Walk on

Though you would not have thought of yourself as respectful of those kinds of traditions, you did what was expected. Like the family heirloom, this tradition has been your responsibility, to carry and then to pass on, a war whose origins no one remembers. You fulfilled it mindlessly in the beginning, quietly, it is simply what must be done. It's a painful tradition though, you grew to resent it. Passing it on became inconceivable, intolerable. You decided it would end with you. Through blood and tears and ultimate sacrifice, it did. Not won, just over. You did not do it alone, or without help.

After death, flowers. Offerings to those who came before you, those whose collective dedication to tradition brought you to this place. A field of poppies, gifts for the dead, spread out behind you, infinite red and green. Healing green and grounding red, everything you will ever need to let go without forgetting where you came from. Those poppies wave behind you, offering blessings and whispered goodbyes - your freedom is also theirs.

There are times

I live in a palindrome city. And while I've joked about that before, I'm going to be serious now.

I'm not sure how I feel about it, or even if I should feel about it. But I do.

There's something about it. Visually, it's pretty, all symmetrical and balanced. To hear it pronounced, it's the same - well, symmetrical at least.

But I'm quite sure its linguistic infinite nature has an effect on the place it represents.

I remember the first time I came to Laval. A sunny Saturday in the month of December. I spent a few hours in the city center, bought something at the Saturday market in front of the cathedral, had lunch and then coffee. I remember thinking I could live here. And so I have, for 11 years. 11 - also symmetrical and balanced, when it's written like that.

I believe I'm ready for someplace new.

What we don't know

There was no real reason for it to happen that night.

But something about going to the grocery store up the street, where we went at least once a day for beer or brownies made him mad. You pushed, he pushed back. He got ugly then, his face a mirror of tragedies unfaced. You knew that though, going into it, what he hadn't faced, it was inscribed into his skin. Probably picked him because of it. And you did pick him, regardless of how he told the tale. That first kiss in the elevator? All yours. His tragedies made him easier to manage, and even weakened you could make him spin if you had to.

After the ugliness you left, went to a friend's house to sleep. You woke up early, calm, before dawn.

You walked back to the apartment, armed with hot coffee and a night spent in a girlfriend's bed. You quietly gathered your things together, the important things. The rest you left for later.

You did not kiss his sleeping lips before you left.

Tapestries

I was a marble statue on a stone bench when he walked out, his pack of cigarettes already in his hand as he opened the door. He sat down next to me, our thighs touching, remembering. We smoked and he told me himself what I had heard around the department.

He told me gently, with regret. I laughed at him, also gently. I knew where his wife was from and I knew what the South could do to its women. His situation, all bittersweet poetry and wilting flowers for him, was actually all pragmatics and strategies, southern style. As familiar to me as the smell of pine trees on the way to the beach on vacation.

He told me he loved me then. He didn't, but I knew what he meant. And I knew what he wanted from me, even if he didn't. I accepted the part with a farewell kiss, still more bittersweetness for him and just a kiss for me.

I played my part well though. It was my parting gift, to make up for my gently mocking laughter. Electric glances and accidental touches and suggestive sighs to help him add sweet tragedy to his bitter comedy.

Past in present

When the young girl thought of the grandmother, she remembered the grit of the raspberry seeds in her mouth. Fresh raspberries she picked herself, not even as tall as the bushes she conversed with, asking and thanking for each berry, a bowl in her hand, her bare feet gently bathed in dew. She chose each one carefully as it was offered, picking off the tiny insects and imperfections she saw. She brought her bowl inside, full, and held it out to be covered in fresh cream.

The food was always better at the grandmother's house, how could it not be? Food was not prepared there, it was managed, just as the family was, without its consent or cooperation, giving in only to the cemented lack of choice.

The young girl watched this woman's hands make everything. Shape pie crust into girlish swirls and flutes, this harsh specimen of a grandmother. The grandmother was generous only with food, gray memories of summer weeks filled with her steady disapproval mercifully colored by bubbling fruit pies too perfect to have been made from bitterness and scorn alone.

The grandmother preferred boys, had little time for girls, or even anything feminine. The dark red lipstick she wore when she went into town, 5 blocks away, was the only concession she made to femininity. But it played out as mockery more than anything else, her broken teeth and cruel smile outlined with the blood she drew when she spoke.

And yet the young girl returned, was even anxious to go there. To sit on the cracked steps in front of that big house filled with hidden passages and round windows and a black basement that coiled around its own darkness and waited.

The grandmother died there, in that waiting basement, among her canned vegetables and the clutter of a life she never went through.

Seen And Unseen

I sat in that office everyday. It must have been something else before, a shop or something. I never asked, but why else would there have been a window like that? Floor to ceiling, wall to wall. It was like working in a fish tank.

My desk didn't face the window, it was next to it. I watched people walk by occasionally, but mostly I just did my job. Papers, computer, phone. I had replaced someone very competent and thought I had much to prove. I suspect I may have been hired for reasons other than my cv. I was an odd mix of young and old at that time and often spoke of foreign cities I had visited. My smile was genuine but my eyes were not.

I looked up from my desk one day to see that a photographer had set up a tripod on the sidewalk across the street from my window. He was older than me but young still and had that artist look - hungry, but for art, not food.

Since when was I art? I looked down at myself, sitting in my chair. Little black sweater and pearls, straight out of the 50s, minus the hope.

We had a conversation of gestures during which he told me he wanted to take a picture of me in that fish tank, but working, not looking at him. I tried to do that. I went back to my tasks and he started his. But he gave up quickly. Because even though I wasn't looking at him anymore, I wasn't the same woman.

He packed up his stuff and left without taking any pictures or saying goodbye. I could not go back to never having seen.

The watch stops

That happens, right?

You are a bit like a watch yourself, very reliable. Until, apparently, you're not anymore - or at least that's the way it is with the watch.

One more time, one last time, you'll try to tell time differently.

And what about the watch? Nothing. It was a reminder of what you left before you left.

It cannot be fixed. Not this time.

The morning after

The time has come, as it always does, to clean out the yard. Despite fatigue and cold, you clear it out. Leaves and bark and broken pieces of terra cotta and pine cones and who even knows what else. You make an impressive list of all that you find, all that you left for nature to deal with. Apparently nature needs more time than just one winter. Or maybe you didn't really leave things so that she could.

So you actually do the work that you do not like to do. Clearing the way. All things natural in a small pile under an ancient maple. All things unnatural disposed of. You relinquish a mess, a mess that you didn't even see as it piled up.

You do not awaken to an empty yard as you thought you would. It has become, overnight, a field of grace. A place where flowers you cannot name will grow.

Oh the places you'll go

Dessert now.

Cream, liquid and hot. Poured over dark broken pieces of chocolate. The cream is for texture and aspect, I do not want gloss. I want something to dive into, not see myself in. Wait, stir, taste, long for more. Don't we always? Sweet, when clear headed, begs for spice.

Cinnamon to show me how to recognize beauty in confusion, nutmeg to illustrate how sweetness must be layered, black pepper to teach me to always expect the unexpected, cloves to remind me to find balance - that more is not always better.

And salt, fleur-de-sel, flower of the salt. Salt that was hand-raked by someone who knows more about salt than I know about anything.

I peel an orange. Blood, by chance. Organic and pure. Its red not the color of blood but of a perfect Bourgogne, tales to tell in that shade that dances between lands.

Peeled and sliced, full of sweetly sour juice, covered with warm, spiced liquid chocolate. A dessert made to show me where I can go.

And so it begins

It began with onions, thinly sliced. Garlic too, three cloves. Pancetta, olive oil. Salt and then pepper. Chicken thighs, skin intact. A long pour from a bottle of Quincy, Loire bred. Things simmered. Too pale, too something, a few peeled tomatoes were needed. More salt, more pepper, herbs and spices.

We've all heard of a maître saucier, a master of sauces, we've eaten his work, noticed, even, how he is too dependent on his skill. This leads him to ignore the basics on occasion. In mastery there is control, domination. His sauces make you forget what you're eating.

In the steam of my kitchen, I knew I did not want to master. I had had no recipe that night, only random ingredients and cold weather that made me want the comfort and warmth of a deep sauce.

I would not control, I would not dominate. Being a master is not for me. A mistress, however, that I could be.

Is she controlled, is she controlling? One can never really say. With a mistress, you never know who holds the power or if she even cares.

Rebirth that night, as every magical meal is.

But this one in particular. I had made many, countless even, sauces before. But this was different. I found myself.

A mistress of sauces.

The color of your chains

Gold is the one you pretend not to see, you ignore it most days, it's only the light you read by. Artificial but necessary for the tasks you've given yourself, so you think. You could live without it. Could actually live without it, but you pretend not to see that either.

Silver is the one you have named, although you call it something else. It is, in fact, a dog's leash. Long enough to let you think you can go anywhere. And you do, almost. But you're still on a leash. You forget that most days. Dog days.

Orange is the one you cannot live without. The orange of desire and promise and sour and sweet. Its links are an elaborate pattern of time and dream weaving in and out of purest hopes and darkest fears. You accept its presence but not its reasons.

You've grown accustomed to the weight and the sound of your chains.

This too shall pass

So, you've been working with this architect. Nice, professional, competent, works for a huge firm. You hired him yourself, although you don't really remember the interview, you were so busy at that point. You must have been pretty vehement about what you wanted, or at least what you didn't want. You didn't pay much attention to the demolition crew, they moved in one by one and quietly.

Now you're in that uncomfortable phase, there is dust everywhere. Nothing looks like it did before. In fact, it doesn't look like much at all. You try to clean around it, which you hope will make it bearable but it doesn't.You try to imagine something beyond the mess that you're living in and you can't.

An artist's vision is required for situations like this. You are not an artist. You are just someone who was whimsical enough to hire an architect and give him free license to make something beautiful out of something that wasn't.

Give until it hurts

Donnant - donnant. Giving - giving. Used in situations where we would use give and take. Or tit for tat.

I have to say that I find it very interesting that the French express that concept in such a generous and optimistic way. And I only say that because they usually admit to being a glass-half-empty kind of culture. Sometimes I wonder if there wasn't a corner that led to the turn that led to the place they are now, a turn that required the loss of optimism. A revolution or something along those lines. Anyone who knows more about French history than me (that would be most people) - please feel free to name that corner.

And I wouldn't say that it's a selfish culture either. The S word is tossed around quite a bit - solidarity - but more as an accompaniment to hand gestures and grand theories than anything else. The fact is that solidarity is legally required here every day from nearly everyone, so spontaneous gestures of generosity are no longer commonplace. Which is not, of course, to say that French people aren't generous. Oh why oh why do I write posts that require qualifications and reassurances?

Anyway, giving and giving. I don't know. It just sounds a bit off. Is it very American of me to want it to be giving and getting?

Animal kingdom

There is a snake. Waiting in the basement, or maybe just lying there. Around the countless corners, oddly shaped rooms, paths that lead nowhere. Dark with eyes, coiled around itself. For company - a persistent odor, neither pleasant nor disagreeable, just everywhere. Dampness and darkness and time weigh heavy in this air.

You do not know how long it has been there. You do not even know why it came in the first place. You have gotten used to seeing it there, or maybe used to ignoring it.

What do you do when you realize the snake is in you?

You lean in, foolish and fearless, and try to hear what's behind the hiss.

1000 Strings

The most beautiful, complicated musical instrument that ever was. A string instument, of course. Imagined, designed and faconed by the greatest of masters. Unimaginable music, the kind that takes your breath away. And it did. Vibrations, of endless varieties, on a thousand strings. To be plucked, bowed, or struck, depending on the day.

You watch, at first in horror but now with calm curiosity, as one by one those strings break or are snipped, depending on the day.

What will remain when all those strings are gone? An echo or a memory, depending on the day.

Reminders can be gifts, depending on the day.

On the nature of damage

Layers, webs, nets - all tight and densely woven - surround a seed. Peel away, untangle, unravel - do what you must to get to it. Take a close look, unhurried and objective. You will not find a truth, you will find a belief. A belief that took seed next to a truth.

Problem is, the truth was a raindrop. It glistened and fell and made something dry, wet. That is all.

The belief was a storm - an epic storm. It downed lines and flooded basements and ripped tiles off roofs.

Do you know what you did? You took shelter - lifetimes of shelter - from a storm that was only one raindrop.

It is still there, you can see it, still just a raindrop. Wipe it with your finger, bring it to your mouth. It will taste clean as you swallow the storm whole.

Graffiti on your walls

Lines, grooves, edges, curves. Messages, signs, symbols, signatures.

You can never know if what you're seeing, what you're reading, is what was intended. You can never know if it is irreverent art or spiteful desecration. You are unsettled either way.

Vandal or artist, depending on the day. Either way, you are uncomfortable knowing they were here. This is not a public space. Access is difficult, challenging even.

What did they see as they left their mark? That, you try not to imagine.

More disturbing still, what did they take away?

You must accept what they left behind, bleach will not work, nothing will. These walls, your walls, they live and breathe. Marks made, lines drawn, they are a part of you now.

As within, so without

There is a map on you. A road map of shining silver outlining everything but the edges. No one really knows where it ends, this map. Or even where it begins. It was made without boundaries or borders. If that was intentional, you can't imagine why.

No one has ever read this map, most people haven't even seen it. Which makes you wonder how useful a map it really is. There is no key, no scale, not a single point of reference. Distance cannot be measured, neither can altitudes. You try to believe it could help someone get somewhere, or at least help someone figure out where here is. You're doubtful though.

Dreaming out loud, you picture it as a tattoo. You imagine someone dipping a finger in an alchemist's silver and swirling shining liquid metal on you, the silent canvas.

Time and time again

There is a place, a no man's land. Neither desert nor deserted, it is simply uninhabited. It is neither foreign nor familiar, no matter how long you stay or how long you stay away when you leave. It is an oasis, a lure, an illusion - depending on the day. It is a full moon - but behind moving clouds.

It is the part of you that belongs to someone else. Given or taken, you do not recall. Does it matter? Does it make a difference?

You want to name this place, draw it on the map, give it a governance. But you can't. Some days you can't even believe it still exists. With reason - some days it doesn't. But that doesn't last.

As much as you would like never and forever to exist here, they do not. You are forced to make do. And yet, you cannot.

At arm's length

It was an ordinary day, or at least it acted like one. But it ended unlike any other. You can still feel the heat, black and infinite, of your act.

Despite what you thought, your hands were never tied. But how could you remember that? So long ago, you made the smallest gesture, the gesture of a child. Arms behind your back to hide something from the world, a big secret for a small child - fingers crossed, hidden behind you. Both hands.

One for the lies you knew you would have to tell. And one for the hope, the wish, the silent plea, that what was would no longer be.