Me and Marco Bellini

Gelato is my new religion. Today I ate it for lunch, and I have never felt better. The other thing that I try to eat everyday is marrons\castagnas (chesnuts) because they are in season, and everywhere. There is even a gelato flavor: marron glaces. Best ever. A French invention. Bravo.

From Lyon, I took a train to Torino through the Alps. The Alps can be seen from the city center--and technically, for this time of year, I am underdressed (unprepared), but like everywhere else, it is unseasonably warm.

Italy's reputation is to be hyper fashion conscious, but even here, the American look is in. In fact, those who are into it look more American than the Americans do. Converse can cost upwards of 60 euros. They take our look of hyper casual and perfect it: a careful cross of thug and punk. I think maybe we are the curiosity of the world.

Marco Bellini is my host here and we are two peas in a pod: he too can walk for hours without collapsing. He has given me crash courses in Italian politics and the mafia; Berlusconi's attempt to privatize water; the role of trees and rice fields in the Piemontian economy; zen\rock climbing theory; and, how to tell time in Italian (among other things). I'm not quite sure how there is enough time to cover all of these topics, but we have. He took me to his hometown, Vercelli, as well, where we stayed with his friends and went climbing. I learned a few Italian words this weekend because his friends spoke only a little English.

Torino: I walked along the left bank of the Po River, walked along the right bank of the Po, helped an Italian woman pushstart her car, watched 4 swans (double date) sleeping on the river. More: walked up a hill to the museum of mountaineering, drank coffee in Cafe Elena, where Nietzche used to hang out, went to a very fine modern art museum (the GAM) where it is written, "All art has been contemporary."

Of Italy and Itailans, I have lovely first impressions.

Lyon the Lion

  

I, II. Overlooking Lyon, At the basilica.

III, IV. French Thanksgiving 1 and 2.

I might like Lyon even better than Paris, which is saying a lot a lot a lot. The public bike system is through the roof amazing. For €1.50 I get an unlimited bike pass for the week. There are terminals all over the city. You check out a bike, you go, you put the bike a way. All day long, all night long. Public biking systems have flopped in a lot of US cities because people are destructive assholes. Not here.

Lyon was once a Roman city. It has two rivers, the Rhone and the Soane, both beautiful. It has an ancient basilica on a hill (with a view of the city I cannot begin to describe just now), and the ruins of a Roman ampitheatre, and an astrological clock that is by far the most impressive man-made thing I've ever seen in person (if I ever see a spaceship I will get back to you). The clock runs until the year 2019. (I guess we all blow up after that). It gives you the time, the date, Lyon's relation to the stars in any season, and important holidays.

After escaping the wreckage of my attempts at French farm life, Lyon is sunny, a safety net of urbanity. I'm staying with my dear old friend, Vittoria. We rode the bus together in Kindergarten, she was one of my first friends in life, and now she is living here, teaching English. Highlights: chesnut ice cream and blueberry sorbet, dancing to MJ at a boat bar. We got a whole crowd of shy French kids to play a reverse version of the human knot that we made up on the spot. It was one of those incredible moments: the bar was quiet except for me and Vittoria acting out (not drunk, just happy). Everyone was glancing at us shyly from their tables, and by the end of the night the whole bar was on their feet. Francois, Vittoria's cousin, who was visiting from the south, looked at my delighted, astonished face, and said, "You're thinking something like this would never happen in the US. But this is not France, it's the situation, it's the moment and the people and the circumstance." Anything can happen, anywhere. And anybody can be family, and any place can be home.

 

V. Dressed as "Vitamin AB" at a "combat the swine flu!" costume party.

VI. Ready for some honest to goodness French Champagne!

Travel

It is an oscillation between pleasure/joy and fear/loss.

Birds What Don't Fly, and other creatures

Last reflections from the farm:

Chickens are disgusting creatures. It was my duty on the farm to tend the chickens, and I now don't eat them anymore. For your sake, I won't go into details, but on days when I had to muck out the coop, I didn't put a thing into my stomach before 2 pm. Those of you who know me well know what a sacrifice it is for me to skip breakfast. Basically, the stench is unbelievable and they shit everywhere, including in their own water container. If someday I am an old lady living in the country (likely), I will not have any, but will get my eggs from the guy down the road.

There were TINY labrador puppies. Blind. The most pathetic creatures I've ever seen. The momma lab looked bored out of her mind.

Horses are big and scary, but incredibly beautiful. I won't have any of these either.

(Un?)teachable Moments Or How I Nearly Lost My Soul (and sanity) in Ruffec, France.

I haven't written in a little while because I've been movin' and shakin'. But I will attempt to catch you up now, in a short series of poorly organized, chronological posts. First, how things ended up as I left the Charente...

A few evenings before I left Ruffec, I was cooking dinner and the TV was on in the background. Jamie's American Road Trip was on: a British chef travels through the US to investigate how the recession effects how regular Americans eat and interact with one another. He was in Georgia (on my mind) for only a few brief scenes, but it was a fascinating study in how race and class interact. First, he had high tea with upper middle class white women in Savannah. He asked them straightaway if, and how, the recession was affecting them. "Yes, of course," they replied, "but we don't talk about it." "And is this predominantly a McCain or Obama crowd?" he asked. "This is predominantly a McCain town," one woman replied, "but we don't talk about that." They ate fancy cakes and had cocktails. Then he visited a poor white family outside Savannah. He asked about the presidential election here as well, and here plenty was said, including the n word. In the background was a Confederate flag. The camera zoomed in on his shocked face, but he said nothing. They ate barbeque. And so there it was, that flag, which I normally dont think about, twice in the course of a week. And that was it for me. I started to think differently about what I was trying to do.

There are confederate flags all over America, and different versions of the same sentiment all over the world. I can't get rid of them all, but if I got some people thinking, I'd like to think that's something. In the end, I don't know if I got through, but I had gone as far as I could go without completely losing it. I was on this farm outside this pretty shit town, (which could have been anywhere in the world), and I had no one to talk to about what was happening. What was happening? I was working for and with people who believed that England should stop Pakistanis from immigrating, and that it was o.k. to fly the flag of American Fascism, and that it was okay for straight people to kiss in public, but not gays or lesbians. I knew I could walk away from this scene at any time, and without a word, but what use would that be? I wanted to affect something. I would take these long walks in the pitch black at night: just me, and the stars, and some dogs howling in the distance. And I would ride around on a borrowed bike in the late afternoons, after I finished work, looking for that barn. I never found it. I knew I should be looking at my travel journal as my friend, but I resented it. Instead, I wanted someone to tell me I was right. But this was about ego. Eventually I realized that if you can't make sense of it, write it. And voila. A gear engaged: I felt just barely better, but enough. And I gave up. Because a teachable moment is only teachable if people are seeing, not just looking, and listening, not just hearing.

Then I escaped to Lyon, which is a beautiful city, and drenched in history.

So America, send reinforcements into the world. I feel torn about travel. My environmental impact makes me guilty everyday. I wonder, even as I do it, if the environmental impact of leisure travel is justified in its mind-broadening qualities. Travel can open one's mind like magic mushrooms only wish they could. And I do get down on America for all of the many problems we have. It's important to stay critical of one's country, always. But as unresolved as our race issues are, western Europe has a lot to learn from us. Maybe because we've been negotiating immigrant issues on a larger scale for a longer time? I don't know...

The Confederate Charente

To my previous post, I would like to amend the list. As it turns out, sadly, racism makes the cut.

The past week has been one of the most bizarre of my life. Last Friday night the 19 year old twins, Tobias and Luke, resident kings of the farm I'm currently working on, took myself and the two other helpers to a country bar. It's in a barn and is also home to the local Harley Davidson Club. It was crowded, I was drunk--real cognac is delicious, by the way--and perhaps for these reasons, I did not notice the unusual decorations. As a side note, I should explain what I mean by real cognac. The French (I think like Italians with cheese) are very particular about their alcohol. It is only cognac if it comes from Cognac, and 'champagne' that is not from Champagne is merely "mousseaux," or sparkling wine.

In any case, the following evening was Toby and Luke's last nite in town before they returned to university in Bristol, so we went out again. I had not yet been treated to taste the very fine Cognac yet, as I had the night before, so I was feeling just a bit more alert and intellectual. The numbers 1, 9, 4, and 7 were written in succession on the side of the limestone barn. Observation number one: whoever built the barn must have been proud to have done so post-war. There were seven or eight Harley's parked in the lot, and a few were vintage--we admired them briefly before entering.

It was five euros to get in and see a just-less-than-mediocre rock band and freeze to death. The barn-bar was not heated: I shivered with cold, and then with something else. Just behind the drummer's head was a confederate flag. To the left was an American flag with the Harley symbol in the middle. My bones were chilled. As sickening as the flag itself was, it's mantra was even more gag-worthy: "The South Will Rise Again." In the center of the flag was an illustration of a rough looking soldier struggling under the weight of his own confederate flag.

My mouth dropped. I looked around me: it was early and the bar wasn't yet full. Make the scene mute, take away the French lyrics, and we could be anywhere in the rural US. People wore sweaters, nondescript boots, and jeans. There were a few bikers in leather, and a few young women who had compromised their warmth for attention. The crowd made room for a wild dancer: the local Erik Starchild, burnout extraordinaire.

I grabbed Luke's shoulder. "What is that doing here? Who put it up? Who owns this place? An American?" Toby came over. They were baffled. People stared, and I realized I was speaking English. Loudly. The boys genuinely did not know what the flag meant. I explained what it was, and asked them to help me get it taken down. I found that I wasn't upset only by the racism (although chiefly this). I was also mortally offended that the French had appropriated American racism of a specific context, now out of date by several hundred years. Something inside me shouted, "Get your own racist flag!" I know this is ridiculous: racism of any order is out of order. But I was not better than the situation: I was ridiculous too.

Luke told me he would talk to someone later, only it "wasn't right" to do so now, as people were partying. I considered walking onto the stage, reaching over the drummer, and ripping the flag off the wall, but took a more cowardly route instead. I went outside and cried out of anger. I continued this way until Lisa, a British woman, (also working on the farm) came out to check on me. And, if half of England is like Lisa then I will consider it a very wonderful, forward thinking country. She lit me a cigarette, held my hand, and convinced me to get out of the rain (me being wet, she explained, was accomplishing nothing). I went inside and made Luke promise to follow through. Sometime after that, we went home.

The boys are very sweet, generally, and seeing that I was upset, tried to comfort me. Toby told me: "people have different opinions in the world...and you have to accept that." This, coming from a 19 year old boy who's never left home, was the icing on the patriot cake. I launched into a passionate history lesson (probably a tirade, from his perspective), which concluded with something like "Confederate flag equals Nazi flag." Now they have gone back to university to party and study, in that order, and for me the thing couldn't be less resolved. I saw the flag on Saturday nite, and haven't had a good nite's sleep since.

I dream of Holocausts: sometimes I am watching from a hiding place, sometimes I am the one hiding. I have been a Jew, and I have been Palestinean, but I have never been a Fascist. Last nite I dreampt I was the twin of the little girl in Pan's Labyrinth. We were two, and we were one. But she died in the morning; I did not. I fear complacency.

I spoke with Carla, my host here, and like her boys (or they like her), she doesn't quite get it. She said that "people just aren't like that here," and whoever put the flag up certainly didn't know what it means. It's possible they didn't. But she also told me that I can't do anything about it, which made me wish I had yanked it off the wall that night, consequences whatever. It also made me like her less. Now, I am in the process of trying to hunt down someone who has some influence at the HD club, is on my side, and who I can communicate with. The lack of solution is as much my fault as anyone's. If I could speak French, I could step forward. I would also like to cut and run.

So, I've decided to stay another week in Ruffec to see if I can put that thing where it belongs: in the asher. Friends, send your prayers this-a-way.

The Country in Any Country

There are certain things that are constant in rural areas the world over, which I find both comforting and ominous.

First, country people always have a place set aside in the woods, reserved for the purpose of dumping unwanted appliances. It is often in a valley, and surrounded by brambles. There's a place like this behind the old Dutch cemetary in Kinderhook, NY, where I grew up. I happened on it a long time ago because I was certain I heard a kitten in the valley. I skidded to the bottom of the hill--no kitten to be found, but plenty of rusty barrels, empty two liters, old plastic dolls, refridgerators, you name it. I'm now at the second of two farms I've stayed it in rural France, and in my off-time/off-road wanderings I've found similar pits in both places.

Second, an excessive amount of drinking and smoking goes on for no other reason than there is nothing else to do. I feared that visiting my sophisticated friends in Paris would turn me into a wine-guzzler and smoker. However, Parisian habits can't hold a candle to Charentian ones. The first farm was in wine country, the second not far from Cognac, and the farm boys here, much like those I grew up with, smoke a lot to look clever. (They are not, of course, clever).

Third is hunting (sounds a bit like bombs going off). In my brown sweater, I typically worry that I look like a deer.

The fourth is fun: me getting stuck in brambles on walks. False. It's not fun. It happens like this. I see a 'path' leading into the woods, and think "Cool!" Then it turns out that there isn't a path, but I becomed determined to make it out the other end. Most recently, the thorns were so thick that I actually crawled on my hands and knees until I reached a small stream, which I crossed on a log, and ended up in a cow pasture. It was interesting. The cows looked up at me like, "Uhhh...WTF?" So I hopped a fence and went off, my jeans ruined.

Much more coming soon, kids. Stay posted.

M