There were three weeks of comings and goings with Bhumi, sharing many feelings.. working together.. eating together.. saying goodnight and good morning. We put up a wall against physical intimacy, but we met at the wall every day and learned a lot about each other. We had time to dissolve some illusions and projections. Despite the troubled situation I saw everywhere in Bhumi's physical spaces, she impressed me again and again with her insight into feelings, the lightness of her spirit, and her capacity for joy. I was drawn to the light in her big brown eyes. Whenever I felt that this light was there especially for me I felt transported.
The decision about sailing hung heavily over the last week. Now it meant not only leaving this place where everything seemed to be going so right, but it also leaving Bhumi while something was growing between us day by day. At the beginning of the last week I decided to go do two days of work at Maison du Compte. This would be a little leaving before the bigger leaving to come. I had an intuition that something was off with the scene there and I was right. I felt stranded with too little real connection with these people who were, for whatever reason, too pressured by their own agendas to slow down and have a leisurely meal or conversation. And I could feel the absence of the special connection I had with Bhumi. Here was a person who was inclined toward me and was there beside me the whole day through. And I missed this. At Maison du Compte I was in a warm house with a big private bath with plenty of hot water, but with a cold heart, missing Bhumi's cold flat with the bathroom two flights down and a limited supply of warm water, but with a warm heart.
I had decided some time back that I would go sailing. I decided that I had to leave France at some point and that this would be the time to get perspective on what I had experienced and how I had changed. I could come back. I believed that I would. Maybe in the summer. Maybe in the fall. Almost as often as I was resolved to go I got a clear impulse to stay. Then two days before I was to leave the intimacy wall came down for Bhumi and I. The holes that had been intimations became invitations and finally the invitations were accepted. We became lovers. Once again I had to decide whether to leave to go sailing. I felt split down the middle, but in the end I…. we…. decided that there was something in this experience for me. Maybe sailing was important for me. I needed to at least go and find out. It was precarious for me to merely stay in this place without having my own center line.
I got on the bus in the early morning. Then the train. The train delayed. Another bus due to the delay. That evening I was back in Barcelona. Bhumi was in my thoughts and my heart every hour and mile. I had arranged through 'couch surfing' to stay with a 55 year old American living in the city, and he invited me to join him for a supper party. Not very pleasant. Too many people crowded into a small place and too much noise. The hostess was cold and anxious. Norman was a kind man, but lost. He came to Barcelona for love and was left alone from the start. Two years now and he is going back to San Francisco. Still looking for love..? or just sex, I don't know. He tells me that he is too old for these Barcelona women to be interested in him. He also reports this to the women he meets as well. Maybe he wants them to turn this negative belief around for him. Obviously, they don't do this. I drank some wine and was prepared to enjoy myself. I met three or four people who I could talk to in a meaningful way. With Fidel, a gentle open Barcelona man, no wife or children, who says he thinks of making changes… traveling… but then he says 'it's complicated'…. or ……' I am a fearful person'. I tell him, "It's not complicated. Fear…. OK…. maybe you are afraid, but you can choose to go ahead and do it anyway." I ask where he would like to go. He says, Asia. Then he tells me he came to America last year and drove across on the old Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles, and his friends said he was courageous. I tell him I would love to talk to him in 6 months and find out what he decides to do. And then an English woman, Jean, who is tall, elegant, black and attractive, but says she only works at her job… why? … security. When I tell her I am in love, she insists, "No, it's lust." I say, "No… love". She refuses to believe this. Shakes her head and says "Lust". I don't argue, I say, "So you have given up on love." She says "Yes." . I say "It is true that if you want love, you have to feel the pain too." She agrees… not interested in going there. Sad. Then Olga from Barcelona, who is about my age. Seems centered. Maternal. She asks what would I like to know about her city. I say, "What is Barcelona without the partying?" She says, "Flamenco." I like this answer. Yes…. big passion… music… dance. When I tell her I am in love, she asks "Why are you here? Why are you going to Canaries? You should stay with her." She believes in love. I say, "Yes, I will go back." She says, "Forget the Canaries… not so great… go back… now." I say, I have to go away some time because of the visa. She says, "Go back. If you love her, you can marry her and stay." I feel foolish. She is looking through me and my poor excuses. I feel warmth, clarity… compassion.
Next morning I got on the plane and it filled up with passengers. I am trying to look forward to sailing but I think it will not be so great. I say, "in a week I will know more." I am afraid. It's not complicated. I have made it complicated so that I do not have to step into the fear. Afraid of what? I want to keep all the possibilities open. I seem to want something 'out there' to tell me what I already know. That love is the only thing that really matters and it is worth risking everything.
I arrived in Tenerife in the early AM and gave myself a bit of a tour of the island on the way to the ship. The ship was grand. The crew lively and congenial. I had an adventure to look forward to, but I could not escape the dismal feeling of being away from my love. I could not imagine a month of this. There were troubles and misunderstandings with Bhumi already around phone calls and messages. Wifi and everything technological produced an endless stream of complications, roadblocks and frustrations. Things were already starting to go weird between us at such a distance. Tenerife seemed like a big rock pile overgrown with pretty tourist accommodations totally lacking soul or beauty. On our sailing day I was seasick crossing to La Palma in high seas. The third morning I told Nikki, our 'captain', that I really had to return to France after this first week. Everyone onboard knew my predicament. Nikki gave me a warm smile and her blessings. One week would be enough. Over a month.. too much. I called Bhumi who had been doing her best to support me in my decision to sail, and she was delighted. We made plans to meet on my return in Provence where she would be on a family visit.
La Palma, our new location, was worthy of it's reputation as a place of beauty. A colonial Spanish outpost with old streets and real character… and tourists, but not like Tenerife. That evening many of us went back into town for a few drinks and I ended up sitting and singing and drinking red wine with three ancient islanders, Antonio, Oskar, and Trotsky. The sailing experience was starting to brighten for me. Then another crossing to a port on Gomera across high seas with a strong wind, but less discomfort, more exhileration. A walk through the small town, situated on a narrow skirt of reasonably level land beneath dramatic cliffs and a black sand beach, heavily populated with Germans.. At sunset Georgia, another passenger, and I made a 10 minute swim back out to the boat. Out on the quiet water our ship with it's black hull was flanked by another tall ship, a white hulled square rigger from Denmark on the left, and on the right, the red orange sun just touching the horizon. Seabirds wheeling lazily against the sky. Half circled behind us by cliffs marked and crossed by geological heiroglyphics in shades of ochre, grey, lavender, and white, rising 500 feet or more into the sky. I laughed out loud there in the water. It was hard to believe that this was real and that this place and this moment was my life. Some kind of perfection.
But I know that even this is not enough. In the life I lived before I always made the best of these moments and tried to feel that life was full. But I was lonely. Always looking for something. If the opening of my heart that I have had with Bhumi did not happen before with others it is no fault of whoever I was with. I know I have changed. I can stand outside of myself and see that I am able to move comfortably into all kinds of relationships. The old men in the bar, the guests at the party in Barcelona, the people of France or on this ship. I enjoy this openness. But these places and people can pass and be replaced by others. What I have found with my new love is something deeper. I feel that I can finally give myself in devotion to another and receive the same in return. This is what I have been looking for. The little girl in 12th night cake showed up at the moment I was ready to recognize this in myself. So I have made Bhumi my destination. I don't have a plan. I don't know when I will be back in VT. I am not making commitments to sail in Maine in the spring. We will work it out. Or not. Doesn't matter. I don't really have a choice. My head complains that I could be making a really big mistake, but my heart just keeps saying YES!.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Another kind of journey
Unravelog
I have spent week after week here in this part of S. France taking pleasure in novel sights and sounds and experiences, meeting remarkable people who have opened their doors and lives to me, and this pleasure has not diminished. In fact the novelty has been tempered by familiarity and in time the experience has grown deeper and richer. When I walk down the streets of Sauve past many doors that I have entered, beside the marvelous ancient walls and buildings that seem to have grown up out the ground in obedience to the spell of a drunken sorcerer with an aversion to right angles, and I stop to greet someone, or pop in to Rhaim's flute shop for a small visit, …. or I come back again to MasLafont and look out my window in the morning light at 'the twins'…. I feel like this is my home. At times I wonder if it could truly become my home and what would that mean.
There is a deeper level of my journey, as I acknowledged from the start, which is the journey inward, to rediscover myself by stepping outside of my old life for a time. When I think back to my first green days in Barcelona it is clear that this part of the journey has grown immensely. I think it is for this reason that I have been less and less inspired to report on my trip as a travelogue. Photos and little fun facts about places only touch on the surfaces of things. Something more like 'Eat, Pray, Love" is in order here. An unraveling.
And yet I fear that in time I will forget many wonderful things. So for my own sake I want to capture a few of these without binding myself to a simple narrative. So here it goes…
Sauve. Medieval village situated on a narrow sloping bank of the Vidourle River, rising up toward 'la Mer des Rochers'.. the Sea of Rocks …an ancient open stone quarry laced with paths running between stone walls and ruins and peculiar limestone pillars and laced everywhere with mysteries. Sauve, a village of 2000 that boasts 34 nationalities among its inhabitants. A village 1000 years old, if not more. Sauve, which means, Salve, which is for Salvia, a plant which grows here and provided a healing balm during the Plague. A town that has many secret rooms built into its walls where the Protestants were hidden during the religious wars, and fighters in Le Resistance..here and in caves and places like La Mer de Rochers, and long before maybe a few Cathars as well. Sauve, which also means, 'Safe'. A town that captives and accommodates artists and writers and poets and craftspeople and dreamers. Robert Crumb has lived here for some 25 years and plays music on occasion with locals. An art gallery by the bridge is called 'Vidourle Prix' because it was once a little grocery store and just kept the name on the facade. Robert's wife is involved in the gallery and they sell Crumb's books, art cards, posters and more. But Robert, as the locals call him, is reclusive. Maybe I saw him once on Grand Rue walking away from me around a corner, but I am not sure.
Grand Rue 6 where Christina lives with her two luminous children, Gaby and Maxim and gave me her spare apartment while I recovered from the flu. She tells me I have been working too hard. She has some work for me, but says, forget it, just rest, maybe later. She has a small atelier at ground level where she sews prototypes for Paris fashions and shares the space with a ceramic sculptress and a children's book illustrator. But she cannot live in Paris any more. Yes, I understand, I reply. She came to Sauve some years ago and stayed. Christina invited me to have hor d'ouvres one evening with her pals on their 'girls night out'. Women who are all single and wonder "Where are the men of Sauve?".
Grand Grand Rue 10, where Mr Potter (Potier) the potter lived until last year when for reasons no one can understand he took his own life. His creations are still there, like some mute testament to his passing prescence behind the unshuttered window of his atelier.. Next , Grand Rue 12, where Frank Rome lives, 56 yo trapeze artist for Cirque de Soleil. Frank, who recently helped put to rest his circus colleague, Fabian, who broke his neck in a midair collision and lived on for 5 years as a paraplegic until he passed suddenly of a stroke… this being the occasion of Frank's prior return to Sauve earlier in December, when I first met him. Frank is the one on the trapeze who catches and throws his acrobatic friends through the air, and he is the one who missed his throw one tiny bit that awful day. Or maybe Fabian was off and Frank did not release him into the net at the decisive split second. I don't know. Occupational hazard is a heavy in the circus trade. No blame, but they, say he carries a burden regardless. Franks' house. A big house that he began to renovate with a big vision 20 or more years ago. After an initial burst of inspiration most of the vision is still hanging in the air, while the reality is substantially unrealized. So it is unkempt and a bit of a shambles. Frank's friend, Patrice, has helped him through the years to complete some parts of the vision. Patrice who worked with Frank in Cirque de Soleil until he fell sick a year ago. Patrice was one of those in charge of moving and assembling the tents. We sat many times in his little apartment he is building into Frank's top floor and talked about life and love, about his own break up and reconciliation in his marriage, how he found his perfect teacher 40 minutes from his home in British Columbia and has been through his own dark night of the soul, and he cheers me on again and again. "Don't know what the hell you are doing anymore?…. Great! That's a good place to be." I came back in January from Mas LaFont to stay and work with Frank and Patrice for a week to get the last bit of roof.. almost .. finished. At least it is insulated and the rain cannot get in. Sitting with Frank on the roof one day looking over the rooftops of Sauve he told me how he started with his big vision and then life intervened. Divorce and everything else. Wanting to be able to sell the house, which is worth quite a bit even as it is, and go traveling. But his children want him to keep it. Son Adrian 22, who I met, and daughter 17 who I have not. The last day, moving the ancient roof tiles, some of them about 1000 years old, shaped directly on the thighs of those long dead people, with the finger marks still visible in the hard clay, handing them up to Patrice, to Adrian, to Frank. Someday they will go the last step back onto the roof, but not now.
Stephanie, Frank's 28 year old girlfriend with a modest nose ring, easy smile, and smoky laughter. Who plays accordion… lovely melancholy melodies of her own invention and traditional songs. Stephanie, who Eric says was only really grounded once in all the time he has known her. Eric, who may have quite unintentionally passed his flu to me the night I met him way out in the Cevennes near where Frank had his motorcycle accident the day before I came back. Eric is a Quebecois guitarist, songwriter, playwright, translator who came to Sauve 6 or 7 years ago and stayed. Who wonders where are the women of Sauve who inspired him in years past to 'storm the gates'. Eric McComber wrote and read a short story on night in Sauve, Stephanie layering her accordion music into the reading. This at the Maison du Compte, the house of the count. The count is gone, but the house remains. A grand structure from the 12th Century, substanitally rebuilt 4 or 5 hundred years ago. Host was host to a celebration of the 1,000,049th anniversary of the birth of art on January 17th. An idea initiated by one of Sauve's favorite sons who came to America and achieved some notoriety with the likes of Warhol, Johns, Lichtenstien, etc. Maison du Compte, where I sat to play the piano for my own enjoyment as the party moved on to another venue while I sat oblivious, as I often am, of the plan. So the mistress of the household, a striking dark haired woman invited me to join them upstairs for some 'soup' (which means supper, actually) and I said yes because it sounded good and that's what I do now. I just say, "Yes". So here I am sharing the family meal with these remarkable people. 3 children. Grandmothers. Two dogs. Carl, who is from Denmark, is a musician, who plays exquisite compositions on guitar. (Later, back at Frank's, Eric tells me that Soraya is a Tuareg princess from Algiers. I don't doubt it.) I am offered dessert and almost agree because I want to be gracious, Soraya says, "No, Peter is getting sick and this would not be good for him", which is true, because I am starting to really come down hard with Eric's French flu. (Patrice says getting sick is great because your immune system gets an update… like a computer.. Cool) So I, say to Soraya, you are right. And Carl, her husband, leans over and says, sotto voce, "The thing is… she's always right". And I don't doubt it. She has already given me the tour of the house, the numerous studios where she paints, the lovely guest room where I can stay if I come and work there, the meditation room, the terrace, the bathroom, which is more of a day spa, actually, and everything actually finished… except for the project downstairs which involves 'rendering' the bare stone, which means surfacing it with mortar and plaster and paint, like I did in Sommieres with Bertrand. So I say… Maybe. I also hear a little of their story, how they came and saw this house and bought it a week later because she missed the stone houses of her childhood and because is it Sauve, I suppose, and that's what happens to certain people when they come here, and spent three years renovating it, the indefatigable Soraya doing much of it herself - with help as needed. Soraya who is always right tells me I need to find my own center line, even though she says I am actually pretty grounded, which is good. She's looking right through me and I think she's probably right. Maybe you need a woman, she says. And I don't doubt it.
Sauve, where I bought my bamboo flute from Rhaim Seligman, 72 who looks more like 55 or 60, and thinks I look younger than my 57 years, which I like to hear because last year I felt like i was 60, but now I feel like I am 45, except when I see a pretty girl and I feel like I am 16. Rhaim Seligman, who built his first flute when he was 11 yo and has dedicated his life to his craft, his great passion. He tells me that a flute is better than a woman. I agree that a musical instrument gives you pleasure when you want it and asks nothing of you the rest of the time, so maybe he is right. Rhaim, who spent 12 years traveling Asia for Unicef researching the instrument and it's music, making many recordings. Who travels every year to one or two places in the world that produce just the perfect bamboo, which is then cured for 5 years before it is ready to use. Whose little shop is packed with flutes in all phases of construction, ready to pack and ship to places all around the world, and where he is willing to stop and sit when I pop in, to roll a smoke and chat, and teach me a little more to help me with my playing of my flute, which I bought from him in December because I thought I was leaving for good and might regret it if I passed by my one opportunity. Silly me, I did not know yet that Sauve had already claimed me.
Bertand's house down past the square where I stayed a couple nights way way back in the distant past of mid December. Bertrand, Benoit's genial carpenter friend whose house is another work in progress with a whole network of stairways leading to apartments for both his grown son and daughter. And Benoit's house just down the street. 'His house' because he is an architect and he restored it beautifully… or his wife's house where he does not live any more because Benoit is with Sarah in St Quentin, but still uses it from time to time when it is unoccupied things being quite amicable with his ex.
Restaurants waiting to open again in warmer weather. The little shops. The fountains. Narrow passages leading down to the Vidourle River or up to the La Mer de les Rochers. The doors and shutters, wood and iron and paint, some of them the iconic baby blue of Southern France, each marked by the years, some elegant, some decadent, each as individual and mute and full of history as old men sitting at small round cafe tables in the morning sun nursing tiny white cups of expresso. When I tell anyone who found this place and stayed that I feel a pull to stay here and not leave, they smile a knowing smile and nod. It is something that is felt, but altogether inexplicable. Something that one fears to analyze too closely, lest it perish from the ill treatment. Better to savor this place, to come under it's spell if you are so predestined, and if the peculiar mystique of Sauve must be acknowledged… simply smile and a nod.
Further up the River is St. Hippolyte, or St. Hippo. If you come from St. Hippo.. you are a Cigalous, or a Cigalouse, depending on gender, the meaning being Cicada. Nobody knows why, but no doubt the insect is plentiful here when it makes an appearance every 17 years or so. In any case 'Saint Hypolytienne' is a cumbersome mouthful. St. Hippolyte - du Fort - to distinguish it from some lesser St. Hippolyte elsewhere, stands below an impressive ridge of high hills topped by limestone escarpments. It forms a kind of gateway to this southeastern reach of the Cevennes, a natural area of forest and modest mountains rising to 1000 meters or so. A town with center that is old, if not quite as ancient and compact as Sauve, but typical of villages in this area. The town where my friend Bhumi lives, who I met at the sweat lodge at Mas Lafont. There is a coop food store on the scale of the little coops of Vermont but even more rough around the edges. Bhumi tells me there are 4 or 5 areas of France that have similar concentrations of people into organic food, living on the land, and all that alternative stuff. Too many people who like the idea of building round houses of sticks and bamboo and mud for my tastes, actually. This is one of those regions. Sometimes I wonder how I managed to find my way back to Vermont without leaving France. Sometimes I have the strange sense that I am in a dream where my friends and family are all speaking a language that I can't understand and that any minute they will tire of this and start speaking English again… but they never do
The same, but different. Here you find a distinct French flavor, of course. I am inclined to think that there is a strain of French national character that is expressed in the words "Liberte!"… and … "Resistance!" ….passionate, with an edge. Nothing like a cause, or a philosophy, or counter-something to inspire dramatic rhetorical flourishes in the French. On the other end of the French manic-depressive continuum is existentialism of course, which the French fashioned into a kind of chic, but which stripped of it's glamourous wrappings is merely resignation and despair, or simple ill humor, which is also clearly on display in every town square. (Eric tells me that Sartre and Camus were hacks compared to de Beauvoir.. sycophants) This region, the Languedoc is the land of the Heretic, the Cathar, the Protestant, the fringe dwellers. It is nothing like Paris here. Very little concern for fashion. Think: Paris = New York, then Cevennes = Vermont.
Up in the Cevennes, near the tiny town of Cros, is Mas Lafont. The house was built in about 1900 by rich folks from Montpellier as a country place. The terraces are much older than the house and the spring that waters the landscape is as old as the hills. I have written about this place already and will not repeat myself here. I have come and left and returned and left and am returning again for a few days to help Alain a bit more. He has a new workaway fellow from Denmark and I am helping him learn the ropes. It is raining everywhere else in France, but here in the south the days are bright and warm and I am glad to do a bit more clearing and burning and to feel well again after my bout with the flu. Jeanne Pierre is putting the new wood floor down for the big hall that is coming into being downstairs here. It is a place where I feel I will always be welcome to return.
Now I am counting the days before my date with sailing in the Canaries. It is a bit of a shock to be returning to my plan. To have a set itinerary. When I first planned all of this the sailing was there at the end, like dessert. My one sure thing. I began with a plan, but now it is just an idea, a contrivance, a vague obligation, or something to resort to when all else fails. But I retired the France portion of my plan a month ago and instead I have been swept along by the unexpected in ways that I could never have planned. Another, mysterious plan has taken it's place… quite a wonderful plan… an inscrutable plan that takes me by the hand again and again when I am in the dark and says, "Don't know what you are doing next?… Cool… now for something really good". And I keep meeting people like Patrice who totally get this and say, "Cool". Or just smile and nod. Many moments have had a numinous quality to them, as if something cosmic is lying just below the surface, or disappearing around the corner before I get a good look, like the elusive Mr Crumb. Then in other moments, or for whole days, everything crashes into the mud with a dull thud and I think, "Of course, the novelty buzz is wearing off." At times of enthusiasm I wonder whether I should cancel the sailing and just stay here. Or when I am in the mud I think I would be pushing my luck. I could move in to Maison du Compte and put three weeks in on the big project. In the lap of luxury really, with a piano, and a setting that is entirely about being creative. Write some songs maybe. I could have Soraya looking through me and being always right. Maybe meet one of the ladies of Sauve who wonder where the men are. Maybe finally learn to speak this confounded language. That leaves two weeks unaccounted for, but something would come along, maybe 3 or 4 things and I would have to choose. Everyone needs a handyman. Everyone takes me in and it is instant intimacy. And then there is sailing. How can I not go? But whose decision is this anyway? I don't have to go. My choice. What is sailing to me now? What if I leave and the magic is gone?
So this is how the journey turns inward now. I think Soraya is right and that I am trying to find my center line. Then maybe find the clarity and courage to let the answer unfold from that. To get myself out of my own way, go through the fear of just saying Yes and not sweating the details. The journey took a turn inward for me decisively on the night of January 6. Epiphany. 12th night. My lost brother Paul's 59th birthday. We cut the gallette, the celebratory cake, and I was the one who got the hidden prize. Of course I didn't know this, only that there was something hard in my mouth. It was a little porcelain figure of a girl with a basket of flowers and a straw hat. The writing on it was so tiny that it took concerted effort to puzzle it out. "Je veux vois offrire le douceur de mon amour." Translation: "I want to give you the sweetness of my love.". It rang true. Something that I have felt missing in my travels and many times in my life… to give my heart to someone… a companion… a lover. Something I keep pushing aside because…. how do you make it happen. I am not a gate stormer, and in any case as much as I might desire the physical part of love, it actually does feel secondary.
Then the sweat lodge and the day after, an impromptu excursion with Bhumi who I met by the fire that night. The first idea was to go to a little performance in Ganges, which turned out to be long on concept and short on entertainment value. So the plan changed and Bhumi said she'd like to go to the river instead. So we sat together a little and then a longer time apart by the banks of the Herault River and I picked up a flat little stone as a souvenir. At home it became a platform for my little girl… which I now kept in view wherever I was staying so I could be mindful of my little girl heart. And there was Bhumi, who is lovely and sweet and complicated and very clear about what she needs, and learning to play guitar in a not-at-all-self-conscious way, and cautious about beginning anything too intense or giving herself away when she is dealing with so much already…showing up at just that moment like a lightning rod for my burgeoning desire to fall in love. Or am I splitting hairs by not simply saying that I was in love, as if anyone ever fell in love without a huge (usually fatal) dose of projection. For days I was in a spin. Those first few nights and at any distracted moment my whole being was inclined toward 'Bhumi', which is to say my Bhumi projection of course, and Patrice would say 'Are you in love?' and I would say 'could be', because surely there is something there that isn't just projection. And when I handed Frank the wrong thing he would blame it on me being in love instead of the fact that I don't understand much French. But on the third day Bhumi and I stepped back from that edge. We put up wall. No seductions. No projections. No giving ourselves away like that. But we have not stopped exploring that edge together and enjoying a sweet friendship. I am practicing expressing what I feel without waiting for her to make it safe, or expecting anything in return and sometimes I find that despite my best intentions I am full of crap because Bhumi lets me know in one way or another. Bhumi stayed for dinner at Frank's one of those early days and showed me how to eat an oyster properly. Later I took the shell and cut it upstairs using a grinder so it would stand upright on it's edge and provide a mother of pearl enclosure, like one of those "our lady of the bathtub' lawn ornaments - for my little girl heart. And when I put the stone pedestal into the shell the irregular shape of the stone fit perfectly the irregular shape of the shell.
So this is the inner journey and compared to it, the outer spectacle is merely a side show. Even these outward affairs of love. If the end of it is knowing my own heart, then I can have that whether my outer situation is agreeable or not. I have made my plans for the next few days. Back to Sauve, Two days to help Christina, my flu-time guardian angel. Then two days to help Bhumi on little estate with it's caravan summer home and garden and many needs because she has not had her full health and energy since an accident two years ago, and because it is sometimes overwhelming (with tears) and she is too much alone in her life and her work and because she is not so afraid of us spending time together and getting closer as she was before. Then ….? More Bhumi days? Maison du Compte for a short stay? Back to the open door at Mas LaFont? Sailing? Stay in Sauve? Anything can happen .. and usually does. Stay tuned.
I have spent week after week here in this part of S. France taking pleasure in novel sights and sounds and experiences, meeting remarkable people who have opened their doors and lives to me, and this pleasure has not diminished. In fact the novelty has been tempered by familiarity and in time the experience has grown deeper and richer. When I walk down the streets of Sauve past many doors that I have entered, beside the marvelous ancient walls and buildings that seem to have grown up out the ground in obedience to the spell of a drunken sorcerer with an aversion to right angles, and I stop to greet someone, or pop in to Rhaim's flute shop for a small visit, …. or I come back again to MasLafont and look out my window in the morning light at 'the twins'…. I feel like this is my home. At times I wonder if it could truly become my home and what would that mean.
There is a deeper level of my journey, as I acknowledged from the start, which is the journey inward, to rediscover myself by stepping outside of my old life for a time. When I think back to my first green days in Barcelona it is clear that this part of the journey has grown immensely. I think it is for this reason that I have been less and less inspired to report on my trip as a travelogue. Photos and little fun facts about places only touch on the surfaces of things. Something more like 'Eat, Pray, Love" is in order here. An unraveling.
And yet I fear that in time I will forget many wonderful things. So for my own sake I want to capture a few of these without binding myself to a simple narrative. So here it goes…
Sauve. Medieval village situated on a narrow sloping bank of the Vidourle River, rising up toward 'la Mer des Rochers'.. the Sea of Rocks …an ancient open stone quarry laced with paths running between stone walls and ruins and peculiar limestone pillars and laced everywhere with mysteries. Sauve, a village of 2000 that boasts 34 nationalities among its inhabitants. A village 1000 years old, if not more. Sauve, which means, Salve, which is for Salvia, a plant which grows here and provided a healing balm during the Plague. A town that has many secret rooms built into its walls where the Protestants were hidden during the religious wars, and fighters in Le Resistance..here and in caves and places like La Mer de Rochers, and long before maybe a few Cathars as well. Sauve, which also means, 'Safe'. A town that captives and accommodates artists and writers and poets and craftspeople and dreamers. Robert Crumb has lived here for some 25 years and plays music on occasion with locals. An art gallery by the bridge is called 'Vidourle Prix' because it was once a little grocery store and just kept the name on the facade. Robert's wife is involved in the gallery and they sell Crumb's books, art cards, posters and more. But Robert, as the locals call him, is reclusive. Maybe I saw him once on Grand Rue walking away from me around a corner, but I am not sure.
Grand Rue 6 where Christina lives with her two luminous children, Gaby and Maxim and gave me her spare apartment while I recovered from the flu. She tells me I have been working too hard. She has some work for me, but says, forget it, just rest, maybe later. She has a small atelier at ground level where she sews prototypes for Paris fashions and shares the space with a ceramic sculptress and a children's book illustrator. But she cannot live in Paris any more. Yes, I understand, I reply. She came to Sauve some years ago and stayed. Christina invited me to have hor d'ouvres one evening with her pals on their 'girls night out'. Women who are all single and wonder "Where are the men of Sauve?".
Grand Grand Rue 10, where Mr Potter (Potier) the potter lived until last year when for reasons no one can understand he took his own life. His creations are still there, like some mute testament to his passing prescence behind the unshuttered window of his atelier.. Next , Grand Rue 12, where Frank Rome lives, 56 yo trapeze artist for Cirque de Soleil. Frank, who recently helped put to rest his circus colleague, Fabian, who broke his neck in a midair collision and lived on for 5 years as a paraplegic until he passed suddenly of a stroke… this being the occasion of Frank's prior return to Sauve earlier in December, when I first met him. Frank is the one on the trapeze who catches and throws his acrobatic friends through the air, and he is the one who missed his throw one tiny bit that awful day. Or maybe Fabian was off and Frank did not release him into the net at the decisive split second. I don't know. Occupational hazard is a heavy in the circus trade. No blame, but they, say he carries a burden regardless. Franks' house. A big house that he began to renovate with a big vision 20 or more years ago. After an initial burst of inspiration most of the vision is still hanging in the air, while the reality is substantially unrealized. So it is unkempt and a bit of a shambles. Frank's friend, Patrice, has helped him through the years to complete some parts of the vision. Patrice who worked with Frank in Cirque de Soleil until he fell sick a year ago. Patrice was one of those in charge of moving and assembling the tents. We sat many times in his little apartment he is building into Frank's top floor and talked about life and love, about his own break up and reconciliation in his marriage, how he found his perfect teacher 40 minutes from his home in British Columbia and has been through his own dark night of the soul, and he cheers me on again and again. "Don't know what the hell you are doing anymore?…. Great! That's a good place to be." I came back in January from Mas LaFont to stay and work with Frank and Patrice for a week to get the last bit of roof.. almost .. finished. At least it is insulated and the rain cannot get in. Sitting with Frank on the roof one day looking over the rooftops of Sauve he told me how he started with his big vision and then life intervened. Divorce and everything else. Wanting to be able to sell the house, which is worth quite a bit even as it is, and go traveling. But his children want him to keep it. Son Adrian 22, who I met, and daughter 17 who I have not. The last day, moving the ancient roof tiles, some of them about 1000 years old, shaped directly on the thighs of those long dead people, with the finger marks still visible in the hard clay, handing them up to Patrice, to Adrian, to Frank. Someday they will go the last step back onto the roof, but not now.
Stephanie, Frank's 28 year old girlfriend with a modest nose ring, easy smile, and smoky laughter. Who plays accordion… lovely melancholy melodies of her own invention and traditional songs. Stephanie, who Eric says was only really grounded once in all the time he has known her. Eric, who may have quite unintentionally passed his flu to me the night I met him way out in the Cevennes near where Frank had his motorcycle accident the day before I came back. Eric is a Quebecois guitarist, songwriter, playwright, translator who came to Sauve 6 or 7 years ago and stayed. Who wonders where are the women of Sauve who inspired him in years past to 'storm the gates'. Eric McComber wrote and read a short story on night in Sauve, Stephanie layering her accordion music into the reading. This at the Maison du Compte, the house of the count. The count is gone, but the house remains. A grand structure from the 12th Century, substanitally rebuilt 4 or 5 hundred years ago. Host was host to a celebration of the 1,000,049th anniversary of the birth of art on January 17th. An idea initiated by one of Sauve's favorite sons who came to America and achieved some notoriety with the likes of Warhol, Johns, Lichtenstien, etc. Maison du Compte, where I sat to play the piano for my own enjoyment as the party moved on to another venue while I sat oblivious, as I often am, of the plan. So the mistress of the household, a striking dark haired woman invited me to join them upstairs for some 'soup' (which means supper, actually) and I said yes because it sounded good and that's what I do now. I just say, "Yes". So here I am sharing the family meal with these remarkable people. 3 children. Grandmothers. Two dogs. Carl, who is from Denmark, is a musician, who plays exquisite compositions on guitar. (Later, back at Frank's, Eric tells me that Soraya is a Tuareg princess from Algiers. I don't doubt it.) I am offered dessert and almost agree because I want to be gracious, Soraya says, "No, Peter is getting sick and this would not be good for him", which is true, because I am starting to really come down hard with Eric's French flu. (Patrice says getting sick is great because your immune system gets an update… like a computer.. Cool) So I, say to Soraya, you are right. And Carl, her husband, leans over and says, sotto voce, "The thing is… she's always right". And I don't doubt it. She has already given me the tour of the house, the numerous studios where she paints, the lovely guest room where I can stay if I come and work there, the meditation room, the terrace, the bathroom, which is more of a day spa, actually, and everything actually finished… except for the project downstairs which involves 'rendering' the bare stone, which means surfacing it with mortar and plaster and paint, like I did in Sommieres with Bertrand. So I say… Maybe. I also hear a little of their story, how they came and saw this house and bought it a week later because she missed the stone houses of her childhood and because is it Sauve, I suppose, and that's what happens to certain people when they come here, and spent three years renovating it, the indefatigable Soraya doing much of it herself - with help as needed. Soraya who is always right tells me I need to find my own center line, even though she says I am actually pretty grounded, which is good. She's looking right through me and I think she's probably right. Maybe you need a woman, she says. And I don't doubt it.
Sauve, where I bought my bamboo flute from Rhaim Seligman, 72 who looks more like 55 or 60, and thinks I look younger than my 57 years, which I like to hear because last year I felt like i was 60, but now I feel like I am 45, except when I see a pretty girl and I feel like I am 16. Rhaim Seligman, who built his first flute when he was 11 yo and has dedicated his life to his craft, his great passion. He tells me that a flute is better than a woman. I agree that a musical instrument gives you pleasure when you want it and asks nothing of you the rest of the time, so maybe he is right. Rhaim, who spent 12 years traveling Asia for Unicef researching the instrument and it's music, making many recordings. Who travels every year to one or two places in the world that produce just the perfect bamboo, which is then cured for 5 years before it is ready to use. Whose little shop is packed with flutes in all phases of construction, ready to pack and ship to places all around the world, and where he is willing to stop and sit when I pop in, to roll a smoke and chat, and teach me a little more to help me with my playing of my flute, which I bought from him in December because I thought I was leaving for good and might regret it if I passed by my one opportunity. Silly me, I did not know yet that Sauve had already claimed me.
Bertand's house down past the square where I stayed a couple nights way way back in the distant past of mid December. Bertrand, Benoit's genial carpenter friend whose house is another work in progress with a whole network of stairways leading to apartments for both his grown son and daughter. And Benoit's house just down the street. 'His house' because he is an architect and he restored it beautifully… or his wife's house where he does not live any more because Benoit is with Sarah in St Quentin, but still uses it from time to time when it is unoccupied things being quite amicable with his ex.
Restaurants waiting to open again in warmer weather. The little shops. The fountains. Narrow passages leading down to the Vidourle River or up to the La Mer de les Rochers. The doors and shutters, wood and iron and paint, some of them the iconic baby blue of Southern France, each marked by the years, some elegant, some decadent, each as individual and mute and full of history as old men sitting at small round cafe tables in the morning sun nursing tiny white cups of expresso. When I tell anyone who found this place and stayed that I feel a pull to stay here and not leave, they smile a knowing smile and nod. It is something that is felt, but altogether inexplicable. Something that one fears to analyze too closely, lest it perish from the ill treatment. Better to savor this place, to come under it's spell if you are so predestined, and if the peculiar mystique of Sauve must be acknowledged… simply smile and a nod.
Further up the River is St. Hippolyte, or St. Hippo. If you come from St. Hippo.. you are a Cigalous, or a Cigalouse, depending on gender, the meaning being Cicada. Nobody knows why, but no doubt the insect is plentiful here when it makes an appearance every 17 years or so. In any case 'Saint Hypolytienne' is a cumbersome mouthful. St. Hippolyte - du Fort - to distinguish it from some lesser St. Hippolyte elsewhere, stands below an impressive ridge of high hills topped by limestone escarpments. It forms a kind of gateway to this southeastern reach of the Cevennes, a natural area of forest and modest mountains rising to 1000 meters or so. A town with center that is old, if not quite as ancient and compact as Sauve, but typical of villages in this area. The town where my friend Bhumi lives, who I met at the sweat lodge at Mas Lafont. There is a coop food store on the scale of the little coops of Vermont but even more rough around the edges. Bhumi tells me there are 4 or 5 areas of France that have similar concentrations of people into organic food, living on the land, and all that alternative stuff. Too many people who like the idea of building round houses of sticks and bamboo and mud for my tastes, actually. This is one of those regions. Sometimes I wonder how I managed to find my way back to Vermont without leaving France. Sometimes I have the strange sense that I am in a dream where my friends and family are all speaking a language that I can't understand and that any minute they will tire of this and start speaking English again… but they never do
The same, but different. Here you find a distinct French flavor, of course. I am inclined to think that there is a strain of French national character that is expressed in the words "Liberte!"… and … "Resistance!" ….passionate, with an edge. Nothing like a cause, or a philosophy, or counter-something to inspire dramatic rhetorical flourishes in the French. On the other end of the French manic-depressive continuum is existentialism of course, which the French fashioned into a kind of chic, but which stripped of it's glamourous wrappings is merely resignation and despair, or simple ill humor, which is also clearly on display in every town square. (Eric tells me that Sartre and Camus were hacks compared to de Beauvoir.. sycophants) This region, the Languedoc is the land of the Heretic, the Cathar, the Protestant, the fringe dwellers. It is nothing like Paris here. Very little concern for fashion. Think: Paris = New York, then Cevennes = Vermont.
Up in the Cevennes, near the tiny town of Cros, is Mas Lafont. The house was built in about 1900 by rich folks from Montpellier as a country place. The terraces are much older than the house and the spring that waters the landscape is as old as the hills. I have written about this place already and will not repeat myself here. I have come and left and returned and left and am returning again for a few days to help Alain a bit more. He has a new workaway fellow from Denmark and I am helping him learn the ropes. It is raining everywhere else in France, but here in the south the days are bright and warm and I am glad to do a bit more clearing and burning and to feel well again after my bout with the flu. Jeanne Pierre is putting the new wood floor down for the big hall that is coming into being downstairs here. It is a place where I feel I will always be welcome to return.
Now I am counting the days before my date with sailing in the Canaries. It is a bit of a shock to be returning to my plan. To have a set itinerary. When I first planned all of this the sailing was there at the end, like dessert. My one sure thing. I began with a plan, but now it is just an idea, a contrivance, a vague obligation, or something to resort to when all else fails. But I retired the France portion of my plan a month ago and instead I have been swept along by the unexpected in ways that I could never have planned. Another, mysterious plan has taken it's place… quite a wonderful plan… an inscrutable plan that takes me by the hand again and again when I am in the dark and says, "Don't know what you are doing next?… Cool… now for something really good". And I keep meeting people like Patrice who totally get this and say, "Cool". Or just smile and nod. Many moments have had a numinous quality to them, as if something cosmic is lying just below the surface, or disappearing around the corner before I get a good look, like the elusive Mr Crumb. Then in other moments, or for whole days, everything crashes into the mud with a dull thud and I think, "Of course, the novelty buzz is wearing off." At times of enthusiasm I wonder whether I should cancel the sailing and just stay here. Or when I am in the mud I think I would be pushing my luck. I could move in to Maison du Compte and put three weeks in on the big project. In the lap of luxury really, with a piano, and a setting that is entirely about being creative. Write some songs maybe. I could have Soraya looking through me and being always right. Maybe meet one of the ladies of Sauve who wonder where the men are. Maybe finally learn to speak this confounded language. That leaves two weeks unaccounted for, but something would come along, maybe 3 or 4 things and I would have to choose. Everyone needs a handyman. Everyone takes me in and it is instant intimacy. And then there is sailing. How can I not go? But whose decision is this anyway? I don't have to go. My choice. What is sailing to me now? What if I leave and the magic is gone?
So this is how the journey turns inward now. I think Soraya is right and that I am trying to find my center line. Then maybe find the clarity and courage to let the answer unfold from that. To get myself out of my own way, go through the fear of just saying Yes and not sweating the details. The journey took a turn inward for me decisively on the night of January 6. Epiphany. 12th night. My lost brother Paul's 59th birthday. We cut the gallette, the celebratory cake, and I was the one who got the hidden prize. Of course I didn't know this, only that there was something hard in my mouth. It was a little porcelain figure of a girl with a basket of flowers and a straw hat. The writing on it was so tiny that it took concerted effort to puzzle it out. "Je veux vois offrire le douceur de mon amour." Translation: "I want to give you the sweetness of my love.". It rang true. Something that I have felt missing in my travels and many times in my life… to give my heart to someone… a companion… a lover. Something I keep pushing aside because…. how do you make it happen. I am not a gate stormer, and in any case as much as I might desire the physical part of love, it actually does feel secondary.
Then the sweat lodge and the day after, an impromptu excursion with Bhumi who I met by the fire that night. The first idea was to go to a little performance in Ganges, which turned out to be long on concept and short on entertainment value. So the plan changed and Bhumi said she'd like to go to the river instead. So we sat together a little and then a longer time apart by the banks of the Herault River and I picked up a flat little stone as a souvenir. At home it became a platform for my little girl… which I now kept in view wherever I was staying so I could be mindful of my little girl heart. And there was Bhumi, who is lovely and sweet and complicated and very clear about what she needs, and learning to play guitar in a not-at-all-self-conscious way, and cautious about beginning anything too intense or giving herself away when she is dealing with so much already…showing up at just that moment like a lightning rod for my burgeoning desire to fall in love. Or am I splitting hairs by not simply saying that I was in love, as if anyone ever fell in love without a huge (usually fatal) dose of projection. For days I was in a spin. Those first few nights and at any distracted moment my whole being was inclined toward 'Bhumi', which is to say my Bhumi projection of course, and Patrice would say 'Are you in love?' and I would say 'could be', because surely there is something there that isn't just projection. And when I handed Frank the wrong thing he would blame it on me being in love instead of the fact that I don't understand much French. But on the third day Bhumi and I stepped back from that edge. We put up wall. No seductions. No projections. No giving ourselves away like that. But we have not stopped exploring that edge together and enjoying a sweet friendship. I am practicing expressing what I feel without waiting for her to make it safe, or expecting anything in return and sometimes I find that despite my best intentions I am full of crap because Bhumi lets me know in one way or another. Bhumi stayed for dinner at Frank's one of those early days and showed me how to eat an oyster properly. Later I took the shell and cut it upstairs using a grinder so it would stand upright on it's edge and provide a mother of pearl enclosure, like one of those "our lady of the bathtub' lawn ornaments - for my little girl heart. And when I put the stone pedestal into the shell the irregular shape of the stone fit perfectly the irregular shape of the shell.
So this is the inner journey and compared to it, the outer spectacle is merely a side show. Even these outward affairs of love. If the end of it is knowing my own heart, then I can have that whether my outer situation is agreeable or not. I have made my plans for the next few days. Back to Sauve, Two days to help Christina, my flu-time guardian angel. Then two days to help Bhumi on little estate with it's caravan summer home and garden and many needs because she has not had her full health and energy since an accident two years ago, and because it is sometimes overwhelming (with tears) and she is too much alone in her life and her work and because she is not so afraid of us spending time together and getting closer as she was before. Then ….? More Bhumi days? Maison du Compte for a short stay? Back to the open door at Mas LaFont? Sailing? Stay in Sauve? Anything can happen .. and usually does. Stay tuned.
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