from Vacquieres, France: the equinox and the harvest

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.

from France: a croissant lasts only a minute

…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 bakery 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.

off to stomp and shoot

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!

cut and color

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.

watch it, or I may change my mind about foie gras

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.

where a brand new camera part falls in the lake and a daring rescue effort proves futile…

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.

ah, madison…(and beyond)

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

half empty, sometimes full

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'd rather be fishing... (not)

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.

paying up

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.

your lesser child

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.

more on cameras (and the way we live and function is this complicated world)

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…

cameras

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:

machines and skylines

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.

plateful

...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.]

yeah!

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.]

waiting

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.

tough choices

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.]

parrots

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.

from New Haven: globe trotting

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.

it was twenty-nine years ago today…

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.

from New Haven: shattered glass

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

from New Haven: eat well?

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.