Inspector Lascaux brushed the dry leaf from his shoulder and surveyed the the vineyards from the porch of his house at 12 avenue des Cathars. Even in the August heat, sitting on the porch of the house was all he could have asked for, whether he had a pastis in his hand or not.
After fifty years serving the forces of order in France --first in Algeria, then Cameroon, then the blissful years in Martinique-- he had returned, with Josianne, to the village he was born in, which had of late enjoyed some success in attracting buyers of the villager's houses from that odd country, le Royaume Uni. Mainly English, but some Scots and Irish, too, paid good money for quaint houses wedged in close together in the village. After they put down their money, many found that the tiny ruelles were more difficult to drive in and out of than they had imagined, and that angling their left-hand drive vehicles into crevices to park stripped paint off. But after a few glasses of the solid Minervois reds, it was all put into perspective. They could be sitting in a caf, looking at the rain coming down somewhere in the British Isles, or they could be here, helping the local economy and their states of mind. Once settled here, few Brits ever looked back.
He, too, scarcely ever looked back. His work had had very disagreeable aspects --not just the need for force, which was rare; but the aftermath of force unleashed by others against others, which Inspector Lascaux came upon, whether in a bedroom, on a street, in a shop, or in a car, as a mere witness to the detritus of human emotions of the most negative kind willfully given into. He was not sorry he had retired, he and Josianne. The fierce curiosity that had turned a young country recruit from the Midi into a cool professional had been a refining fire: the more he worked at his investigations, the more his faculties were engaged, and that engagement bred results, which pleased his superiors and led to promotion.
At some point, though, he began to sense that he had seen about everything that police work could capture within its net. The perpetrators appeared less sociological studies than instruments of a malevolent instinct that reappeared over and over again despite the efforts of social workers and defense attorneys to introduce mitigating factors into consideration of the responsibility of the accused. When he found himself filled with contempt for a ten-year old boy who had, fatally, set fire to the bed his grandmother slept in, he told himself his soul was at risk and he had better get out.
Here in the Minervois, writing reports concerning break-ins into the houses of part-time residents was the main preoccupation of the gendarmerie. The foreigners demanded them for insurance purposes, so they were produced by the officers called to the scene. Their main occupation was riding around the villages, checking to see that no one had inadvertently left a door or window open, a service for which the villagers were glad to pay taxes. For Inspector Lascaux, buying the home on avenue des Cathars was a return to a distant past, now more prettily remembered because both he and the village had prospered in each other's absence. He had no more to do with the gendarmerie than any other citizen, although the outlines of his career were known among them. They accorded him the respect of, if not a senior colleague, of one who had plied their trade beyond the perimeters of Metropolitan France, in places however legitimately of French concern, none of them would have willingly served.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
The Epistemology of Père Philippe: A Fiction
Père Philippe sat on the floor of the sanctuary, his legs tucked under him, before the monstrance, adoring the Blessed Sacrament. His black robe, the grey heart and cross embroidered near his heart, normally hung slightly short over his lanky arms, but he had rolled the sleeves up, the better to sit in contemplation.
Since he had become a Passionist, particularly since he had become the hermit of the chapel in the Black Mountains, he had found his place. From the time of his childhood, death had been a familiar: it was not just that he was regularly in attendance at the bedsides of those who had died, whose earthly bodies lay in state, usually in the beds they had slept in in the villages they had lived. It was the village custom, so he and other children shared the same experience, although his mother was more pious than most, his father not so much, his brothers and sisters still less.
It was that he was incapable of distracting himself for long from the brutal fact that however one distracted oneself, in the end, whether the casket was ornate or just a pine box, the physical ceased to be. Watching others (which he did naturally, without judgment) he marveled at their ability to plunge into their studies, or games of soccer, or whatever activity seemed most pressing at the time.
He was not without a sense of humor, or incapable of affection. Even as he watched others, he delighted in their natures: some persons were cheerful, others choleric, a few melancholic, still others agitated, or indolent. Few he thought malicious; most deviated from their resolutions, whether to save more, or work harder, or settle down; but that which caused their natures to, at times, betray them into acts they later regretted, was not something in their own natures, but their susceptibility to false promises, whether in advertisements, on the radio or from salesmen of one sort or another.
In the end, most lives would be put right, he firmly believed that. For himself, though, he felt a call that was stronger than that of any advertisement, radio announcer or salesman. He wanted to be closer to the presence of that he had experienced in the quietest moments of his life, whether by the bedside of a man whose agony had ended in a sigh, then stillness; or the radiance of a bride and groom fully committed to each other on the day of their wedding;, or alone, walking in the mountains around the village, or reading the life of St. John of the Cross, the mystic.
His decision to join the Passionists was not taken lightly. The Passionists' mission is to teach the world how to pray. To teach how to pray, one must first know how. Yet prayer can mean many things: supplication, confession, glorification, are only three of the purposes of prayer. The prayer the Passionists teach is that prayer that would lead to union with God, a state beyond which there is no more to know.
Yet to reach that state beyond which there is no more to know is very, very hard. Père Philippe had been a Passionist for eighteen years and he had struggled at first to understand exactly what he was doing and why. Even among his fellows, he was unusually solitary. After ten years in various parishes in cities, he was assigned to this chapel, where he could work alone, an assignment he relished secretly because in an hermitage he could practice his devotions while remaining at the disposal of any villagers who chose to celebrate the Mass with him, rather than in the church in the village.
In this way, he devoted himself to saying Mass (everyday but Mondays), leading the prayers to Mary, the Blessed Mother; adoring the communion wafer and writing about the Holy Spirit. He had had some success with his writing: a religious publisher had printed two of his books, one about the Apocalypse, the other about Babel. His superiors at the seminary and the diocese's office were pleased.: someone so retiring, so ill-suited to running a parish, with its financial demands and intrigues, had managed to draw a following.
Those who prayed the Mass with Père Philippe would often say that they had never encountered a priest like him.
"He has the real faith--"
"When he preaches, he is full of feeling--"
"He speaks from his heart--"
"But his books are difficult to understand--"
He could be said to be a philosopher, a lover of wisdom. But his approach, which led to detachment about money concerns, encouraged prayer and simple charity towards others, could be summed up as not so much a way of thinking about the world, as a technique for managing in it.
That technique involved the development of a finely-tuned interior antenna from which God could transmit. Everything that interfered with the frequency at which God worked, only blocked the signal or caused it to come in at a weak frequency. Prayer, such as most were instructed in --the recitation of words of adoration during a weekly liturgy, -- could help, followed by the taking of communion, through which God freely gave of himself. Yet despite providing a base from which the faithful could take strength, there was more to be had, Père Philippe knew.
Not everyone was prepared --or needed-- to know God as Père Philippe knew HIm. When he said the Mass, he frequently did not look directly at his congregants, but upwards, beyond the stained glass of the little chapel in the Black Mountains, to God. The reason being that when he was saying the Mass he felt the most outward signs of God's presence, invisible but immanent, coming through the ancient stones.
During the Revolution of 1789 and the Terror that followed, the authorities tried to sell the chapel to have it demolished. A curé's brother managed to buy it, preserving the building until it was safe again to say the Catholic Mass in France. The chapel had been a dependency of the 8th century Benedictine abbey in the village and was now almost a thousand years old. Of course God was comfortable here, Père Philippe thought, which was why Mass was a daily conversation with the Lord, and not an empty ritual.
Père Philippe looked at his watch: there were five minutes to go before the start of Mass. He had been sitting on the floor of the chapel for almost thirty minutes, along with a handful of his parishioners. He got up from the floor and walked over to the monstrance. Lifting it from the altar, he raised it high over the heads of his parishioners, turning first to their right, then to the center, then their left. He set the monstrance back down on the altar table, opened the cut glass door in which the sacrament was kept and gently removed it, placing it on the paten, on which he carried it to the tabernacle, while his parishioners watched him walk to the side altar. At the altar, he removed a quantity of communion wafers and added them to the one on the paten. He returned to the altar table and left them there.
In one swift movement, he slipped through the side door that led to the sacristy. It was time to put on his celebrant's attire. Mass would begin once he returned in his vestments, the assembled standing in a gesture of respect. As he made the sign of the Cross, God would make himself known again, not as he had in the Blessed Sacrament, but through the person of Jesus Christ, who would then become the Blessed Sacrament, remitting sins and if only briefly, giving those present a glimpse of the possibility they might overcome the finitude of the body via the Spirit.
Père Philippe prayed quickly, before he began the liturgy, only to God, that he might be His worthy servant. Only an empty vessel could take the Spirit in, could send it out to others, Père Phlippe was happiest when he most emptied himself. It happened rarely, but sometimes he felt himself only an instrument. At those times he felt also the most wonderful release from anything that had been troubling him. After so many years as a priest, he had made so little progress. Yet he felt the call again, each time he entered the sanctuary, a new beginning. Then and there, at that moment, a new beginning: it called him on.
Since he had become a Passionist, particularly since he had become the hermit of the chapel in the Black Mountains, he had found his place. From the time of his childhood, death had been a familiar: it was not just that he was regularly in attendance at the bedsides of those who had died, whose earthly bodies lay in state, usually in the beds they had slept in in the villages they had lived. It was the village custom, so he and other children shared the same experience, although his mother was more pious than most, his father not so much, his brothers and sisters still less.
It was that he was incapable of distracting himself for long from the brutal fact that however one distracted oneself, in the end, whether the casket was ornate or just a pine box, the physical ceased to be. Watching others (which he did naturally, without judgment) he marveled at their ability to plunge into their studies, or games of soccer, or whatever activity seemed most pressing at the time.
He was not without a sense of humor, or incapable of affection. Even as he watched others, he delighted in their natures: some persons were cheerful, others choleric, a few melancholic, still others agitated, or indolent. Few he thought malicious; most deviated from their resolutions, whether to save more, or work harder, or settle down; but that which caused their natures to, at times, betray them into acts they later regretted, was not something in their own natures, but their susceptibility to false promises, whether in advertisements, on the radio or from salesmen of one sort or another.
In the end, most lives would be put right, he firmly believed that. For himself, though, he felt a call that was stronger than that of any advertisement, radio announcer or salesman. He wanted to be closer to the presence of that he had experienced in the quietest moments of his life, whether by the bedside of a man whose agony had ended in a sigh, then stillness; or the radiance of a bride and groom fully committed to each other on the day of their wedding;, or alone, walking in the mountains around the village, or reading the life of St. John of the Cross, the mystic.
His decision to join the Passionists was not taken lightly. The Passionists' mission is to teach the world how to pray. To teach how to pray, one must first know how. Yet prayer can mean many things: supplication, confession, glorification, are only three of the purposes of prayer. The prayer the Passionists teach is that prayer that would lead to union with God, a state beyond which there is no more to know.
Yet to reach that state beyond which there is no more to know is very, very hard. Père Philippe had been a Passionist for eighteen years and he had struggled at first to understand exactly what he was doing and why. Even among his fellows, he was unusually solitary. After ten years in various parishes in cities, he was assigned to this chapel, where he could work alone, an assignment he relished secretly because in an hermitage he could practice his devotions while remaining at the disposal of any villagers who chose to celebrate the Mass with him, rather than in the church in the village.
In this way, he devoted himself to saying Mass (everyday but Mondays), leading the prayers to Mary, the Blessed Mother; adoring the communion wafer and writing about the Holy Spirit. He had had some success with his writing: a religious publisher had printed two of his books, one about the Apocalypse, the other about Babel. His superiors at the seminary and the diocese's office were pleased.: someone so retiring, so ill-suited to running a parish, with its financial demands and intrigues, had managed to draw a following.
Those who prayed the Mass with Père Philippe would often say that they had never encountered a priest like him.
"He has the real faith--"
"When he preaches, he is full of feeling--"
"He speaks from his heart--"
"But his books are difficult to understand--"
He could be said to be a philosopher, a lover of wisdom. But his approach, which led to detachment about money concerns, encouraged prayer and simple charity towards others, could be summed up as not so much a way of thinking about the world, as a technique for managing in it.
That technique involved the development of a finely-tuned interior antenna from which God could transmit. Everything that interfered with the frequency at which God worked, only blocked the signal or caused it to come in at a weak frequency. Prayer, such as most were instructed in --the recitation of words of adoration during a weekly liturgy, -- could help, followed by the taking of communion, through which God freely gave of himself. Yet despite providing a base from which the faithful could take strength, there was more to be had, Père Philippe knew.
Not everyone was prepared --or needed-- to know God as Père Philippe knew HIm. When he said the Mass, he frequently did not look directly at his congregants, but upwards, beyond the stained glass of the little chapel in the Black Mountains, to God. The reason being that when he was saying the Mass he felt the most outward signs of God's presence, invisible but immanent, coming through the ancient stones.
During the Revolution of 1789 and the Terror that followed, the authorities tried to sell the chapel to have it demolished. A curé's brother managed to buy it, preserving the building until it was safe again to say the Catholic Mass in France. The chapel had been a dependency of the 8th century Benedictine abbey in the village and was now almost a thousand years old. Of course God was comfortable here, Père Philippe thought, which was why Mass was a daily conversation with the Lord, and not an empty ritual.
Père Philippe looked at his watch: there were five minutes to go before the start of Mass. He had been sitting on the floor of the chapel for almost thirty minutes, along with a handful of his parishioners. He got up from the floor and walked over to the monstrance. Lifting it from the altar, he raised it high over the heads of his parishioners, turning first to their right, then to the center, then their left. He set the monstrance back down on the altar table, opened the cut glass door in which the sacrament was kept and gently removed it, placing it on the paten, on which he carried it to the tabernacle, while his parishioners watched him walk to the side altar. At the altar, he removed a quantity of communion wafers and added them to the one on the paten. He returned to the altar table and left them there.
In one swift movement, he slipped through the side door that led to the sacristy. It was time to put on his celebrant's attire. Mass would begin once he returned in his vestments, the assembled standing in a gesture of respect. As he made the sign of the Cross, God would make himself known again, not as he had in the Blessed Sacrament, but through the person of Jesus Christ, who would then become the Blessed Sacrament, remitting sins and if only briefly, giving those present a glimpse of the possibility they might overcome the finitude of the body via the Spirit.
Père Philippe prayed quickly, before he began the liturgy, only to God, that he might be His worthy servant. Only an empty vessel could take the Spirit in, could send it out to others, Père Phlippe was happiest when he most emptied himself. It happened rarely, but sometimes he felt himself only an instrument. At those times he felt also the most wonderful release from anything that had been troubling him. After so many years as a priest, he had made so little progress. Yet he felt the call again, each time he entered the sanctuary, a new beginning. Then and there, at that moment, a new beginning: it called him on.
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Taking Stock
August 3, 2013
With August, the reality of Fall comes closer. As of Tuesday, I will have been living in Caunes-Minervois for two months. I came here because of the generosity of friends who recognized that I needed to make a defining break after an excruciating loss. I never had a plan, other than to improve my French, and to know France and its people better. For all my efforts, I have received so much, and more, in return.
Being here I do not know whether I am a witness to France's unstoppable decline or its plucky resilience. France is a country where talk matters, where books by French writers matter --even if the ideas in them fly in the face of what is happening outside of France, even if they deliberately ignore the world outside France. Wanting to categorize, to classify, to analyze, to engage in dialectic, to expatiate --that is the essential quality of a Frenchman. It is the result of his upbringing: surrounded by the names that made France a great power, he is taught that to think large thoughts is to count: Pascal, Voltaire, Rousseau, philosophes; great administrators, like Colbert, Louis XIV's Finance Minister; and Vauban, the builder of the country's defensive fortifications; Riquet, the engineer who built the Canal du Midi; Eiffel, a great builder of bridges, and not just the tower that bears his name. These are not dusty names, they are very much alive and models held up as worthy of imitation.
The negative side of this is that French thought, whether in science, finance, mathematics, the arts, or politics is less influenced by thinking elsewhere than any country to which it might be compared. Some here believe that that insularity may be the country's Achilles' heel. That mentality's roots in France's history perpetuate a way of looking at the world where little is supposed to change that is not driven by public consensus led by brilliant French thinkers.
In the long run, it may not be the best strategy for remaining competitive in a global economy where economies of scale matter. But it is what makes the French fascinating: their stubbornness, their refusal to yield to standards not established first in France, their insistence that France has the subject covered.
I am a romantic, so I consider the French celebration of artisanal production a principled position, even as I wonder whether the realities of the global market will permit small producers to survive without subsidies. Passion imbues the French small producers: they love what they do. When I patronize them I am taking a position to support their enterprises, even as I wonder whether they will exist in twenty years. But I admire them, and want them to succeed, because the scale at which they work is a human one.
Nowhere else can a foreigner be put so at ease, be made to feel nothing important happened until his arrival, while simultaneously remaining only a guest. That quality of the French -warmth and distance-- is a legacy of the ancien regime, when receiving royalty in one's home operated on one level as a display of extravagant hospitality, but on another, as a means to personal advancement. If there is gain to be had from making visitors happy, the French will find the way to do so. They have been doing it well since the days of the Sun King.
Henry James wrote of Paris, "[T]he great merit of the place is that one can arrange one's life here exactly as one pleases...there are facilities for every kind of habit and taste, and everything is accepted and understood."
In Caunes-Minervois, I have been able to arrange my life exactly as I have pleased, and I have been accepted and understood, as James might have said. I end my blog here, with many thanks to those of you who have followed by peregrinations. As Americans, we often take France for a country living on faded glory with nothing to teach us. I hope the blog has succeeded in suggesting that the French point of view is nuanced, rooted in its long history and its well-developed habits of thought, not merely the product of arrogance, as is often written in our newspapers.
So many Americans have fallen in love with France because to understand the French and to know France is to be enriched. I count myself one more of that number. I arrived unfamiliar with driving regularly in my own country, let alone a foreign one. I became a better and a more confident driver on French roads. Is there no irony in the fact that as a result, a New Yorker became more American?
With August, the reality of Fall comes closer. As of Tuesday, I will have been living in Caunes-Minervois for two months. I came here because of the generosity of friends who recognized that I needed to make a defining break after an excruciating loss. I never had a plan, other than to improve my French, and to know France and its people better. For all my efforts, I have received so much, and more, in return.
Being here I do not know whether I am a witness to France's unstoppable decline or its plucky resilience. France is a country where talk matters, where books by French writers matter --even if the ideas in them fly in the face of what is happening outside of France, even if they deliberately ignore the world outside France. Wanting to categorize, to classify, to analyze, to engage in dialectic, to expatiate --that is the essential quality of a Frenchman. It is the result of his upbringing: surrounded by the names that made France a great power, he is taught that to think large thoughts is to count: Pascal, Voltaire, Rousseau, philosophes; great administrators, like Colbert, Louis XIV's Finance Minister; and Vauban, the builder of the country's defensive fortifications; Riquet, the engineer who built the Canal du Midi; Eiffel, a great builder of bridges, and not just the tower that bears his name. These are not dusty names, they are very much alive and models held up as worthy of imitation.
The negative side of this is that French thought, whether in science, finance, mathematics, the arts, or politics is less influenced by thinking elsewhere than any country to which it might be compared. Some here believe that that insularity may be the country's Achilles' heel. That mentality's roots in France's history perpetuate a way of looking at the world where little is supposed to change that is not driven by public consensus led by brilliant French thinkers.
In the long run, it may not be the best strategy for remaining competitive in a global economy where economies of scale matter. But it is what makes the French fascinating: their stubbornness, their refusal to yield to standards not established first in France, their insistence that France has the subject covered.
I am a romantic, so I consider the French celebration of artisanal production a principled position, even as I wonder whether the realities of the global market will permit small producers to survive without subsidies. Passion imbues the French small producers: they love what they do. When I patronize them I am taking a position to support their enterprises, even as I wonder whether they will exist in twenty years. But I admire them, and want them to succeed, because the scale at which they work is a human one.
Nowhere else can a foreigner be put so at ease, be made to feel nothing important happened until his arrival, while simultaneously remaining only a guest. That quality of the French -warmth and distance-- is a legacy of the ancien regime, when receiving royalty in one's home operated on one level as a display of extravagant hospitality, but on another, as a means to personal advancement. If there is gain to be had from making visitors happy, the French will find the way to do so. They have been doing it well since the days of the Sun King.
In Caunes-Minervois, I have been able to arrange my life exactly as I have pleased, and I have been accepted and understood, as James might have said. I end my blog here, with many thanks to those of you who have followed by peregrinations. As Americans, we often take France for a country living on faded glory with nothing to teach us. I hope the blog has succeeded in suggesting that the French point of view is nuanced, rooted in its long history and its well-developed habits of thought, not merely the product of arrogance, as is often written in our newspapers.
So many Americans have fallen in love with France because to understand the French and to know France is to be enriched. I count myself one more of that number. I arrived unfamiliar with driving regularly in my own country, let alone a foreign one. I became a better and a more confident driver on French roads. Is there no irony in the fact that as a result, a New Yorker became more American?
Friday, August 2, 2013
Revolution! --At the Post Office
Friday, August 2, 2013
I have to return to the post office in Caunes this morning to post a check to the United States, so I get there by 9:30 a.m., shortly after it opens. The sliding door reigsters my presence and opens in enough time for me to slip inside, as the door closes behind me.
At the window is yesterday's servant of the people, the chef de service, who lectured me on the indivisibility of panoramic stamp pairs. Today he is speaking with a man who has come to the post office to pay his electric bill to Éléctricité de France, or as it is known to everyone in France, l'EDF.
The receipt from l'EDF is a major document in France, required for a house purchase, so that the account of the seller can be transferred to the buyer. This is a requirement even if the purchaser has never owned a house in France. How, then, does the prospective purchaser of a house in France who does not live in France buy a house in France? By having a friend who has a house in France supply a letter making reference to their EDF account, and stating that the purchaser is part of their household and shares their address. The closing of the transaction will be held up until the seller's EDF account is transferred to the purchaser, which cannot be done until EDF has processed the contents of the letter of the friend of the purchaser in their records. And I am told "bureaucracy" is a French word.
At the post office, the chef de service and the man with the electric bill are deep in a conversation about the cost of electricity, which will rise, I have read, 5% over the next six months, and another 5% in the following.
"The government said that privatizing electricity would make electricity cheaper, and the syndicats [the French trade union associations] said that when electricity was privatized electricity would cost 50% more. Electricity was privatized, and now electricity costs 100% more!"
"Who can afford it?" says the customer. "It will be tough if this keeps up."
"Meanwhile", continues the chef de service, "the 200 wealthiest families in France saw their incomes increase by 25% this year!"
"Yes! Yes! --And what did they do for that money?"
"I tell you what's going to happen" says the chef de service, warming to his topic. "After August, in the fall, in September, there will be revolution!"
"Yes! Yes! Revolution!"
"I don't like to say it, but when people have had enough...you know, capitalism isn't good, and communism isn't good --extremes on each side-- but I tell you these rich families don't create any jobs. I would rather subsidize the man on the corner who makes a living plying his trade and hires two or three to help him."
Hoping to bring the conversation to an end, so that I can be attended to, I offer agreement:
"In the United States, most new jobs are created by small businesses--"
"The United States, where there is no poverty because it's a capitalist country!"
I am getting nowhere now. Fortunately, the man who came to pay his EDF bill wraps the conversation up, and I am able to get the chef du service to supply the forms to send my envelope via the French equivalent of certified mail, return receipt requested, although not before he gets in a complaint about how difficult it is to find them. I fill out the forms while he serves another customer and then return to the window. I pay him, and ask how long it might take before I receive the acknowledgement of receipt.
"I don't know how things work in the United States. Within fifteen days you ought to receive the return confirmation."
"Well, I sent a CD there two weeks ago, and it has not arrived."
"Well, perhaps you sent something inappropriate--"
"It was a CD--"
"Well, there might have been customs duties. Everything gets scanned--"
"Look, I'm sorry, I just want to know whether I can count on this document arriving and my getting a receipt."
"I do not see why it wouldn't--"
"Ok, let's talk about another item. Have the new Marianne stamps come in yet?"
"No, not yet. They probably won't be here for...another two or three years!"
And the chef de service looks at me and smiles.
I have to return to the post office in Caunes this morning to post a check to the United States, so I get there by 9:30 a.m., shortly after it opens. The sliding door reigsters my presence and opens in enough time for me to slip inside, as the door closes behind me.
At the window is yesterday's servant of the people, the chef de service, who lectured me on the indivisibility of panoramic stamp pairs. Today he is speaking with a man who has come to the post office to pay his electric bill to Éléctricité de France, or as it is known to everyone in France, l'EDF.
The receipt from l'EDF is a major document in France, required for a house purchase, so that the account of the seller can be transferred to the buyer. This is a requirement even if the purchaser has never owned a house in France. How, then, does the prospective purchaser of a house in France who does not live in France buy a house in France? By having a friend who has a house in France supply a letter making reference to their EDF account, and stating that the purchaser is part of their household and shares their address. The closing of the transaction will be held up until the seller's EDF account is transferred to the purchaser, which cannot be done until EDF has processed the contents of the letter of the friend of the purchaser in their records. And I am told "bureaucracy" is a French word.
At the post office, the chef de service and the man with the electric bill are deep in a conversation about the cost of electricity, which will rise, I have read, 5% over the next six months, and another 5% in the following.
"The government said that privatizing electricity would make electricity cheaper, and the syndicats [the French trade union associations] said that when electricity was privatized electricity would cost 50% more. Electricity was privatized, and now electricity costs 100% more!"
"Who can afford it?" says the customer. "It will be tough if this keeps up."
"Meanwhile", continues the chef de service, "the 200 wealthiest families in France saw their incomes increase by 25% this year!"
"Yes! Yes! --And what did they do for that money?"
"I tell you what's going to happen" says the chef de service, warming to his topic. "After August, in the fall, in September, there will be revolution!"
"Yes! Yes! Revolution!"
"I don't like to say it, but when people have had enough...you know, capitalism isn't good, and communism isn't good --extremes on each side-- but I tell you these rich families don't create any jobs. I would rather subsidize the man on the corner who makes a living plying his trade and hires two or three to help him."
Hoping to bring the conversation to an end, so that I can be attended to, I offer agreement:
"In the United States, most new jobs are created by small businesses--"
"The United States, where there is no poverty because it's a capitalist country!"
I am getting nowhere now. Fortunately, the man who came to pay his EDF bill wraps the conversation up, and I am able to get the chef du service to supply the forms to send my envelope via the French equivalent of certified mail, return receipt requested, although not before he gets in a complaint about how difficult it is to find them. I fill out the forms while he serves another customer and then return to the window. I pay him, and ask how long it might take before I receive the acknowledgement of receipt.
"I don't know how things work in the United States. Within fifteen days you ought to receive the return confirmation."
"Well, I sent a CD there two weeks ago, and it has not arrived."
"Well, perhaps you sent something inappropriate--"
"It was a CD--"
"Well, there might have been customs duties. Everything gets scanned--"
"Look, I'm sorry, I just want to know whether I can count on this document arriving and my getting a receipt."
"I do not see why it wouldn't--"
"Ok, let's talk about another item. Have the new Marianne stamps come in yet?"
"No, not yet. They probably won't be here for...another two or three years!"
And the chef de service looks at me and smiles.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
The Triumph of Aesthetics at the Post Office
August 1, 2013
The Caunes post office has quirky hours: closed on Thursday afternoons, open only to 3 p.m. on the others, a visit is a mission, not a casual drop-by. The space is quite small, with only one clerk behind one desk, and two or three chairs to sit in while waiting for the person being served to finish their transaction.
Because transactions are frequently involved: the French post office also serves as a savings bank, and is where many people do their banking. Everytime I have been there, someone is either depositing or withdrawing money. Every time I have been there, too, there has been a different clerk at the window.
The clerks are rotated from village to village. During the summer holidays there are clerks called "remplaçants" who fill in for the permanent clerk on holiday leave. I seem only to have met remplaçants, a man, a woman, and now another man, the latter a grizzly-haired man with a beard. When I call him a "facteur" --the French word for postman-- he quickly corrects me, saying he is not a facteur, but a chef de service -- a department head. Excuse my ignorance, I should have known.
I ask about the Marianne stamps --no, they haven't any and probably won't until all the other stamps are sold. On to the next topic: I need to buy five stamps to send postcards to the U.K., along with stamps for the U.S. The chef de service pulls out a sheet of stamps featuring two images of Véhicules Postaux: on the left, one of a 19th century postal coach, a Malle-poste, 1840, pulled by a team of four horses; the other, on the right, of a modern post office van, a Renault Kangoo Z.E.. Although the vehicles are separated from each other chronologically by over 170 years, the side-by-side layout of the stamps has the stagecoach and the 21st century van seeming to drive on the same dusty road, the van a bit further along on the road, the same village behind stretching out behind them. A very nice design a stamp collector would appreciate.
I, however, am not a stamp collector, and all I want are five stamps for five postcards to be sent to the U.K. In France, however, such considerations are secondary to crass considerations of utility.
When I ask to be sold five stamps, the chef de service tells me I must buy six. When I ask why, he tells me the sets cannot be broken up. To instruct me in the matter of fine postage stamp design, he pulls out the sheet, puts his finger on the stagecoach, then runs it to the van. "You see? They cannot be sold separately."
I buy six stamps.
The Caunes post office has quirky hours: closed on Thursday afternoons, open only to 3 p.m. on the others, a visit is a mission, not a casual drop-by. The space is quite small, with only one clerk behind one desk, and two or three chairs to sit in while waiting for the person being served to finish their transaction.
Because transactions are frequently involved: the French post office also serves as a savings bank, and is where many people do their banking. Everytime I have been there, someone is either depositing or withdrawing money. Every time I have been there, too, there has been a different clerk at the window.
The clerks are rotated from village to village. During the summer holidays there are clerks called "remplaçants" who fill in for the permanent clerk on holiday leave. I seem only to have met remplaçants, a man, a woman, and now another man, the latter a grizzly-haired man with a beard. When I call him a "facteur" --the French word for postman-- he quickly corrects me, saying he is not a facteur, but a chef de service -- a department head. Excuse my ignorance, I should have known.
I ask about the Marianne stamps --no, they haven't any and probably won't until all the other stamps are sold. On to the next topic: I need to buy five stamps to send postcards to the U.K., along with stamps for the U.S. The chef de service pulls out a sheet of stamps featuring two images of Véhicules Postaux: on the left, one of a 19th century postal coach, a Malle-poste, 1840, pulled by a team of four horses; the other, on the right, of a modern post office van, a Renault Kangoo Z.E.. Although the vehicles are separated from each other chronologically by over 170 years, the side-by-side layout of the stamps has the stagecoach and the 21st century van seeming to drive on the same dusty road, the van a bit further along on the road, the same village behind stretching out behind them. A very nice design a stamp collector would appreciate.
I, however, am not a stamp collector, and all I want are five stamps for five postcards to be sent to the U.K. In France, however, such considerations are secondary to crass considerations of utility.
When I ask to be sold five stamps, the chef de service tells me I must buy six. When I ask why, he tells me the sets cannot be broken up. To instruct me in the matter of fine postage stamp design, he pulls out the sheet, puts his finger on the stagecoach, then runs it to the van. "You see? They cannot be sold separately."
I buy six stamps.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
La Carrière du Roy; FunSport
July 31, 2013
I awake sounding as though I have had a sex-change operation: my voice is definitely baritonal, and my lungs are spongy with mucous. My rheume de foins has turned into an old-fashioned respiratory infection, and it will take a few days before my symptoms clear.
I need to have the washing machine repairman return to try to fix it again. Calling his number, I am told he will be by at 11:30 a.m. My English guest and I decide that that might be enough time to hike the carriere du roy, the path along the marble quarry, which leads to a gorge on the far side of which is Notre Dame du Cros.
The path starts on the topmost part of avenue du Minervois, off the road that leads to Peyriac and Rieux. We soon find ourselves by the quarry, where monolithic blocks of marble stand neatly, one on top of the other, waiting to be shipped to Carrara, where they will be polished to a fine red hue and sold. The path, which is known as the carrière du roy because it was from that site that Louis XIV took the marble to make the columns of the Trianon at Versailles, turns away from the quarry and quickly climbs to one of the gorge's edges.
The view over the chasm and beyond, to the snow-capped Pyrenées (which can be seen clearly today) is surprising and wonderful. We are so near to Caunes, yet so far.
The path is being maintained by three young men, employees of the French Department of Forests, who widen the path, see to it that the markers on the path are visible, and that the wooden frames into which informational bulletins about the area are inserted, are maintained in good repair.
"Do you like your job? Do you like getting out of bed in the morning?" I ask them. They smile and affirm that they do, then add, in English,
"It is wonderful!"
My guest and I make it back to Caunes by 11:30 a.m., but no washing machine repairman ever arrives. Having had such a fine experience on the hike, I am not too upset by his failure to arrive. I call the number again and the repairman tells me no one told him of the appointment. (Which is funny, because I remember someone called out to someone over the phone, to ask whether he could be here at 11:30 a.m..) He will be here tomorrow after 2:00 p.m.
***
My guest and I drive to Declathlon Sports on the road to Foix to buy energy bars for bicycle rides as well as electrolyte-replacement drinks for each of us: the sun is beating down and it must be in the mid-90s, although there is not a trace of humidity in the air.
Having paid for everything, we get in the car and drive to the unfortunately-named FunSport. This store is a bicycle enthusiast's idea of heaven. One half --a separate building-- sells-used and inventory clearance bicycles, the other sells new ones. In their categories, prices can run into the thousands of Euros. A titanium frame might cost 4950 Euros, the wheels 1950, plus brakes, plus speeds. If you are serious about working on your bicycle, you can buy a heavy iron contraption that will allow the bicycle to hang suspended at eye-level, to avoid the back strain from having to bend down.
There are helmets that cost several hundred Euros, clothes, gloves, gears, shoes. We are there to buy one screw, which will replace one of the two on the steering mechanism on the Xootr Swift. Total cost: 50 centimes, but the staff member who handles the sale is as friendly as if we had bought an elite bicycle. FunSport is a store that reflects the French obsession with cycling, and the pursuit of technical excellence in bicycle design. Between the new, the used and the inventory clearance models, FunSport must have a thousand bicycles in its two stores, in small, medium, large and extra large sizes.
There are road bikes, track bikes, mountain bikes and every kind of gear that goes with them. All the parts for building your own bicycle are there, if you can afford the price of doing so. You can buy wheels whose rubber circumference extends halfway across the wheel's diameter, an innovation that gives the rider more aerodynamic advantage. You can buy tires for mountain bikes that look as though they would fit on mini-tractors.
You have to be seriously obsessed with bicycles to buy at FunSports.
I awake sounding as though I have had a sex-change operation: my voice is definitely baritonal, and my lungs are spongy with mucous. My rheume de foins has turned into an old-fashioned respiratory infection, and it will take a few days before my symptoms clear.
I need to have the washing machine repairman return to try to fix it again. Calling his number, I am told he will be by at 11:30 a.m. My English guest and I decide that that might be enough time to hike the carriere du roy, the path along the marble quarry, which leads to a gorge on the far side of which is Notre Dame du Cros.
The path starts on the topmost part of avenue du Minervois, off the road that leads to Peyriac and Rieux. We soon find ourselves by the quarry, where monolithic blocks of marble stand neatly, one on top of the other, waiting to be shipped to Carrara, where they will be polished to a fine red hue and sold. The path, which is known as the carrière du roy because it was from that site that Louis XIV took the marble to make the columns of the Trianon at Versailles, turns away from the quarry and quickly climbs to one of the gorge's edges.
The view over the chasm and beyond, to the snow-capped Pyrenées (which can be seen clearly today) is surprising and wonderful. We are so near to Caunes, yet so far.
The path is being maintained by three young men, employees of the French Department of Forests, who widen the path, see to it that the markers on the path are visible, and that the wooden frames into which informational bulletins about the area are inserted, are maintained in good repair.
"Do you like your job? Do you like getting out of bed in the morning?" I ask them. They smile and affirm that they do, then add, in English,
"It is wonderful!"
My guest and I make it back to Caunes by 11:30 a.m., but no washing machine repairman ever arrives. Having had such a fine experience on the hike, I am not too upset by his failure to arrive. I call the number again and the repairman tells me no one told him of the appointment. (Which is funny, because I remember someone called out to someone over the phone, to ask whether he could be here at 11:30 a.m..) He will be here tomorrow after 2:00 p.m.
***
My guest and I drive to Declathlon Sports on the road to Foix to buy energy bars for bicycle rides as well as electrolyte-replacement drinks for each of us: the sun is beating down and it must be in the mid-90s, although there is not a trace of humidity in the air.
Having paid for everything, we get in the car and drive to the unfortunately-named FunSport. This store is a bicycle enthusiast's idea of heaven. One half --a separate building-- sells-used and inventory clearance bicycles, the other sells new ones. In their categories, prices can run into the thousands of Euros. A titanium frame might cost 4950 Euros, the wheels 1950, plus brakes, plus speeds. If you are serious about working on your bicycle, you can buy a heavy iron contraption that will allow the bicycle to hang suspended at eye-level, to avoid the back strain from having to bend down.
There are helmets that cost several hundred Euros, clothes, gloves, gears, shoes. We are there to buy one screw, which will replace one of the two on the steering mechanism on the Xootr Swift. Total cost: 50 centimes, but the staff member who handles the sale is as friendly as if we had bought an elite bicycle. FunSport is a store that reflects the French obsession with cycling, and the pursuit of technical excellence in bicycle design. Between the new, the used and the inventory clearance models, FunSport must have a thousand bicycles in its two stores, in small, medium, large and extra large sizes.
There are road bikes, track bikes, mountain bikes and every kind of gear that goes with them. All the parts for building your own bicycle are there, if you can afford the price of doing so. You can buy wheels whose rubber circumference extends halfway across the wheel's diameter, an innovation that gives the rider more aerodynamic advantage. You can buy tires for mountain bikes that look as though they would fit on mini-tractors.
You have to be seriously obsessed with bicycles to buy at FunSports.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
70 Kilometers on the Road; Zorro Washed Here; French Hay Fever
July 30, 2013
The day starts with a 70-kilometer bicycle ride through the Minervois as far as Aragon and Villegailhenc, starting at 7:30 a.m. Just before the end of the ride we have to mount a hill, and I almost crack. The bicycle I am riding will not allow me to change gears; when I do, the chain falls off. And it makes noises that only bicycles out of alignment make when I stay in the one gear I can manage.
Claude, the olive grower, and club president, saves the day. When I explain why I can't change to a smaller sprocket, he says, "Well, let's stop and we'll change the sprocket while you stop, and the chain won't fall off." Indeed, it does not, and I am able to crest the hill without difficulty, although by the end of the ride, I feel as though I have been on the Bataan Death March. Perhaps because a new rider, my English friend, is a stripling of 31, the older men want to put him on his mettle.
Patrice, the secretary waves his finger at me and says "Today I am your executioner, no?" (Au jourd'hui je suis ton bourreau, non?") He certainly is.
However, Claude's practical solution to getting me up the hill allows me a moment of glory on a hard day. For most of the ride I have been struggling to keep up. By putting the bicycle on the lower gear I need, Claude makes up for all the earlier hours when I thought I'd never stop huffing and puffing.
When I and my guest return home, I knock on Bob and Annabelle's door: the washing machine still isn't running, and Annabelle has offered to let me wash some clothes. While she is emptying her washing machine, I tell Bob, with reference to the ride, that "By the time I leave on September 9, I will either be in the best shape I have ever been in, or I will be dead --there's no in-between."
***
The washing machine repairman comes by just about when I was told he would, three-thirty p.m. Like the plumber David Martinez, David Chabbert is a youngish man who is accompanied by an adolescent boy acting as his assistant. The two of them move the washing machine out of the house and into the courtyard of the house to let the hose drain the water out. After this is done, David Chabbert unscrews a lid on the bottom of the back of the washer and finds...a sodden sleep mask with two ties, rather like Zorro might wear if he needed forty winks. The sleep mask has been living inside the tube a long time, until it reached its end and stopped up the drainage, is the explanation why the machine refused to drain. The machine is brought back into the house, and I pay 40 Euros for the service call. The repairman tells me to go ahead and wash the towels in the machine again, which I do gladly.
Unfortunately, when I return home a few hours later, the machine still doesn't drain. Perhaps Zorro left a few more masks behind.
***
The French term for "hay fever" is "rheum de foins" (literally catahrr-fever). I have "rheum de foins", and I have it bad. The sunflowers and the wine grapes and the fruit trees are all being sprayed and the harvesting of the grapes will be in two weeks for some varieties, continuing through the end of September for the darkest, reddest, most tannic wines.
"Then there are also plants to which people have allergies, in addition to the reactions to the spraying and the extra amounts of plant matter in the air", explains the pharmacist in town. Fortunately, I don't have to have a prescription for an antihistamine tablet, or for a nasal spray. I rode 70 kilometers with a swelled head rather than take an antihistamine, thinking that I would adjust to the environment. By the afternoon, I decided I would have to stop the sneezing attacks and the post-nasal drip and that I wasn't adjusting the environment.
What did people do before medicines that dried out runny noses and sinuses existed? We see Millet's The Gleaners without recognizing that it is a painting about the desperately poor picking up the leavings of the harvest to feed themselves. We forget, too, that some of them probably suffered horribly having to do so, due to la rheume du foins. Oscar Wilde once said he didn't like nature, that it was unnatural, a statement any hay fever sufferer knows rings true.
The day starts with a 70-kilometer bicycle ride through the Minervois as far as Aragon and Villegailhenc, starting at 7:30 a.m. Just before the end of the ride we have to mount a hill, and I almost crack. The bicycle I am riding will not allow me to change gears; when I do, the chain falls off. And it makes noises that only bicycles out of alignment make when I stay in the one gear I can manage.
Claude, the olive grower, and club president, saves the day. When I explain why I can't change to a smaller sprocket, he says, "Well, let's stop and we'll change the sprocket while you stop, and the chain won't fall off." Indeed, it does not, and I am able to crest the hill without difficulty, although by the end of the ride, I feel as though I have been on the Bataan Death March. Perhaps because a new rider, my English friend, is a stripling of 31, the older men want to put him on his mettle.
Patrice, the secretary waves his finger at me and says "Today I am your executioner, no?" (Au jourd'hui je suis ton bourreau, non?") He certainly is.
However, Claude's practical solution to getting me up the hill allows me a moment of glory on a hard day. For most of the ride I have been struggling to keep up. By putting the bicycle on the lower gear I need, Claude makes up for all the earlier hours when I thought I'd never stop huffing and puffing.
When I and my guest return home, I knock on Bob and Annabelle's door: the washing machine still isn't running, and Annabelle has offered to let me wash some clothes. While she is emptying her washing machine, I tell Bob, with reference to the ride, that "By the time I leave on September 9, I will either be in the best shape I have ever been in, or I will be dead --there's no in-between."
***
The washing machine repairman comes by just about when I was told he would, three-thirty p.m. Like the plumber David Martinez, David Chabbert is a youngish man who is accompanied by an adolescent boy acting as his assistant. The two of them move the washing machine out of the house and into the courtyard of the house to let the hose drain the water out. After this is done, David Chabbert unscrews a lid on the bottom of the back of the washer and finds...a sodden sleep mask with two ties, rather like Zorro might wear if he needed forty winks. The sleep mask has been living inside the tube a long time, until it reached its end and stopped up the drainage, is the explanation why the machine refused to drain. The machine is brought back into the house, and I pay 40 Euros for the service call. The repairman tells me to go ahead and wash the towels in the machine again, which I do gladly.
Unfortunately, when I return home a few hours later, the machine still doesn't drain. Perhaps Zorro left a few more masks behind.
***
The French term for "hay fever" is "rheum de foins" (literally catahrr-fever). I have "rheum de foins", and I have it bad. The sunflowers and the wine grapes and the fruit trees are all being sprayed and the harvesting of the grapes will be in two weeks for some varieties, continuing through the end of September for the darkest, reddest, most tannic wines.
"Then there are also plants to which people have allergies, in addition to the reactions to the spraying and the extra amounts of plant matter in the air", explains the pharmacist in town. Fortunately, I don't have to have a prescription for an antihistamine tablet, or for a nasal spray. I rode 70 kilometers with a swelled head rather than take an antihistamine, thinking that I would adjust to the environment. By the afternoon, I decided I would have to stop the sneezing attacks and the post-nasal drip and that I wasn't adjusting the environment.
What did people do before medicines that dried out runny noses and sinuses existed? We see Millet's The Gleaners without recognizing that it is a painting about the desperately poor picking up the leavings of the harvest to feed themselves. We forget, too, that some of them probably suffered horribly having to do so, due to la rheume du foins. Oscar Wilde once said he didn't like nature, that it was unnatural, a statement any hay fever sufferer knows rings true.
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