ON BALANCE - 10 November 2011
10th November, 2011
I thought it was just a boring head cold, you know, sore throat and then days of tissues and no energy. And it was a week of rain, I mean almost non-stop, the sort of torrent you don't go out in because you'd be drenched in less than a minute. Forget an umbrella - the mistral makes it laughable. So I holed up for 5 days and edited from morning til night. Going back through the work from March until now. Some 150,000 words that wove through Cape Cod, New York, England, Provence, then again to New York, Cape Cod and New York again, Back to Provence, on to Tuscany back to New York and then our final trip here, to Provence.
Now it was time to separate Provence out, which came to just over 80,000 words. I needed to get it down to 20,000. What a great process. It's the winnowing, the reduction, the saying goodbye to some little darlings you want to show off. The first swipe is easy, at least for me, because by now, having gone throughout the whole thing twice two things make themselves clear: one is the inherent themes you find, some of them you didn't even know you had, most of them not planned, which to me means I let go and opened up to what Provence had to teach me. And then the second thing you find is a fair amount of crap. A chainsaw takes care of that. The axe kills the little darlings, the epee gets to the point and next will come the scalpel, the deep precision that the scalpel wields, necessary for the removal of tiny aberrations in order to lay bare the final copy, its beating heart vulnerable and glistening.
Over those 5 days I learned I also have another book in the wings. But more about that later. In the meantime I got it down to 21,000 words which is now the hands of my editor.
While I was thus occupied, my cold instead of editing itself was enlarging. Until it finally turned into a sinus infection which sang throughout my face in a high-pitched-off-key tune with every step I took. So off to the local doctor, an extremely smart, efficient practitioner who was most concerned about my flying in 3 days as, along with the infection I had water trapped behind my left eardrum. Such music. He stood back, examining me now from enough distance to read "me" and not just my ailment. He asked if I was allergic to anything. I told him I don't do well with steroid medications and of course Prednisone, along with a heavy duty antibiotic is what he needed to prescribe if I were to fly without bursting my eardrums over the Atlantic.
"What do you mean?" he asked, referring to my steroid difficulty. "I get a tad angry," I said. "Some Valium, perhaps?" He suggested. Lovely. He then examined Joel who now has a cold and prescribed something for him to take before boarding the plane to help with the congestion. Voila! 2 examinations. 46 Euro. Approximately $60. Without insurance. Why do we have it so wrong in America?
So, that was yesterday. Today I awoke pain-free for the first time in 10 days AND the sun came out!
We got our packing done early - we leave Bonnieux tomorrow morning - so we could go out for our last mosey, stopping first at Les Trois Sources to say goodbye to Paul and Caro. Paul, great spirit that he is, and knowing Joel was in search of fire for his Elements series, had stacked a huge bonfire and with a single match set it ablaze. In front of us the heat of the flames, behind us the heat of the sun. The air still, the ground succulent from the rains. A persimmon tree, bare now of its leaves, stood almost comically laden with its satin orange fruit, like a treasure tree in a child's book, the blue sky an immaculate backdrop. I picked 3 juicy ones which we will have for dessert with du frommage.
Then we drove over to Goult to see Patricia, our favorite goat-cheese lady. Her farm, out of a fairy tale. The stone farmhouse, chickens, 2 cats on a window sill, 2 dogs all whoof and wagging tails and a horse just hanging out, munching grass and coming over for a nuzzle once in a while. We stand outside the cheese shed and watch Patricia's herd of goats being led by a neighboring lad across a field down to a stand of poplars where they will graze on a different pasture as well as get some exercise.
Patricia Mercier has been doing this for 25 years, 13 hours a day, with 10 days off a year to visit her children in Paris where she originally hails from. Her cheeses are artisanal. In peak season she makes 200 a day, selling them each week at a couple of local farmer's markets and a few restaurants. It's been a bad week for cheese-making. This many days of rain, unusual here, have saturated the air with moisture, making these delicate cheese hard to set. We buy 2 lovely runny ones, to accompany the persimmons and wistfully take our leave.
When it comes to the land here, we feel we've really taken it in. But now, just as we are leaving we are being taken in by the people. We can imagine all the winter, fireside meals we would have...but then, it's good to leave hungry for more.
The sun is going down now. This late autumn day, which had managed a couple of hours of summer warmth is now turned toward the chill of a winter evening. The fields and vineyards sail by bathing us one more time with their last hurrah of color. The sky, not to be outdone, has abandoned its blue tease and gone to grays with hints of navy and lavender, the sun edging the clouds in silver and gold thread. Old houses, smoke curling from their chimneys, would be too quaint if they weren't the real thing. It's true that other realities exist here, too. Down the road 8 miles are the suburbs of Apt. Then again, once you've passed through them you are in the medieval town.
And that's how it goes here, the ancient and the modern, the suburbs and the country. But the balance seems all right. The Provencals' care too much about their hard won culture, they care too much about food and preservation, to let the scales tip in the wrong direction. You have to care this much to keep a good thing going, you have to love it and appreciate it enough to support each other in the endeavor to keep this way of life intact.
I don't see corporate greed steam-rolling these people any time soon. After all, all you have to do is invite the suit in, sit him or her down at table and serve some good country food and wine and watch it do its work.