Conceived in November
Posted August 25 2010.
A song for Brendan’s Birthday, August 25th, 2010.
As my parents’ six children produced fifteen children and around half a dozen were conceived in November and born in August, I am overwhelmed with birthdays this month. Add a friend or two into the equation and I often forget to congratulate all but I usually remember milestone birthdays and those of close friends and naturally, I never forget my own children’s because I love them more than anybody. Still, I modestly proclaim, I have a big big heart and all are remembered though not always acknowledged on my blog.
I don’t really know
Posted August 16 2010.
what I’ve been up to. I’ve done a little editing, a little cleaning, a lot of laundry, and somehow time disappears.
The weather has been a little crazy – not the heat you’d expect in the south of France but most days warm enough to wander and eat lunch outdoors.
After the jazz festival in Marciac, Rob and I layed low until Friday evening when we drove to Vaour to hear a salsa band. The lead singer, a buxom women, very Spanish-looking though French, reminded me of Clarissa Pinkola Estés as she seemed comfortable in her skin – and though quite the opposite of all the skinny French women in the audience, was one of the sexiest there. More importantly, she had an extraordinary voice.
For some reason, Vaour always has a great fete though it’s smaller than our village. The choice of music is better and the crowd is more picturesque – many look like a slightly updated, slightly aged, health-food-eating hippie from the Woodstock era.
Our fete – that is happening right now – is more rural country. Unfortunately it attracts a raucous crowd of young hooligans. On Saturday night, some miserable-poor-excuse-for-a-human-being smeared shit on and under the driver’s door handle of our car. If it weren’t for Robert who came to our door in the morning and told me to bring a bucket and soap, Rob, Brendan, or I would have had an unpleasant surprise.
Last night, a group of drunks picked up a huge rock and threw it at Robert’s door. (He lives round the corner from us.) And though I slept through the yelling and screaming, around 40 villagers were woken and gathered outside. Two American couples who are staying in a house, directly in front of Robert’s, called the police but half an hour later when Rob decided to leave, they still hadn’t arrived.
These same drunks or others went along one of the main streets and smashed a number of flower pots. Rob says that when he’s mayor, he is going to stop the annual fete as it’s more trouble than fun. “This is no longer paradise,” he said. I think there should be a policeman or four cruising the streets, especially late at night because earlier in the evening, Rob and I did have fun listening to a group called “Nashville” though their sound was more old rock and roll than country.
On Wednesday evening, we will drive to the neighbouring village of Campagnac, to a winery, who are hosting an “apero” (meaning early) blues group.
And so our summer progresses. In early September, Rob and I will drive to Paris, fly to Amsterdam, and after a few days, I’ll catch another plane to Toronto then Vancouver.
Jazz
Posted August 8 2010.
Marciac Jazz Festival – click here to see Rob’s photographs
Rob and I returned on Friday evening exhausted from the jazz festival in the small town of Marciac. Last year was its thirtieth anniversay and somehow over the years, with the help of Wynton Marsalis, this small festival has gained an international reputation and attracts the best jazz musicians in the world.
The town is characteristic of the bastides in the area – central village square with the mayor’s office and village shops clustered along the four sides of the square. For this two week festival every year, the wide arched pavements allow for numerous food and drink tents and a stage where, throughout the day and evening, live jazz is performed. As we wandered around the town, into various courtyards and arched-entrance gardens, we were seduced with more live music. I especially liked a lone musician, bare footed, sitting at a grand piano playing in a church yard.
We attended two evening performances with Ahmad Jamal, and 31 year-old Hiromi from Japan one evening and Allen Toussaint and Wynton Marsalis the next. And though 6000 is a lot of people to accommodate under one tent, large monitors on each side of the stage, and one huge central one allowed each ticket-holder a clear view of the musicians. Both shows started at 9 in the evening and went until after 1 am, at which time we had to find our car and do a 40 minute drive to our hotel.
We are still recovering.
Leaving town without my computer
Posted August 4 2010.
I can’t remember the last time I did this but I need a break.
This has been a strange, unsettling week. I find myself deficient as a person and a writer. I have wanted to comfort friends and I can’t find the words. Everything that comes out of my mouth or onto paper or onto my computer screen seems like a cliche.
I have been going around in circles like a chicken with its head cut off.
There has not been enough time to think clearly. As a writer, I believe in not being evasive, in giving concrete examples, in telling the truth no matter what, but at this moment, I do not have the energy to explain myself, fearing I will use the wrong words and offend someone I care about.
Yesterday I went out for lunch with Clare, Lysiane, Alice and Susan. We enjoyed a wonderful meal in a hilltop cafe, near St. Antonine. After lunch, Susan and I went for a short stroll. She asked me how I was doing. “Not great.” I told her Rob and I were leaving for Marciac the next day (today.) She said that maybe that will cheer me up. Jazz is good for the spirit. (Marciac hosts one of the largest jazz festivals in the world.) And I remembered last year when I went to an apero jazz concert with Ruth and suddenly realizing that I was happy, sitting with a group of mostly strangers, listening.
I would like another such experience.
I return on Friday evening and hopefully soon, I will be more coherent.
“Dance me to the end of love”
Posted July 27 2010.
Memories of my dancing teacher: Gladys Gale
My dancing teacher is being cremated today. I have been thinking about her since her son, only child, sent me an email on the 23rd of this month, telling me that she had “passed away”.
She was one of the most beautiful women that I have ever met. Her son calls her “a babe.” She seemed more like a queen to me – so tall and regal, elegant and fluid in motion. Her every move appeared, to me, a dance.
I began dancing at her school when I was 15 – late for a dancer and was in awe of my teacher. She never yelled or screamed at her students but she worked us hard. When she praised me, I felt wonderful.
This picture of “Mrs. Gale” and her son was taken over 40 years ago and yet when I visited her last year, she met me at the doorway, in heels, posed, still a dancer. Though her hair was long and white, tied back with a ribbon, she looked much younger than her 80 plus years. We sat and talked. She told me that she was very ill. “But you look well, you’re still beautiful,” I said. “That’s the problem. No one believes me.”
I have no idea how we approached the topic but she told me that she had always been self-confident, never doubted herself. She knew she was a good dancer, wife, mother. She deserved whatever she wanted though she admitted to being a little too passionate about clothes. She took me into her bedroom and opened her closet door. It was no ordinary shallow apartment closet – it seemed to go backwards forever and every nook and cranny was stuffed full of clothes, bags, shoes… “I will organize it someday,” she sighed.
She had moved to the penthouse apartment after her husband died – a sweetheart of a man – who adored her. I think only once did I hear them fight and I spent a lot of time in their house as I was dating their son. Both treated me like a daughter. I can remember Mr. Gale telling Malcolm not to hurt me. “She’s too sensitive,” he said. Years later, when I dropped in for a visit, he whispered in my ear that he loved me. I adored him too. And his wife.
Thinking about her, her beauty, her dancer’s body, her generosity of spirit, I realize I know little about her background. I met her two brothers and her dancing teacher and yet I never asked questions. I know only that she and Albert came to Canada from Scotland. Why did they immigrate, I wonder. (I think perhaps because her older brother was here.)
I would have liked to have spent more time with her. I would have liked to have been at her service today…
I would like the impossible. I remind myself that I am lucky to have known her. She and, in turn, her son were the first to teach me about beauty and dance. She played an important role in my life.
“How can we know the dancer from the dance?” ~ William Butler Yeat
Socializing
Posted July 18 2010.
My days pass in a kind of daze. I’m always busy, my mind always active, but I’m moving at my own slow pace and enjoying having time to do as I please.
And part of doing what I please includes accepting house work or, to put it in fancier terms, I’ve accepted work as a property manager. Over the past two years, I’ve become good at cleaning, sorting, and organizing living space and so when the house that I rented for the writers was showing too much wear and tear, and the owners in the States needed help, I agreed to put the house in order.
Over the past weeks, I have sorted, done laundry, cleaned, bought new bed linen, towels, and numerous odds and ends. I have taken down drapes and given all that is decent to the dry cleaners. On Wednesday, I will restain the stairway and the table. I have also found a plumber and electrician and am keeping my fingers crossed that they appear. Believe it or not, I am enjoying this work.
I also agreed, with Sue, to water David’s garden while he is in Scotland for a week. The reward is to help myself to whatever I’d like. (That’s not exactly what David said, but it’s what I do. Note the beets on our kitchen counter.)
And I have also been socializing.
On Wednesday, the day Brendan arrived, we went down to the lake with Alice, Clare, and Lysiane for the village’s Bastille Day celebration. When we arrived numerous little piglets were roasting over open flames. The reception crew served us pastis and wine and lemonade for starters. We waited and waited and waited for the feast to begin as alcohol on an empty stomach is not a good idea and I had eaten little that day. (One table had brought their own appetizers. Smart people.) We were finally served two hours later and all of us were so tired that we didn’t even stay for the fireworks.
Ruth’s birthday party yesterday was quite the contraire. She invited Sue and Susan, Rob, and me down to her garden to celebrate with a simple salad (she said) and a famous chocolate cake from Hotel Sacher in Switzerland. (She had once told her daughter that this cake, in its own wooden box, is a symbol of decadence to her and her daughter remembered and sent one.)
I felt as if I was living the scene in “Women in Love” where Rupert describes, in such lovely terms, how to peel a fig. The table was covered with white linen. We began with champagne and moved on to red wine. Ruth served fresh cantalope, a German potato salad, and two kinds of sausage, done over a small flame. She had precut a country bread and had a round of creamy cheese on the table. When we were full, she brought out the famous cake and a thermos of coffee.
After the meal, I was sated. I lay on the grass looking heavenwards and had a small sleep, while Ruth told stories of her life. She is lovely. She is vivacious. She is a musician. She is an artist. She never does anything haphazardly or so it seems to me.
As if Ruth’s feast was not enough pleasure for one day (though it definitely was), in the evening we went to Rosemary and Bob’s for a swim and dinner. I can’t remember the last time, I felt so content, swimming up and down in the beautiful clear water. Rob swam a little and then dressed and joined our hosts at an outside table. I kept doing laps, back and forth, back and forth. The water was nearly 30 degrees and I didn’t want to leave it but finally did, to join the others at the table, sipping glasses of Sangria (Rosemary calls it something else but I cannot make out the name – as she has a Scottish brogue.)
At this point in the evening, Francis, who had just returned from Malta, joined us. And then we sat and ate another feast of cold cucumber and zucchini soup, pork pie, potato salad, Norbet’s potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms, chicken salad, bread, cheese, and icecream. Life is good, I said, with a big yawn.
And soon went home to bed.
Writing Woman
Posted July 9 2010.
And so the writing week has passed and Marlene left for London yesterday. All is quiet (though I can hear Rob in the kitchen upstairs and the washing machine humming in the next room.)
Last Friday was the finale dinner of our Jungian autobiography course and I spent the day in the kitchen, preparing the finale feast. In the morning, I made a casserole of escalloped potatoes, blended a tandoori marinade into which I sunk cubes of chicken, and then peeled prawns for the salad. In the afternoon, I washed several types of lettuce and endive for the salad, and put together skewers with the tandoori chicken, zucchini, baby tomatoes, red, yellow, and green peppers.
Individual salads with prawns, lemon, and avocado were assembled at the last minute. The skewers were grilled in the oven.
In the photograph, Marlene sits at the table awaiting our guests. We both did everything we could think of to make the experience, for the participants, rich and full. The women in “the writing house” said that they felt as if they were living an “Enchanted April.” Another woman, who stayed in a gite down the road from the village, has booked for next year. All the women wrote thanks and comments in cards that they presented to Marlene and I at the dinner. I felt close to tears when I read mine. I love women who are warm and generous with their words and hugs. I love doing for others when I feel appreciated. (And I felt appreciated.)
On Saturday, there was a final session in the morning and then I began driving one women, two women, to the train station, and drove once to the airport. On Monday, I drove a couple to Albi to pick up a car, waited and led them through the town so they wouldn’t get lost… Now, all have gone.
I am happy but exhausted. I wouldn’t feel quite so tired if it weren’t for Wednesday evening in Toulouse. Marlene and I left the village early morning and caught a train to the city. We visited Notre Dame de la Daurade to see the famous Black Madonna and then shopped a while, met Rob, and ate a traditional dinner of steak and frites, under the stars.
We had reserved rooms at an hotel across from the train station but forget to request inside rooms. Both were hot and noisy. I slept little. Marlene didn’t sleep at all. In the morning, I stumbled across to the train station for a coffee. I didn’t recognize Marlene when she stood in front of me. Shortly after, Rob and I drove her to the airport and headed home to bed (though I couldn’t sleep.)
Now I must get back to my writing and editing.
I love summer
Posted July 1 2010.
At last, we have had a stretch of beautiful weather. Some days when the temperature rises over 30 and sweat is dripping down my back and at midnight, when there isn’t a hint of a breeze and no clothes feel like too many, I remind myself that just over two weeks ago, we had to turn the furnace on and I must not complain.
Marlene arrived a week and a half ago to prepare for our writing workshop. Last Saturday I picked up three women at the train station and dropped off one male. Rob was happy to be going to Madrid (and Marlene and I were sorry to lose our chef.) But it is good that he went.
This week is about women and writing, dreams and the soul, and though Rob writes, dreams, and most definitely is soulful, it’s different when there are only women in a house as I imagine it is different when there are only men.
It’s a small group this year, for many reasons, and because of its size I do not have an assistant. Still I miss my Gill. I lay out breakfast each morning and I prepared (with Marlene) the welcome dinner and we will serve a finale dinner tomorrow evening. As I gave up on cooking a long time ago, I have been searching my memory for something to serve that is fresh, delicious, easy, and Frenchie. And also because of the smaller size, we have been able to give a little extra time – like the potluck dinner on Monday evening, after which, we watched several Jungian DVDs, and I drove several participants to Albi yesterday afternoon to view the cathedral and museum. Tonight we shall have open readings.
This is the first year that I haven’t taken the workshop and though I have some regrets, it is easier and I have time to breathe when the workshop is in session and run an errand or two.
I forgot that today is Canada Day and one of the participants brought in Canadian flags and tatoos. I put one between my breasts and two other women did the same. Several others put them on their arms, and one near her ankle… I asked one women if she felt more patriotic since the Olympics and she said “definitely.” As I missed all the fanfare in Vancouver, I don’t feel more or less. I am proud to be Canadian for many reasons but I am also proud to be Northern Irish and I have an affinity for France… I am lucky at this time in my life to be able to bounce back and forth between continents, and the small island on which I was born.
Just before the workshop, the insurance company paid the majority of our claim and so I was able to pay the artisans.
And my friend, Clare arrived yesterday with her family.
Life is good.
My Father
Posted June 20 2010.
A lot of people say that I’m the splitting image of my father. Rob says that I own some of his facial expressions. My mother says that, just like him, I don’t have a peaceful bone in my body. But it wasn’t until I was last home and we took a ride in his pickup truck to the dump and then shared a takeout order of french fries on a bench outside Canadian Tire, that I knew I was my father’s daughter.
Love you, Daddy
In Requiem
Posted June 20 2010.
I learned, in the past two weeks that two friends had died earlier in the year. And this past week, my sister-in-law – though she hasn’t lived with Rob’s brother for years – died of a heart attack. She would have been 60 in October.
Dear Hans Miguel was in his 80s, a long-time friend of Susan, who came to the village a number of times in the summer when all the fetes were happening and so we attended and danced. The man could dance and somehow in his arms, I could dance better than I ever have. And a few evenings, late late, we would look up at the stars and wonder why they are so much brighter here than anywhere else.
Tatu was in his twenties, a joyous outrageous young man, who did what he pleased and always made me smile. Gill and I met him one summer when he was working at Mark’s restaurant. Young women loved him because of his joy and his beauty. When Gill and I lived in Northern Ireland, he came for a visit (though he spoke little English) and cavorted down the streets of Belfast with his bright yellow shorts and a girl’s hairband, keeping his wild dark locks in check (the only thing he kept in check.) He fell off a roof in Paris around four months ago.
His friend Camilo sent me a note the other day: “It is sad what happened to Tatu but if you knew him, you know that he should be smiling and jumping of happiness as always, so life continues and we should enjoy it as he did!!!!”
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades…
I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth (Mary Oliver)
I did not know Carmel well. Her mother says that she was “a gentle, private person, not one who could or would share her worries.” Her sister calls her a care-giver: “Even as a small child, while cousin Max and I played cowboys and Indians, she would be dressed in her nurse outfit, ready to patch any cut or scrape… Yes, Carmel was a care-giver. The down side was she always took care of everyone else, while neglecting to take care of herself.”
The last time I saw Carmel was at her daughter Ayah’s wedding two years ago. We stood and talked a while. She was full of plans for the future. (This makes me especially sad.) I spoke to all of her children, reacquainting myself with the older two who I’d known only as children – both unusual and lovely – and chatted with Ayah who I’d met at the last two family weddings. (Unusual too – a tall statuesque beauty, smart as a whip, and a talented singer and writer.) I also had a conversation with her parents – two people I admire – who were kind to me years ago. (Mary worked as a librarian at Stanford and lent me rare books for an essay I was writing about mysticism.) She says “Parents are supposed to leave before their children, but Carmel had to go. We miss her dearly, but she left us her greatest gift, our grandchildren and they are wonderful.”
I’ve been thinking about these three all week. I am reminded that I or someone I love could disappear at any minute. I have felt sad, vulnerable, in tears.
