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 

Hearing Voices

The perfect level of background chatter, in a café or train, is like water flowing in a small creek.  A busy bar or house party full of people pressed together is the crashing calamity of whitewater, a waterfall that drowns out.  A class of recent émigrés stumbling over a dictation pulses and crescendos like a pond of spring peepers, the volume inching upward, punctuated by random monosyllabic yelps.  Chatting with a new acquaintance is as though tuning in and out of reception and static as the weather report warns of rough seas...then foundering on unavoidable rocks.  A thoughtful person with precise enunciation is like sipping a generously poured cocktail.  A word of amorous affection -- an ice cube melting on your tongue.

Sometimes I dream in French, but even in the dream I feel something's not quite right, or I'm just making things up.  Occasionally, a word of French pops into my mind, unbidden, in the omnipresent stream of internal monologue, like, "Ok, now I'll stir the soup; the potatoes are looking bien cuit, so it's almost done."

Then there's the awkwardness of what to do with words like "croissant" and "Paris" when I'm speaking in English: just say them normal, or with a ridiculous accent ("KWA-saw," "pah-REE")?  Or what to do about "librairie" and "collège"?  Say them without the accent and they become "library" instead of the word for bookstore, and "college" as in university, rather than the word for junior high.

The silver lining of my nascent comprehension is that I don't have to overhear banal conversations.  Unconcerned with eavesdropping or unignorable cellphone calls, I can retreat deeply into reading in public, and later resurface with the bewildered thought, "Why is everybody speaking in French?"

end of semester celebratory class lunch

good horizontal lines

barge + Pantheon