I learned today

Which is a good thing to be able to say about any day, I should think.

A new word. Retors. As in "Il est retors." Which is an unfortunate thing to have to say about anyone. But which, on occasion, is true. Whether it needs to be said or not is an entirely different subject.

The dictionary says crafty but it's a bit more pejorative than that. Maybe dipping a toe into shrewd or malicious. In any case, sly and probably underhanded.

Really, nothing you'd want to be around. But at least we know what it's called.

From the rooster to the donkey

Passer du coq à l'âne. I love this expression, probably because I do it from time to time.

It's when you're talking about one subject and then you jump to a completely unrelated subject with no transition at all.

To be truthful, there is always a link for me, it just may not be apparent to everyone. And I am usually able to loop it back around so that, in the end, it all makes sense. I have a few friends who have similar conversation styles so they trust my sense of direction. Those who don't usually smile and watch me draw swirls.

Conversations are spirals and swirls, as opposed to straight lines, aren't they?

The things I don't know

Cannot be counted. Some of them probably can't even be imagined.

No longer waiting to live, I'm trying to live while waiting. Don't ask me what I'm waiting for, I have no idea. If I did, it would be anticipation, not waiting. Right?

My France

I suppose there are stages to living in a foreign country. An early stage where you compare many things and judge a few of those. A stage after that where you notice and resist. Another where you notice and accept. And another where you don't notice any more.

I suppose that's why I haven't written about France in a while, I don't really notice so much any more. Which may be because my energy has been focused on those same stages but within my own life. Or it may be because I'm in circumstances unlike any I knew at home. And so now I have nothing to compare it to. France is the only place I've been divorced, or a single mother or quite so completely alone. And the only place where I didn't know what would happen next.

So here I am, in a France that's new for me. In a life that's new for me. The newness of my life, mercifully, has come gradually, one change at a time. And while I have longed for faster and/or more, time has been treating me with a kindness I have not.

This France, my France. There is affection in that possessive - how could I feel otherwise for a place that has been so patient and gracious a witness? There is a tolerance, deep and quiet, in this land. I feel it everyday when I walk by the river. But there is also a pledge in that possessive. I will walk barefoot on the land that has been so gentle with me and I will ask it to remember the path my footsteps took.

Map this

Map the lines you've crossed, all of them, they will be the scale. Every map needs a point of reference.

Map what you've lost, it matters, the way a neighboring country matters - best to have good relations, but that's enough. Peace between borders.

Map what you know, it's precious little, but precious still. It is the ever changing landscape. Time and season always take care of what you cannot.

Map what you've learned, a mountain range. Hard to get to but majestic views worth the risk.

Map what it cost you to learn, the valley nearby, carved by glaciers of hard truths.

Map the grace that melted glaciers into a river of acceptance whose beginning and end cannot be mapped.

A battle of wills

Lights on or lights off? As you will.

On a quest for answers, hows and whys, a mortar and pestle are your only tools. Grinding river stones down to nothing, searching for traces of water, the only thing that could have made them so smooth. Well, that and time. There must be some in there, mustn't there?

In the land of answers, you knew you would find blood. How could you not, given your questions? But you make friends with swords and find a home in the shadows, nothing sinister there. Honey where you were expecting blood.

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.