TRANSITIONAL WOES
January 15 2013
A couple of days ago I received an email from my good friend K, in response to the last post, wherein I moaned about our adventures with the French cell phone plans. He wrote, “I’m sure there was a bunch of other transitional woes….” K is a musician and writes like he composes, eerily on pitch and somehow between keys.
Transitional woes. Yes, in both senses: the woes that come from transitions and the woes that transition, themselves. So, yes, there’ve been a few of the former since we arrived: the toaster that takes 10 minutes to heat up and then, in one fiery second, devours the bread into the unreachable-without-electrocution depths of its slat-y coils. The firewood, which must first be season inside the fireplace before it will burn, the fire needing to be lit with store-bought, kiln-dried wood the cost of which makes one think of the phrase, “money to burns.” The narrow turn at the top of the lane between centuries-old stone buildings; the façade of one now wearing a layer of paint from the front right fender of our rented Citroën. The oven controls, the hieroglyphics of which were totally unfathomable to us until finally deciphered courtesy of Google.
All of the above being absurdly trivial hurdles compared to those which the truly suffering have to face everyday of their lives. Nonetheless, when you are of a certain age and alone with your spouse in a foreign land these ‘woes’ can give your sense of reality a good shake. In these moments, we are feeling our way around like sightless kittens and the realization that we are each other’s sole teat, can be very frightening for two independent adults like us.
But these woes come and go and are balanced by the daily shock of beauty that surrounds us. This morning we awoke to snow, the kind that obliterates distance and, as such, the future. What solace to be ensconced inside a moment of silent beauty; the pollarded plane tree embracing an inch of snow on every skyward-reaching limb; the cypress trees as still as eternity, their dark, densely-woven forms dusted with flakes.
After breakfast we walk to the Charcuterie; we have decided on lamb navarin for dinner and in stumbling French, ask the butcher which cut he recommends; the meat case of red loins and legs, livers and kidney, a stark contrast to the grey and white world outside.
Back home, while Joel catches prepares the navarin, I sit by the fire and watch the snow come and go, come and go and, finally, address a woe that has been a constant since we arrived: the steady drip of anxiety which, at first, I put down to jet-lag or exhaustion had not only not abated but seemed to be ratcheting up to the point where, and shame scalds me as I write this, I was on constant alert for danger: the car too close to a roadside ditch; the merging traffic at every roundabout; the image of myself falling down stairs. What the hell, I thought, am I always like this? Is this a transitional woe or a way of life? Haven’t I been over this, countless times? Does this shit ever stop? What else is there to learn?
Finally I talk with Joel about it and, as always, re-learn that sharing feelings is the first step to changing them. Of course I’ve been anxious. Why do I always forget that every time I manifest something positive in my life the old fear that it will be taken from me or that there will be some awful price to pay, arises immediately. Some things really are so ingrained that it takes a lifetime of work to smooth the rut. You can’t be told as a child, almost daily, that if you laugh too much before dinner you’ll be crying before bed and not internalize that as an unconscious belief that pleasure will always end in pain.
This time 24 years ago, I was spending my last evening as an active alcoholic, working like a mad scientist with bottles of booze in my kitchen. I was convinced that if I could just make the right concoction I would be able to drink “properly” for the rest of my life. I’m not sure at what point, after hours of drinking my experiments, divine intervention made me realize it was never going to work, nor where I found the courage to pour the remains of every bottle down the sink. But I did, and after spending the next day in bed with the shakes, managed to get myself to an AA meeting where I would learn over the next few years that some woes are only transitional if you surrender your will and accept that you are powerless.
So it goes with anxiety. It will, for those of us prone to it, arise time and again. The only way out of it is to accept it when it arises and speak it out loud, thereby banishing the need to indulge it.
The snow stopped this afternoon, making way for a pure blue sky. We walked to the top of the village and looked out to the crest of the Petit Luberon. There, nestled in its side, lay the lavender field with its seven cherry trees, still dusted with snow; a perfect gateau. We’ve picnicked there in the months of lavender and cherries and we’ve lain there on an autumn afternoon. Three days ago we walked its perimeter, the trees sturdy in their nakedness. In the neighboring field we noticed a swing had been hung from the branch of another cherry tree. How could one not sit on it, kicking off, legs pushing and pulling propelling oneself higher, watching it all come and go?