Epicurean Regression

oooh... stock image

After six months of re-American life, I started to feel the hankering for French things again. I had been staying away from them: not looking at pictures of Paris (more difficult to avoid than one might think), not interacting too much with the people I left behind, avoiding bakeries. But about a month ago I found myself ordering a (disappointing) croissant in a cafe. Selecting brie instead of pepper jack. Reverting to "pardon" when I bumped into people by mistake. It seemed I was ready to confront the France that I missed in a more direct, need I say visceral, way.

It began at Christmas, when a friend flew back a box of macarons. Those little delicate cookie creations, vibrant colored crackling puffs sandwiching fragrant creams and jellies in flavors like Vanilla Olive Oil, Hazelnut Cocoa Bean, Moroccan Mandarin, Rose and Lavender... I ate them almost exclusively at night. In bed. Guiltily cheating on my homeland and its Oreos.

I began having cravings for French food. Some of these were satisfied by the family friend with whom I'm staying, a woman who has learned from three decades of marriage to a Frenchman how to simply, matter-of-factly concoct the perfect tarte aux pommes, to make pate à choux rise just so, and to flavor everything with cream and butter. She also makes killer chocolate chip cookies, but I digress. Regardless of Priscilla's kitchen prowess, what I really wanted was escargot.

My date and I got dolled up on a Wednesday and headed to the inner Richmond for a night of inner richness (ha ha ha). He was excited. Ordered a town car. He had never had snails before and was raring to go. He was not disappointed. 

mmm... stock image

It is difficult to mess up escargot. The traditional recipe exists essentially as an excuse to consume butter perfumed with garlic and parsley, but oh, it is so so good. Especially helped out with a glass or two of Sancerre. We had oysters too, with red wine vinegar mignonette, and then I had bouillabaisse and there were digestifs and a complimentary apple tart (not as good as Priscilla's)... I was in heaven. I was in fake Paris. I knew it was fake because a female French customer told us we looked fabulous.

But that wasn't enough. I needed more invertebrates. For my birthday Kate took me up the coast to Tomales Bay, where we sat in the freezing cold sunshine (ah, Northern California winters) and I learned to shuck, shuck, shuck my little heart out. My dear friend knew just what to do. She brought champagne, a spread of cheeses, lemons, and a beautiful baguette. I thought of my uncle Jean François and the mountains of oysters we put away during the holidays in Toulouse, of my first bivalve off the coast of Brittany, of my father and his skilled wielding of the blunt, heavy-handled knife. Kate and I ate ours raw, of course, all 36 of them. I looked at the families around us, many foolishly barbecuing their little gems of the sea, and scoffed.

Then the next day I reviewed the places on Yelp, had a burrito,  and everything went back to normal.

Can You Handel It?

Georgie Handel himself

Christmas time has come and gone. New year's day as well. Now, a time to reflect, to ponder, to look forward with the wisdom of another year. A time to ask such burning questions as: Why could I not find a Sing-Along Messiah in San Francisco??

For the last decade or so, I have been able to belt out yearly Hallelujah choruses and ridiculous melisma, sometimes accompanied by baroque orchestras, sometimes by solo organ. I have been able to socially breeze across voices in a hodgepodge of choir-members and weekend singers, singing alto with my lower-voiced buddies, soprano I with the high pipers, outside of the restrictions of "rehearsal" and "assigned parts". More often than not this happened in the American Cathedral on George V, led by a spirited choir director expertly hiding fear of losing the reigns of the packed and weighty-voiced house. 

As I was on the board of the Paris Choral Society, I was charged with getting the word out, and I always depended on touting the grand tradition of a Handel's Messiah Sing-Along to a susceptible French audience. But it appears I was full of lies. Did I make it up? Is singing the Messiah alongside a trained choir not a thing we do in the States?

PCS Sing-Along in action

I was certain that some opportunity to whip out my well-worn sheet music would come along. But no. Oh, there were plenty of Messiahs out there, but I couldn't find a single one that would encourage the audience to join in. Perhaps I was not sufficiently observant, but I was nonetheless outraged. I didn't want to LISTEN. I wanted to EMOTE VOCALLY. I took to singing it from beginning to end as I walked through the city. I put it on at every opportunity, hoping to spark a flash-mob. 

But it didn't happen. I was reduced to attempting to get my family humming on Christmas Eve, to no avail. I suppose America is not quite what my rose-colored memory retained.

Although, since this is a choral-oriented post, one thing San Francisco HAS offered in that realm was a FABULOUS semi-amateur choir rendition of Orff's Carmina Burana (of car commercial and pop canon fame). I attended because a friend was singing, and was delighted. The singing was nice, the orchestra too, but the best part was the showmanship. During O Fortuna (the big one A-AAh A-AAh, A-AAh A-AAh, A-AAh-a-aah- AAh. AAh. AAh), the singers held tiny LED flashlights to their faces as if telling ghost stories. During the Tavern movement (basically about men drinking in the tavern and how great it is), the choir shined the same lights through what looked like owl masks at the audience. Fabulous. Oh, and the soloists had three costume changes each. Including the tenor, who made all his onstage during his one dying-swan aria. 

When we performed Carmina Burana in Paris, I remember having to wear flowers in my hair, but that was it (well, it's possible the male choristers sported potato sacks, but maybe I made that up). Our crowning glory was found in the flurry of young modern dancers in colorful leotards that came in and out of the aisles during instrumental movements. The San Francisco Choral Society? Same dancers. From the Champs Elysées to Davies Hall, semi-pro choral scene brings kitsch and swooping drama. Wonderful, comforting consistency. My heart is a little warmer for it. 

Hallelujah.

Mode-us Operandi

I would like to preface this post with an acknowledgement that I have no legs to stand on in my commentary. I am far from fashion plate. That being said...

Perhaps it's the extended stay in Mother Europe that warped my born-and-bred Californian perspective, or some kind of deep-rooted desire for structure, but  think it's a bummer that there seem to be no more dress codes. While this is the norm out West ("down with the New Upper Class and their despisal of white after labor day! I will wear sneakers to the office and tattoos will be a prerequisite for employment!"), it surprised me to find that in Paris, things were not so different.

I suppose this in somewhat unfair... In Paris I lived mostly in the lands of the hipster bohemes, who peered over their espressos and cigarettes with a fashion-eye towards London. Their jeans were expertly worn and their vintage clothing was often Hermes and YSL and had real fur and I'm pretty sure they had it all dry-cleaned, but it was calculatedly cool. Very "what, this old thing?". In the other, more western parts of town things remain brand-new Chanel suits and Vuitton bags, sky-high shoes and various thousand-euro takes on the Little Black Dress. So I'm not saying San Francisco and Paris have converged on the plane of vestimental theory. But there are some commonalities to bemoan, and some puzzling discrepancies.

When I first came to France as more than a toddler, on a monthlong visit in the summer of 1995, my father warned me. He looked me up and down and said they dressed... different there. I didn't really get it until I arrived in Nice and, while I slept off my jet lag, my grandmother filtered out and hid the clothing she deemed inappropriate for my international coming-out. Gone were my docs, my overalls and plaid men's shirts and the baggy jeans with the fabric panels sewn down the sides. Mamie was not having any of that California laxness in her house. She then took adolescent me shopping for flowing bright-patterned silk pants, a pinstripe tailored suit and a light classic raincoat, among other things I must have burned when I came back home as I am sad to say I can no longer find them. 

When I moved to France in 2003, things were much the same. Christmas in Toulouse was a flurry of champagne corks and cufflinks, gold jewelry and aprons worn over gorgeous dark floral prints. Mamie whispered in my ear then too, nixing what she termed revealing necklines, but she wasn't the only one. My cousin Stephan, when we went out for (what is apparently traditional) Christmas-eve clubbing told me he wasn't sure I was going to be able to get in. "You know, the first thing they look at is your shoes."

And yet, going to the opera, or the ballet, or the theater seems to do nothing at all to the French. I suppose I should say the Parisians. I once went to a first-run of the Sellars-Viola production of Tristan and Isolde and found myself seated between one couple in black tie and another in jeans. The tourists in the rush seats were in shorts. I was confused. If you don't dress up for the opera, what do you dress up for?

The answer, it seemed, was jogging. I used to go out wearing whatever I could get my hands on, lots of it or very little depending on the season, but nothing that was particularly attractive. I would stop at a traffic light or a moving bridge, red in the face and sweating through my T-shirt and 49ers hat. People waiting with me would politely ignore, and the other occasional jogging Miss in velour sweatsuit or a sports bra that matched her shoes or the collar on her tiny dog would raise her eyebrow at me. "You leave your house in THAT?"

Now, running through Golden Gate Park I have no fear or self-consciousness. There are people just as shabby as me huffing down those paths. There are also people napping half-hidden in hollowed out tree trunks, but that is a different story. As far as clothing goes, there doesn't seem to be much restriction at all. I have been to two weddings in the last couple of years where the entire groom's party wore sneakers, and I must have seem thousands of photos of cowboy boots under white gowns. 

I went out for drinks and dinner with an old friend the other day, steering him away from the upscale fast food place that opened in Mill Valley and towards a tavern with outdoor seating and black-clad waitstaff. On the walk from the car, he mentioned something about hoping he wasn't underdressed. But inside, sitting at a white-tablecloth for two, was a dude in track pants and a woman in a crisp peter-pan collar. I guess the mix makes the mix. Still, maybe I'm lazy, but I would like a little more warning. I wore strappy heels to an art opening, but it was in Olema (farmland/winecountry) and so everyone else was in flip flops. I wore jeans to a comedy show and everyone else was in buttoned shirts and sweet swinging dresses. I might just go the way of a friend back in France, restrict all my wardrobe to the cuts of various black dresses and add the occasional swanky coat or bright tights. LBD LBD.

This is not to say that there are no restrictions and no judgements (I mean, really, this isn't Berlin). My brother often remarks on my Mom jeans. I have nothing to retort, having adopted them directly out of Mom's closet, but it stings a little coming from someone wearing a stocking cap. It is a stylish stocking cap though. That seems to be the underlying rule, regardless of the location: if you are going casual, go stylish casual. In the Bay Area though, you can't look like you're trying. In Paris, you can't look like you're not.

Retirée

It has been a while.

I am not sure if I have been getting used to California again or if I have just become accustomed to the Summer Vacation Lifestyle of staying at my mother’s, in my childhood and adolescent bedroom, watching TV and sitting around the deck. Now with the addition of a bottle of beer.

Maya with electric lines (or whatever)

The view has gotten better. They have cut down the trees in front of the house and now the only thing marring the strangely enticing view of the freeway and the bay is the collection of thick, low-arching electric lines. Electric or telephone, I guess I don’t know, but they are definitely there.

I have been escaping quite a bit, to San Francisco and Oakland, Santa Cruz and Monterey, a fledgling music and cabaret festival on the Russian River. I still have a lot of friends here. Last week I made myself stay home for ten days, telling myself that I had to get down to good old brass tacks, send off thousands of resumés and get moving. Also I spent ten dollars on a promotional ten days of Bikram and Power yoga in order to force the issue. I bought a new yoga mat that my mother laughed at. It’s brown and she says it looks like poop. She is a bit obsessed with poop. She also says my cat, who has an asymmetrical spot on her muzzle, looks like she has been eating poop. I always said Nutella, but mom won’t let it go. 

Dolores Park, on a day without bubbles but with Mime Troupe

The other night I was in San Francisco with my friend Charlotte, we ate take out in Dolores Park between some hippies from Denmark in neon green jumpsuits and multicolored dreadlocks and some homeless guys with an all-terrain skateboard and a dog that tried to eat Charlotte’s falafel. There was a band with a battery-powered amp and someone with a bubble machine. When it got cold and we got tired of posing for a modern-day Maupin novel, we walked to the apartment Charlotte was subletting between circus contracts and she made us tea. We laughed a lot and very hard.

Charlotte and I have a relationship that started when I first moved to France, she was taking time off from a math degree at Berkeley, doing modern dance and sharing an apartment with a French ballerina-type. There was a sheet dividing their rooms if I remember correctly. I had known her ex-boyfriend back in Santa Cruz and we shared many a vegan mush dinner. She returned to Europe after completing her degree, this time to Brussels where she studied handstands 8 hours a day. We’d see each other at least once a year, when she came through on a field trip or a contract, or when I had a visiting friend who wanted to take a train ride out of France, but not so far as Amsterdam. We hung out in Paris right before I came back to California. Last week’s festival- Charlotte was my in- was the first time we had seen each other on this continent.

Charlotte, waffle-ironing.

So yeah, we laughed a lot. The place she was renting had a fake mural on the wall of the kitchen and a fold-out ironing board. I took pictures of Charlotte posing with a waffle iron (we couldn’t find the clothes kind). We talked about our love lives, our work lives, our plans for the future and our lack of plans for now. We talked about things we had done and she reminded me of conversations we had had (somehow I am never the one who remembers). There is something so nice about knowing someone for so long. It was very hard to leave her behind. If I remember correctly, we refilled the teapot six times.

I have been getting this feeling a lot lately, the feeling of sharing life by sharing time. Everyone is becoming an old friend and the bar is getting higher for meeting new people. If I haven’t known you for an approximate decade, you had better be really interesting or attractive, or there is little chance that I will remember your name. I met one girl three times last week. I felt pretty guilty, until I found out she is a twin, then I figured she was probably used to it.

I am definitely going to become crotchety before I hit 35. Maybe the Summer Vacation Lifestyle is really just a glimpse into Retirement.

(While writing this entry, my mother began talking about our genetically high insteps and their relation to loose joints and hip problems. I told her that, as of yet, these are not problems for me. Her words: “Well, you’re a child.” So I guess I’m complaining about nothing. I take it all back.)

Fog

It is very foggy in the Bay Area.

You would think I would remember this, that 8+ years living away would not have wiped my memory of this integral fact, but it seems to have slipped through the cracks. The window that looks out onto the bay from the dining room at my mother's house here in Mill Valley is white with fog, criss-crossed with telephone lines and bordered with leafy green. And red. And greygreenred.

I went jogging today on the bike path that runs under the freeway, to Sausalito and San Francisco, and was almost trampled by a woman with an industrial-sized baby buggy and golden retriever.  They came out of nowhere. Manifested out of the white. I dodged them, barely. Must remember the sporty yuppy factor when in Marin. Not so much a problem back in Paris. In Paris jogging threats were mostly limited to guys overexcited about the idea of a woman with stamina. Or people picnicking on the canal. Or my own incapacity to multitask (unzipping my sweatshirt, changing my music, and keeping my feet going on uneven terrain having ended in bloody knees on more than one occasion). Here it seems the fog can hide all sorts of forgotten threats.

In the strong visibility of of the living room, my cats are having a face-off. Paris trying to gain terrain on California. Shady, so named by one of my college housemates for her ability to sneak around and grab at people's ankles from under beds and tables and couches, is trying to hold her home turf. Her low-pitched threats sound impressive, at least for a cat protected by the slats and legs of the piano chair. Shady is the matriarch. I left her here with my mother in 2003, when I went to Paris "for a year or so" to check things out. Shady has since been joined by Kittyton, the lumbering star of my brother's youtube channel, and now Maya, straight off the plane from France, has come to rattle the delicate balance. Right now Maya is lying on the floor, about five feet away, watching. Every now and then she sneaks closer, bridging the gap, working on reducing the space between them. 

I imagine them outside, in a ring covered in white fog, darting in and out, circling and hissing, until they decide it's not worth it and lie down in a dogpile. Well... catpile.

While the cats try to get used to each other, my brother is lying on the couch, watching baseball. He and my mother are teasing me for my lack of player and stat knowledge. I tell them that it's not that I am not a fan, I just don't particularly care. My mother says it's only a matter of time. That soon enough I'll be sporting orange and black, shouting at the TV and refusing to go to the kitchen to replenish snacks when it's my turn. Maybe so. 

But for now the fog is too much for me.

Le grand bleu

Well, here I am. In a tin can hurtling at 575 miles per hour 35,000 feet in the air. My cat is at my feet, enclosed in a tiny carrying case and swaddled in comforting-smell clothes (though I have a hard time believing that my unwashed T-shirt could be that much of a calming aid). She is doing surprisingly well. When we were delayed in Frankfort I tried to coax her out to share a pretzel and beer with me, but she was uninterested. Perhaps she just doesn't like Germany. Or pilsner.

8.5 years, 3.5 bags.

All my bags were overweight. I managed to look sad enough to get some of the fees ignored, but it still cost me 230 euros to get my two monolith suitcases, the cat, and the computer on the plane. No big surprise. 

les dernières

The night before I left Paris I flipped out. My good friends, coming by to wish me well, found me in a whirlwind of Unprepared. Boxes everywhere. Poorly packed. Hysterical. After preparing me a bowl of pasta and opening bottles of champagne, they proceeded to repack my bags, like my own personal transcontinental elves, whilst I wandered around collecting hugs and jokes and being invited outside for cigarettes. They then kissed me on the cheek and floated off one by one into the night and early morning, laden down with gifts and bags to store, in order almost exactly opposite to my meeting them. How's that for Poetry and Meaning?

When I unpack in California, it's going to be a treasure hunt. I have no idea what made it  in there. Don't tell customs. 

I was able to delay my trip back a week, but it wasn't enough. So many things to do, so many things left undone. Museums and long walks, contracts to break and medical care to take advantage of (why didn't I find time to get new glasses? WHY?). I suppose you are never ready to leave behind a decade of your life. But still, I think I may have truly excelled at underestimating the task at hand. I shudder to think of the boxes I have left behind.

lapinou

small-time treachery

What I was able to do, though, was probably the most important. A great big 12-hour goodbye picnic at La Villette with cheese and wine and badminton and hugs and photos and barefoot grass-walking. Beers with my music kids from the American Cathedral, ending in rounds of bunny-eared singing in the Irish pub down the canal from my apartment. A last board meeting or the Paris Choral Society, where I, the dome of the Invalides clearly visible through the 6th floor window, fell under the influence of fabulous wine, good food, and great company to accept responsibility for a swath of things I probably won't get around to for months. A lunch at Chez Paul entirely composed of escargot and escarole. Another at the Patache, bookended by oysters and tarte tatin. A last-minute recording session with the boys. A tagine dinner and reckless dance party out in the banlieue, pushing furniture around and wiggling into the night. Evenings and picnics with my dear dear friends, on the banks of the Seine, listening to jazz at the Parc Floral, at the Jardin de Reuilly by the sparkling-water fountain, on the edge of the canal trying to out-hipster the hipsters... Oh my Parisiens, I will miss you so.

It's difficult to believe now, now that there's no turning back. Now that I am sandwiched between the curved wall of the 747 and a Buddhist monk who I feel compelled to share my vegetarian meals with, trying to crane my neck to watch John Carter on the screen in the middle of the aircraft, while my feet twist around the cat carrier at my feet. Now that I have no more control even through lack of control (some part of me hoped that I would fail to leave, that the incapacity to let go would make it impossible to do anything but stay in Paris, in Europe, at least a little longer). I guess sometimes you've just got to let go. Especially when the airplane map shows us inching further across the Atlantic, and I left my inflatable raft in a box somewhere in Ile de France. California here I come...

I love you, Paris, I'll see you soon.

En train de...

Right now I am in a train on my (I guess) last excursion outside of town. I took the cheaper non-TGV line to Toulouse, and now have about 3 hours left of Limoges and Brive La Gaillard and other places I have never stopped. But it is nine o’clock in May and the sun is setting and the train moves slowly enough for the towns to be visible in the sunset and it is charming. I have only vague ideas about when trains went out of style in the US (ripped apart by the automotive and oil industries is my favorite story) but in any case it was a truly sad thing for romanticism. Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone would take a plane within France.

About six years ago I went on an Eastern European trip with a girlfriend and we took a train from Riga to Moscow whose dark exhaust hinted at coal. We were packed in with a hundred Russians who kept getting up and thudding to the back of the train with glass mugs and teabags to access a water tap heated by the engines. I rented a glass that looked something like the brilliant rendering below and tried to follow suit. Julia made a friend in the smoker’s compartment and they bonded over linguistically incompatible conversation. Their absurdist repartee was so pleasingly fluid that the woman dropped by regularly, unlit cigarette in hand, to pick up my friend on her way back to nicotineland and continue their chat. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen on planes.

brilliant rendering of russian tea glasses

On planes I end up trying to sleep folded onto the tray table or wedged up against the wall while some seatmate probes: “gee, it must be so neat to live in PARis”. I stand in line for the restroom and hover above the metallic seat while trying not to wonder where the speeding vortex goes. On this Latvia-Russia train it was obvious. You could see the tracks through the hole in the ground. Mystery solved, thankfully in sensible shoes.

When we got to the border between the two countries, we caused a half hour delay. We were interrogated in two languages we didn’t speak about our luggage (I think). We looked at each other and tried to neither laugh nor cry, waving our red passports and pointing to our tickets while the other passengers watched. Stone-faced does not do their gaze justice. I was especially paranoid, as my friend had insisted on hiding a piece of clandestine hash in a tampon applicator in her toiletries bag. All the ads I’ve ever seen for those movies where people are kept in sketchy prisons for crimes they didn’t commit raced through my head until the customs people just gave up and the train got moving again.

It was awesome.

On the way back from Amsterdam a couple of years ago, a trip taken with a group of my closest friends from Paris and one from California in part to celebrate the defense of my Masters thesis, we spent the entire time in the bar car. It was one of the best parts of the trip. We cleaned them out, and laughed so hard we cleared out the car itself. Although, not completely it would seem the next day when I received a text message from some guy I didn’t remember, asking to hang out with Dre before she went back to the US. Needless to say, it went unanswered.

I remember my first train trip in France, when I was fourteen going with my grandmother from Nice to Toulouse. She knitted, and kept pestering me to stop reading and look out the window. I didn’t want to look out the window. I wanted everyone to think I was refined and European and not with this high-pitched dyed-hair old lady who kept trying to lovingly feed me fabulous egg and salad sandwiches. I was, obviously, totally wrong to not take advantage of the images of cows and sunflower fields rolling past, but what are you going to do. There would be time to catch up on the pastoral eye-candy. Roughly six hours per, if you are counting from Paris to Toulouse.

The last time my mother visited, she and her boyfriend took a train from Paris to Rome. There was some bizarre condition with her US reservation that meant they had to (surprise!) stand in line and confirm their travel before boarding the train. In the end, they arrived, running, just as the train was leaving. I had a heated argument with the guy on the quai and he shrugged his shoulders. “Désolé.” But as we were turning around to go home and drink more wine to forget, he called to me. The train had stopped. Something about a door being jammed open. He helped them onto the train and they made it to Rome, reservations intact and (I’d like to think) souls invigorated by their near-miss.

With planes there are no near-misses. When you have an early flight you have to sleep at the frickin airport. JFK, Athens, Stockholm. I have done it MANY MANY TIMES. AND IT SUCKS. There are no last-minute door delays. You have to sit in the plane for hours on the runway, waiting for them to figure it out. Not drinking water. Not walking around.  Just sitting, waiting so that you can sit some more a thousand more feet up. The plane is not the friend of those of us who sometimes (always) arrive a teensy bit (half hour) late.

sleep-train goody bag

In a few days I will take the night train back to Paris, and slip into my mid-level compartment, complete with blanket-satchel and plastic-wrapped hygienic and surprisingly comfortable pillow, as well as a goody-bag sleep assortment and bottle of water, all provided by the train company. I will arrive back in town probably an hour behind schedule and have the option of paying too much for a café allongé or taking a two euro shower in surprisingly clean facilities provided for the night-trainers. Then I will calmly take the metro to my teaching gig. No ridiculously long trip into town, no waiting forever for the spinny baggage cart to spit out my mangled bag. No annoying standing in line while tourists try to figure out the ticket-into-town system. All hail rail.

I love trains so much that when the SNCF (train people) bought up teaser ad space in the metro I fell for their ruse immediately. “Coming soon, direct tunnel from Paris to New York!” I was gleeful, imagining the ease of slipping into Gare Du Nord 30m before departure, rolly-bag in hand, going through security measures where I wouldn’t have to take off my shoes. I didn’t care about the physics of the 5851 km underwater tunnel. My fantasy was finally coming true. I felt cheated when the follow-up ad told me I was dreaming, it would never happen, but that you can now reserve flights through their website. Jerks.

I am considering wearing a conductor’s hat on my flight back to San Francisco in mourning and silent protest for my dreams of continued rail travel. 

Gare d'Austerlitz at 815 (i took the coffee, thank you)