The Other Side of the Ocean

I have always liked both the word and the flower. I have heard it referred to as the windflower. Someone who writes a blog called Ocean is apt to like a plant called windflower.

The word anemone is itself is light and airy (though sometimes, especially after a trip to France, I think it should be pronounced "any-money" because typically this is what I have none of after a period of travel). Little anemone. Like a child.

Walking back from the market I passed a sign in front of a flower shop: local anemones on sale here. Irresistible. And so, rather than photos of fruits and or veggies, you get this, locally grown near Madison, Wisconsin:

I have said this before – I miss the café life of France and especially of Paris.

I’ve been asked if I long for French food when I am back here. But I am (basically) okay with food in the Midwest.

For example, on my last evening in Paris I ate in a terrific, hidden little gem, L’Ourcine.



fantastic


The chef is one of several dozen up-and-coming chefs in France, much adored and fussed over for his talents. The food is excellent. The price of the menu – 30 Euro. For this I had crabmeat smothered by avocado mouse with diced green apples on top, a grilled filet of St. Pierre over Asian greens and a sublime pots de crème.



wonderful


The next evening I ate in downtown Chicago at an equally wonderful gem, Crofton on Wells. Ms. Crofton has been cooking up a storm here for nine years now, at very decent-to-your pocketbook prices, quite comparable to l'Ourcine. My heirloom tomato gazpacho with rock shrimp rocked with the zest of house-smoked tomatoes, and the scallops, bathed in a red-curry mussel reduction could not be more perfect. I ended with a quad of icecreams: sour cherry, apricot, honey and dark chocolate.



delicious


The wine prices at Crofton were a little silly, but hey, the Midwest isn’t as rich in wine as is France.

And so I have been forced to admit that I can eat well on this side of the ocean.

But the café life. Give me a break.

On Tuesday in Paris, again and again I would come across scenes like this:



crowded


Now granted, the skies were a touch friendlier and temps a few numbers warmer, but that shouldn’t matter. Wisconsinites are hardy types: they freeze their eating spaces year round with overworked air conditioning and underutilized heating systems. So how do you explain today’s café scene on State Street? Walking home, again and again I would come across scenes like this:



empty


And in case you do not buy the fact that the temps were not sufficiently low to drive away café moments, I’ll note that right next to an empty café I saw these two, sitting on a bench, clearly enjoying this very unwarm dish:



hardy


Have I mentioned that I miss the café scene of Paris?

In Paris, evenings for me are mad. Much to be done, food to be eaten, last minute poking into places that stay open only so long.

But mornings in Paris are sacred: I have nothing to do but catch the train by 10:30 to make it to the airport in time for my flight. It is always like that. And so I get up early and walk.

If it’s fall or winter, then being up and about at 7:30 puts me on the streets before the sun is up. It’s a toss up then whether to head for the Luxembourg Gardens or the river. Usually the gardens win. This time I went to the river.





I never much cared for the heavily trafficked streets along the Seine. But I like the bridges. I suppose I could pick up on the bridge theme now and see in this some statement about how confused I am about where I have been and where I am heading, but I wont do that.

Instead, I’ll take you to one of my favorite corners to have breakfast. It’s a bit of a walk from the area where I always choose to overnight, but the walk is a nice one and so I do not mind.

If the weather is decent, as it was yesterday morning, I’ll sit outside. The world is a blur of activity. A fishmarket is just across, a butcher – to the side, two chocolate shops are down the block and a baker, a very unfriendly baker, is around the corner.





And there is an elementary school a block away. Since this is the center, the hub of the left bank, the kids all look well-tended, cared for, not wanting.

Still, children are children. Their needs are significantly less complicated than ours. They don’t need to cross oceans to feel complete. In the village of Vacquieres, Jean-Benoit, the winemaker, told me that joy for his daughters comes from hearing that a half a centimeter of snow is in the forecast. (They share that delight with many Wisconsin children, though I think we over here wish big: no dusting will do; waist-deep at a minimum.)

Across from my café three children pause, waiting for the light. They’ll go to school, go home, eat their meals, fall asleep and the next day they will be at this same corner.





Not me. I pay for my breakfast and head back to catch the train for the airport.

Tuesday was not a play day for me. Ocean suffers when I have things to do that aren't camera worthy. Today I travel back to Madison.

Like the Parisian pup, waiting for something to happen here...





...Ocean readers will have to wait for something to happen here. Tomorrow, after classes, I'll return to Paris on the blog.

A bientot.

I am spent. The intense days at the vineyard (see posts below) were a high, for sure, despite the round the clock watching, listening, writing, photo editing. But now I am spent.

I have a day before I need to be back in Paris, but I want to leave this wonderful family alone already. The change in weather has reinvigorated the vineyards. I hear trucks rumbling to and from the fields constantly. At the Chateau de Lascaux as well, the pace quickens. Jean-Benoit is giving the fields a day to dry off, but there is work to be done elsewhere. The intensity of the vendange is suddenly palpable.

Monday noon, I finish my last post, pack my computer and resolutely load up my very tiny “Smart” car. Jean-Benoit rushes over to say good bye. He makes sure traffic is stopped at the bend in the road so that I can do a u-turn and head back. Helpful to the very last second.

So what now? I head for home, Pierrerue, deep in the belly of the Languedoc.

It’s not really home. I lived there for only three weeks this June. But I want to return nonetheless. I want to be like the mother who visits her child season after season, simply to note changes and hear that sweet voice of a younger one..

And if I am searching for a calm, for an equilibrium to take hold, I'll include a stop by the sea.

I'm smitten with the beaches here, in the Languedoc. Like everything about the province, they are without fuss. I park the car by a stretch of sand, I step out the door and my feet are on the warm golden crystals.

Just three weeks into September, the beaches are empty.




Sure, there is the idle fisherman sitting, waiting for something to happen. I wait with him. Nothing happens.





I play with my new camera, I make footprints in the sand.





I admit it. I miss the harvest and the vineyards. I miss the sounds, I miss the smell of day-two juice.

Move on. No fish in the bucket, no room for nostalgia.

I pick up the road to St. Chinian and its baby village, Pierrerue. Hello vineyards. I knew you when you were throwing infant leaves out. Look at you now!





I’m hungry. I am nearing my destination, but I am remembering that Pierrerue offers no eateries. But the Chat qui Peche does, right there, besides the Canal du Midi.





The waiter stares at me. You were here last spring! You’re Polish, right? Remember? I am too.
Oh, I do remember. It's just that I am having trouble with the "friendly to the outside world" switch. Still, I ask about his summer at the Cat who goes Fishing.

Too hot, that’s for sure.
You have so many flies here now! Why?
It’s the harvest. The trucks drop grapes, the flies like the juice.

Hmmm, Vacquieres didn’t have flies. Pierrerue doesn’t have flies. Perfect villages clearly do not attract flies.

Pierrerue, I love you, Pierrerue, I love you. A song to the forgotten one, the one left for
its perfect cousin up in northern Languedoc.

Pierrerue is pouting. The sun hides behind a cloud as I stand facing it, there halfway up the hill.





I pass the house of the artist whose paintings now hang on my loft brick walls. I hesitate. If I knock on her door, I will have to stay a while. But my mind is still unsettled, full of harvest thoughts. I am spinning with images from Chateau de Lascaux vineyards. I pause the car, my foot vacillates between the gas and the brake, finally resting gently on the gas.

A few more glances at the familiar hills and I push forward. I will overnight further south. I need space from the familiar.





I eat a meal alone, for the first time since coming to France. I need the quiet before I turn north and then northwest.




In the morning, I speed to Montpellier, buy my croissant and café crème for the train and turn toward Paris, with a last wave to the vineyards of Languedoc. They were meant for sunny skies and this morning they are getting them.

Sunday Afternoon

So I had to ask Jean-Benoit Cavalier, winemaker, proprietor of Chateau de Lascaux – what do you like best about this life of a vintner? Is the work in the fields? The mixing, blending? The harvest?

We were walking through the mixed forests, the garrigues, just north of his village of Vacquieres and every so often we would come across a field of vines. It is the nature of winemaking here: these woods are part of the terroir. And each vine-planted plot has a story – an age, an expectation, a purpose.





I already know Jean-Benoit loves his work. He told me so. And really, it is obvious.

He tells me now how deeply satisfying it is to reflect about the entirety – putting together the whole story of a wine, from the planting to the final bottle placed in the cave. Watching it unfold, shaping the outcome.

The harvest is one important part of that entirety. Jean-Benoit leaves the vacation home up north, in the mountains, two weeks before the end of August.

I come back to the village and I think about how to run the harvest that year. It requires all my concentration and so I like to be alone then.

And there are other elements of pride – I can see that. There’s his family, sure. And his village, Vacquieres. His wife, Isabelle, is a fan of it as well.

Just the right size, she says to me. Three hundred people. No more. At this size we all look after each other, there is a sense of community. It is quite wonderful.

Aren’t all villages like this here, in the south of France? I think of Pierrerue – my June retreat this year, also with about three hundred. And with people who believed it was special, unique. Or maybe I have just visited the only two special and unique villages. These are it! They are the beloved ones, the savage babes (another term I hear about Pierrerue and now Vacquieres – sauvage, untamed by the outside world)!

Jean-Benoit pauses at a field of vines that is already harvested. Organically grown grapes, because they are better that way. The leaves are starting to turn. In a few weeks it will have to be a fiery red blaze of color.





It is my first planting of a new field. The soil is terrible – layers of deep stone…
So why would you choose to plant in this spot?
Because I like coming here. Look, you can see the village, just so.









…There are trees on all sides. I can show you something else – bee hives. I have someone tend to the bees here.

I look closely. Why do I think a photo of a bee is well worth the encounter of a close kind? Maybe to remember the moment.








And sure enough, a bee gets tangled in my hair. I remember childhood summers in the Polish countryside, with my grandparents. At least once each year a bee would dovetail right into my hair. There is a choice: endure a bite to the scalp or fish the bee out with your hand, knowing that you will get stung. I fish, I get stung.

I will remember the moment.

Back in the car, we drive up through a dense fragrant forest. The rain has really intensified the scent.

Rosemary? I ask, but I know the answer. The herb is everywhere, growing in the wild, adding its distinct essence to the forest floor.




See this? It is a capitelle, a hut, a shelter, from sheepherding days. It is probably two thousand years old.





We crawl inside. Jean-Benoit touches the roof, nicely layered into a conical shape.

It’s fine work, isn’t it?

He could be talking about the hut, he could be talking about winemaking.

Earlier in the afternoon, we had stopped at the garage/cave of his friend, Christophe. It was after the Sunday meal. Family members were gathered to help with the press. Christophe is a writer, a vintner (Domaine Beau Thorey), a man of several trades. He presses his grapes by hand.





We like Americans because they gave us this model of a hand press. It is a California invention!
We like the French because you gave us your wines.

The men push, with great breaks in between. There are no pauses in the laughter.

We linger until the pressing is finished and the residue is carted away in wheelbarrows.





One spot you have to see. Jean-Benoit knows the roads well. I am lost, but then I am always lost when a local person keeps track of the turns.

Before us, in the gray light of a misty, drizzly day I see a vineyard, stretching toward the hills. At the end of it there is a church, standing alone, unprotected by village houses.





If you want a memorable wedding, this would be the scene. The feeling of your place in the scheme of things is tremendous. You get the sense that life is about your backbreaking work in your (chosen) field and the passion that drives you forward. Or is it I’ve been hanging around Jean-Benoit Cavalier and the Chateau de Lascaux too long...

Is there such a thing as a perfect moment? A perfect cluster of grapes? A perfect wine? …village? …host? Perfection, defined not only by the result, but also by the beauty of the effort that went into it? Do you need me to answer that?

Sunday Midday

Since when did I become a permanent fixture at the large kitchen table of the Cavalier family? Since Friday. Three times a day. I am hopeless when it comes to the family meal, especially when it is prepared by Isabelle.

I love to cook – for two, for four, for ten – all of it. But I love to be cooked for even more. Especially here in France.

On Sunday afternoon, though, the routines change. Out come the better clothes (I forgot my time and place, so the image of the grungy American will stay firmly rooted in the French consciousness after my visit here). Out come the relatives (the aunt, who lives just across the street). Out come the better dishes, the dining room table cloth placed at the dining room table.

We eat at midday and were it not for the fact that in the evening, Isabelle will serve a supper of pureed vegetable soup and omelets packed with wild girolles (mushrooms much like the chanterelles), I would probably throw down my napkin and retire from eating after that Sunday meal. Perhaps not. This is, after all, the south of France.

First come the mussels, straight from the Mediterranean sea.








Then the eggplant and tomatoes, the salad, the cheeses and the chocolate gateau. The Cavalier daughters hover and help, maman serves, tante comes with freshly baked cake. And with the most fascinating conversational contributions you could imagine. Passion for all that is great and wonderful runs high in this family.

Oh, the Languedoc Sunday family dejeuner! I leave it with such a feeling of warmth and contentment! It’s not just that there are plates of foods that stir all senses. It is the understood sentiment that now is the time to put away all baggage and sit down and exhale. For a long while. Because the week ends well if there is shared food, wine and casual observation with people you care about.

I am so relaxed at the mere recollection that I will write no more. I’ll leave you with photos of la famille Cavalier of Vacquieres, France.



aunt Madelaine, nephew Jean-Benoit



oldest daughter



middle daughter



mother Isabelle and youngest daughter, beneath an old family portrait



the mirror, creating a new family portrait

A machine may pick well. It can, for the whites and rosés, sort out the leaves and stems.




It can mash, crush, move things from one bin to another.

And then there is quiet. The wines rest in their barrels. Twelve months for the Chateau de Lascaux les Pierres d'Argent, the whites. But early after the harvest, you need the human hand to open each barrel, plunge down a stick with a chain and stir up the residue. It's called la battonage. Daily, at this stage.




And if you put your ear to the opening, you can hear the process of fermentation.

The world is never completely silent. You just have to pop a few corks sometimes to hear movement, that’s all.

Sunday Morning

La Premiere Foulee des Vendanges! – reads the poster. A race to honor the wine stompers of the past.

I think the local jogging club simply wants to promote their sport, but that’s okay. Jogging is good. Grape stomping is (was) good. I am all for watching and supporting le local sport on a Sunday morning in the neighboring winemaking village of Corconne.

Only you have to feel sorry for the 47 who have chosen to participate in this thirteen kilometer mini-marathon through the vineyards. Sometime at night the rains came and their occasional pause hardly lasts the length of time needed to gulp down a café crème.

Still, it is a happening and so my host at the Chateau Lascaux, Jean-Benoit, takes time off from picking and pressing to drive me to the village where it all begins.

The race starts and ends outside the Wine Cooperative and the band is there to put some oomph into the day.








The runners are off. We follow their progress across rocky soils and paved paths. Volunteers wave road traffic to the side and provide sustenance. Are those real fruit pates I see? That would just throw me off, were I running. I’d get out of the race and concentrate on selecting the cassis over the kiwi, despite the encouraging cries of “courage!, courage!” from the sidelines.





Up village streets (they have run over to our village now!), past painted doors and Jean-Benoit’s caves…








Onto the finish line. I am a poor observer of the human condition when the rains come down. I worry about my camera. I go inside the Cooperative and sample rosés that are freely being poured. I miss who came in first or last. I taste, I purchase.





A farmer of snails has set up his table at the Cooperative as well. He sells escargots in jars or as a snack, roasted on the spot, served in a baguette. I buy those as well. Your guess as to which – the jars to take back, or roasted in a baguette?








Sunday morning in the Languedoc. No one appears to mind the pause in the vandange (grape harvest). They all have read the reports. The sun comes out tomorrow. Today’s wet skies means that you can take time off, guilt free. Sort of like a snow day back in Wisconsin.

Saturday Evening

Nina, we have visitors from a winery in New Zealand and I’m going to do a tasting for them. Come join us. Jean-Benoit calls up to the office where I am, as usual, frowning over Ocean text and photos.

So this Midwesterner who looks for opportunities to taste good wines and who has, for years, loved to listen to vintners discuss the particularities of terroir is supposed to say no?

A busman’s holiday! The New Zealander tells me. We are visiting wineries and having a good time as well.

Of course, it goes without saying that if you do the first then you will have the second…

Jean-Benoit uncorks a range of wines from his cave at the Chateau de Lascaux. Six bottles – two whites, four reds.





It is a trick to taste the youngest, I think, because you have to predict how it will mature. Many of the vintners I’ve met in France sell you stuff that they want you to keep hidden until the year, say 2012. That’s fine if you have invested in a cave or at the very least, in a storage place that will let the wine relax in wine-spa-like conditions, temperature and humidity-wise. Me, I keep my wines in a dark corner of the loft. It’s the best I can do. Imperfect? Oh yes.

But it is for this reason that Jean-Benoit’s words are music to my ears. I ask him about how his wines will be X years from now.

I sell them if they taste good now. It’s no use selling them for the future. People live in apartments and cannot provide great conditions for wine. It is up to us to do that. You, the customer, buy a wine and you should expect to uncork it and love it.

Jean-Benoit uncorks, we sniff, swish, sniff again, drink.

Or at least I drink. Spitting is quite the acceptable option. But wait. A vintner uncorks his best wines. He shares his knowledge, work, effort with you in that small bit poured into your glass. The aroma and flavors are wonderful. Would your natural inclination then be to spit it out?

I have spat my way up and down wineries where the product was indifferent, or when I was driving, or when I was doing the fast and furious visiting, forgetting that there is always a slow road to take out there. But now, in the caves of Chateau Lascaux, the tastings are gifts from the person who has created the wines. They are to be savored. I savor them.

A neighbor, himself a vintner, is with us, listening attentively. When Jean-Benoit speaks, it is always with something worthwhile to say. He does not indulge in random small stuff. I may have to explain the tone and tenor of Ocean when the time comes.






I join the family again for supper. I eat all meals with them – it was not in the original plan, but I have fallen into the habit of saying yes when they ask and they always ask. I would be a fool to pass on French country cooking. I don’t know if people here even know how to do it poorly.

Saturday Afternoon

The village is surrounded by vines, forests and hills. I am told it creates a perfect terroir (climate, environment, culture etc etc) for grapes. I know it creates a perfect view from the tower room of the family home.





Not all vines surrounding Vacquieres belong to the Chateau de Lascaux. Indeed, quite a number of fields (including some of Jean-Benoit’s) produce grapes for the cooperative that makes wine from the two neighboring villages (Vacquieres and Corconne), oftentimes under the label of Vin de Pays d’Oc.

I drank that on my Air France flight! -- I tell the men bringing in their grapes here. One by one, they drive up and unload the day’s clusters.





The grape separator (which I am sure has a fancier name than that) is huge. Out go the stems and leaves. At the Chateau de Lascaux, this is done by hand for the reds. You cannot let a leaf remain. The fermentation is too long – there would be taste consequences!





As the winegrowers (why is the English vocabulary so imperfectly suited for wine making terms?) dump their grapes in, information about their lot is put into the computer. It’s all extremely sophisticated. I'm impressed.

These are the wines that stores and restaurants in the States love to sell. At the cooperative, I can pick them up for somewhere between 3 and 5 Euros. Fine wines,well priced here and back home.

Jean-Benoit drives me back to the Chateau. I snap a photo of the road up ahead and the two cyclists approaching our village. Le velo? I ask, showing off my brilliant command of French. I know it is no longer "le bicyclette," like in the olden days. Here, we like to ride what we call "le ve-te-te" ("velo tout terrain"). Okay, I was close.

Saturday Afternoon

The wine expert guy, the oenologist, comes, basket in hand. There are little bottles in it and he takes samples from different bins, marking the progress of each grape as it moves from juice to wine at the Chateau de Lascaux.





I spend so much time in the cave that I feel I need to bring in an outside opinion, just to hear another perspective, Jean-Benoit (vintner and proprietor of the Chateau) tells me.

I follow the three of them – the expert, Jean-Benoit and the apprentice (happy birthday to you, you’re just eighteen years old this week, you would not be working as a winemaker’s apprentice in the U.S., but you could be in the army, happy birthday to you) – and taste from each bin, as they do.





Take a Midwesterner who is in love with the wines and Languedoc and ask her to go easy on the tasting rounds. It’s a challenge.

I listen to the comments -- an intricate analysis of how sweet the grape is, how deep in color, how aromatic it is on this day, how over time it begins to mature into something so complex that it's hard to find words to describe what has just happened, all in the space of a few weeks.

Jean-Benoit is completely focused on his wines. His face lights up at the sight of the dark reds, his eyes smile at the vibrant notes in the roses and he looks relieved and happy with the maturation of the oldest (almost three weeks now!) of the whites.



Jean-Benoit sniffs, the oenologist writes


His apprentice fills our bottles and glasses and talks suggestively – noting things, but not asserting yet. He is there to learn, not to educate.

The wine oenologist is brutal. He scribbles things on the board, talks of temperatures and of fermentation, and appears to want to spare no blows, indifferent to a blogger’s presence.





Except there aren’t really any blows. Jean-Benoit’s wines are performing magnificently. It must be like testing the student who does his homework and is equally creative and brilliant.

Towards the end, I am tempted to lead everyone in song and dance right there in the vineyards. Shouldn’t one celebrate the success of all that fermenting grape juice? In the alternative, a nap sounds deliciously pleasant.

I sit down to review my photos instead. I have a few minutes before Jean-Benoit takes me on the next round of visits. The rain is holding back. Terrific luck. They should hire me as a rain-staller.

Saturday Morning

Quickly, before the rain comes. Jean-Benoit has the car waiting. It isn’t exactly dark still, but it feels early.

I have helped myself to a real Languedoc morning coffee – from a large cereal-size bowl, as is the custom, along with a fresh baguette (how could it be otherwise? it is part of the table setting) and I am sitting down to the computer, wondering if I could write about a harvest if I never witness a single grape being picked this entire week-end long.





But the rain stubbornly refuses to fall.

The clouds, they are like cotton balls, wavy, I have never seen them like that, Isabelle remarks as we stare at the rapidly moving formations. I can see why they’re saying that when the rains come down, they’ll drench Languedoc good and solid. The sky looks like at any minute it will swallow you, your village and your entire field of grapes. Waves of clouds, waves of vines.






Jean-Benoit and I drive out into a field, bordered by trees, where he has tentatively set a picking truck to work. Should I continue? – shouts the driver. Can't blame him. I'd be tempted to run for cover if it were me out there, in the field, truck or no truck. Still, the drops are hanging back...





Go on, go on! Jean-Benoit turns to me and says, I got up early this morning, looked outside and noticed it wasn’t raining yet. Maybe we can get something done. But I told most of the team not to come in.

The driver works his way slowly. The grapes fall in, efficiently, until the bin is full.

A machine does the job well, but only if all the grapes are mature and good and the vines aren’t too old.
And I suppose you don’t get neighbors to come in and stomp with feet to get the juice out anymore?

Jean-Benoit smiles, not knowing that indeed, I have been asked if, when in France, I will stomp up a storm, dirty feet and all. Seems like not something that the European Union would possibly tolerate, but still, we in the States expect a certain degree of quaintness from those European types, no?

These days, no feet touch the grapes, but tomorrow the two villages – ours and Corconne are having a race in the fields. It’s called La Foulée des Vendanges, after the stompers of the past.

We visit a neighbor’s field – he has taken the chance and sent out a handful of pickers. I watch, take photos, answer questions. Though explaining Ocean to pickers whose language is neither English nor French (they are Moroccan) is a challenge.











This particular vineyard is a father and son operation. The son is assisting dad. Soon, the dad will be assisting the son. It’s how it works here, I’m told.






The sky is still holding it in. Jean-Benoit and I drive toward his own fields of aging vines. I have always loved these vieille vignes best. In contrast to the tall vines that climb high and enjoy the air and the sun and the movement of a gentle wind, these older guys are bunched together in communities of clusters, all tightly held against a thick and beautifully twisted trunk.





A vintner knows what to taste for. We’ll be picking these soon.






In another field belonging to the Chateau de Lascaux, the tall Mouverdre grapes are also almost ready.



Jean-Benoit surveys the vines...

Another day and they will be perfect. Their skin holds so much flavor even now!

What a difference a day makes. To a vintner. To me, the taste is fantastic as we speak. I’d have you picking while the going’s good. That’s why I am left to take pictures and not bottle wine. I’d probably bottle it when it is still grape juice.



...he samples, eyes each bunch critically, nods his head.


fall colors are showing up around the edges


My taste buds are about to undergo some training. That’s forthcoming. Come back in a few hours. I need to pause for a dejeuner en famille. Garlic roasted meat with crusty potatoes, salad, cheese and the very excellent red Chateau de Lascaux, Noble Pierre 2002. Oh, and flan, rhubarb compote and almond cakes for dessert.

Friday Evening

The drive to the village of my hosts takes me past vineyards and mixed forests. It’s getting dark, but I can’t tell if it’s the clouds or the time of day.





It’s the same each year. On the days surrounding the equinox, the weather becomes strange. Unusual. Forceful. Jean-Benoit speaks from experience.

It did not strike me to avoid the equinox on my trip here. I aimed for the middle of the harvest. But the weather has taken charge. The gendarme warns the vintners that these are not going to be just rains. These are going to be RAINS.

On this evening of my arrival, I sit at the kitchen table with the proprietors of Chateau de Lascaux -- Jean-Benoit, Isabelle and their three teen daughters, eating the fish tarts, braised celery, salad and cheeses. Stewed peaches, vanilla ice cream and almond cookies finish off the meal.





A Chateau de Lascaux white is uncorked. I hear myself trying to explain what tort law is to the French – a challenge, even without the forty-eight hours of no sleep and travel fatigue.

All this talk of personal injury… I’m resisting the impulse to crawl under the table and check on my own foot. I had dropped a suitcase on it while trying to maneuver it down from the rack on the train. I wonder if the shoe will fit around it the next day. I wonder what Jean-Benoit will think if I traipse through the vineyards barefoot in the rain.

Mostly, I listen and eat and take in the huge Languedoc kitchen with the old fireplace, the copper pots, the wooden table.










Chateau de Lascaux is an old winery. Jean-Benoit’s father was a vintner and so was his grandfather. I ask if the daughters are interested in winemaking. Jean-Benoit shrugs and says “we’ll see.” Daughters can be so unpredictable.


The homestead and the caves are right off the main square of Vacquieres – a village of about 300, just north of Montpellier. The house literally touches the church walls. It is an old place, with winding corridors and large rooms, old stone walls and tiled roofs.





The night is perfectly quiet. Normally, white wine harvest begins at 4 am and ends by midmorning. But that’s over and done with. And the predicted rains are putting the remaining harvest on hold. The equinox rains. How will they effect my week-end here? Check in later, I’ll have an update.

…But the anticipation, the image, the memory – a lifetime.

When I dream up these trips to the continent (sorry, I realize North America is also a continent, but no one refers to it as The Continent, do they?) I immediately place myself into images of desired and desirable venues. One of them will be at a wobbly round table with a café crème and a croissant.

And so when the plane approaches the coast of Brittany, I start thinking – where and when can I indulge my image?

Answer, here:



speeding to Montpellier


In travel, nothing happens as it should. I miss one train because I run to get this very croissant, pause to take a photo…



at the airport, a bekery with a reputation

… and then careen madly to the platform, only to watch my train pull away from another platform (the ticket showed voit. 3, I read voie 3, for you French speaking types who can now laugh at my expense).

So now I am speeding in a very roundabout way to Montpellier.

I had planned on spending the day in Paris, on refreshing myself before la grande visite of the week-end, but I could not sit still. For me, here, every minute counts.

Tonight I am to show up at the doorstep of Jean-Benoit and Isabelle, proprietors of the Chateau Lascaux winery. I feel like an inferior version of the journalist (plus photographer) who was invited to spend a few days at the home of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes to write up something clever about their new infant. I am in awe of winemakers and so I consider my “assignment” to be even more significant – it is to tell a story from the insides of a winery at the time of harvest. I mean, come on – Suri against the Chateau Lascaux. Of course the Chateau is much more intimidating.

For now, I am just loving the return: to speeding trains, to croissants in the morning, to my beloved Languedoc.

I pack my bags, make sure the batteries are charged for the camera(s), finish my classes and head for the airport.

I have been invited to spend the week-end at a vineyard in Languedoc (in southern France). They’re in the middle of the harvest and I want to see what it’s like to snip and mush grapes all day long.

Unfortunately, the weather homme says rain. Do conditions of rain dampen the spirit? Not mine.

I am exceptionally excited. A bientot!

So, you’re going to be leaving in a day or two? Jason asks me this eyeing my hair dubiously – as in, you’re going like that?

Jason, my hair cut and color genius doesn’t like it that I do not tend to my hair. I always mean to tend to it, but the minutes pass, the helmet goes on and before you know it I have indifference hanging down to my shoulders.

You know, if it were a touch longer, I would do a razor cut. I know he doesn’t really expect me to grow it out right there on the spot, but still, I feel that in this, too, I have disappointed him.

Okay, I can do something bolder. Let’s bring it way up in the back and push it straight in the front… and he’s off, snipping away for over an hour.

I am transformed.

Initially I think – too much so. Something is not right. I realize that the haircut belongs to someone who tends to her appearance. A Parisian someone perhaps? It does not belong to a woman who chooses to go to the salon in sweat pants and a frayed t-shirt.

At home, I slip into my silk negligee and put on stilettos…

No, I actually do not do any of that. Ocean is an honest blog.

But as I pack for my trip, I put in the good shoes. Because Mary Janes, the comfy alternative, wont cut it on the other side of the ocean.

Oh, I’ll eat foie gras. Put it in front of me and I’ll consume just about anything that is fresh and honest. And foie gras people do not lie about what their product is: goose (or duck) liver through and through.

Still, in the same way that a review of the habits and mores of the meat industry has lead me to not order a hamburger for years and years, so too, I have not gone out of my way to order foie gras in recent times. Typically, there are many other items on the menu that will do equally well.

But today, I reconsidered. Not because I was frantically trying to secure a reservation at any number of eateries in Paris that love to serve foie gras (no luck so far – the entire nation seems to be eating out at my top choices on Tuesday, September 26th). Rather, I have had it with the geese who like to come down for a spa-like visit to Madison on their way north.

Who would not like a respite in this lovely, forward-looking town? We accept all. Including these Canadian birds, who love to leave us numerous mementos of their sojourn. But today they overwhelmed the loft’s driveway. By afternoon, their poop piles almost reached my third floor windows. Almost.

Give it a break, birds. Eat a different diet. Do something to raise your levels of hygiene. I'm fussy, I know, but you guys make it so difficult to keep the soles clean.

Splash…it is gone.

It’s been a busy time. In two days, I’m flying off to France. There’s work to be done there, but I also have a few days off in between. But now, on this side of the ocean, I am at a crunch. I have been teaching overtime to make up some class hours and I have been trying to frontload all committee work so that I do not fall behind.

So little time to blog!

This evening, I realize that I hadn’t even taken out my camera, let alone given much thought to a post for the day. And so I go out for a brief stroll by the lake – some two blocks away from where I live.

There is always something great to take photos of out by the lake. In the winter, I have been mesmerized by the ice fishermen. In times of bad weather, watching the clouds move through is as dramatic as anything on TV. And on this early fall day, I am happy as anything just to watch the fisher-people do their thing. This guy hadn’t caught anything all day. Two minutes of me watching and he lands a blue gill.






I am about to go home, but the sky is especially dramatic and so I decide to step out on the little wharf that juts out into lake Monona. I am just messing around, wondering how wide the lens span is and so I snap this…





…and I think how funny it would be if my new equipment somehow slipped from my hand and fell into the water.

No sooner do I consider how funny it would be, when the lens cap wiggles out of my fingers and plunks right into the lake.

Damn.

I call Ed who never thinks anything is a problem.
I dropped my lens cap in the lake – I tell him. I called everywhere and a replacement is not to be had!
Why would you spend money on a replacement cap if the old one is just in the lake? Did you go in and try to fish it out?
I was on the little wharf jutting out into the lake! It’s deep there!
Can’t be more than a couple of feet…
I am not going to go jump in the lake after a lens cap!
Why not? It’s probably there on the bottom, where you dropped it.
The current moved it miles away, I’m sure!
There is no current there.
There’s duck poop in the lake! It’s slimy around the shore!
You said you were on the wharf jutting into the lake…
It’s freezing in the water!
How would you know without testing it? I’ll go jump in the lake for you if you want.
I couldn’t ask you to do that… Maybe I could… Could you do that maybe?




Our best efforts… okay, Ed’s best efforts prove futile.

I knew I should have come with my underwater visor...

I assure him that I do not mind purchasing a generic replacement cap. That I’ll attend to my cameras in the future. That it was an unfortunate accident that is unlikely to happen again.

I’m a lawyer, after all. I can convince anyone of anything.

Walk to market, note the dominance of the fall colors… take in the cultural heritage of this city (it is vast!)… Hmong farmers are an important presence… A Chinese cultural celebration occupies a corner of the Square… a Mexican-American parade of cars leads up to the Capitol…

The annual Food for Thought Festival, just down the block from the market, celebrates south-central Wisconsin’s commitment to sustainable agriculture. Regional, preferably organic…

Okay, so you need a breath of fresh air after all this – head for the countryside, it’s only a few minutes away…

And then come back to the pleasure of bistro food at Le Chardonnay, where a bottle of chardonnay will chill you out after the "stress" of a warm September Saturday in this town.

Told in photos, below.



putting out the onions



farmer's daughter




bag for the green peppers



September berries




a celebration of Chinese culture




boy dances





Mexican pride: a parade of cars




and flags





Food for Thought Festival: fried cheese



and mango lemon ice





corn field, birds and old wind pumps




hazy blue and shades of green




yes, the middle of September




chardonnay at le Chardonnay

So much to consider, here, on Ocean.

I'll be more reasoned and steadfast tomorrow. Today -- wiped out.

But I'll say this much before I push back the computer: Madison isn't just anyville, out there, waiting for the sun to set in a perfect arch. It's been said that we are of a certain type. Not so, not so. And that is a good thing.

I watch bloggers come and go, I watch them retreat, get tired, reach some sort of blogger depression, fizzle off and I wonder: why were they blogging to start with?

Probably for the same bungee-plunge reasons we all did: seems fun, why not? Wheeeee!!!!!

Then it gets too boring. Or too hard. Or too threatening. I have adjusted my blogroll countless times for the fallen away types who have … fallen away. Understandable. At other times, Ocean may have sunk right along with them.

But me – I love the concept of blogging. Maybe not on this night. Because tonight, I am preoccupied with nonbloggable thoughts. Like for instance whether this photo of a butterfly, encountered on the bike path this afternoon...




…is as good as the one taken moments later.





No matter. There is the compulsion to continue. And maybe sometimes midnight gets here and the pillow looks so fresh and cool and you still have a sentence to straighten out. Sure. But that’s just a bad weather day. More often you want the minutes to slow down so that you can say it all. So that you can take a million more photos because you know that within you, you have a better one that hasn’t been put forth yet.

Blogging, for the challenge, for the pleasure of it.

The Nature Conservancy sends me address labels every year in the hope that this will inspire me to make a sizable donation.

I rarely respond to solicitations through mass-mailings. I dislike junk mail and I try not to open or read any of it. Junk mail, junk TV, junk food – I’ve been down that road and I want no more of it.

Maybe it’s the age. On the other side of fifty you look to clean up your mailbox, so to speak.

But the solicitation from the Nature Conservancy is a little different. For one thing, they send those stickers with my address. I use them. I like to flaunt their symbol on mail to gas companies, cable companies and all other possible big-time exploiters of the natural world (and I do not regard myself as a clean green by any means, so there’s guilt there as well). And, were I to throw the stickers away, then a tree would have been plucked in vain.

With all this complicated stuff going through my head, I was actually pleased to move into an apartment nicely situated just across the railroad tracks from the Madison branch of the Nature Conservancy. Today I went in to pay my dues.

You know those great stickers you send me each year? I’ve come to pay up. So long as I have mounting credit card debt, let me add your good cause to the bundle.

Puzzled look. Huh?

Those stickers? You know, with my name, address and your pretty green leaf, alternating with butterflies, on them?
Sorry, not ours. Must be some national mass mailing from the membership drive folks over... wherever it is that they are situated. We don’t do that sort of stuff.

That’s too bad. I live across the railroad tracks. I would like to support your cause and purchase great quantities of those stickers and give you good money for them. But I would like to do it locally. Didn’t I hear that the big Nature Conservancy dudes had some trouble with an IRS audit just a few years back? I want to see my money do its work here in Wisconsin, so that the trails expand and butterflies settle on prairie flowers all summer long.

Sorry, call the national guys – here’s their number...

Maybe I’ll put in some labor hours instead, you know, for the trails and the butterflies.

Outside, the sun is out for the first time this month, it seems. The Nature Conservancy hasn’t a splendid garden outside, but it has a patch of goldenrod, in bloom and radiant in the bright light of the early afternoon. I had my lesser guy with me, the Sony H5, and I asked him to snap up a shot of the bloom outside, as a tribute to the set of stickers I receive each holiday season.

Suppose you had a kid who struggled to keep up with the total success story of the other sib at home. You’d love the kid anyway, right? Of course!

Oftentimes, that kid will bring to the table something so striking, so beautiful, that it will take your breath away. Othertimes, you know, things will be just ordinary.

I took my little guy, the Sony H5 out today when I biked to Whole Foods. On the way back, this lesser child took a good enough shot of the FINALLY emerging blue sky, close to dusk, over Lake Mendota...





And then, my little guy make me chuckle as he focused on the hair clips of the last of the Union Terrace devotees. In color, they matched the chairs and tables at the increasingly less populated Terrace.




Anyway, the camera tango continues.

I can’t let go. Isn’t there a saying about returning to the farm after a year on the Boulevard St. Germain?

I tasted the Sony D-SLR alfa 100 and I am having a hard time packing it up and sending it back.

True, the smaller camera I would use in its stead (the new, far less expensive Sony H5) is lovely. And it takes quality photos. I mean, can you really tell that this…




…was taken by the H5 rather than the Alfa 100? Of course you can’t.

But I can.

But Nina, the world can’t tell. You’ll save money. The H5 is light. The H5 will take on a conversion telephoto lens giving you fantastic capabilities. You’re just clinging to the Alfa 100 because it buys you status. You like the idea of looking pseudo professional, with ten pounds of camera dangling from your neck. When oh when will you use it over and beyond next weekend in France? Give it up! The H5 is the way to go!

All the above has been said to me, to my face, in the past 12 hours. It makes sense. Absolutely.

Nina, do you know what the national savings rate is for France? (high) In Japan? (higher) In the US? (in negative numbers) Are you going to contribute to this national malady of spending more than you have?

If I were living in France, I’d be saving too, to purchase that house in the south where family and friends would come each summer for a protracted six week vacation and I would play and frolic to my heart’s content in the hours that I am not working and I would spend Euro cents for quality local wines!

The cameras, their packaging, receipts, printouts, etc are strewn all over the dining table. I am paralyzed. I feel I am about to capriciously fling an ax of doom on one of two players, not unlike what I have witnessed on Project Runway.

One must go. I love them all. tick tock tick tock…

This is so important to me: how should I be capturing the world on film/flickr?

Breaking my camera earlier last week in New Haven made me think of this again: how much would I improve were I to upgrade the old (okay, less than a year, but old by industry standards) equipment?

Tons. The new camera behaves beautifully. The shots compensate for light, for speed, for my inadequacies.

IT’S A KEEPER!
Well no, not exactly.

There’s the price. Astronomical by my standards. But I have come to terms with credit card debt for the most important things in life like daughters, travel and cameras. So no, it’s not the cost.

Call me obsessive about matters of weight, but that really is it – the new camera is too heavy.

I am retreating to the world of the Sonys without wonderful interchangeable lenses. I just cannot see myself being at peace with an elephant. You, with the huge trunk. Careful now, I need to change your lens. Let me load the replacement back into the suitcase they call the carrying tote.

Tomorrow I will be packing up the new baby and sending in a bid for a smaller replacement. I feel cheap. I feel horribly unkind to my little dependables. But I have to do it. Goodby Sony alfa SLR – you are too much. I look forward to the new kid on the block, to be tried out as soon as the weather changes from ridiculously wet to pleasantly and safely dry.

One parting shot and I’ll be on my way. With the telephoto lens, of the flowers on my sill, many dozens of feet away:

Oftentimes their skin is pasty from being indoors all day and they wear dorky clothes.
The world of machinists, as described by one of the lot, at the International Machine Tool Show in Chicago this weekend.
Hey, that’s not a dorky bunch! These guys are in yellow and blue shirts and they move around blue lights!









Gone are the days where metal milling machines required a muscled arm. Everything around me is computerized.

Ed, who convinced me to go to the Show with him, has designed and put into production the smallest cheapest CNC (computer numerical control) milling machine on the market – for the hobbyist, or the miller with a threadbare pocket. Ed likes cheap things.

I like the free candies they have in bowls to entice you to look at their machines.
What kind of candies?
Oh, you know, Hershey’s Krackle or milk chocolate Kisses.

Just like guys to not go all out on the candy. I mean, is a Hershey’s kiss going to get you to look over and buy a machine for hundreds of thousands?

This is an international expo and some countries still believe in grabbing the (male) audience by the seat of their pants.








And the French! Theirs is a full-scale show, with cups of beer (they're pandering to American machinists), if you stick around for a minute.

But really, the fascination is all in the machines.






honey, I'll be home soon...



We walk past countless displays. Ed pretends to be blasé about stuff. He parades in his denim shorts and ancient t-shirt, his face wearing an “I’ve seen it all before” look. But the sales reps know one of their own. He gets approached, cajoled, coaxed and I get the benevolent smile, like I’m some kind of tag-along.

The machines are of course impressive. But showing me their capabilities is like impressing a kid with Belgian chocolate when Skittles will do the trick as well. The thing mills metal. Wow. It does so with the precision to the millionth thousand or something. Wow. Etc.


We end the day at Frontera Grill (see post below) and drive out way beyond the airport to stay overnight at a roadside inn. Remember, we’re dealing with frugal guy who can’t understand why anyone would spend the money on a big city hotel. You could buy a whole new camera for a night’s lodging there – he tells me. I have no answer other than -- you can.

The next day we backtrack down to the Museum of Science of Industry. I used to live by the Museum. For six years it was within spittin’ distance of my front door and yet I rarely went there. You could say that I am more of a paintings than a diesel engines kind of person. Still, they are showing a film on the Tour de France… Besides, this trip is meant to put Ed at peace with urban life. Ed dislikes cities almost as much as I like them. Best to take him to places that have the Burlington Zephyr on display.





We take Lake Shore Drive back downtown. It is wet and navy gray outside. The acqua tone of Lake Michigan seems strangely out of place.





We can go malling now if you like. Ed tells me. I don’t hate machines. I do hate malls. Still, I aim to please. Besides, I need the perfect black shoe that will move seamlessly between work and dirt roads. Says something about the demands of my day.

If you buy your coffee here and also pick up three candy bars, we can save $10 at the mall parking lot.
The man is frugal to the core.

...not possible to pull out the old computer and the new camera late in the evening and to begin thinking about a post on machines. Much better to come back to this tomorrow, fresh and squeaky-not-tired.

For today, I'll put up a pic of just desserts. From an eatery in Chicago. A foodie-Chicagoan would recognize the whole mess of sweetness, I'm sure.

Until tomorrow then:





[P.S. Thank you, new camera for taking much of the noise out of dark evening shots.]

Three packages – one from Fed Ex, one from USPS and the third from UPS. Missed them all. Can pick up only one before the week-end. Which would you go after?

Oh, Fed Ex, of course. Fed Ex smacks of importance. USPS is probably the tote bag. UPS – the extra lens.

I get on a motorbike that weaves through traffic as if it wasn’t there (I'm not driving, thank God). I get to the Fed Ex holding warehouse before it closes and voila!





I am up and running. [If only I can figure out how to work the darn thing! Tomorrow I am off to the machinists’ convention in Chicago. I’ll mess with it there. In the meantime – a first attempt to press down and get a photo out of the pricey little piece of plastic.]

I rush home in the afternoon just to be there when the mail/fedex/ups vans come. Excuse me, let me interrupt this lovely lunch – I have an appointment this afternoon. Not yet? Not here? Sigh…

Ocean feels naked without the shield of a lens. So often a camera determines the story for the day. Oh, look at that, I have a picture from the day of a bird. Let me write about birds and me.

Recycled photos do not work. Here, what sense does this make?

I was sitting at an outdoor café in Madison and I noted that there weren’t many enjoying the warm summer evening in the same way. The street felt desolate because of the absence of aperitif/coffee drinkers. I shared the space with a bird and a bird at a café does not contribute much to a robust urban scene. By the way, this happened two weeks ago.




Yawn.

Today, I ran home after hours of teaching, exhausted. I filled myself with coffee so that I would not doze off and miss the fedex/mail/ups delivery. I missed the fedex delivery anyway.

I’m glad I am not a regular on-line shopper. I could not deal with this sort of nervous anticipation. Mine is a quiet life. Predictable. With minimal stress. And with photos. Camera, I need you.

So tell me, is it the end?
No, but we’ll need to do extensive surgery.
I don’t know if I can afford it! Should I just say my good-byes? How do I decide if the surgery is worth the cost?
We usually suggest that it is worth it if the cost of surgery is less than 60% of the actual value…
But how does one attach a price tag? I mean, there is immeasurable value…
It’s up to you… We have a graveyard if you decide to let go…
I think the surgery comes out to be 59% of my best estimate of the value! I don’t know what to do!
Take your time. There’s no need to decide right away.
Oh go ahead, do it!

[That’s the gist of my conversation today at the camera repair shop. The old camera will be fixed, even though the new baby is on the way.]

A friend sent me an article from the NYT about parrots today. I do not know why – it came with no text. And so I read it, to see what about parrots reminded him of me.

Perhaps he thought I should get one. No, no parrot for me. I travel too much. And their droppings are disgusting. I had parakeets once, to appease a universal longing children have for pets. Naturally, one died and had to be replaced. Years later the other one died and had to be replaced. I realized then that unless miraculously two died at the same moment I would be replacing parakeets for the rest of my life. Eventually one died and I told the other that she would just have to live out her final years solo.

I think she kind of enjoyed being on her own. She lived forever.

Maybe the article was sent to me as a question. The person interviewed in the article is a parrot fan but he admits to having once eaten a parrot. I did answer my friend and assured him that I had never eaten a parrot. Not even when visiting places where parrot consumption is the norm.

(But I do eat chicken so perhaps I should not brag about my parrot avoidance.)

In the article, it was mentioned that parrots are smart and loyal. Perhaps my friend was suggesting that I am both, but I do not think so. There are more efficient ways of telling someone they are smart or loyal or both.

I am hoping it is a hint at future travel. Perhaps he is suggesting that we should visit parrot-inhabited regions of the world. I’m happy to do that. Friend – if you are reading this, the answer is yes! Preferably this winter, as winters in Wisconsin are long and tedious and a parrot-break would be most welcome. And I mean some place further than the bird house in the zoo.

It is the first day of Law School today. I cannot post much, as I worked from before sunrise. I cannot include a photo from the day, as my new camera is, according to UPS, halfway between a warehouse and the loft and the old one, the one I dropped on the sidewalks of New Haven, is being inspected (I am paying $5 so that the repairperson can assess the shattered plates and pronounce the damage as complete). All you get, therefore, is this musing on what is it about me that prompted my friend to send me this link about parrots.

I can say this about Labor Day week-end in New Haven: it may require lifting, moving, dragging, dusting, arranging, unpacking. It may be taxing, strenuous, demanding.

But it is also delicious.

Looking back, I see heaping plates of spicy, satisfying foods from every corner of the globe. We have our favorites by now. Each evening, I lose myself in the heady foods and aromas of kitchens that mix spices and ingredients in beautiful ways:

Tuesday: Eritrean



Wednesday: Italian



Thursday: Thai



Friday: Malaysian



Saturday: Japanese



Sunday: Latin American



Monday: I go home, full of warm feelings and wonderful food.

Daughters are ensconced in their new living quarters. Time to head back to Wisconsin. It will be salads and scrambled eggs again. Though not for long – in a couple of weeks I get to test my soon-new camera in a distant venue. But for now – home.

Measuring life by notable dates. Do you remember where you were your last birthday? Do you remember where you were on your birthday of twenty-nine years ago? Do you remember where you were on this day twenty-nine years ago?

I do.

I was standing in a small university chapel on Chicago’s south side, thinking forever thoughts, looking around a space decorated with flowers. 'Regional, seasonal' were words of the future. Twenty-nine years ago I held lilies of the valley because they reminded me of spring in Poland and if memories count, then they would be counted as the 'something old.'

Do you remember what it is like to be barely twenty-four? To have faith in friendship and love, to look ahead to holding a newborn or two?

And then, to have before you a day when you have to sort through mountains of old scraps and papers and something falls on your lap and it’s better than memories of old women selling lilies of the valley on street corners in Warsaw?

I did.

Have you ever sat in a photo booth with someone you loved to death who laughed with you at the funny faces, the funny young faces in the smudged mirror just ahead? Would you classify a photo taken then as one to keep forever?



I did.

To you, ILYAFA, from me.

I asked a friend to look something up about replacement cameras on the Net tonight. It did not happen, but rather than finding out that it did not happen, I was told something else and before you know it, I was tangled in an untruth of ridiculous proportions.

People lie all the time, I know that. Mostly they lie to avoid the consequences of truthtelling. I do not intend to decipher the whys and whereofs of it all. I just want to note that, in terms of finding out information about replacement cameras, truth fares better than lies, not because with truth comes a better camera, but because we are, when speaking of cameras, wedged within the realm of the insignificant and if we cease speaking truthfully about the insignificant, then what hope is there ever for honest discourse?

I broke my camera yesterday. I was literally walking on the street, reaching into my purse for keys and I dislodged the camera strap. The precious little thing fell to the sidewalk with a loud crack.

Coincidentally, this afternoon I drove out with my daughter to get a new little TV. She had carried the old one everywhere with her and finally, when she brought it home after the toil of travel with it precariously balanced in her lap it quit working. It is cheaper to buy a replacement TV, I said to her, than to fix an old inexpensive one.

It is probably cheaper to replace a dropped camera than to fix it.

It is probably better not to say just anything for the sake of the pleasant ring behind good words because there are only so many fake good words that act to sooth the soul. After the initial sugar rush, fake good words just sound hollow.

As for the camera – if you hold it at a particular setting, you can still eek out a picture. I suppose you can post it and say – it’s the rain, that heavy awful rain that created the blurry lines. But after about a dozen photos, the reader may wonder if maybe it’s not the rain. Maybe it’s you, refusing to let go of a broken camera.



familiar colors of a parking lot, through a broken lens and a rain-splattered window

A busy day. Of course. Moving in can be as taxing as moving out.

I looked over the three or four photos that I took all day and I liked none of them and so even those cannot inspire me to write something sensible here. Okay, maybe one was worth reprinting on Ocean. I was walking across Old Campus – the place where most freshman live and I was thinking how young these kids look (I have a law student and a senior – both far removed from “the first year of college” category). And, how tense they appear!

I was mulling over what pressures they must feel and I wondered if I did anything to take a load off my own daughters when they first left home to study here. I probably did not do enough. Most likely I told them to eat well and not worry about much else. But I am sure they did worry, even as they ate well.

Then I saw this guy talking to a woman who may have been his daughter (or a well kempt mother of a freshman – you can’t tell with these groomed types) and I marveled how effective he was in conveying his message to her and to the world. (Of course, he appears not to be too great on the “eat well” front... his beverage of choice speaks mountains.)

So, to all who speed through each day and worry that they haven't done enough, here's my message, found on a random back of a guy on campus and reprinted here, on Ocean.