballet, wine and cheese courses... I lived better than I really could, but I don’t regret it too much. I lived a hundred days in ten. It was a beautiful vacation.

Here are a few scenes from it:

Bordeaux: Part 1

“Do you want to wait here while I go check on the rental car situation?” I asked Rebecca.

She nodded and took a seat in the waiting room. Her expression was neutral, the stoic mask of someone who was in a truly bad mood. So was I. It was understandable. The train was over three hours late, and she had spent three hours in a poorly heated train station. Then, on the train, she had learned that the cause for the delay was a chevreuil… which is, well…

“I think it’s a deer,” Rebecca had said. She tried to confirm this with another passenger on the train, but his English was not perfect. The final translation came out as something like “It’s a like a goat, but with… (he mimed a set of antlers with his hands).” Rebecca was still pretty sure it was a deer.

“Worst case scenario,” I added, “the train hit the deer. How does that take three hours?” The frustrating afternoon had eroded most of my humanity.

I went to check on the rental car. I had waited too late to reserve one online, and I was now in a panic. Could I reserve a car? Would the prices have gone up?  At the desk, I told the gentleman I would like to reserve a car for next week, from the twenty-third to the twenty-seventh. After a few staccato bursts on his keyboard, he sat back to await the results of the search.

- I’m sorry, we don’t have anymore cars at the price you were quoted.

- Oh…well, do you…

- Let me check the next price level up…

- Oui.

- Okay, we do have some cars at the next price level.

- Oui…

- Let me check the prices.

- Oui.

- Okay, we have this one for ___________.

- So… a difference of three euros?

- Oui.

- Okay, um… oui. I’ll… I’ll do that.

He handed me a slip of paper with a reservation number on it, and I crossed beneath the station and rejoined Rebecca, grateful for the good news I was bringing. In writing, no less. Good news you could touch. We bought our tickets and boarded the tram just outside the station. Destination: Quinconces.

****

Less than half an hour after we boarded the tram at the train station, we rolled to a stop at the Place de Quinconces. I flashed our still-virgin tickets to Rebecca triumphantly – we can reuse these babies later! (After you board the tram in Bordeaux, you are required to insert your tickets into a machine aboard the tram that time-stamps them – this rule is not always respected, and it’s rarely enforced. However, if you get caught without “composted” tickets, the fine is pretty heavy – at least $50.) With bags in tow, we set off across the Place.

I had been living in France for about a year by this time and, gun to my head, the biggest difference between the two countries is not language, architecture, nor anything tangible, but rather a general impression of history. It is a country that is much more connected to the past than the country in which I grew up (up in which I grew?). In La Rochelle, there is an apartment in which the windowpanes were installed before the founding of my country. In Saintes, where I lived last year, there are the remnants of an ancient Roman civilization that was founded during the lifetime of Jesus Christ. Antiquities that boggle my American mind are the trappings of daily life for the average Frenchman. Just the names of the streets and squares in France represent an incredibly rich history unto themselves.

I had arrived at the Place de Quinconces many times, and I had always wondered at the name. Who were the Quinconces, anyway? A group of resistance fighters in WWII? Victims of Robespierre and his Reign of Terror? An ancient Roman religious order?

Turns out, a quinconce is a geometric pattern. The 5-piece in dominoes: That’s a quinconce. That’s how the trees on the Place de Quinconces were arranged, hence the name. Goddammit.

Either way, it’s a beautiful square, one that occupies the space once occupied by the twice-built, twice-destroyed Château Trompette. On the side facing the river are two pillars; at the other end, a statue commemorating the Girondins. In the middle is a lot of empty space, and the Place often plays host to enormous flea markets, antique markets, carnivals, etc. This time, in the middle of the Place was…

“…a reptile exhibit? That should be interesting in the winter.” I sneered, remembering that cold-blooded animals tend to be pretty sedentary when it’s cold out.

The wheels on my suitcase sunk into the white clay mud of the Place as we trudged along cutting across the western corner, toward the statue. My friend Jonah’s apartment lay just beyond, and it was with Jonah and his girlfriend Allison that we would be staying this weekend.

“These statues were actually almost destroyed in World War II,” I told Rebecca, “to make bullets.” As we walked along, I rattled off every piece of information that came into my head on the subject of Bordeaux, a free-association of barely-relatable factoids. In case she had forgotten, I had been here sooo many times.

“Lots of monuments were lost that way in World War Two… And speaking of lost things, there used to be a castle here… I think Napoleon destroyed it, maybe… Oh, and speaking of Napoleon, there’s a bridge that you can’t possibly see from here, and he had it built…And now we’re approaching Jonah’s apartment, which, if memory serves, is number 11… yes, now I’m sure that was it, and if I’m correct, the keys should be… yes! Alright, we’re golden… there’s a golden statue on top of Pey Berland tower, we’ll see it from Jonah’s window…”

****

On one of my last nights in Bordeaux before I went home for the summer, Jonah had paid for the first round in what turned out to be a one-round evening at the bar. Now, months later as we walked into a local wine bar, I was determined to pay the tab. The bar had just opened, but the hostess looked mildly surprised to have clients already (another gun to my head, a huge difference between the New World and the Old is that people seem to start their evenings much later over here…). Rebecca stepped up to the bar, and asked…

“Are you open?”

The bar tender seemed taken aback for a moment, then coyly responded “Why yes, I’m open!” Wink, wink.

“Oh là là!” exclaimed Rebecca. I was puzzled by the reaction. She had used the “vous” form, of course, which can be used to address either a group (“Are y’all open?” in my part of the USA) or a single person to whom you would like to be polite. Hence the confusion, I guess, although I had asked a thousand people, men and women, if they were open… now I’m wondering…

We chose a wine from the Côte de Blaye, which is near to Bordeaux. It’s also near to where I live, so I’m kind of proud of it. (Like any good Frenchman, I have a proprietary love for the things from my adopted region, which is Charente-Maritime. Of course, I am not a Frenchman, good or otherwise; my pride is a poseur’s desperate plea for legitimacy and sophistication. Oh well. I am as God made me, as they say, and I suppose it does no harm.) I swirled the wine around the glass, raised it to my face and inhaled deeply. Then, after holding the glass up to the light to check its color – it was, I can report with full confidence, “red” - I raised it to my lips and took a sip, swishing it around my mouth. Taking in a small amount of air, I swallowed, and gave the wine taster’s nod – a modest display of approval, carefully calibrated to avoid showing too much enthusiasm. It’s a carefully jaded culture, that of the wine connoisseur.

“No one ever sends it back… have you noticed that?” I asked, after we had each filled our glasses. “I mean, they always nod…”

“Well, you’re the one who ordered it. It’s your fault if you ordered a bad wine; you wouldn’t really send it back unless it was corked.” Rebecca replied.

There was no need to send this one back; It was a nice, woody red wine that splashed against our palates with the mild bite for which wines from that region are known. I tried feebly to analyze the taste, wondering vaguely when I even started caring about wine. The bar was warm against the winter chill, and I felt satisfied. It was a good start.

Coming soon… Part 2: Bergerac