Iberiana

I wouldn't say we're van-life-ing wrong, it just feels neither here nor there -- I'm either longing for the simplicity and independence of my tent (where it's normal to be unwashed and exhausted), or else I'm fantasizing about the air conditioning and running water that would otherwise be integral to sleeping "indoors."  A big factor is certainly the heat, as mid-May was already high 80s, and the combination of sun-baked upholstery and daily dune climbs withered me like an off-brand chunk of dried mango.  Before our little fridge frizzled out, I could clutch a chilled liter of water to my chest to (try to) sleep.

But the van is great for casting a wide net, getting to out-of-the-way places, and peeing mid-morning in a country that abhors public bathrooms.  The chameleon-like ability of the van is to come and go on a whim, to park in a city center and be your very own lackluster hostel for the night.

We're just finishing a tour of southwestern Portugal and Andalusia, Spain.  In Portugal, we left the van next to a wakeboarding school/brah-paradise, and hiked ten days on the Rota Vicentina, a.k.a. Fisherman's Trail.  This series of paths connects villages and beaches on the cliffstrewn coast.  Big dunes covered with flowering plants, tiny carved out coves, long sand beaches, cafes just opening for the season, and occasional surfers dotting the waves unspooled before us.  Brave storks and storklets(?) perched in nests in obscenely precarious places, undeterred by strong winds or asshole seagulls dive bombing the fledglings.

After flirting with heatstroke and recuperating at a yoga-yurt sort of campground, we took the forecast for 100F as a sign to stop.  Back in the van, we crossed the border into the Gary, Indiana, of Spain: an enormous industrial zone complete with cancerous-smelling air, just next to where Columbus departed on his voyage to America(!).

There are many, many beautiful places in Spain: Sevilla is lovely, with big parks and well-preserved historical quarters; little Moorish villages perch in the mountains of the Alpujarra; Granada is stuffed with great art and music and food and life.  But we also came to Andalusia to visit where Jean-François's great-grandparents came from before emigrating to Algeria and leaving for France.  What I call our "cultural heritage" stops all shared elements of economic hardship and ecological exploitation.  In Berja, we found the remnants of a prosperous mining town, now with a humdrum, scruffy mien.  Little Albuñol is nearly choked out by the expanse of intensive-agriculture greenhouses squatting throughout the valley.  In fact, this region has been expanded by silting up the river, creating a huge, unnatural plain extending from the feet of the mountains.  The 40,000 hectares of greenhouses of El Edijo, the "sea of plastic," is the most visible man-made structure from space.  Depressingly, they even extend into the national park; the Internet tells me they are part of the dystopian introductory shots of the newer "Blade Runner."

To end on a cheerier note, tapas is originally from Andalusia.  We have had gallons of gazpacho and platefuls of thinly-sliced salty ham.  This is also the home of sangria, and -- hey, it's 5 o'clock.

The one time I was not hot, in the wind as the sun set.

The Rota Vicentina from north to south gets progressively cliffier as you go.

stork neighbors

Where the river meets the sea, and consequently is a salty place to try to wash your shirt.

best camping kitchen 

close-up of Alcazar of Sevilla; not pictured, Jean-François having his beard trimmed by a -- Barber of Seville...

The Caminito Del Rey, within a big gorge

most decoratively plated carrot cake

traditional Moorish mountain village houses

Pampaniera

The Answer Is More Cheese

Shockingly, in the last year I have sat at a cafe with a coffee and croissant here just once.  I wish I could claim it's part of my deeply committed dietary discipline, or even an avoidance of cliché.  But actually, it's tough to find a really good croissant in La Rochelle.  I've concluded the best way to avoid pastry heartbreak and misfortune is ordering the cleverly disguised day-olds that are rehabilitated with almond paste and re-crisped.  Then, one day in the chic-est cafe on the harbor, I saw a croque monsieur croissant.

The croque monsieur is a ridiculously/adorably-named sandwich (translation: "Mr. Crunchy-Bite") that proclaims frenchiness with every decadent ounce of its being.  It's like they heard about a grilled cheese and were grudgingly like, "Ok, that does sound pretty good -- but we need to dress it up a bit."  Usually on awkwardly large bread, it features ham, cheese, and creamy béchamel sauce.  The bread might be dipped in egg, but the cheese and sauce in the sandwich are not enough: it is topped with more cheese, cooked brown and crispy.

Take all that and replace the bread with two halves of croissant.  Monsieur made for an excellent second breakfast, its richness complemented by my delightfully bitter little espresso.  Cue the pleasant buzz of a busy cafe, the wind and waves of the harbor across the street, the sun slanting across the table.

-Why second breakfast?  Two friends from class were coming over to make fresh pasta and turn it into spaghetti carbonara.  Bike-related logistics made for a very late start.  But we enthusiastically mixed the dough, let it rest, smooshed it out, rolled it with the magical hand-crank machine, and sent it through a final time to be cut.  Skinny little strands spilled out from the roller, which we (increasingly tipsily) separated.  Bacon sautéed and egg yolks thickened-but-not-scrambled, it was delicious and/or we were starving.

THESE POPPIES!

there are also acres and acres of ferns

post-carbonara

not at all tangled 

Plage Gros Jonc, which is a double entendre in French for "big cane"

Moving Pictures

I'm reviewing my notes for the final exam for French Cinema: 1980s - Today.  The idea of our elective classes is to gain a richer understanding of French society. To comprehend the particular character and touchstone elements that make French people and things (so (very)) French.

Of course, you can't just jump right to the '80s; we spend a lot of time on what came before, and how greater social changes shape modern cinema.  Certain themes are timeless, like a children's animation featuring a political dissident crow in a top hat trapped in prison, saved from a pride of savage lions by the music of a blind organ grinder.  Some characters, on the other hand, sprout from a particular era's malaise, like a '70s anti-hero who badgers an underage prostitute into joining him for long drives through ramshackle suburbs, endless and manic grandiose speeches, and one of the most sloppily executed murders ever.  It's not just another crime drama, and the director's bold deviation from, I guess, any sympathetic characters is exemplary of the nihilism of the times.

Probably my favorite film was the 2016 stop-motion "Ma vie de Courgette" ("My Life As Zucchini").  It's the redemptive story of a young orphan learning to process grief and find happiness in the present.  In the first ten minutes, our main character (nicknamed Zucchini by his late alcoholic mother) has nowhere to go but a surprisingly homey and well-run orphanage.  After a tough start, he begins to make friends with the others, including a new cute girl.  Courgette and Camille bond during a weekend ski trip, where he makes a toy boat for her out of his mother's beer can (his most treasured momento).  The kids have a snowball fight, dance to German techno in their chalet, and cleverly expose Camille's would-be legal guardian as a fraud and jerk.  

There's no sugarcoating of the bleak circumstances that led to each kid's orphanhood, but there's a genuine, organic development of kid alliances.  Everyday banalities like cafeteria lunch and being tucked in at night mark the slow but sure passage of time and the innate evolution therein.

We've also studied how the French government subsidizes the film industry and urges people to go to the theater.  They support theaters, or at least projectors, in almost every small town; fund all kinds of discount tickets; and limit movies broadcast on TV.  This might be the most French part of cinema -- reinforcing egality and fraternity by "liberating" people from their couches and incentivizing them to go out and bask in the warm glow of their culture.

a still from "Fantasmagorie," probably the first film animation, 1908 

Garden update: we dug a trench to put up a fence against the rabbits.

I got a rug and a desk, and am searching for just the right milk-crate seat

The lilacs just started!

Pain Complet*

*translation: whole-grain bread

Hey, I came to France a year ago mid-March.  And this is now actually my second-longest romantic relationship.  Oh what crazy things come to pass with relatively stable housing.  (-And with men who speak French.  Is it a coincidence?)

Today we hauled off all the remodeling detritus and declared the work officially done.  I still need to find a desk and chair for my...office? I don't really do any work, so what should I call it?  A friend had a She-Shed, filled with arts and crafts supplies, where we'd decoupage and paint and she'd smoke weed so as not to disturb her adorable son asleep in the house.  Here, I have a sort of siding (white-painted cladding) on the walls, and the car is parked outside the window, conferring a somewhat garage-like feel on the room.  I don't yet know if the vibe of my old Alaska dorm decor will fit this more conventional space (ie: free brochure maps, pastel-shaded pages of adult coloring books, postcards ranging from Beaux-Arts illustrations of the night sky to animals with glitter to Route 66-type kitsch to mediocre food photography).

Most significantly, I have someone encouraging me to write.  Who himself likes to write, and talk about what we read, and how we formulate our ideas and our sentences.  Sitting, biting your nails a little, leafing through the thesaurus, talking to yourself, and looking at how the sunlight changes and moves; trying to both look at something and imagine at the same time, to describe it precisely but also in your own way.  Whether or not it is work, it is good to have a place to work it out.

not pictured: bike path into the woods 

Jean-François's office is the perfect writing shack

Something possessed the previous owners to paint the wall behind the bed midnight blue; we have eliminated all trace of this tomfoolery.

my office is a cluttered blank canvas 

We also spent many hours repainting the BROWN walls and *ceiling* of the bathroom.  Jean-François's godson is a master carpenter and all-around swell guy, and added the window in my office, opened a wall between the bathroom and the separate toilet room just next door, walled over the former toilet room door, built cabinets, and kept us in good humor while everything and everyone was covered in plaster dust.

Heart of Larkness

*Mid-February

Rasping cicadas...the discordant shrieking of a forest-full of birds...I sprawl listlessly, comatose in the heat; it's 85 degrees and 100% humidity at 9am; I am stranded in suburbs with small children...  There is a part of France with with a dark, brutal history: originally a penal colony, French Guiana is where they brought enslaved Africans, dumped and subsequently organized forced labor for thousands of criminals -- or just people they didn't like -- and killed off the native people by design and disease.

Welcome to spring break!  (Mid-winter break?)  One of Jean-François's daughters, along with her husband and two sons, recently began a three-year contract in Cayenne, adjacent to the Amazon rainforest.  And because I will do stupid shit in the name of love (See: letting a guy's yappy dog lick my face; recording a dozen tracks of myself campily singing the word "wasabi;" crossing frozen rivers the condition of whose ice is highly questionable), I bought an expensive plane ticket in order to pretty much be steamed alive.

We alternated several days visiting family with a couple ventures into the semi-wild.  Despite the words "abandon all hope ye who enter here" on loop in my head, we managed several hours of squishing through mud and gnarled roots to see the ruins of prison camps.  That, friends, is the, uh, main tourist attraction.  For you fellow history fans, we slept in an old holding pen within view of the island where Alfred Dreyfus was jailed(!).  To really get that You-Are-There experience, we camped with hammocks, basic provisions, and not enough drinking water.

By far the best part of the trip was the fruit.  Pineapple, melon, mango, guava, rambutan, bananas -- and a green papaya salad/condiment made with garlic, lime juice, and mild pepper.  We bought dried bananas, which were like little sticks of banana-bread-jerky.

It was also the end of Carnaval.  We caught the penultimate parade, a perfect mix of local social clubs and businesses and a few guest appearances by Brazilian marching bands.  A phalanx of all ages beat on oil-barrel-like drums, with lines of sparkly, beplumed dancers.  Sometimes the rhythms of two groups became unwittingly syncopated as the parade slowed and everyone condensed.  This was one of the rare occasions that I awoke from my overheated stupor and moved enthusiastically under the equatorial sun.

We found a wheelbarrow to overturn and weight with rocks to secure our food from monkeys; we made it all the way until after breakfast before having to yell at them, Jean-François pounding his chest like a gorilla

A nighttime jungle walk included snakes, toads, sloths, and the tiniest frog I've ever seen

We went on a boat to look for caimans (alligators, more or less) in the marsh

industrious leaf cutter ants

tropical Dickensian workhouse

(lower-right corner)

Lolling around and reading won out over hiking in the hot mosquitoey rain

Type, Sort, Kind

I am well aware that I have a "type," and what that type entails. As I summed it up to one boyfriend: "I like strong flavors."  Easygoing yet strong-willed, a motley collection of skills and interests, someone equally happy to host a dinner party as to hike all day in the snow and snack on cheese.

And so it was with a sense of familiarity that I watched my partner pick up a reciprocating saw and blithely attempt to carve a hole in the wall.  More specifically, this time it was the chimney, which we discovered has a layer of brick-like material behind the drywall.  Only momentarily daunted, Jean-François then procured a circular saw, stood on the dinner table for better leverage, and proceeded to plume-cloud the combination living-room-dining-room-kitchen with fine, chalk-like red dust -- basically a gritty pollen bomb, with some chunks of plaster here and there.

A lot of people talk about doing stuff, or dream about things that they convince themselves are beyond reach.  And some of us ( 👀 ) compulsively debate pros and cons and get mired in the complexity of options.  I am fascinated (and perplexed) by people who can both humbly admit their inexperience and forge on ahead with...whatever. 

But I also bring valuable things to the table.  Like insisting the electricity is shut off when messing with wiring; the savvy to remove industrial goo with lavish amounts of paint thinner; and knowing when to take off my glasses so details blend together, a little fuzzy like an Impressionist painting, the visual obliquity heightening sensibility.

ready and waiting for the moving van 

This is how Santa gets into the house!

Coming soon: interior window!

on the new route to school

I am also learning to embrace taking the bus to town, watching the dawn light, weirding out the teenagers headed to high school and the few winter tourists by crouching on the ground to take pictures of frosty plants

Chez Nous

Most of the houses here are enclosed by walls.  The island is basically an overgrown sandbar, so for centuries people built low stone barriers to protect their gardens and fruit trees.  The local limestone is not overly abundant; walls of 3-4 feet are sufficient to keep the wind from menacing most vegetables, and the ivory-colored stone reflects the overly robust blaze of the summer sun.

As properties more recently transformed from farmhouses to vacation homes, the walls changed to smoothed concrete and grew taller -- typically 6-8 feet high.  This creates, for me, an unpleasantly contradictory atmosphere: the houses crowd close together, yet are isolated.  There's not much waving-hello-to-your-neighbor or commenting on the flowers because everyone is holed up in their little compound.  (To be fair, everyone is chatty at the markets and cafes, and there's lots of public land and beach.)  The villages feel both hyper-dense and deserted.

Occasionally there's a house with a wire fence, and the effect is almost park like, breathing green and openness and life into the neighborhood.  Even rarer are houses at the village limit, abutting farm fields or forest.  Happily, we found the trifecta: a house at the end of the road, that faces the trees of a bird preserve on one side and fields on the other, with no walls.

After a great deal of paperwork and planning (mostly Jean-François) and packing and fretting (mostly me), we move in this weekend.  I will resist the temptation to immediately begin unpacking the clothes and kitchen things and 37 boxes of books, and instead make a little fire in the little fireplace(!) and clink glasses with my delightful companion.

the coastal trail to La Flotte, our new town

little runny birds who run-run-run in front of the waves

normal activities around the corner from the university

coral?

all the winter the coast can handle