Some minor instances of culture shock

To close out a year of near-wall-to-wall France, here are some important lessons I've gleaned as a student of life here:

-a university degree with honors is marked "assez bien," which means "good enough"

-one browses the ornaments and local honey of a small-town Christmas market to the classic holiday melodies "Wake Me Up Before You Go-go," "Take On Me," and "Maneater"

-proposing the addition of mustard to a ham sandwich elicits disbelieving laughter 

-mimes are not automatically considered ridiculous

-flossing is not a thing

I saw a beautifully produced play about a plucky lad turned WWI pilot, who returns wounded and depressed but is joyously embraced and inspired to remake his life by his fiancé, mimed.

When they say they're going camping, they mean they rent a tiny cabin next to seventy other tiny cabins, next to a restaurant.

Termination/Germination

My student life ended somehow more anxious and less dramatic than anticipated.  Only five of us were there the last day, each person drifting away quietly as they finished writing about a famous French ecologist.  There was no little lunch party with dishes from our home countries; a few of us drank vending machine coffee in the hallway, and that was that.

After two rounds of exams it's a pleasure to wheel-barrow around a ton of horse poop, paint dozens of wooden slats for the foyer, and devote entire afternoons to making ravioli and cake and carnitas.  After so much mental concentration and the sure but slow linguistic results of studying, I'm happy to shift to more tangible tasks -- like bricking the grill and cleaning the fryer and heaving bags of trash!  And more interestingly, skiing and snowshoeing.  In just a few weeks, I'll be back in Coldfoot, sharing with Jean-François the wonders of the northern lights, a million acres of snowy moose-filled forest, and 24/7-free-all-you-can-eat bacon.

I had looked forward to titling this "Arctic Working Honeymoon," but then my residency card finally came through and we weren't in a rush to get married by January.  Maybe "Boreal Betrothal Bake-cation"?  What's in a name: the Trucker's Cafe by any other word would smell as diesel-y.

There are several horse farms nearby.  We met a nice guy who brought over truckloads of manure for the garden.

prosciutto and caramelized onion on the left, spinach and lemon ricotta on the right, with kalamata-tomato and mushroom-walnut-cream sauces

We combined visiting a friend over the weekend with the Lascaux cave museum.  I tried to tell JF how much more mystical it is in the film with Werner Herzog's narration.

Quick Study

The last regular day of class is over, all that's left is exams.  This semester went by faster than the others, despite our somewhat ornery and plodding grammar professor.  Maybe it was the perpetual visa uncertainty, or maybe it was the actual acceleration of our thoughts and words -- the buffering rate of our brains now allows for more free-flowing information, life at full speed.

My ability to do things in French now includes:

-reviewing inheritance laws with the notary 

-requesting medical co-pay reimbursements 

-understanding most of a movie without subtitles

-reliably saying numbers using their ridiculous formulas like "60 + 17" for 77, or "four score and twelve" for 92

Things that continue to stymie me:

-when someone asks where I'm from => somehow always phrased in a way I don't expect 

-the various ways to refer to "these" and "those" => object? person? masculine? feminine? singular? plural? relatively nearby or far away?  There's a different word for every possibility!

-the pettiness of bureaucracy => part of a thick dossier of documents, we filled out three separate forms all with the same information in slightly varied order, just to identify witnesses for our wedding in July 

leaving the university for the last evening

the last tiny butternut was still hanging on at the beginning of November 

Post-Hiking Hammam

One of my most wistful travel regrets is not having time to soak at the old Turkish baths in Budapest.  Just from the exterior architecture it's clear that the sublime lies within.  A few years later in Istanbul, I took my first plunge.  Kindly women mimed to get naked, led me around by the hand to various steamy rooms and hot pools, scrubbed me as though they wanted to reach bone, and likewise massaged with the strength of bodybuilders.  It was wonderful.

A hammam is not just a spa: the communal aspect of the baths, the grand slabs of marble and geometric tiling simultaneously timeless and evocative of the distant past, the sense of being cloistered from the rest of the world -- it's special.  Happily, there is such a place not far away, at the Mosquée de Paris, the oldest mosque in France.  And one of my best friends lives just down the street.

We spent the morning catching up (in hushed tones, to preserve the calm), increasingly sedated by the eucalyptus vapor wafting by, wrapped in towels with sugary mint tea, in the half-light filtered through stained glass windows, beside a little burbling fountain.  In case you're not perfectly sated after all that, you can get some baklava at the counter on the way out.

No photos inside the hammam, but the week before was spent walking in the foothills of the Luberon, north of Marseille (mostly in the rain).  This is part of a tiny village in a gorge that has been transformed into a restaurant and small hotel.

Walking through quaint villages, talking about Provençal dungeons and poetry, looking forward to changing out of wet socks.

You can almost see the Marquis de Sade's house from here!

A cozy library with left behind books where I scored a mildewed copy of Happy Potter in French

Nonsense and Insensibility: Women in French Film

I'm taking another cinema class this semester, covering the 1930s - 60s.  It's with my favorite professor, who always has a cheerful, bustling sort of energy, as though she just got off the phone joking with her best friend.  This despite the fact that the films we're discussing are -- just...perplexingly depressing.

We started with "Hotel du Nord," which, granted, is a realist depiction of life during the Depression.  The film opens with a young couple in a working class neighborhood, renting a room for the night to follow through with their suicide pact.  Luckily, the guy's a terrible shot and just grazes his fiancé, and then chickens out of killing himself.  While he spends a year(?!) in prison, she's hired at the hotel, befriends the colorful characters there, and is pursued by a grouchy pimp/murderer.  My favorite character is the pimp's girlfriend, a salty broad who talks back to police and remains immune to the rampant escapism that intoxicates the other main characters.  However, she remains attached to her abusive, cold boyfriend, even after he runs away with the delusional fiancé-now-maid.

Next is "Le Corbeau" (The Raven), now considered the first film noir, as it is saturated with mal-intent.  In a small village, anonymous letters are sent, first to a doctor and his mistress, then to an increasingly wide circle of influential community members, threatening exposure of their sins and secrets.  The town is gripped by increasingly feverish speculation, suspicion, and denunciation.  The film came out in 1943 and was suppressed for several years, as no one was in the mood to reflect on the fact that all of us do and are capable of doing dishonorable things.  Though this film devoted plenty of time to exploring various men's foibles and disgraceful acts, we are ultimately presented two -- perhaps three -- guilty, cruel women as the tormentors/shit-stirrers of the rumor-mongered doctor and village.

Shifting to an ostensibly more fun tone, though still rather upsetting, we jump ahead to the mid-50s with Brigitte Bardot's first big hit, "Et Dieu...créa la femme" (And God Created Woman).  If you're looking for an embodiment of the most stereotypically sexist, infantile, and objectified idea of womanhood, your search is over.  The "savage" and explosively unruly Juliette is a walking pair of boobs who oscillates between the attentions of a wealthy industrialist three times her age, and two unfortunately entranced brothers, the dorkier of whom she marries, the other whom she baldly continues to pursue.  Is this a reflection of unbridled post-war capitalism?  French society contaminated by the vulgarity of big expensive American cars and hedonism?  Can we substitute a sexy lady erratically dancing for any character development whatsoever?

-We're not quite done with women who have crazy romantic entanglements with awful men!  "A bout de souffle" (A Breath of Fresh Air) brings us to Godard, Truffaut, and the nouvelle vague.  The film centers on a couple who interact with all the flair and sophistication of newly acquainted twelve year olds.  Michel is a run-of-the-mill, low-grade-mobster bad boy, demanding and disparaging (while craving to impress) Patricia, a pragmatically faux-naive, second-wave-ish American.  They while away several days talking about nothing, having sex, arguing about whether she'll join him on the run, until she's so bored of him she rats him out to the police.  The End.

"I dance when I'm angry" - Bret McKenzie

La Flotte harbor low tide

some vegetables got going very late in the season, so I made a curry with the cutest little guys

Goodwood Revival

After a quick and dirty three days back in the trenches of formal grammar study, I absconded to a sort of mid-century English fantasy mini-vacation.  Goodwood is the estate of the Duke of Richmond, located just outside Chichester.  There are rolling green hills, sheep pastures, tidal marshes skirting a harbor with quaint old wooden boats, a nearly-thousand-year-old cathedral, and pubs galore.  But we came for the racing.

Perhaps more accurately, we came to share in my dad and brother's love of race cars, and for the spectacle of thousands of people dressed with exuberant creativity and exacting accuracy -- nailing the fashions, hairdos, makeup, and caricatures of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.  This year's theme was the Summer of Love/1967, and while there were hippies, a Hendrix look-alike cover band, and a hundred vintage VW buses on hand, they were far outnumbered by more classic race fans in their post-war hemlines, Stetsons, and flight suits, swing dancing away their ration book coupon cares.  This dash and glamour really did set off the cars, all of which seemed perfectly restored, motors impeccably tuned to roar around and around the track.

Happily, the rain wasn't too bad, and resulted in vivid rainbows.  We spent the evenings in posh quarters: a "cottage" (townhouse) on the grounds of Chichester Cathedral, steps away from lovely gardens and remnants of medieval walls.  A generous amount of wine was drunk with tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, spaghetti and salad, and hefty chunks of chocolate.  I got to run my mouth speaking heaps English in its native heath, savoring the nuance and complexity that evades me in French.

We came back after four days, but soon my parents followed, and we had another sort of foreign fantasyland to explore.  We showed them around the island, visiting the beach bar, picnicking on the shore, cycling through the cobblestoned village to grab fresh croissants and crab and oysters.  The sun was mostly out, I skipped some classes, and we recounted old family stories with generous portions of cheese.

And that's how September went, with the days little by little shortening, but very full.

more than a racetrack, a real festival of all things car

Jean-François naps among our 50s housewife neighbors

There was a display of traditional shepherd and dog herding, quite a contrast in speed compared with the cars.

The wet track made slide-y conditions.

In the pits!

Pumpkin update: they seemed to have reached maximum size and orangeness, so we picked them. Upon cooking the big guy, we discovered he's impressively bland, so I scooped out the roast segments and transformed them into pumpkin spice cake. 

La rentrée

Back to school is somewhat ominously referred to here as "The Re-Entry."  It conjures images of children donning scuba gear, unsmilingly taking a last deep breath, and submerging themselves in unknown scholastic waters.  I, too, will soon be back in the classroom, trying not to drown in French but rather to refine my strokes.

Accordingly, we've been spending more time at the beach.  The water is warm, the tides are big, and friends with teenagers finally motivated us to get the paddle board in the water.  Not only that, we pulled out all the stops and ate both tripe and cod liver, at the request of said teenagers.  

Breaking news: I read "The Little Prince" for the first time.  How I reached such an advanced age without doing so I can't explain, but I'm making up for it by also reading it in French.  On deck are French editions of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Philosophy" and "White Fang."

a blustery choppy day

Marta and her daughter came to visit, and we discovered the bin of period dress-up clothes at the museum

sun-dried acanthus(?)