The View from Inside My Bed

The view from my bed

The last three weeks have been spent mostly horizontal, though I couldn't keep from taking a few pictures while at that angle. I was laid low by a nasty, northern California flu. No it was not of the swine variety -- at least my canine teeth didn't turn into tusks, nor my nose into a snout and my tail did not visibly curl... I tried all of my battery of natural remedies (homeopathic drops for "grippe", cats claw pills, elderberry syrup and echinacea drops for stronger immune response, "Breathe Easy" tea with licorice as well as cherry bark/slippery elm syrup for cough, chiropractic adjustment for displaced rib due to coughing...). What finally kicked it, in addition to the passage of resting time, was two acupuncture treatments and chinese herbs, 3x a day in warm water before meals.

Melting Bhudda Pond

Backyard Bed

The weather in the first couple of weeks was warm and sunny. It was hard to be shut up in the house all day, every day, especially with my garden calling to me through the windows. In need of sun warmth and vitamin D production, I moved my sick bed out to the garden on a couple of afternoons to the dappled shade just beyond Melting Buddha Pond.

Movie Therapy

I practiced extensive "movie therapy" in the afternoons and evenings to keep me horizontal and stationary on the comfy green couch under the afghan. Old movies work best, with Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Judy Holiday, Gene Kelly, Doris Day...and the like. Or newer movies with the "feel good" factor -- "As Good As It Gets", "Cider House Rules", "Awakenings", "Cinema Paradisio", "Il Postino", "While You Were Sleeping", "Sleepless in Seattle"... I ran through my extensive VCR collection and had to go out for a few more from Goodwill there at the end.

Sunset across the street

The sun sets around 8:30 pm these days. From the couch I had a front row seat as slanting sun rays burnished the spectacular hedge of roses at my friends R & F's house.


I succumbed to the flu on May 29. I told Toby, the acupuncturist/herbal doctor, that I had to be up on my feet by no later than June 8 for rehearsal for the reading that my writers group had especially scheduled for June 9th so that I could participate. I made it just in the nick of time, and a grand reading it was by one and all!

I've been walking around the garden while I drink my healing herbs in the morning and afternoon, acknowledging the plants while receiving recognition from them in return, planting and picking herbs and bouquets of flowers to bring into the house.


Back in the pink 'o' health.

Bisous,
N2

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-Jog

Oui, I agree, it has been too quiet here on the blogside while I have been in transition…

First I had to finish up my projets de la maison rue Ferlus so that it is ready for R&C to have a sunny honeymoon here at the end of July – my first renters!  I am convinced they will like it here as much as I do – the village, the food at the Revel market, our Sorezian bakeries, lac St Ferreol just up the hill for swimming and boating, walks and bike rides into the countryside, the fascinating history of the region, the Mediterranean sea or the Pyrennes mountains just a little over an hour a way…  I could go on, but then I might start a landslide of visitors. (I’ll add a photo mosaic of the house soon.)

I had M, D and G over for one more dinner (roast pork loin with shitake mushroom sauce, parsleyed noodles, salad with goat cheese and roasted beets…), took two more walks around town with my camera, slept fewer hours than needed and then scooted with G to the Toulouse airport to leave for Paris Orly.

I met my dear friend S in Paris for Cecilia Woloch’s Paris Poetry Workshop.  We stayed in the 03eme (3^rd arrondisement) of le Marais in one of Parler Paris’ furnished apartments – tastefully renovated and on a quiet back street.  We had a talented, supportive group of poets with us in the workshop. Cecilia and her crew of Expat Lady Poets, Heather Hartley, Jenny Huxta and Jennifer K Dick, had us exploring and writing morning, noon and night.
We even made a daytrip to Burgundy on the train where we were lulled by a walk through the quiet village, regaled with the writing of Jeffrey Greene and the cooking of his mother, Gretchen at their 18^th century presbytery in Rogny-des-Sept-Écluses (a village with an ancient system of seven locks built in the 17^th century).

The last writing event was a reading by all of the workshop poets along with Jenny Huxta of new and existing work at Shakespeare & Company bookstore on the left bank.  We walked across the Isle St Louis in sublime sunset light to have a celebratory dinner at a long table in the upstairs room of restaurant Au Chien Qui Fume (metro Chatelet) – really good food in really good company.

After an arduous day of travel (20 hours door to door, Paris=>Chicago=>San Francisco =0@...), I spent some time in the city with the Son and his smart and lovely Wife and then made my way to the little town in Sonoma county we call “the Burg”.  A bounty of flowers and friendship awaited me – D, C and R had made my little blue house very welcoming and a Scramble of Eggs arrived for our writers group meeting around dinner time with food in hand.

Home again on this side.  Gotta’ go, I hear the garden calling me to come out and jiggety-jog among the flowers.

Bisous,

N2

 

Happy Muguet des Bois Day!

M told me today, when I took her this bouquet of muguet (moo-zhay--lily of the valley) that it all started in the USA with a May 1st (1886) strike for the eight-hour day. A few years later, the Socialist International designated May 1st as a special day for demonstrations.  

In 1941 the French Vichy government made May 1 a day on which workers could stay home and still be paid. The French created Mother's day at the same time, to celebrate, peut-être, those who stay home and are not paid.  

In the US, the first Labor Day was celebrated in 1882 on September 5, and it has remained in September ever since.  The British have their Labor Day not on May 1, but the first Monday in May.

In France, May 1 is also La Fête du Muguet and a bouquet of lily-of-the-valley is given to friends and family in celebration of Spring and for good luck.  Consider this virtual bouquet of muguet my Spring wish for good luck to all of you.

Bisous,

N2

Gospel avec Meester Blaiz

Soreze entertainment on a wet and cold Sunday that shoulda’ been warm in late April, is a Gospel show at Notre Dame de la Paix, the parish church.  A musical style “couleur blues jazz” has been promised and G and I take my friend N, in town from California out to see the show and meet M and D there with their visitors over from Wales.

The local dentist, who wears a Captain Ahab beard, but in a friendly way, greets us as we rush up the steps to the open church door saying “Bienvenue, beaucoup de chaises.”  (Welcome, plenty of chairs.) We pay and take the third pew on the right.  By 8:45 pm, we figure that they have waited past the 8:30 pm start time for a better crowd, but kindly Ahab announces that Meester Blaiz is en route from Ville Franche and will arrive dans quelque minutes.

Mister Blaiz arrives before we are too cold in the unheated church, sits at the electric organ in front of the altar steps and begins singing his way through le repetoire of gospel traditionals with his partner Naoële.  His singing and playing are a little hard to hear in the space but Naoële’s voice is great, once she cuts loose on “Jericho”. 

 Notre Dame is getting quite chilly. We snuggle together on the pew under N’s serape and one woman in the front row wraps her scarf up over her nose.  We begin to get a bit concerned, there are 36 songs listed on the back of the program and they have started by singing 1-7 in order… broken only by Meester Blaiz asking us to “Eemageen” that Gospel is the answer to the problems of the world and to imagine several other things that I don't quite catch.

I hear N and G in whispered discourse:

I’m counting the people.

I already have.

Seventy-two.

That includes him.

I am transfixed by the uncanny resemblance of what I have decided are mother and transvestite son ahead of me to the right – both have short brown hair, identical brown skirts and tops and one small gold hoop earring, but I am sure the younger once had a beard on that strong jaw.

 Nobody Knows"

By the time I am making note that the main altar Christ has been nailed behind the wrist, not through the palms like the Christ on the side altar crucifix, it is clear that we outlanders, at least, are suffering from expectations not aligned with those of Mister Blaiz. 

I’ve taken the opportunity to read the program -- “Mister Blaiz chante l’espoir” – Good, he has hope in common with President Obama. “He is traveling France and the rest of the world to galvanize those who doubt, who have fear and who suffer…”  I translate just in time.  I was feeling the urge to stand and shout out “Shut up and sing!”

G and N conspire:

I could faint.

Oh, no, don’t do that.

Then you two would have to help me out…

I am down to analyzing the relative breast sizes in the paintings and statues of Mary during “Rock My Soul” even while joining my voice to Naoële’s when she croons soaring notes.  The unrepentants in the last pews refuse to be drawn in.  Downcast eyes are checking watches.  D's eyes, rolled heavenward in the pew across the aisle, are not seeking the lord above but looking for corroboration of “Good lord when will he be done?!”

We rise with the others at the terminus of the third version of “When the Saints” and it is not to rhythmically signal approval or a desire for more, but to use the cover to duck and run for the exit.  “Let My People Go”, indeed.

A+

N2

The Urge to Create (L'envie pour créer)

I was reading at  The View from Inside My Head blog  this evening, where Peter was saying "I need to make things and if I don't that need grows and niggles at me until I do." I know that is certainly true of me, too. 

Here in Soreze, I have been partly filling that need with blogging =o). Taking the pictures for the blog has gotten me out and about the village and beyond with my little digital camera in hand. Once pictures are dumped to computer there's a need to view, maybe to tweak, then upload to ye blogge and work at trying to get some layout of picture with words...

Cooking has long filled the "need to create urge" from a period in my life when there was neither time nor material to create in other ways. The habit of constructing an eye-pleasing and tasty salad learned during that time is almost more filling than the eating of the salad once it is done.  Making soup broth from leftover bones and vegetable scraps is a useful creative urge to have in these lean times.

The proposal at The View from Inside My Head is to post the "Make Something" challenge and see what happens, so here goes . . . . I will make something and pass it on to the first five people that comment on this post and agree to the following -

1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make. Whatcha get is whatcha get.

2. What I create will be just for you, with love.

3. It'll be done this year (2009).

4. I will not give you any clue what it's going to be. It will be something made in the real world and not something cyber. It may be weird or beautiful. Or it may be monstrous and annoying. Heck, I might bake something for you and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!

5. I reserve the right to do something different.

6. In return, all you need to do is:

7. Post this text on your blog and make 5 things for the first 5 to respond.

8. Send your mailing address - after I contact you.

Bisous,

N2

Easter, Eastre, Eostre

The moon stared down on the village Wednesday night and whipped up a fury of wind that scoured stone houses and rattled the plane trees.

When I went out for a breath of fresh air Maundy Thursday evening, Notre Dame beckoned me with open doors. I stood at the back of the church, outside the circle of worshippers, making only the mystery of the incense mine, preferring the celebration of Eastre, the mother goddess of fertility, spring and renewed life.

It was a wet market on Saturday, but a lively one, especially sous le couvert de la salle de marché médiéval (under the cover of the medieval market hall). Everyone was shopping for the Easter Sunday meal and catching up with friends and family come to town for the holiday. G introduced me to a new café on the square in which to have a warm and welcome grand café crème indoors.

Catching up with the Tartlette blog on Saturday evening, I found a lovely recipe for Pavlova with lemon curd and berries. I had just picked up a basket of fraises Gariguette (small local strawberries) and some fresh eggs at the market...I had a lovely new teapot I wanted to show off. I decided to make a treat and invite G, M and D for Easter tea!

I joined the last minute shoppers at the Utile around the corner and picked up lemons for the curd. I hand whisked the egg whites with the sugar while listening to Prairie Home Companion (April 4th with Wynton Marsalis and his Quintet) over the internet -- as is often my Saturday night habit.

I couldn't manage the height or stiffness of peak which the ladies at Tartlette seem to easily achieve with their cuisine-arts, but the crunchy on the outside/marshmallowy in the center Pavlova Pancake, (as I dubbed it) with tart curd and tasty berries gave delicious layers of transmogrified egg nuance to our Eostre tea party.

Quite fitting for a holiday that has undergone considerable shapeshifting through the ages, non?

Bisous de Pâques,
N2

Abandoned or Full of Life (Abandonné ou plein de vie)

Churches are still prevalent in Europe, in their physical presence at the top of the hills and en l'ancienne centre ville. The St Martin bell tower in Soreze was completed in 1512 and, though the church was destroyed during the religious war between the Catholics and Protestants in 1573, the tower was saved as a watchtower and its stone shell is an identifying emblem of Soreze.

As people streamed up the slope to the steps of the Notre Dame de la Paix parish church on this Saturday before Easter bringing bunches of boxwood and olive branches to be blessed for Palm Sunday, you could feel the pull of the old beliefs.



My good friend S is visiting from the UK and I took her down the road to the Abbaye d’En Calcat in Dourgne to hear the chanting of forty white robed monks. We hadn’t anticipated the high endurance Mass, nor the turn out of hundreds of people with more branches in hand.

That hour at the abbey gave rise to strong auditory memories: voices with the sonorous reverberation of well-forged bells, the catholic story of Easter made mysterious again in French, the tintinnabulation of chain against thurible as incense perfumes the air, the coughing of old smokers, the pat pat pat of little boy feet at the back of the church, “La paix soit avec vous.” (Peace be with you.) from the strangers in the pew next to us.

Our afternoon was spent at the first “vide grenier” (literally “empty the attic” - flea market) of the season around the square in the nearby village of Saint Félix Lauragais. After surveying the booths of most of the vendors, I was getting a little hot in the bright sunlight.


I noticed the church was open and stepped in to get a look. The choir and organist were warming up for an evening performance. I sat and soaked in the notes and cool air falling from the gothic stone vault.


It was a weekend blessed with friendship, sun and peaceful sounds.

Bisous,
N2

Violets and Wood Smoke (de Violette et Fumée de Bois)

The way to Berniquaut is uphill. The ground is covered with plum petals, a snow flurry of palest pink across the footpath, where earth is mounded up on the sides, tunneled over by hedges that weave wooden digits together.

The petal snow blows. I pull up my hood and I am walking a medieval path at eventide, beads in hand, the old prayers murmuring on my lips Hail…full of grace…blessed art…I must climb to the ancestral town and bring news of approaching weather before the bells strike seven. I am calmed by the enclosure of the climb into the embrace of the wood, emerging onto the butte, the view over the plains to Toulouse.



The flowering of Spring has begun, the birds sing. My downcast eyes pick out verbena citronnée, primevére, heliborus, euphorbe, gentiane de bois pushing up through dirt brown duff. Field bunnies run ahead uphill, into leafless brambles, down hidden holes. Flower petals tumble down my long robes.


The roman cart track is strewn with broken granite as I reach the top of the ridge, the abandoned citadel of Berniquaut. The sky is the deep pastel blue for which we long in our wode-dyed cloth for les vêtements de la riche – the deeper the blue, the higher the price they will pay.

I mount the butte and survey the rolling plain to Revel, St Felix and Toulouse on the left, Dourgne and Castres on the right. The air in the valley is la rose de la brique de Toulouse et de l'ail de Lautrec, fortelling the warmer light of summer to come. No rain tomorrow. The sky is clear to the horizon; the wind blows dry, if cold. I knot a shawl around my shoulders and descend in the falling dark to bring my report to the abbot.

The sides of the hedge-covered path pull me close, breathing their night scent into my hair. Down where the sun plays in the day, un corps de ballet de violettes dances down the hillside, purpling the sky with perfume. The pruning fires of the villagers send smoke signals to the stars. The light fades and I hurry home à la sonnerie de l'Angelus par les cloches sur le cou des chèvres et dans la tour de l'église (to the chiming of the Angelus by the bells at the throats of the goats and in the tower of the church).


N2
20090330

Green Fire (Feu Vert)

"This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes...
I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze of growing..."

DH Lawrence, "The Enkindled Spring"










I've been going out for ma petite randonnée on the Rue des Jardins which looks back on Soreze from the west. Out there the greens in the late afternoon are ablaze in the last shards of sunlight.


Warm snows of wildflowers drift over the brambled ground,


the vines are fledging stone walls with tender
green feathers aimed at the center of the eye,


buds of new life rouge the tips of lichen-crusted hedges.






Oh my!

x0x0
N2

Drinking in the Sun (Boire le Soleil)

Au contrair mon frere

J’aime le shop de Mariage Frere. Oui!
That delectable tea in its beat up tins,
the slim, possibly gay, boys, their sly
Bonjour madame counterpointing fey
linen suits, their readiness to d’accord
my requests for a vertical tasting
of Ceylons, Earl Greys, Assams, to decide
on Darjeeling instead of French Breakfast,
to absent-mindedly say, What was that
tea I sent to my son for his birthday?

Je ne sais quoi exactement je l’aime
about the crumbling colonial décor
as I take tea there of an afternoon –
it can’t be the tiny tables with no elbow room.
Perhaps the cultured feel of tea by the pot
on white table linen, of choosing from framboise,
citron ou chocolat pastry on the teacart, each
using a different tea in the recipe – tea cakes
Voici! they’re being witty with me.

As much as I love the chatter and splash
of le Marais street life in the spring rain,
I’ll slip into the Frere’s for une cent gram
in separate bags to send off to New York,
Healdsburg, San Francisco, Tatlintown or
take back with me to Amsterdam by train,
I’ll sit and put my feet up with one of the
Freres’ hundred different varieties, I’ll duck
down Ave Bourg ti Bourg again and again.



One of the unexpected gifts I have derived from my time in France is the introduction to the quality teas of Mariage Freres

My good CA friend, Renee, first sent me to their shop in le Marais district when she knew I was making a visit to Paris four years ago. Since tasting their tea, I’ve tried to have several varieties of the loose leaf with me wherever I’m living. I came near to running out last week and had to order some through the mail. Orders of 50 Euro or more are delivered free within France. Gentil!


The sun’s been out in force for the last week. I brew up a pot of tea in the morning and take mon petit déjeuner sur la terrasse. I sit in the sun and have a good soak until I'm warm to the bone.



Bisous,
N2