LIMBO LAND - 15 November 2011
15th November, 2011 LIMBO LAND
I look at a note I made in my journal: possibility is expansive and vast. I ask myself what on earth does that mean? Are they just 3 random words that popped up and sounded sort of "deep" when strung together? Or did I actually have something in mind, based in reality, something heretofore unexplored but possibly worthy of exploration?
I'm not feeling "expansive" at the moment. The "possibility" that we would both return to New York sick and that my brother, in England, would undergo major surgery today, never occurred to me when I was over there in Provence fantasizing about the future. The only "vast" resonating with meaning at the moment is what a vast distance, physically and emotionally, lies between that side of the Atlantic and this.
We were both sick the last week in Bonnieux and so decided to make the trip back easy on ourselves, booking a great room at the Pullman Hotel at Marseille Airport the night before so we would spare ourselves a 5 a.m., wake-up, the drive to the airport, the dropping off of the car, blah, blah. So we left mid-morning Friday deciding to make it one last day of adventure in the land we've eaten whole. A bit of online sleuthing by Mr. Joel unearthed a promising restaurant in Ventebren, the last old hill town we'd visit before leaving. We did our usual meander, back roads all the way, the Luberon slipping away and then gone, replaced with tough rock and less autumnal color, the foliage a palette of misty, faded greens.
And then the sudden wind up to Ventebren, the ridiculously narrow streets
and La Table tucked away in one of them, its summer terrace looking out to the Mediterranean. The small, 2 room restaurant was all we could have hoped for: the decor a comfortable and pretty blend of ancient and contemporary, the music-free ambience intimate and lively, the clientele hungry and happy, the staff so very kind, the food...note perfect.
We ambled throughout the village after dessert. The sun had come out. The air, still. Birds full-throated. Two young children at play. A luscious sex kitten of a young woman sitting outside her door, face-tilted to the sun.
The hotel, more of the same: peaceful, elegant. Luxurious bed. Gourmet breakfast. And we just kept moving slowly forward...check-in, security, the plane to Paris, security, Johnny Depp courtesy of Vanity Fair and then Air France at your service. Again, that French generosity and kindness, the food perhaps the best we've ever had while flying in a tin can over the vast expansive ocean. That this is a possibility should never be taken for granted.
And yes...in spite of being sick and exhausted, yes, it felt good to put the key in the door, to open and enter our newly, outrightly-owned apartment.
Then the slow methodical unpacking, there the dirty laundry, there the few small gifts for family, there the few small treasures of the earth, the rocks and stones chosen for talismanic possibility. 2 tiny mugs, whose combination of ceramic elegance and miniature sturdiness will continue to deliver hot, ginger-laced, cherry tea to our Luberon lips. The vastly longed for expansive bath, enough to make us weep that what had once been a possibility is now reality. That, and bed. Our bed. The one whose cells remember our bodies imprints, where we lay our heads now, in this Manhattan-land, the Hudson drawling its never-ending flow beneath yet another full moon, baguettes a thing of the past.
All the noses of baguettes we ate
The next 4 days will lay us low with blocked infected ears for Joel while I lumber slowly between kitchen and supermarket, closets and laundry. The possibility of seeing family and friends on hold until we're contagion-free. November hulking silently out the window, dressed in its expansive gloom.
My brother survives surgery, the distance between us vast and sad. Forever is not a possibility.