Staying Young

I have been at a christian community/ conservation research centre called A Rocha for almost a week and I am now considering prolonging my stay by a few days despite the difficulties of a keyboard with muddled letters and no apotrophes. The time here has been simple and beautiful and good. We are in the middle of the French countryside so I mere amble down the road takes me to wild flower fields and spectacular sunlit views across the blowing stretch of trees. I found a wooden swing on the far side of the house where I can sit and rock and muse. The people volunteering and working here are an equal mix of french and english speakers, so a fare amount of conversation and banter defaults to french as the english speakers are keen to practice and some of the french workers cant participate in english. I have done my own share of garbadge pick up in a marsh, as well as a bit of raking and cooking, but my most useful emplyement has been in translating sections of their french website in to english. I have also come to quite enjoy the company of a few other workers, with whom we have already had a generous share of laughter, even sillyness, and sincerity. Yesterday a sprawled out conversation on the lawn transitioned in to dinner and then late night chatter well past midnight that was recommenced upon waking at the marathon of kitchen table conversion when the first foul weather permitted little otherwise. I have often remarked that joy is most evident when I can put aside my self-made pretention and partake in the simple activities at hand whether it be standing on my head, going out for drinks or positing my position on the particularities of a teapot.

Spill-over stream of consciousness

As the possibility of returning to a tree-planting camp become more and more feasible with every new e-mail exchanged, I've begun to feel suddenly apprehensive, even scared of what I'm getting myself back in to. I think I thought at the time and even afterwards that it was a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing, something I could curiously bare and later testify to as another experience come and gone. I think I thought I'd find an outlet for some of the stories, the hours, the things I felt, but they've been kept remarkably sequestered in my memory bank. It's one thing to step out knowing nothing, and  another to deliberately return to it. These scenes when I stepped off the greyhound bus in nowhere northern BC were taken in as if I had a notebook and camera rolling. I sat for 10 hours in the empty parking lot of the town's one grocery store on May 25th, a 90 pound backpack weighing me down, and the world unfolded before me: The drunken natives stumbled past; the shaggy Quebecer on a green children's bicycle kept circling around with a story about how he was trying to get on with a planting company to avenge his two-week dead, murdered girlfriend but was obviously collecting cans; the middle-aged woman I found working in a nearby discount store drove me to her house where her husband and sons slumped around in boxers smoking cigarettes while I hunted for the number of my foreman online; the fat retired truck-driver told me the difficulties of breaking semi-trucks on icy mountain roads in winter time-  keeping me occupied as I hopefully waited for someone to show up, hour after hour, offering his cell phone, watching my things while I ran in to buy some fruit with my last .60 cents, and eventually rolling next to me down the highway in his wheelchair to show me to the motel. I'd say it was a lesson learned in not travelling penniless or without contacts, but I think the human openness proved the contrary. 

Two phone calls (one to my foreman, the other to my mother) and a night's sleep later, I found myself in Tonya's live-in hippie van, bumping down gravel mountain roads as dust and regga filled the air. Freedom (her pampered pooch) took her normal seat in shut-gun while I reclined on the bed in the back surrounded by boxes of eggs and milk, taking in the array of books, bottled herbs, bright sweaters and scarves she'd crammed on to various wooden shelves. Upon arriving I was introduced to Andrew, the recovered-crack addict, dashing maintenance man, who I still recall fondly shooting at with a cap-gun as he lay in a drunken stupor with his feet hanging out the window of his truck. We unpacked and organized the truckloads of food that'd get us through the next three weeks, talked through basic meal planning, and I eventually stumbled off to the forest to set up my tent with a raging headache and a thought to how I hadn't had anything to eat or drink since the trailmix at breakfast. Up at 4 Am the next morning with night-sky faded to soft, sparkling blue, I emerged from the darkness of the trees and hiked to the cook shack where I'd spend countless hours with Tonya in the kitchen, mixing, talking and laughing with a loose joy that only the wilderness can render. 

Some mornings I'd wake up shivering, cold to the bone, and after the hopping, uncoordinated scurry to layer myself in yesterday's filthy clothes in the limited space of my tent, I'd run to the cookshack, turn on the ovens and light the stove top flame as I held my hands over the fire's near heat and leaned in to the open oven door. I was embarrassed by my early arrivals, afraid that Tonya would notice my afternoon's waning if she knew I'd been up mornings over at 1 Am. The cold became my nemesis; rousing myself might have been harder if I did not feel chilled to the bone even in my sleeping bag. The prospect of an oven-heated cookshack after running between refrigerator and dining tent to set out the breakfast and lunch table was my unforgotten incentive as I talked myself through the cold. When Tonya learned of how the cold ceaselessly plagued me, we'd take time to wrap my chest and waist in a sheet, like the bodice of a geisha, that I wore under my many layers of clothes until it eventually trailed out behind me. Tonya once found me sitting on the log near the stove, the sheet wrapped around my head and shoulders, looking something between an alien and refugee. My fingers learned permanent chill, and my hands were so chapped that it's only in France that they've found full recovery. Eventual dishwashing once the planters had come and gone was an excuse to run warm water over my freezing hands and rejoice that the temperatures were warming with the day. I fear the cold beyond all else, the ceaseless inescapable cold that shivered beneath my skin even when every exterior warmth was on me. 

As a child I use to slip out of bed at night and lie on the wooden floor to try and feel how many less fortunate people around the world daily suffered. I'd eventually squirm, turn over, and crawl back in to bed with the rational realization that any such potential suffering couldn't be prepared for as much as dealt with when the time came. I figured I might as well enjoy my bed in the meantime. I still think of this now, and thought of it often last summer, as I lay vertically on my mat, often waking to feel like someone had given me a good kicking during the night. Between lifting, standing, and lying, your body aches in a dull, throbbing sort of way like you've been twisted around and hung up. There is no romance in sleeping on the hard ground, but I'm grateful for what an accommodating sleeper it has made me. 

If I go back to planting some of these known and unnamed fears will likely accompany me, but I think too of how the open air, the trees, the woods, let you shake off any pretension or pride, and let you quietly slip in to whoever you simply can be. I loved my world where my prize was their worship of my edible creations, where I could be quietly me and no-one gave a rat's ass about where I came from or what I knew. Everyone knew each other in this separate sphere, where the hours ticked slowly but you learned to happily exist in the company of the wilderness and the odd assortment of humanity who chose to inhabit it.  

French and English

Some parts of French vocabulary learning are easy because a near identical word exists in English. Also, one can also see how it stretches you to use more interesting vocabulary in your own language as the translation has more interesting nuances. Examples:

(Fr) banal = (En) mundane. Hey but we can say banal too woohoo!

(Fr) immense = (En) Immense, though I prefer the French pronunciation. It sounds more weighty

(Fr) décontracté = (En) bewildered. But, not so far off from disconcerted

(Fr) à l'esprit étroit = (En) literally means "at narrow spirit" but we translate as "narrow minded"

(Fr) la parjure = (En) the betrayal. We also have our older word "perjuries" that we should use more often. Interesting note too as I think how jurer "to swear/to promise" comes from the same root in our language: juristication & jury

(Fr) un gueux = (En) a beggar. An old french word that you now only see as le mendiant but if we look at how knees translate as "les genoux" this makes him a sort of "kneeler." In English we of course must look at how "to knee" (s'agenouiller) is exactly the same as we can also "genuflect" before the throne (le trône)

(Fr) la perfidie = (En) the treachory. Now we can at least understand when one's brother calls them a "perfidious nitwit"

(Fr) la menace = (En) the threat. Or the menace. Same in the verb form as "to threaten" is menacer

(Fr) l'infamie = slanderous remark. Easy to understand as it's a negation that forms "in-famous." But, we might want to question the nature of their legacy next time we declare someone "to go down in infamy" as I think we've forgotten the nasty meaning of this declaration

(Fr) la dérision = the scorn or mockery. We too have derisive remarks.

Well, once again a cheerful compilation. Thank you Jean Giraudoux for your deleterious (délétère) provision. Forced french play writes makes me spend a lot of time with the online dictionary.

And we could all together go out on the Ocean

I feel as if I have not said enough on the sweet rolling landscape of Provence. I run down meandering country lanes that take me through olive groves and up hills where the tile-roofed houses, lines of orchards and waves of small mountains pan the horizon. The fresh brilliance of purple and white trees colour the landscape and the tall roadside grasses are tossed by the ever blowing wind. I sometimes stop and look about me and think whimsically of a camera or a person to whom I could say "look, look!". But instead, like the many other beautiful sights before, I merely try to absorb it in to myself as if one could be satiated by visual consumption. I feel like I'm swallowing a spoonful of beauty, while never certain if this encounter with the natural world will ever have resonance outside myself.

Between the many hours on buses, airplanes, or walks in the wild or civilized countryside, it's fatiguing to travel alone. This is not a new feeling, as I clearly remember wishing for a companion from the first time I flew on my own at seventeen. One can talk about the health of independence, self-establishment and self-knowing, the modern woman who stands solidly on her own two feet- I am not one to dismiss some of these principles and tie myself blindly to marriage for the sake of companionship. But often as I walk or sit alone, I give a thought to how we're made for companionship, for shared appreciation of what we're looking at and shared love as we look at the other. It's for this that I almost don't have the heart to go anywhere new to "see" something else over spring break. I'm tired of just seeing. Who sees me? For afterwards, whom shall I tell, what am I to do with everything that is stored away inside me, my collection of secrets cramming memory's space? I have not the time or the energy enough to write it all out. I'd rather just have someone to look at, understand and say, "Yes... you were there too."

I have no delusions that I'm unique in having memories ever compiling, such is the nature of every human life as each passing year feeds new thoughts and passing. My frustrations lies primarily in the uncomfortable awareness of all that is contained within ourselves. I wonder where experience's value and utility lies if a human never shares what they've seen. I think of those who die of old age, with full heads and closed lips and their life finding justification only unto itself. Some argue that morally each is of innate value in whatever isolation, but surely the exponential potential for joy and depth should be accounted for when two human lives touch. This theme is my predominant question and unsettlement no matter where I go: From my first year in Vancouver where so many days and hours made me feel invisible, to my transfer to Iowa where few people touch my daily life, to my studies where everything I'm learning goes undiscussed, and travels where the people I meet, the stories that grow, the beautiful and poignant things I see take root only inside me. This absence of Shared experience and life makes me feel so terribly lonely yet simultaneously self-reprimanding for never staying in one place long enough to cultivate a continuity that might calm my youthful fears. Here lies the question of responsibility as I may have to admit that between moving, a closed mouth and self-distancing I have only myself to blame.

With this said: continuity is certainly not in my prospects for the months to come. I shall continue to trot between different countries, jobs, books, and people as I'm intrigued by the adventure, and delighted when I can reconnect with old friends. It is indeed the relationships I have with friends and family that I hope to grow by at least placing myself in closer proximity. So while my sense of permanence is still quite impermanent, I hope to at least deepen the relationships that hold me in place. All this said, I have a two week spring break coming up as of this Friday: All of you should get online, do a quick tally, and get the next cheapest ticket to France. Let me know when you're arriving...

All that Changes and Stays the Same

When I go to a new place I like to be open to discarding old routines and adapting to the most natural flow of my new environment. Out goes my cinnamon fetish, recipe reading and gym routine, and instead I devote myself to dates and pears, French children's novels and hours of vocabulary flash-cards. After being in France for two and a half months I realized that some habits of my former existence are just too precious to discard. I began taking long walks to the north of where we live, in open rebellion against French women's disdain for exercise but with the pretence of merely surveying the landscape. I soon traded city clothes for runners and I have since begun to run these rolling hills feeling fully satisfied in getting out of the house, taking in the country air and relishing the movement and motion. I similarly indulged in an NPR podcast about a month ago, and since then have caught myself up on every missed episode of Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, This American Life, and PRI's short story editions. I likewise have turned a blind eye to the utter absence of any grain or whole wheat in my diet, as well as dairy besides the odd smattering of coffee milk or cheese. But today I calcium crave and shall cave, and I shall march down to the store for a generous tub of plain yoghurt .

There are likewise many habits that I've adopted while living here that I'll not so enthusiastically loose. I appreciate the routine tidiness of the living space; how each clothing item, dish, glass and body product has it's appropriate place. The living space is just too small to not be neat and it makes me feel quite on top of my small, organized world. I also like the encouraged regular consumption of bottled water- the plastic is wasteful but I don't think I've ever been so hydrated in my life. Light switches are well placed and designed that they're easy to tap on and off. The "stores" (English word is...?) on the windows that got wound down from the inside, make the inside of the apartments private and pitch black at any time of the day: a burrow like sleeping environment and a nice transition from day to night. Women's body products and perfumes are a cornerstone of female existence and I don't think I've ever been so amply supplied with such products for daily preparation.

The expectations for the quality of food (preparation, smell, taste, melting consumption) match so nicely with my own finicky standards that I don't give the slightest thought to being a choosy eater as much as just another plebeian worshiper of the delicacy placed before me. One never eats a lot, but can slowly and amorously slice and savour each tasty bite. Dinners here are appropriately long (1-3 hours), with enough variety of courses that every craving on the palate is satiated. The hot food item: potage, ratatouille, blanchette, coquilles de St. Jacque, or something of Provincial nature leads the opening course of every evening. We then can choose between any number of bread's from Paul's Bakery: olive, abricot, cereal, or fromage being our favourites, and then eat this with either olives, tapinade (olive, garlic, anchovy blend), avocado, Tamara (fish eggs at its base I believe), or cheese (Camembert, Brie, Pont l'Évêque, chevre, Caprice des Dieux) as our most regular options. The last course is usually a green salad which we can adorn with sliced tomatoes and balsamic or choose to add chickpeas, cucumber, or red pepper as fancy requires. More standard dessert items, that we have from time to time, are mandarin oranges (brilliantly orange and sweet at this season), pears (don't think blah N. American pears) or yoghurt. Our little household also has a particular weakness for hazelnut chocolate so we have a number of varieties to nibble from. My theory, which I'm sure many other's have shared, is that any religious fervour that was lost during the French Revolution was simply transferred to the worship of the dinner meal. While I obviously don't share in their same dismissal of the church, I feel quite at home partaking in their evening rites around the alter of the dinner table.


I frequent this cornerstore daily for a date (the edible kind) and a pear.


A typical street in Aix


Tim, Jenna's neighbour from Chicago, and I outside St. Savior's Cathedral in Aix. Tim flew out for a trip through France with two of his friends, Mike and Brett. Before they arrived we entertained him by sitting outside in the sun and dining on olives, bread and wine.


Justine, Jenna and Tim before for a costume party. Caesar (all the french people yelled "Av" to him on the street), a flapper, and a Venician doll (I, the robot, happily stayed out of the pictures)


Tim, Brett and Mike in their little room. After their first night over I asked in the morning, "So, who ended up sleeping in the bed?" There was a moment's pause before Tim answered, "Les Trois".




This is what good chocolate does to your world: Thank You Purycard for all your tasty delights