Sylvie's Scarves

What wonderful news! Sylvie has a wonderful range of scarves for sale. And as I've already four in my wardrobe, and though I sincerely tempted... it's likely better than I leave these for others to enjoy.

Remember her? I wrote an earlier blogpost on her: The Felting Lady. She is a gifted artist of felting and silk. I've put images here, both close-up of the details and distant to show the whole scarve/shawl. If you find any of them to your liking, she would be delighted to sell it (them) to you. They are 60E(for a small one around the neck) to 120E (large and enveloping) plus shipping (which is minimal as they are so light). Her email is femmeenrouge@hotmail.fr. Her English is superb (she lived nearly ten years in Australia), and who knows, maybe you'll enjoy exchanging with her as much as receiving a gorgeous and unique shawl?

The Rare Quiet Morning

I slept in this morning slothfully reveling in the indulgent pleasure of staying horizontal, abed, as the birds sang their chorus and quietened, as the chill of the morning air through the delicate light evolved into warmth and strong rays of the Eastern sun. The only glitch: a dog in need of his morning outing. But, happily, I can descend three stairwells, open a door and climb back up and still find a way to return to slumber. After the second descent (in response to sharp and insistent barks at three minute intervals) I acknowledged a need for verticality, or at the very least, a gentle move towards awakening.

A call from Erick confirmed this. Clients lost on the Place Voltaire, and a morning's class to add my two bits to.

But here I am, an hour and a half later, quietly soaking in the light, the tweets and twirts of a family of swallows over my head, nesting beneath the roof tiles, the hum of the swimming pool motor, a dog, now quiet, resting at my feet. My cup of tea has been drunk, my cup of mocha -- a treat for this Saturday morn -- but a third gone.

I couldn't resist going to my strawberry patch -- unbelievably generous this year! and Jonas's favorite task of the day -- to pick this morning's bounty (the kids being with Erick). I weeded as I plucked the strawberries, admiring the abundance and somewhat chaotic state of my little garden. It's time to pluck out some of that garlic, I wonder if the potatoes are ready? Or should I wait? The peas are few, but giving as they might. The mint is yearning to take over (as are the strawberries). The squash and melon plants are multiplying and growing. The tomato plants are doing their thing.

Hands covered in dirt, (no time to put on gloves) slippers a bit damp, I rinsed off the berries and added them to my morning's repast.

New rhythms are coming into my life, over and beyond a quiet Saturday morning in my home in Provence. Lovely O came for the fourth Friday in a row to share our afternoon exchange of English conversation for practicing her newly acquired skills of Thai massage. Her new friendship is one of the gifts I am cherishing in this period of my life. She is living a new couple, and pondering its impact upon herself and her son, whether they should move in, what attracts her to him, frustrates her about him, etc., They've been together exactly a year, and yet... it is not yet clear. Is it ever?

She is my opposite, and yet very much like me. We are both highly sensitive, porous, quick to be hurt by criticism (not the fighting types), artistic, deeply connected to our bodies (she is a dancer by training), attentive if relaxed parents. And we're both on the path of moving through this life either accompanied or not, but certainly not from an early age the wife of one man.

She is very beautiful. My age, fluid, radiant, very much the wanderer and the dancer. She is the free spirit, frightened of restraints, of caging, of being held back, very much in need of space, time, trust. Her man is what is described here as "fusionel". He believes when in love, you do everything together, and when she emits a desire for a day at the beach, accompanied only by her small son and no one else, or the need to sleep alone at her home to gather her wits/ se resourcer, he is hurt, offended, and at times, suspicious, méfiant.

What a way to put things in perspective for me, and to reflect upon what I've learned these past few months. I offer her the guidance I might. That being opposites, perhaps they can each help the other find a middle ground, make tentative steps in the other's direction, be kind, offer understanding, gently work through their respective histories and issues. And yet I hear her and I see that though he is good, generous, kind, interesting, tender... she is frustrated by what we'd say in English, his clinging, and what I find even more powerful, his lack of trust in her.

In my past relationship I wanted more, and he wanted less. Though I was far more tolerant of space needs, silence, separate outings, separate lives than this man. I had wanted a partner to grow with, to create with, to share my life and his. O is ready for this, and eager to participate in his business, to help him with her skills and person. She is also ready for the stability he represents. But they quite clearly have their hurdles to leap.

We'll see where they end up. As she speaks of his reactions, I remember my readings and suggest that rather than close up, be frustrated, etc., when he reacts strongly to her desire to have time alone, quietly suggest to him that he look again at himself and why this button is so tender, why he bursts into distrust and fear when she expresses a very banal and simple need to have time in her own head, by herself. Gently, with understanding, will he hear her? Or will the personal filtering mechanism impede any absorption of her reason?

We are all at such different stages of personal development. Our issues and fears are powerful and hold dearly to their existence. The ego is firmly in place and though glimmers of light and hope are there, freeing the soul, regaining clarity, openness, trust, strength... it is all so tricky. Sometimes we take baby steps, sometimes we fall back into the trenches, sometimes we leap forward, sometimes we shore up the cracks in our walls, no matter the potential light they offer.

And yet I do appreciate the idea that we are attracted to precisely the person that can help us see and work through these fears and extremes. However, only if we are willing to see the conflicts they bring to our lives as means of learning and evolving, rather than annoyances and reasons for departing.

This week also brought me the joy of more friends, and more confirmations of finally being on a sane and healthy path for me. The question has come up, for myself and for other women friends in similar points in their lives. What is my personal path? When do you cease to live for yourself, putting your husband/man and children ahead of you, and when can you, must you, will you, regain your footing and find the sense and justice of your own presence on this earth?

Up to this point, I've easily adopted a place beside others, adapting my pace to the ambition of another, be it Erick or JP. With Erick, it made sense, and we built, evolved and created. But with JP it was a dead end. Oh, I came away from this coupledom with far increased knowledge of the wine world, with tango steps in my feet, with experiences exploring the Gard and the Cévennes, not to mention Venice. But, sharing a life truly with him was not my path. And little by little, it became drastically clear that being with him impeded me from finding my own path.

And so, what is it? What is my very own path? That is the question.

I have lived forty four years as a woman without an absolute notion or ambition for a precise field of study or course; i.e. I never dreamed of being a veterinarian, or of having a family of 5 kids and living in the suburbs, or of exploring the Amazon.

When you are open to many possibilities, and take pleasure in equal numbers, when you enjoy people, but also revel in time on your own, when you find basic jobs in offices not to your liking, and thankfully have the skills and education to scrounge about pretty well, when you want to raise your kids well but not fall into dire poverty... when you've chosen to live abroad and are surrounded by amazing friends, when you've a house you love and whose tending enriches your soul... what is the path to take? Am I carving one? clearing away the brush? or following bunny trails that lead to dead ends?

I'm meditating on this, and receiving -- ever so gently -- nudges from the universe, nuggets of ideas coming together, a rightness for a future direction.

Monica came this week and read my cards. As always, she gave me strength and joy simply by being here. Her powers as a medium/seer are potent. I hear what she communicates, wondering which portions will play out (in every instance, there have been true sightings that were proved in the months that followed, but just as much, sightings of possible paths that I didn't end up following). But just as marvelous is the energy she transfers to me when I am in her presence. She has seen me through my divorce, through the purchase of the house, through my anxiety for the boys, through the turmoil of my times with JP. She saw the complete and total confusion of last summer when truly I had no idea where I would end up, still attached emotionally to JP but knowing it wasn't right, looking to find someone in the part of the US I love most, Northern Michigan.

This time, the cards were particularly wonderful, except where JP was concerned. She said you're done with him, he limited you, his life is not yours. It was good luck that brought him into your life at a time you needed urging and momentum to divorce, and now it is good luck that is removing him from your life. Let go, and find yourself. You are the butterfly emerging from your chrysalis. You have projects ahead of you. You are surrounded by supportive and wonderful women friends, and present and attentive sons. Pursue your project(s), they can work, find the accountant/legal adviser to help you put it together. The B&B should sell this summer, and thus you'll have the necessary funds to advance. Enjoy being where you are, there are men in your future, perhaps even a choice of two. Not to worry, you attract them easily enough. Beware of anyone who is radin (stingy), or too old. What you seek is what you deserve: true sharing, support, encouragement, being more as a couple then you are alone, someone who can accept all that you are and not simply permit but enrich the full expression of your essence.

The part of the deck came up again and again in the most positive way: the two most beautiful cards. I'll put it here. Champagne flutes of celebration, and the spider who reaches to the energy of the sun, brings it down through her spun threads and enriches life here on Earth.

So now, it's up to me to realize this potential, n'est-ce pas?

Images from the Lubéron

The Lubéron is a valley to the east of Avignon lined with two ranges of hills atop which there are a number of some of the most lovely perched villages, villages perchés, one can hope to find.

Understandably, this is a popular day tour for me and my clients. Each time I go there, the visit varies depending on the weather, energy of the visitors, preference for walking and/or shopping, interest in monuments, or just reveling in the time-old act of sitting in a cafe people watching, a glass of rosé or orangina in hand.

With one group we might be buffeted by the powerful Mistral winds as we walk up the troglodyte home lined tiny streets of the now abandoned town of Oppède le Vieux, and with another a shared moment of laughter at a fellow visitor's bull dog as he rolls in the deeply staining orange ochre slopes of Roussillon.


We admire the blended earth pottery (called terres melées, quite a stunning achievement of swirled colored clays made into delicate pieces, and clear glazed). We take in the vast views in all directions, and we explore little nooks and crannies of these quaint places. And, de rigueur, we enjoy some scrumptious ice cream before heading back to the hotel.

Being Single Again

An interesting thing about being single again is simply the different way my time is filled. And yes, it is quite filled.

My social life is quite present, but has a very different slant. I'm blessed with girl friends -- friends who call me, invite me out, suggest activities, come by to visit, receive my phone calls and give me love and support when I've my moments of being down.

Thus I've been out to concerts, made a beaded necklace, received great massages in exchange for English conversation, gone to yoga class, am going out to an English/French networking evening, worked in my garden, cleaned out my pool, been to school meetings, explored Aix-en-Provence... and all this when I'm not touring my now plentiful clients visiting Provence.

I've time -- perhaps at long last? -- to take care of myself. Yes, massage is one thing, as are healers of other sorts. Myself and my larger self including my home, my garden, my children, my friends are benefiting from greater attention and focus.

I've time to be conscious.

I'm not running about with my head cut off. Rather than rush through a bit of cleaning Friday afternoon or Monday morning, I do it calmly on Saturday.

I'm still going out dancing, but to places I know where I'm received by friends and fellow students from class. No more evenings out at restaurants, and fewer movies in movie houses (I prefer the less expensive internet options these days).

Avignon is a hot house of theatre, artists, funky and friendly folk. A very different feeling from the more bourgeois Nîmes.

It's all just more relaxing, accepting. It's also a more international vibe. Nîmes and Vauvert were far more French. I know that sounds odd, but t'is true. The small town scene of the Vauvert market is far different than the bustle and movement of St. Rémy de Provence, Ile-sur-la-Sorgue or Aix-en-Provence. And downtown Avignon is filled to bursting with tourists these days. Thus I'm surrounded by English, German, Dutch and Japanese, to name a few.

As the birds singing in the trees outside my windows awake me with the sun (about 6:15 these days), I emerge into a different state of mind, a different world, a shifting reality.

I still have my moments of being down. But I am also very very grateful for what I do have. Slowly, I'll make sense of what I lived, thought, felt, chose. Slowly I'm growing, learning, adapting, evolving.

Slowly.

Good bye Isabelle

This morning we said good bye to Isabelle. Paul Pierre called me Wednesday evening to let me know that she'd died that morning around 3AM. Yesterday the family arrived, and today was a day for friends. He asked me to contact our mutual friend Sophie, the beekeeper. And I took it upon myself to call JP. Ooph, not an easy call for me. I would have vastly preferred to leave a message.

It was one of those moments when I just said to myself, you don't leave an sms about someone dying. That's just not done. This is something to be communicated by the voice. No? Ah well, it was brief, and awkward. What more to say? Were we going to chat about banalities? No.

I was saddened to learn of Isabelle's demise, and yet relieved as well. But I was thrown just hearing JP's voice. That sadness is frustratingly still in me.

In the end, both he and Sophie sent written notes to Paul Pierre. Neither was able to come to the mas.

And so, after dropping the kids off at school this morning, I headed out to St Martin du Crau. Paul Pierre greeted me, and immediately begged his excuses as he needed to be with others, elsewhere, that we'd find a time to talk in the future... Of course, and understandable. I gave him a hug, put Filou back in the car, and brought my roses and bottle of wine into the house.

And then... what? A simple greeting to faces I knew. A moment upstairs where Isabelle's casket was draped in a cloth, her daughter beside it. Then back downstairs. Could I help? A bit. But I felt rather out of it, lost, not at ease sliding into conversation with family members I'd never met. And so I took refuge in the cheese lab with Aurelie. Thankfully she was there. I grated some pepper onto her cheese, and helped a teeny bit (barely). Mostly I shared thoughts and feelings with her. She too is living a mini-nightmare in her own home as her mother is terribly ill, bedridden for more than a year now, and still for some terrible reason, hanging on. But, at the same time, her little girls -- like my little boys -- were being particularly lovely. Life has its sharpened edges, and its gentle ruffles.

Then back into the main rooms and outside. I helped put out the buffet of various foods brought by friends. I cut fougasse, and later the chocolate cakes. I opened some wine. And I waited. We then slowly made our way into the room to eat a bit, moving conversations. It was an event without direction. Paul Pierre was trying to be attentive to all who were there, and no doubt exhausting himself in the doing. His daughter Marie was sad and with her companion and her close friends. And others milled about. Other than managing food and cleaning and putting flowers into vases, no one dared impose themselves further.

And then, it was the moment for the casket to leave for the crematorium. Four strong men in the group carried it down the stone steps and out into the van. We gathered in silence, a few tears filling the pouches below our eyes, delicate streams descending. But... not a word, not a poem, not a shared memory, not a tribute, no note played on a cornet, or a violin, or a voice raised to the skies.

Each held his own council. We were a group of individual mourners in a shared space. Each held his memories to his heart. Why? why no ceremony? why no candles? why no sharing of our love for this woman? Why such a stiff upper lip? This is the Breton way?

I was lost, sad, and out of sorts. I wanted to let the tears flow. But in such solitude? Such silence?

And so I too departed, after helping clean up a bit. I climbed into my car and headed back to Avignon and the errands that awaited me there.

I've written before about funerals in France. And I wonder still why it is that there is such a different sense of things here. I attribute it as I might to the Protestant ethic of my world -- one where the people took back the right to communicate directly to God, to interpret the Word as they might, on their own. And thus gave themselves a voice and encouraged sharing their individual thoughts and perceptions. France is a product of its Catholic past (far more than the Protestant minority) -- a world where the priest speaks for you-- blended with its current laïc sensibility. Thus, if there's not a priest to do the talking for you, you don't talk, you don't interpret, you don't share your spiritual moments.

This is simply my groping in the dark to make sense of my own sadness in what I didn't experience this morning. As I shared these thoughts with two dear friends, and a colleague at the kids' Waldorf school, we were in agreement as to the importance of ceremony, marking the moment, sharing it, lighting a candle, reciting a poem, but most of all, allowing/permitting/celebrating a collective event.

And so, I grieve, and I am grateful that in this distant world that I've mostly made mine, I've friends who understand me, and who too would do as I would.

Once a bit of time has passed, I'll call Paul Pierre and see where he's at. What is next...

A Morning at the Boulangerie

It was a fly on the wall sort of day. As we walked in the door, one of the large mixers was eating its dough (truly). A mechanical take off on the blob... but backwards? Jean Pascal did a quick hello and the baker's hand shape (back of hand to back of hand) before returning to the onerous task of peeling dough off the underside of this motor. We watched, a bit taken aback, but fascinated nonetheless, as he scooped up the heavy orange dough (for his orange and chocolate flavored fougasse) and carried it in three portions over to the alternate machine.

To get out of the way, but also because it's great fun, I took my group back to the baguette corner. There, the tallest of the bakers was hunched over preparing his boules of dough for their rise, and rolling out the dough already properly risen, laying the long ropes of sticky pale dough onto the special baguette racks, to be put into the special chilling/rising/ and convection air oven to bake for the next morning's crowd. Careful and constant repetition of a most important task. After all, bread is the staff of life, and where would the French be without their baguettes?

We then mosied over to another corner of the shop where a young stagiare was making an apple tart atop a layer of pastry cream atop puff pastry dough. Hmmmm



Then a moment's pause for a cup of coffee, before we watched Jean Pascal and his long-time employee weigh out and then perfectly form boules of lemon fougasse dough. And roll, and roll, and roll,.. under the palms and perfectly curved fingers, with just the right touch.

It's mesmerizing.

The Camargue on a windy day

The Mistral had been blowing for days. Nights I curled up under three covers, socks, pjs with long pants, the works. During the day, we wore light sweaters and leather jackets to break the wind. Sun glasses de rigeur.


They liked marshlands they said. Okay, shall we go to the Camargue in the evening? And off we went. Down the long stretch of road outside Arles. Due South. And landed thereupon a world that is flat, with a restrained palette of colors, peopled by horses, bulls and flamingos, oft covered with vacation rentals and ranches (manades), where not seemingly barren. Yet teaming (on a normal non-windy day) with an array of mosquitoes to impress biologists and tourists alike.

This day the sun shone fiercely. The sky was scraped clean. Our hair was tossed about mercilessly. The horses stood facing south, their backs to the whistling warrior winds. We gamely left the car and explored on foot.

In the distance the flamingos, on the other side of a ditch the white horses, and at our feet, salicornes, the edible salty plant often pickled and delightful atop carpaccio sliced beef. - Of course I harvested some to bring home and pickle myself!

It is another world down there, at the edge of the sea. You can go no farther and remain on the European continent. From this point, the sea and over there, Africa. It's tempting...

An Evening on the Town with the Boys

I've not often taken my boys out to town with a destination in mind that is far more adult than child-oriented. In the old days either the kids stayed with the aupairs, or we simply didn't go out (far more the latter). And in recent years I went out with JP, but rarely during the week with the boys. Or, dropped them off at a film while we went dancing, or set them up with a film at home, or sent them to a friend's house, or...

If I took them out, it was to the local pizzeria that they love, or to a film for them, or to a friend's house with kids. But, have them tag along to an event that interests me and not themselves particularly? No, I've rarely done that. And, so, I pay the price.

They're not accustomed to being "trimbalés" (sp?) all over the place. They're not easy. They don't make do with grace, tolerance and patience. They make their boredom known.

But, I would not back down. If not before, than from this moment forth, they need to learn (particularly Leo) that not every minute of the day is orchestrated for his benefit. Sometimes, you do something to please another. Sometimes you go along and make the best of it because someone else wants to do this. Sometimes, you just keep your mouth shut and be. Yes, I did get a wee bit spiritual and discussed living in the present, the now, where you're at when you're there... But hey, the words of Eckhart Tolle are in my head.

The evening wasn't a total loss. The small trio in the Rue des Teinturiers was excellent. We enjoyed 'un verre' each (a glass of rosé for me, orangina for them), sat on the wall and watched the world walk by. However, the moments spent at the Guingette of the Bal des Teinturiers were painful for me (due to their complaints) and them (they're not fans of Serge Gainsburg covered by a local band with the requisite accordion player).

Perhaps the next outing will go better?