My French Underpants

An Ange Passe

2011-09-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

The other day while having lunch with some French speakers (in a fancy Chinese/California cusine-y place,) there was a sudden silence as the dozen or so of us stopped chattering. "Ah! Un ange passe," said the facilitator from the Alliance Francaise. The expression was new to me. I can't think of an American equivalent.

I love figures of speech and colloquial expressions. The way one culture sometimes chooses to express something so differently from another. I seldom get to hear or speak French these days.

The God of Carnage by Yasmin Reza (translated from the original French by Christopher Hampton)

2011-06-21T07:59:00.000-07:00

The play begins unremarkably. Two couples in a living room--strangers come together to discuss the fracas in the park between their little boys that left one with a split lip and two missing teeth. The tone is tensely polite. Imagine George and Martha without the booze, the madness, and the tragic history. These two couples in the stylish living room in Ms. Reza's play are civilized despite the dynamic that pits a call for justice against justification. One might wonder how this foursome will fulfill our expectations for a scintillating evening of theater, but it's right about then that the alliances onstage begin to shift. The parents of the boy who wielded the stick begin to wield their own weapons at each other, and in a dizzying escalation, the upset wife vomits all over the art books on her hosts' coffee table. The collective shriek from the audience will not be the last of the evening.

As the politeness behind the proscenium is pulled away like a restrictive necktie, the audience is forced to let its hair down, too. We can look all we want for a solid protagonist, but there's only whiplash waiting for us. By the time the booze comes out, we have loved and reviled each of the four characters, and we're not finished yet.

Reza examines love, marriage, the gender gap, parenthood, and the very nature of the human animal, but given the escalating antics onstage, the experience is more visceral than cerebral. I was too busy laughing to get a headache from thinking too hard.

The God of Carnage is at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis until August 7th, 2011.
It won a Tony in 2009 for best play.

Following Sophie Calle

2011-06-17T18:14:00.000-07:00

Lounge area at the Walker

I love this room. For me it embodies its setting--Minneapolis, Minnesota

where snow and ice are likely to be part of the environment half the year.

I took break from my home improvement chores the other day--an art break. The Walker Art Center is one of those museums I could go to over and over again. Iconic modern masterpieces. Surprising temporary exhibitions. This visit I spent almost all my time at a traveling exhibit called Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera Since 1870. Here's a quote from the Walker's website, "Exposed offers a fascinating look at pictures made on the sly, without the explicit permission of the people depicted. Investigating the shifting boundaries between seeing and spying, the private act and the public image, the exhibition reveals the myriad ways photography has brought to light the forbidden and the taboo. Homing in on sex, celebrity, violence, and surveillance, it provokes an array of uneasy questions at the intersection of both power and pleasure."

There were photos from Brassai's series "Secret Paris of the 1930s." And more photos of people in Paris by Henri Cartier-Bresson. But I think one of my favorite parts of the exhibit was a series of photos by Sophie Calle, a French photographer, writer, and installation artist that I've written about HERE. The photos I just saw at the Walker are a project of hers called The Shadow. Ms. Calle had her mother hire a private detective to follow her for a day while she went various places in Paris that were personally significant for her. She wrote journal entries throughout the day, and these are included in the project, too She wanted photographic evidence of her own existence, she said.

The are so many significant days in a person's life. People and places that are like the sun to us as we revolve around them. Would we see them differently if we had a photographic record of them? Would we see something new? Change our minds about someone or something? What would that surveillance expose? Would it change us?

Truffaut's The Man Who Loved Women

2011-05-23T08:40:00.000-07:00

Mr. Ex and I went out to see "The Man Who Loved Women" back in 1977 when it was first released. We were especially amused by the scene where The Man drives his lover around in the fresh air with the windows rolled down in an attempt to erase the post-coital flush from her cheeks. When I saw this movie all those years ago, well....it was quite simply a movie about a man who loved women.

I just watched the film again last night and was completely stunned to find it's really a movie about writing--more specifically, writing memoir.

Book-ended by scenes of The Man's funeral, the movie establishes his addiction to women in a few brief scenes, and then after an unexpected rejection by a woman he's expressed interest in, he is thrown into an evening of self-reflection. He combs through photos of old lovers, thinks back, and asks himself why he is so addicted to serial love. Inspired by his question, he grabs his typewriter from the top of his bookcase and begins to tap out his story. After he's completed several chapters, he takes the book to a professional typist who finds his story so disturbing that she refuses to type the next installment. The Man is devastated by her rejection.

To write is to express yourself, the man muses later, sitting alone at home in the dark. It is also to expose yourself to judgement. My very first reader had blacklisted me. From a somewhat later vantage point, he continues, At first I stopped writing. I lost interest in everything. Then I began to read nineteenth century autobiographies. How do you write about yourself? How did others do it? What were the rules? I realized there were no rules--that each book was different and expressed the author's personality. Each page, each sentence of an author belonged to him alone. His writing is as personal to him as his fingerprints.

There's even a scene about self-publishing when The Man's physician shows him the book he's written about fishing, and admits that he himself bore the cost of publishing it. Luckier than his doctor, The Man finds a publisher for his story. Before the book is released, The Man runs into a former lover that has not been revealed in the scenes from his book. After their meeting, he phones his publisher in a panic, telling her that he needs to re-write the book because he's just realized that he wrote the book because of a woman whom doesn't even mention. You want to write one book, you end up with another, the publisher tells him. She explains that this is what happens sometimes, and that the man now has a reason to write a second book.

At the end of the movie as the parade of women arrives for the Man's funeral, there's voiceover narration from the publisher as she observes first-hand the women she's read about. The Man is dead, but There is something that will endure, she says. A remembrance. A rectangular object. 320 bound pages. We call that a book.

Memoir. A story that answers a big question. A story that reveals something not just to the reader, but to the writer. Something that will endure. A book.

L'illusioniste

2011-03-27T22:49:00.000-07:00

"The Illusionist" is a movie that made me want to own it frame by frame and hang it on my walls. A strikingly beautiful piece of animation, it is also full of humor and pathos.

We hold our illusions close to us in this life. But things are often not as they seem. We think shoes will bring us happiness, that we can by some miracle do justice to a job that we are unqualified for, that if we take care of someone and bestow upon them the things they desire that we can bring them happiness. Maybe sometimes we manage to pull the rabbit out of that hat. But other times, we have no choice but to release the poor bunny and let it fend for itself.

Maybe the only way to manage is to keep making magic as long as we can. "The Illusionist" certainly does a fine job of working its movie magic.

A New Book by the Charming Jamie Cat Callan

2011-03-05T13:02:00.000-08:00

http://frenchwomendontsleepalone.blogspot.com/2011/03/bonjour-kirkus-reviews.html?spref=fb

Jamie and I were housemates when we were both Auvillar fellows at Moulin à Nef. I enjoyed her joie de vivre then--and now it's captured in a book.

Le Chapeau

2010-05-21T14:21:00.000-07:00

A group of French tourists were riding that silly little red train in Athens, and as they went by me and my friend Meredith on our way to the Ancient Agora, a woman called out happily, "Ooh la la, le chapeau!" She liked my hat. Nice to hear French in Greece. Like being two of my favorite places at once. Nice to have a pretty hat.

Le Divorce

2010-04-23T19:34:00.000-07:00

Divorce can siphon off a person's joie de vivre. I've been waiting for Monsieur EX to sign off on the division of our community property so I can indulge my ooh la la in one of my favorite places. Lately
I've been picturing myself stationed at the end of a Freeway ramp near LAX. The sign I hold aloft will read, WILL WORK FOR FRENCH FOOD...IN FRANCE.
So I'm dreaming of fall drizzling into winter in a little village near Carcasonne...and of course Mr. Ex prys his way into my fantasy. Our love felt infinite twenty-five years ago when we toured the ramparts in the rain and had our umbrella turned inside out as we sloshed over the cobblestones to dinner in a little candlelit restaurant with walls made of stone.
I had tarragon ice cream for desert.
Why do I remember these things?
How much cheese do I need to eat to harden a few arteries and reduce the bloodflow to my memory banks?
WILL WORK FOR FRENCH CHEESE...ANYWHERE.

The Music of Olivier Messiaen

2010-03-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

In the past month the music of French composer, Olivier Messiaen has come into my life twice, and both experiences have been ekphrastic, which is to say that other artistic mediums were involved with the music and served to enlighten it.
In February I went to Minneapolis to see the work of my friend, choreographer Julie Mueller, who created a cycle of dances for Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time in a collaborative work with the Bakken Trio.
Julie's dance training is rooted in the German Expressionist movement that pioneer modern dancer Mary Wigman implemented in her school in Germany in the 1920s. Wigman was hailed for bringing the deepest existential experiences to the stage, and it was in this spirit that Julie's choreography imbued Messiaen's music with a visible incarnation. The dancers performed both masked and unmasked--a nod perhaps to Wigman's propensity for masks with non-Western/tribal motifs, and to Julie's own interest in Japanese Butoh. At times, by the use of scarves, the dancers took on the look of winged creatures in keeping with Messiaen's love of birds and his belief in Angels. There were swords, too and in a dramatic dance solo, Messiaen's inspiration for his composition lived and breathed on stage. "There shall be time no longer," says the Angel of the Apocalypse in the Revelations quote that Messiaen employs on the front page of his composition.
Yesterday I attended a performance in a series entitled Music & Mansions put on by the Pasadena Conservatory of Music. Messiaen's Vingt Regars Sur L'Enfant-Jesus was performed by the amazing pianist, Mark Robson, in the midst of an art exhibit titled, Secular Icons, painted by the symbolic expressionist painter, Edward Beckett. In addition to the art surrounding the audience and the pianist, there was a program insert with twenty "automatic drawings"--one for each of Messiaen's "Regards."
And like the performance of Quartet for the End of Time, there were copious program notes of Messiaen's own making that set the mind off on its own journey.
I don't really care for surround sound or 3-D. But I am craving more ekphrasis and more Messiaen.
Messiaen served as the church organist at La Trinité in Paris. It's on my list for the next visit. Maybe there will be a concert, and maybe there will be dancers or painters, too.

photo credit: NY Times

Petit Suisse

2009-12-09T13:44:00.000-08:00

I've been craving the dessert cheese called Petit Suisse ever since I came back from France. Not anymore. This past weekend, a person who is quite aware of my passion for cheese spooned a dollop of this Trader Joes's product into my mouth. Et Voila! If you'd like to try this as a dessert, Petit Suisse is served with a sprinkle of sugar on the top. Maybe a couple of raspberries or a sliced strawberry on the side. Or a square of chocolate. And think small. We're talking rich. The real Petit Suisse comes in containers the size of a shot glass. After you finish one, you're drunk on cheese.

I Wish I Knew This Woman

2009-11-16T20:24:00.000-08:00

Dinner conversation is pretty amazing when one is at a writer's residency. Tonight, dining in the Ragdale dining room, I learned of a French artist named Sophie Calle. I just read about her on Wikepedia.
Here's an excerpt which describes some of her work. The italics are mine.
I love that she referred to her boyfriend as "X."
I hope I can see her work someday. To see it in France would be even better

"Douleur Exquise" (exquisite pain) 2003. She was supposed to go to Japan but didn’t want to, so she took the train through Moscow and through Siberia, then through Beijing, then to Hong Kong. She was supposed to meet her lover in New Delhi, but he made up some sort of story about a car accident, which she realized was a lie. She took a photograph every day until the day they were supposed to meet in New Delhi, and wrote about how much she looked forward to meeting him. The second half of the book was all about the pain of the heartbreak. She would write about the horrible memory of the conversation where she realized he was breaking up with her on one page, and ask people to tell her their worst memory, which was placed on the right. Over the days, her story became shorter and shorter as her pain dissipated over the time. The juxtaposition of everyone’s terrible memories also played down the pain of a simple breakup.

At the 2007 Venice Biennale, Sophie Calle showed her piece Take Care of Yourself, named after the last line of the message her ex had left her. Calle had asked dozens of women—including a parrot and a hand puppet—to interpret the break-up e-mail and presented the results in the French pavilion. ^[5]

At her gallery shows, Calle frequently supplies suggestion forms on which visitors are encouraged to furnish ideas for her art, while she sits beside them with a disinterested expression.

In November 2008, she will participate in an exhibition "Système C, un festival de coincidence" proposed by the Stéréotypes Associés inMains d'Oeuvres, Paris.^{[citation needed]}

Sophie Calle was recently awarded the frieze Writers Prize 2009 for Take Care of Yourself. Take Care of Yourself is a break-up letter her then-boyfriend (dubbed ‘X’) sent her via e-mail. Calle took the e-mail, and the paralyzing confusion that accompanies the mind’s failure to comprehend heartbreak, and distributed it to 107 women of various professions, skills and talents to help her understand it – to interpret, analyze, examine and perform it. The result of this seemingly obsessive, schoolyard exercise is paradoxically one of the most expansive and telling pieces of art on women and contemporary feminism to pass through New York in recent years.

Got Cheese?

2009-10-19T15:49:00.000-07:00

I miss the cheese.

During my last week or so in France Clos Chevrel, Ossau, & Étorki were added to my previous list. Before I arrived back in the States, I asked my daughter to be sure there was Brie in the house for my homecoming. A day later I went to the store and bought a wedge of the delicious American blue cheese, Maytag. Today, I've been paging through a book titled, French Cheese. The photos are beautiful.

Luckily, the grocery store just down the street has a fabulous cheese selection. But according to my calculations, there are about 230 French cheeses that they don't have.

Friends

2009-10-19T15:14:00.000-07:00

I bought a yummy chocolate concoction at the Maxims at Charles DeGaulle Airport before I left France. I could have just crammed it in my overstuffed carry-on and hopped on the plane--but just to remind myself how much I enjoyed the company of writer Jamie Cat Callan during our month together as Auvillar Fellows, I asked the guy who sold me the chocolate to take this photo.

Jamie is a super-enthusiastic traveler & a tad bit more extroverted than I am. She pulled out her camera often and chatted with everyone we met. So here I am with Mr. Cardboard having one last French encounter inspired by Jamie's joyful fervor.

Bigger Is Not Better

2009-10-13T05:10:00.001-07:00

Okay. I realize the title of this post may seem weird given that, ultimately, I'm going to write about lingerie, but bear with me.

Shopping in France is a pleasure. I haven't shopped much, given the state of the dollar, but I have bought two things that require a certain amount of effort--shoes and lingerie. Shoes and lingerie must be tried on. Let's suppose for a minute, you are lingerie shopping at Target. Place yourself in this cavernous environment and imagine...it takes a very long time to run back and forth between the dressing room and the lingerie department (putting your clothes back on each time you do so.) And even if you were willing to spend quite a bit more money--at Nordstrom, let's say, it would still take the sales lady a very long time to run back and forth between the dressing room and the immense inventory of lingerie she must peruse to bring you what you need.

Nordstrom has a fabulous yearly shoe sale. It's a vrai fête de chaussures, but when those handsome sales guys run off to get you a different size or a different color, they have to take the bus somewhere, I think. And then they must climb three-story ladders and inch slowly back down, their arms laden with boxes....

The stores here are small. Very small. Think of the size of your bedroom, perhaps. Think of an average, efficient sales lady (that's right, one saleslady) and voila, you have the French shopping experience.

I bought lingerie in 20 minutes. Gorgeous lingerie. After we determined that I was---sit down for a moment my American girlfriends--a size 90 C, the saleswoman laid out 5 bras in my size that had the potential for co-ordinating culottes that were neither bikinis or thongs. So even with this particular style restriction, I had a very good selection AND all the bras fit perfectly.

All the bras never fit perfectly at home. Why? I have no idea.

Once in the dressing room, the saleswoman was an arms length away (while still at her cash register) which allowed her to hand me les culottes (which were on a shelf behind her) and things proceeded apace.

Done with the shopping.

Now for the wearing.

Terroir

2009-10-12T08:06:00.000-07:00

Wine lovers know about terroir. Primarily it's the soil of the particular region that contributes to the characteristics of the grapes grown there, but it's also the general topography and the weather conditions that create the unique qualities of the crops--so says Wikipedia.

I was familiar with the concept of terroir in relation to wine, but I heard the word over and over yesterday at the maison de chasseurs. The wine was local, the armagnac was local. The prunes, the deer that was in the sausage, the succulent pieces of boar that were on our plates all were local. "Terroir," said the man across the table from me every time he put something on my plate or filled my glass.

So I looked it up. "It can be loosely translated as a 'sense of place'," Wikepedia says.

Writers know about sense of place. Every story happens in a particular place at a particular time, and we take pains to evoke that time and place, searching for the exact words that will bring the setting and the story to life.

And so it is. The stories that come out of my time here in Auvillar were born in this place. Terroir.

Game

2009-10-11T13:26:00.000-07:00

It was another foie gras sort of day.

Enough meat for awhile, I told myself after the walk down the hill from the restaurant to our house. But les chasseurs were having a party.

This past month in Auvillar, my housemate and I have had the opportunity for a few brief conversations with the hunters who have a lodge next door.

"Good luck with your hunting," we told them if they were still gathered out front when we unlocked our studio in the mornings and climbed up the stairs for a day of writing. And if we crossed paths in the afternoon, we politely asked if they'd gotten anything.

Things began to get interesting a couple of weeks ago when they returned from the hunt with five wild boar. We'd didn't see the carcasses unloaded ourselves, but we heard the clinking of glasses and dishes and conversation after they made themselves dinner.

Today they got deer and the carcasses were strung up just inside their door. Their meal was pretty much over, but the men and a couple of their young sons and even a girlfriend were still gathered around the table when we walked by this afternoon.

"Sit," they said. "Try some boar." So we did. And deer sausage. And homemade prunes in Armagnac. And 2 kinds of homemade wine, and finally, coffee. The food was delicious. The hunters were very nice. In fact, marriage was proposed.

I declined.

I did, however, get the instructions for making prunes in Armagnac.

Beauty Underfoot

2009-10-10T14:12:00.000-07:00

There are many houses in this region of France that are hundreds of years old. They're very similar to one another--walls constructed out of red brick and river rock plastered together with mud. There are tile roofs and windows with painted wooded shutters. Floors are often simple clay tiles, but sometimes things get wild.

When one rehabs one of these old houses, it's often standard procedure to pick out the centuries-old mud and recoat the wall with stucco leaving the old rock and brick still slightly exposed. It must be a lot of work, but it probably lasts a few hundred years and you never need to paint the walls--though the windows and doors and the woodwork are usually painted.

One of my favorite interior paint combinations is red and yellow.

Old rough-hewn wooden beams are usually left exposed.

People often add extra windows when they re-do an old house because the original version tends to be dark. I'm picturing a perfect French house with wild floors and lots of extra windows. And a pigeonier.

It would be in a beautiful village---remote, yet with a train station and a TGV to Paris. Alas, ce n'existe pas.

Duck, Duck, Goose

2009-10-10T13:24:00.001-07:00

Duck is a big thing in this region of France. I ate duck gizzards twice today.

We VCCA folks had lunch at the home of a French sculptor. She served us a delicious salade landoise which is a lightly dressed plate of greens with duck gizzards and dried duck breast.

Tonight, I ate a salade Gascogne at my favorite restaurant in Auvillar, Sadoul de la Tour. Salade Gascogne is toped with the aforementioned bits of duck plus a roasted duck leg and a nice slice of foie gras on toast. It smells like Thanksgiving. The waiter at Sadoul de la Tour looks like a cross between Tony Curtis and Emilio Estevez and always speaks French with me very patiently. After my salad and my dessert of glace liegois, I needed a digestif so I ordered an Armagnac and he brought it with 3 sugar cubes and explained to me that one can ease the firepower of the Armagnac by eating a couple of sugar cubes dipped in Armagnac first. Sort of a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.

Which made me remember that today at lunch the sculptor explained how the French like to partake of an eau de vie (which means literally water of life) after they have coffee following a meal. The eau de vie is poured directly into the empty but still warm coffee cup which enhances the aroma and the taste of the eau de vie. We had two to chose from--a locally made plum eau de vie that she had added vanilla bean pods to or a mirabelle (a tiny yellow plum the size of a cherry) eau de vie from the Alsace region. I chose the mirabelle.

Oh--and then there was the apple tart.

The concept of joie de vivre requires absolutely no explanation after a day like today.

Color

2009-10-09T14:36:00.000-07:00

In the beautiful village of Auvillar, there is an economical use of color. Shutters do not exist in every hue of the rainbow. Doors or windows either. The world of color in the paint department is finite. Go wild with your flowers, mais faites attention! with the paint. Some of us have theorized that paint colors may be regulated by the village--or perhaps the larger entity that chooses the 1oo plus beaux villages de France. It could be that these colors are traditional and have existed for centuries. I do know that if you rebuild a historic house here, you must find old roof tiles to re-do your roof. In any event, they've made some good color choices. These colors seem drawn from nature--flowers, the stripe of color on a bird's wing or the shell of a beetle.

I live in a condo complex in the L.A. area. We have rules, too. We have a color. One.

Je regrette.

Shopping for Sexy Lingerie

2009-10-09T13:58:00.000-07:00

I went shopping for lingerie today in nearby Moissac. No luck in the lingerie department, but I bought a pair of shoes and a very nice top. French clothing is very lovely. There is quite a bit more detail and workmanship and a stunning sense of style in the displays.

In the very first dressing room I went into, there was this sign next to a scarf.

"A scarf is here for your use with the things your are trying on." Scarves are integral here. How can you decide if you like what you are trying on without seeing it with a scarf?!

The whole afternoon was sweet. We went for "tea" which actually turned out to be hot chocolate and it was the best hot chocolate I've ever had. If I had to imagine the recipe, it would go like this: Melt the best chocolate in the universe and pour it into a cup. Add chantilly.

As sexy as lingerie. To me anyway.

But I am going to look for lingerie in Valence d'Agen on Tuesday. Wish me luck.

Le Vendange

2009-10-08T09:58:00.000-07:00

When I was a student in France, I loved being here so much that I quit college so I could stay here. Yesterday while we were helping to harvest grapes at Domaine de Thermes, I joked that I might quit writing and just do farm work in France. There is an organization that could make this little dream come true. http://www.wwoof.fr/. Something to think about, but I'm already imagining the stories that might arise out of that experience so I probably won't give up writing forever.

Our afternoon of harvesting (which is always done by hand because the land is so hilly) was just one postcard after another.

It's a surprisingly low tech operation at Domaine de Thermes. When the augur or maybe the stemmer wasn't doing what it was supposed to do, Thierry just banged on it with a big hammer. Voila--juice began flowing through the hose into a tank.

When we got back to Moulin a Nef, there was a lovely dinner. A poet and her husband, a sculptor, la directrice (who could give up painting if she wanted and just cook--she's that good,) her husband and my fellow resident writer, Jamie Cat Callan, and me--future farm worker.

Merci Monsieur!

2009-10-06T04:22:00.000-07:00

I found a French book in the bottom of a box of second-hand stuff that someone gave my mother. I taught myself how to say, "Bonjour," "Bonsoir," "Comment allez-vous?" and "Merci." I was in 2nd or 3rd grade and Sister Mary Whoever was not impressed. "You'll study Latin in high school," she told me. I studied French in high school--maybe just to spite her. But as a high-schooler, I staggered through my classes under the influence of after-shave and Beatles' songs and boys wearing letter-jackets.

College is when it got to me. It wasn't exactly like a ride on the TGV. Things started slowly. Freshman year I was in a class that was too difficult and had to have a tutor. He was very cute, but that actually hindered my efforts at verb conjugation.

Sophomore year my professor frequently used poetry in the classroom and I think I remember a line passionate enough to keep me awake at 8 a.m.--something like "C'est mon coeur qui bat pour toi.

Junior year I went to France with a small group of Americans from my Catholic women's college. We brought our own professor--Monsieur Villette--and that was my personal point of no return. Monsieur V. opened the door on a lot of things I had no idea about. Paris was the very first big city I had ever been to, and the first time I dipped my feet into the sea, it was le grand bleu. I drank my first glass of pastis with him, learned my way around the cheese course, and saw my first Picasso. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to amount to much at that point in my life, but my semester in France with Monsieur V. changed that. And I actually learned to speak French. Merci Monsieur Villette!

Drink Local

2009-10-05T04:53:00.000-07:00

Eating local has become a big thing where I live in Southern California. Conscientious shoppers peruse their local farmer's markets and eschew bags of Trader Joe's frozen veggies that have been flown in from China. They read the labels in Vons and Safeway to see if the produce is from California or Chile. Luckily, we have great wine in California. I've visited the famous wine regions of Napa and Sonoma, and not too long ago, I filled up my trunk in the somewhat lesser known area of Paso Robles. UPS brings me regular shipments of wine from 2 of my favorite vineyards there--Justin & Tables Creek-- but that's an embarrassingly big carbon footprint for a good glass of red.

Here in Auvillar, you could ride your bike over the hill and fill up your bike basket. Or pile 5 wine lovers into the VCCA van--which is what we did on Saturday.

The folks at Domaine de Thermes gave us a private tour and tasting. "Ça pique," we were warned when the winemaker used the hose right from the barrel and shot it into our glasses so we could taste some wine that was nowhere near finished.

Then we sipped sweet grape juice that hadn't yet begun to transform itself into wine and asked a lot of questions as we walked from barrel to barrel and then to the tasting room all the while breathing in air that should be captured and used for scented candles or air freshener.

My favorite wine bears the name of one of the owners.

Voila, c'est Monsieur Dolthi, le vin, & moi!

My Cheese Census

2009-10-04T03:02:00.000-07:00

The list so far: comté, cantal, morbier, luberac, manchego, petit suisse, petit billy, p'tit Basque, roquefort--and the mystery cheese I bought from the guy in Valence d'Agen.

The fantasy: a delivery service that shows up at my door with a serving of a different kind of cheese every day.

Au Marché

2009-10-04T02:23:00.000-07:00

This is what I bought at the local market this morning.

I wasn't so sure about doing my own cooking during a writer's residency. I thought I'd probably live on bread and cheese and maybe buy a quiche from the local bakery if I felt like living it up. But going to the market is a way to soak up the atmosphere. The stories I'm working on are set it France so who knows--a couple of my characters might sit down at a table and tear into a delicious fougasse (that's the pizza-like thing) topped with bacon and goat cheese. It might be useful to know that one usually buys beets already cooked in France or that paté can be purchased in une petite boule.

Going to the open air market here in Auvillar means walking and that's good for thinking which is good for writing.

Everything here seems to be good for writing. Last night after a dinner that lasted pretty close to five hours my brain felt full too--

and as layered as this artichoke (which I think was big as my head.)

hahahaha

2009-10-02T10:22:00.000-07:00

Ça roule ma poule.

Literal translation: That rolls my chicken.

Meaning: That floats my boat.

Everyone appreciates a good rhyme.

Maybe even this authentic Auvillar chicken.

Food for the Palate; Food for the Soul

2009-10-02T01:31:00.000-07:00

The word for breakfast in French is petit déjuner, which translates literally as "little lunch." And logically, the word for lunch is déjuner. The word for dinner is dinner. Last evening, inspired by a wonderful dessert cheese called Petit Suisse, we had a petit dinner. Small glasses of Pastis as an aperitif accompanied by skewers of little pieces of pork served with cornichons and pearl onions.

A cup of vegetable soup, ramekins of "mac and cheese"--the cheese was a combo of Roquefort and Luberac and there were cherry tomatoes on top. The next two courses were salads. (The French do not eat the salad first.) Salad #1 was tiny new potatoes in creamy dressing. Salad #2 was lettuce and petis pois topped off with a baby carrot in a mustard vinaigrette. Then came the Petit Suisse served with a miniature plum drizzled with Armagnac and a single square of dark chocolate on the side.

Finally, a real dessert--canelé. A pastry we'd complain about in the U.S. because it's so small. Then Armagnac served in lovely hand painted glasses--tiny glasses, of course, with lilies of the valley painted on them.

The obsession with food in France is anything but petit. When I first visited France as a 19-year-old, all the fuss over food struck me as enjoyable, but a bit over the top.

But now, I see that relationships are nourished at the table. That love and friendship as well as food can be served up on a pretty plate. Three or four hours lingering in the candlelight with family or friends is a feast for the palate and for the soul.

French Words I love

2009-10-01T07:07:00.001-07:00

French for apple is pomme. French for potato is pomme de terre--which makes a potato an apple of the earth.

French for butterfly is papillon. French for moth is papillon de nuit--butterfly of the night.

And sometimes the French just see things differently. A wing back chair is described in French as a chair with ears.

But I'm told the poetry can devolve into the absurd. An acquaintance at dinner the other night told me that her package of disposable earplugs bore a label that, translated into English, read "earplugs for a single use that can then be thrown away."

Cheese Please

2009-09-30T07:32:00.000-07:00

"How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 kinds of cheese?" DeGaulle once asked. This says as much about French cheese as it does about France.

The cheese man at the open air market in Valence d'Agen yesterday was quite generous with samples. He had only a small selection--maybe 6 or 7 varieties of cheese produced in the Pyrenees which is about a 2-hour drive from here. I selected a hard cheese--a little sharp, good for an omelette or grated onto a salad. But after he told me he liked my hat and that I was beautiful and that he'd like my phone number, I got a little discombobulated and forgot to ask him the name of the cheese.

I told him I had only a USA number for my Blackberry, and then he asked me to stop back and see him when I finished my shopping.

I didn't.

But for the next couple of hours as I strolled past the fish, and the couscous, and the bread, the dishes, the clothes, and jewelry and yes, even the lingerie, I noticed that all of the couples I saw seemed to be well-matched in age. Maybe the French appreciate une femme d'un certain age.

Maybe cheese merchants, who know that the aging process enhances the cheese, are especially appreciative of older women.

For the Birds

2009-09-28T08:02:00.000-07:00

I can't afford to do any real shopping on this trip to France, but yesterday I did some window shopping--or what the French call lecher les vitrines (the literal translation is licking the windows.) That's a pretty good description of how much I liked this bedding I saw. Mind you, I have a fabulous hand sewn quilt made for me by my mother and I've had it on my bed for about 15 years and still love it. But. There's just something about those birds. I have a thing for birds right now. I'm enjoying a book ( written in English) called The Poets Guide to the Birds and there are lots of birds here where I'm living here in France--pigeons and ravens and magpies and little songbirds who I don't quite recognize. Not to mention the chickens and roosters. I live between two roosters--handsome fellows who crow whenever they seem to feel like it. And at night, if I sit out on the patio after everyone has gone to bed, I hear owls calling to one another. But they sound a little different from the owls I've heard in the USA. There's a sort of vibrato in their calls--as if they are rolling their vowels the way French speakers roll their "Rs."

If I bought that comforter I saw in the window, I'd have to hang it out on the clothesline on laundry day.We have no clothes dryer here at Moulin a Nef. http://www.vcca.com/france.html

I thought I would only pretend to like this process, but I love the way my sheets smell after a day in the sun. It would be fun to see that gorgeous comforter dancing in the breeze. Maybe all the real birds would soar in for a closer look.

Sunday in the Country

2009-09-28T05:59:00.000-07:00

We drove into the province called Le Lot yesterday and saw another of France's most beautiful villages--St. Cirq Lapopie.

But it was the apple orchards in the countryside that captured my imagination. The rows of trees have a framework of wooden poles over them from which are hung vast sheets of white netting that can be used to cover the trees. But when the netting is pulled back, it's gathered and anchored to the poles at the ends of the rows. It looks like grand draperies made of white tulle--like the apple trees are having a wedding.

C'est La Vie

2009-09-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

I like to say that I'm currently living in France. I'm here for a month, thanks to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. http://www.vcca-france.com/index.php?page=2009-2 This first week has already concluded, and so far I've awakened every morning in my charming room in an old stone house thinking, I'm living in France! It's a bit of a fantasy because it's pretty unlikely that I'll continue to live here, but for now I do live in Auvillar which has the distinction of being one of the 100 most beautiful villages in France.

http://www.les-plus-beaux-villages-de-france.org/en