This is the funniest video mash-up I've seen in a long time. Not for those who are sensitive to potty-mouthed muppets. You've been warned!
Lucie and I have a secret place we've been going to on the banks of the Sandy River for the past 5 years, a place where often we see not another soul, that is gorgeous. We were going to go today but discovered it has been closed to public access (access goes through private land) thanks to a few people who apparently went there and partied and left trash. We are in mourning as it doesn't look like it will be accessible again in the near future. Instead we packed a picnic and had one on Mt. Tabor.
Lucie had her first dental surgery today, the removal of her bridge, a bone graft and a gum graft. Picked her up in Beavetron and it seemed to have gone well, with only a little swelling and discomfort. She is on a restricted diet for two weeks with lots of odd prohibitions. Not only nuts and seed, crunchy foods (raw veggies, good bread etc.) but no raspberries, ice cream, hot beverages....
Skyped with my niece Julia today for the first time. She seemed a little scared of the process with her unkempt just woken up uncle but enjoyed skyping with Ewok. Also skyped with my parents for father's day. Went to the office a bit, gardened, made up a pinto bean new mexico chili concoction and went to writers workshop.
My mom requested another segment of green porno. Here is the spider:
We both woke up super early and spent the day getting our lives here back in order. Plowing through home and office mail and bills, laundry etc. We made several meals out of our exploding overgrown jungle of a garden and I started to tackle the weed epidemic. At night we began Suddenly Last Summer with Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift and Katherine Hepburn but I fell asleep so we finished it the next morning.
Today we did our 25 hour journey home, after a great visit in France. We said goodbye to Henriette, Julie and Rose and took a taxi to the airport. Our three flights: CDG to JFK to LAX to PDX went smoothly without incident or delay. Lucie finished the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, I continued with Mysteries of Pittsburgh, and critiquing stories. We stumbled home, zombified at midnight and Ewok was delighted to see us and has been a love sponge ever since.
Last night we had dinner at Henriette's, the 4 of us. Rose loved the potatoes and gobbled up her fish. Henriette gave her some crayons and coloring books which she seemed to really enjoy too. Today we took the metro to the Jardin des Plantes to go to the zoo. The 2nd oldest zoo in the world, built in the 1790s. The place was chock full of kids and was amazingly ethnically diverse with lots of mothers in colorful African garb, or Arabic headdresses, and mixed classes of all ethnicities. Pretty cool. After a thorough exploration of the zoo we went to the Grand Mosque for lunch. I had an amazing tagine of lamb, peppers, olives, tomatoes, onions and cinnamon couscous. And, of course, tons of mint tea.
Spent the afternoon getting ready for the plane trip tomorrow: packing, shopping for the plane, making sandwiches....Tonight Lucie's friends Laetitia and Jerome are coming over to join Julie and Rose for pizza.
Took the metro today to another English language bookstore, the Red Whellbarrow, on the fringes of the Marais district and picked up a copy of Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon's first book. Then we headed to a French bookstore and Lucie bought the last volume of Proust's Rememberance of Things Past. After that, we headed to the Gare de Lyon train station and picked up Lucie's friend Julie, and Rose, Julie's daughter and Lucie's goddaughter. We had a leisurely Italian meal across the way from Lucie's grandmother's apartment complex and now they have strolled to the Eiffel Tower so Rose can ride the donkeys there. I've stayed behind purportedly to write but I'm procrastinating.....
Yesterday I spent most of the day in pajamas. I worked on my new story, surfed the internet, printed out some of the stories of my colleagues in my workshop in the upcoming Tin House Writers Workshop in July, I critiqued some of those, and copied some of Christine's impressive opera collection onto my computer. Today, Christine drove us to Angouleme and we took the train from there to Paris. A relatively uneventful journey except for the exploding coke bottle in the seats across from us that splattered everyone in the car. Went to the Grand Epicerie to buy some chocolate as gifts, headed to an English language book store, Shakespeare and Co. to look for a book for me for the plane (I finished Kavalier and Clay and also the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie which was hilarious and disturbing), and went to a pedagogical bookstore for teachers where Lucie looked for some materials for her students. Then had a great dinner with Henriette, chicken and pasta. The weather in Paris is awesome. Perfect. And it looks to stay that way for the rest of the trip.
Here is another picture of the neolithic "menhirs" that dot the landscape in Brittany.
And since no one commented on Isabella Rosselini's green porno movie on the sex life of bees, here is one on snails:
When we went to Vancouver 3 years ago to visit Lucie's friend Vincent, who was studying there briefly, his roommate Claudia, who studied bees, showed us a great time there. Coincidentally she just arrived in the Dordogne to visit Vincent, the same day we arrived. Thomas, Lucie and I went over to Vincent's house for dinner. In his family for generations, this house, in various states of repair and disarray, was a great thing to behold. Some of the rooms are very slanted, others have secret doors, or bottles of homemade spirits, or tombstones to neighbors graves, or the foreleg of a goat that was once used to ward off the devil.
Today Thomas leaves for China, a 2 week tour with his music. We learned he is going to do a Pacific Northwest tour this fall too, which we were excited to hear.
On an unrelated note....here is a video of a Bonvalet river crossing, and a photo of a boat cemetery in Brittany.
Yesterday we drove from Brittany to the Dordogne, through the Charente region which was mostly agricultural, with occasional very cool looking modern windmills, and then into wine country, through the town of Cognac, and into the Dordogne. Lucie's brother came over for a delicious dinner of ratatouille and then we headed to his land and cabin, said hi to the goats, Lucie took a boat ride around one of the ponds, and we visited the depressed chicken who doesn't lay eggs are leave the coop even after putting her butt in ice water to snap her out of her morose state.
Today Jean-Jacques, Lucie and I went to one of my favorite places, the twelfth century water mill that grinds walnuts into oil. Only open on Sundays, today was the first time I actually saw the process in action. The place smelled heavenly. I would buy the perfume if their was one. The video below starts with the nuts and ends with the water wheel that powers the whole thing. Afterwards we walked around a bit, on a 2000 year old Roman road, still semi-paved, where you could see the ruts and grooves from the ancient carts that passed that way so long ago.
Interestingly almost all the tourists in Southern Brittany are French. Such a huge contrast to Paris where it seems like you are hearing a new language every minute. Here in 5 days we ran across one American family and one large group of Dutch tourists. And a billy goat of unknown national origin, but presumably a proud Breton.
Some of the islands are only islands at high tide. At low tide you walk to them and there is a sign warning you what time you need to come back. We visited another island with neolithic stone carvings reminiscent of Australian aboriginal art that we saw at Quai Branly, such as "dream of opossum" or "dream of serpent." Another island, "the island of the monks"--that had a conspicuous absence of monks, made me garden crazy, anxious to get home and plant more flowers. Check out that photo.
Had a great meal, traditional from Normandy, of Sole cooked in a butter sauce, on the tip of the Quiberon Peninsula. The word for Peninsula in French, presqu'ile means "almost island". Jean-Jacques informed me that the English word also means "almost island" if you translate the latin roots. There were many hikers out and about on the cote sauvage of this peninsula. I think Dracula stayed in because of the sun.
Our days have taken on a definite rhythm. Regardless of the weather we go on a long hike in the morning, have a leisurely lunch, go on a shorter hike in the afternoon, come back to the house for dinner, and then Jean-Jacques, Christine, and sometimes Lucie go on a third evening hike since it isnt getting dark until around 10. At this point I'm horizontal on the couch reading. Traditional lunch is a galette--a buckwheat crepe often filled with egg, ham, and cheese; a pitcher of hard apple cider, and then a dessert crepe. I had the best dessert crepe ever on this trip-a salted caramel and butter one. Whoa! The best galettes have been awesome but the ones in Paris in the part of town where Bretons settled has ones just as good.
This whole area is studded in mysteriously placed stones that predate Stonehenge, the Pyramids etc. There are thousands of them, some in obvious but unexplained alignments, some studding people's backyards.
