Et puis, en ville.

The weather, thus, has been messing with holiday mindsets. For those of us who aren’t accustomed to southern hemisphere Christmases, that is. It’s been nice to revisit all my favorite nooks and corners of the city, camera in hand. I was wandering around the Carmes neighborhood the other day. People were shopping at the market, taking a pause for café, and walking slow past window displays. I like searching for the details in residential passages between streets: And this: Which is fantastic.

After there’s rain, the walls kind of soak up the water and take on this drenched look. The above is a café that X and I like to go to. About a month ago, I met the members of the group Dark Dark Dark there. It was nuts–a cluster of Minneapolitans united in a European city. I remember seeing a guy playing his clarinet in the street. Curious… Then the Minnesota-slanted English as the others discussed ordering café crèmes. In any case, the café has good vibes and memories for me. Lastly, my appetite is alive and well. A little topsy-turvy at times due to all the grease and dense meals I’ve been consuming, but that’s what salads are for, right?

Bit random of a post, I realize. Mostly, I just wanted to share some new photos with y’all.

Oh what the heck–here’s one last photo (rather surreal) taken at night in the park:

I’m of that mindset, even though I’m from the land of ice and snow. These past few years, it seems to me that the cold cuts me deeper and deeper. I wear two or three pairs of wool socks, leg warmers, tights, pants, base layers, sweaters, scarves, mittens, jackets, hats. Still. I am an ice cube. Well, cold front aside–Dieppe and the north of France was lovely. We stayed with X’s grandmother, who cooked amazing things for us to eat (lots of butter, lots of cream). One memorable night we eat a stack of crepes with jam, lemons, sugar, and Nutella. They tasted incredible after venturing out to the end of the dock in the old fisherman’s port of the city. Jacques came with us to the beach. He was impressed with the snow that caked the rocks. Dieppe at night is a sea of sepia-toned lights underneath a castle. There’s a scenic overlook where you can catch whiffs of salt and sea (and snow). We stopped there for a minute to take in the view. Then ran off in search of warmth. Basically, we spent the week hopping from café to bar to café, then back to grandma’s kitchen. One afternoon, we drove to Rouen and wandered the streets, drinking hot chocolate and eating cake. (I’ve definitely put on some pounds after this week of Northern exposure, sheeesh!) But what are you supposed to do when it’s so cold outside? And tea salons are so good at making attractive window displays. Tarts and tea always sound heavenly. The above is a photo from Rouen.

The photo below as taken there as well, in a tiny courtyard. I thought of home (Minnesota) a lot this past week. Seeing the snowy landscapes, staying with grandma (okay, not my grandma, but a grandma, nonetheless), and hearing Christmas music in all the stores. Holidays are coming. I’ll be headed home in a short time. And I guess I’ll be capitulated back into the thick fog of What Comes Next. Fog as thick as that weird mist chocking the roads in northern France. Before headed back down south, we drove to Paris to spend a night, check out some photo exhibits, and enjoy the bustle of the Metro. We stayed in a tiny hotel near Notre Dame–a great location with lousy heat and a tight, winding staircase.

We arrived on Friday and spent the day lunching, wandering, and checking out the Larry Clark exhibit the Museum of Modern Art. Later that night, we met up with my friend Emily and caught some music. Too much wine for Kelli brought us back to the hotel by 1:30 am (still pretty late for me). Skies all cobalt and glassy from the weather, we collapsed and woke up to:

More Snow. It was incredible. The streets were full of slush and umbrellas. We dashed into a café for flakey croissants and coffee, then wandered the market stretch, lured by the smells of cheese, rotisserie chickens, and olives.

We caught one last exposition: Saul Leiter, then hopped back on the road to drive the 6 hours of road between Paris and Toulouse. It felt very long. Lulled by the radio: voices on France Inter for hours and hours, we basically unpacked and fell asleep. Wild Saturday nights.

It feels good to be back in Toulouse. No snow. Southern skies. And thoughts of Christmas.

Those are my thoughts at least.

I don’t know if those thoughts were expressed so eloquently last night when X and I sat down to dinner. It’s a subject that he’s passionate about. Direction. Ability. Volition. Purpose. (…) I wonder how much direction and purpose brought me to where I am right now. Last weekend, X and I went for a long walk around the city in search of burgers and des salons de thés. We stumbled into the place where we wrote our “Contract” last summer before I left. We sat outside at Le Miroir, post-lunch and wrote out the articles–an agreement that I would return and we would trade languages and cook delicious things together. We both signed the paper. Made a copy in English and a copy in French. The thing was though–the summer threw me for a loop. I lost all my verve and nerve and readiness to run back to Toulouse. I almost didn’t.

Buying my ticket back to this city felt more like a boiling point had been reached, rather than an arrow launched with certainty, stabbing a target. Meanwhile, when I’m not questioning free will, I’m still exploring Toulouse. A favorite place of mine is Terra Nova: a bookstore and café. I like to page through the BD’s and children’s books with a pot of tea. Jacques really enjoys accompanying me on my walks around town: I just hope he doesn’t jump out of my pocket like the plastic army dude before him did. But if he does decide to run away from me, I hope Jacques picks a beautiful place like the Jardin des Plantes to abandon ship. I went walking around this garden earlier in the week, listening to RadioLab. When I’m not wandering the city with my i-pod looking at window displays and trying to memorize neighborhoods, I’m in the kitchen. (So basically, nothing much has changed since my last post, haha!) While I’m not always cooking something necessarily, I’m always ready to snack. One of my more ambitious snacks was scrambled eggs with parsley. I found the recipe in Julia Child’s memoir. Fluffy eggs, mmm. And the secret is: take your time.

A hard lesson for someone who suffers from chronic nerves and impatience!The Blanquette de Veau that I made last weekend: that took a lot of patience, too. (Apologies to the sensitive vegetarians out there. I just think all food is so picture-worthy. Even raw meat.)

The Blanquette was gorgeous. A nice creamy white sauce. Thyme and salt-sprinkled morsels of carrots and leeks. It was extremely rich though… Portions were made small. And so I find myself at the three-week mark since my leave of Minnesota and my return to the city of pink bricks. Thoughts swirl around the ideas of chance and coincidence and control. Hands stir bowls of butter, cream, and sugar in the kitchen. Head struggles to ignore ticking clocks.

Right now I’m looking forward to: a Thanksgiving celebration (2 days late, okay, okay), a nice bottle of rouge tonight, and a trip up north next week…

“Come on up, I’m starving,” Jess says in the intercom.

She made an upside-down chocolate-ginger-pear cake. It was drop dead gorgeous (really, Jess, it was! I’ve been showing the pictures to friends like a proud mother or, rather–god mother?) As per usual, we each pull out our point-&-shoots and snap the cake’s portrait, then settle onto the couch with big wedges of the cake and cups of tea. Conversation turns to my friend’s upcoming Thanksgiving celebration. Visions of pumpkin pie and green bean casseroles settle into focus like polaroids in my head–I’m so happy that I’ll get to have a Thanksgiving this year despite my being in a foreign country. Before I left home, my mom threw a giant bird in the oven in case my November holiday never manifested itself in Toulouse. Here’s what she came up with a week before my departure: Man, I love Thanksgiving. We won’t be eating a whole bird like this one. It’s hard to buy entire turkeys in France unless it happens to be Christmas time. So, ever-resourceful, Jess bought all the pieces separately. We considered connecting them all once they are cooked to create some kind of spider-turkey with multiple drumsticks and breasts. I’ll be sure to bring my camera. After indulging our food fanaticism, my friend and I talked a bit about school in France. Academic programs in Toulouse. My intention this weekend is to make a CV (resume) that I can distribute around the city–slim chances that I might be able to find work.

I pour through different links at Toulouse’s university websites. It feels daunting. Like I’m showing up late to a party and I don’t know who to talk to or what to do first. Go hang out by the food? Hit the dance floor? Wander around with my hands in my pockets waiting for someone to snag my into conversation? The prospect of academia is interesting, but I feel unprepared and ill-at-ease.

I thought of school in Toulouse last night as I walked across the city to the Carmes neighborhood. I’m giving English lessons to a student belonging to my friend Sarah for two weeks while she is out of town. We met in a small wine bar and spoke for an hour over white wine and beer about strikes in France, the midterm elections in America, and our interests in general. It was nice to try a new bar, to trade cultural insights, and to wander this beautiful part of the city (see above photo). This morning I rolled out of bed, brewed a pot of coffee, slid on my leg-warmers and hit the streets in search of a chocolatine. Today, I will tackle the same swarms of question marks regarding Thanksgiving recipes, continued education, and careers in writing. But at least I’ll do so with a healthy amount of chocolate in my stomach.

I’m living close to St. Sernin, which is pictured above and below: As a Minnesotan highly attuned to winter weather, constantly bracing herself for bitter winds and snow in her boots, the south of France is a welcome change at this time of year. Although–my sister told me the other day that she’s been wearing capris and t-shirts lately, so maybe weather is balmy everywhere right now.  What have I been doing over the past week and a half? Damn: 12 days in Toulouse already. I make this revelation everyday and stop dead in my tracks: there’s not enough time. But then again, it’s all we have.

Man, I’ve been vacillating between Hold-Your-Loved-Ones-Close-For-The-End-Is-Near Thoughts and Life-Is-Too-Serious-To-Take-Seriously Thoughts. Overall, that has left me in a good place: usually across the table from X eating something we cooked together and drinking wine (that’s a constant, for sure). I’ve been trying to situate myself in this temporary sejour. Do I look for work, or do I just spend all my US dollars I earned over the summer serving coffee and writing freelance pieces? (I plan on making a CV that I’ll drop around town, and I’m giving a couple English lessons, so there’s a coin or two in my pocket.) The money question is a constant, of course. When I haven’t been pondering how to make a buck, or wondering if I could possibly stay longer than what I’ve anticipated, I am seeing old faces, grocery shopping, exploring different corners of the city, listening to X’s infinite music library, or writing at the library. I’m working on a project–sort of about Toulouse-Lautrec, you might say. I ordered his cookbook before I left (The Art of Cuisine), wherein there are more than 100 recipes that Lautrec used back in the day (the day being the late 1800′s, early 1900′s). I’m trying to replicate what he cooked for his friends, or at least find inspiration between the pages. I went to the library with X and together we paged through on of the French versions of Lautrec’s cook book. It was gorgeous: filled with woodcuts and paintings on a thicker, more textured paper than the English translation that I have. Amidst quintessential librarians going “Shhhht!” we ooo-ed and aww-ed at the different recipes: all rich and calling for mounds of butter. The one above, which isn’t very well-photographed, is a simple plate I made for lunch last week: sausages and apples. Basic, but delicious. While I could go on about the Toulouse-Lautrec Project, I feel I have to turn to this little guy first: the horse in the above photo is Jacques. Maybe you remember Turtle from last year? He was the last little plastic friend I had. Well, I don’t know where he got off to, sadly. So, voilà: a new buddy. Now when Jacques graces the pages of my blog, he can rest at ease that he’s been properly introduced. Today was a Monday. Another week begins. I played the housewife while X was at work: doing laundry, washing dishes, and generally reposing after a weekend spent “road-tripping” southwest to Pézanas, among other small towns. I saw the Mediterranean. I wondered about what a friend recently asked me on-line: Are you finding what you’re looking for?

Well, I found a map. And now I’m going to play cartographer for a while, that’s all.

I’m back in Toulouse, and it’s lovely (minus the persistent cold, that is). It’s familiar, yet still very new. This city: intriguing acquaintance that I’m continuing a conversation with, you might say. I missed these streets, these trees, these statues, the subtle shush and blur of activity. I arrived last Thursday after 16 hours of airports. The travel was long, but my head was buzzing with thoughts and music (new headphones that cushion my ears in beautiful music). The one bummer of the voyage was the fact that I was seated next to a rather obese man who had difficulty staying on “his side.” Around 3 or 4 in the morning, over the North Atlantic, I remember leaning into the window when he fell asleep, so as to make way for his involuntary slouch. I cupped my hands and looked outside.

Beyond the blinking lights of the plane’s wing, I could see the sharp pin-pricks of stars–so incredibly bright–totally filling the black space. It was incredible, and in a way, I think it’s these sort of moments that push me to imagine travel and foreign places as cinematic. Long poems. Something of this nature. Soon the sky began to fade into a pale blue and then this incredible thing: the sunrise. It was like spilled oil paints over a landscape of clouds. It’s funny to think that only people in airplanes were privy to this sunrise, so thick were the clouds under us. As usual, I look for symbolism (what does this mean?) and decide that there’s always something worth finding in the thick of grey matter.

I’m a little unsure about what I ought to divulge in this second chapter of this blog. I hate to be vague, but I also want to proceed with tact. My current circumstances are out of focus, I realize so I’ll just say this: I’m back in this place with a writing project about cooking, I’m working on improving my French, and I’m living with a man I met a month or so prior to my departure last June (who I playfully referred to friends back home as “my Frenchman”). Our time together has thus far consisted of poulet-chopping, tea-drinking (colds abound in all countries, it seems), and tireless conversations wherein I often find myself ending statements with a question mark because I’m unsure if the words I’m choosing are correct. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” & “Is that correct, what I just said?”  But so far, things have been going well. First forays into the kitchen, a trip to the market, the grocery store, café, and bar for un coup de vin. And I have a new traveling companion, as you can see in the above photo. I asked X to give my horse a name. So let me introduce you to Jacques. He’s replacing “Turtle,” my previous companion. (I don’t know where Turtle got off to, but he was pretty small, so maybe he fell out of one of the many holes in my pockets.)

Anyway, I leave you with the above image of Jacques eating some frites last Saturday. He was impressed with the flavor they had when dipped in the white wine sauce from salty mussels. He’d never tasted anything like it.

Because I’m going back to France. This time to live in Touluse for awhile. Crazy? Unforeseen? If you were inside my head since the last time I wrote, you’d have seen the jolts and question marks, and this next stint would make more sense. Let it just be said that I have given this a lot of thought. Too much, in fact.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a round-trip ticket to fly to Toulouse on Wednesday, November 3, then back to the states on December 20.

On n’a qu’une vie, n’est ce pas…?

Work ended uneventfully a few weeks ago, leaving me with nothing but time time time.

Which, I must admit, has been fantastic… Basically, I have this incredible gift: a blank agenda.

I listen to music, I get drunk off of music. Wander the streets and explore in my running shoes.

Over the course of this year, I’ve learned so much about myself–also how to live alone, get by in a foreign language, and bake things in an adorably small oven. Also, I would say, more than ever, that I have put my trust in people. All people. And it’s paid off; it really has.

Looking at people with a readiness to hear what they have to say. With no judgment. With patience. Being in the position of an outsider for these past months has definitely taught appreciation for/necessity for: tolerance. And the importance of lightness of being.

Also, living life as if it were Art. Well, it is art. We can choose to look at each day as if it was cinematic or an abstract photo montage or whatever we want. I realize that this entry is reading like a sappy palm-sized keepsake you’d find in a snooty boutique. BUT. It is really what I think.

You know what else I think?

I think I’m at the end of this blog. It’s been a year. A whole year. My time in France is dwindling. I never really blogged much about teaching or the trials of everyday life, though they were aplenty. I enjoyed using this blog as a place to be exciting, hopeful and happy. It wasn’t always that way, especially during the winter doldrums, but I think for the most part, this has a been a record of celebration and excitement. Yeah!

But I find myself running out of steam. I have a matter of weeks to remain, then it’s time to pack my gigantic suitcases, reduce my life to a few stacks of clothes, journals, and knick-knacks, then hop on a train to Paris; then hop on a plane to good ol’ Minneapolis. I miss home, but it’s peripheral. Life here is finally forcing itself upon me. I am not burdened by too many future thoughts. Trying to enjoy what is. Here and now. And who is. Here and now.

And so I’m thinking this blog-thing has tapered to its close.

I may add a little here & there, but only if I feel very motivated! My energy right now is going into profiting of every single last second!

Closing with an excerpt from a poem by Hollace M. Metzger:

See, it’s not the place

or the year,

one’s bravery or fear

to stay or to leave.

it’s simply the ability

to fill one’s own heart

with love,

a selfless longing

for anything.

i thought i could do it,

but only while being there,

and i have done it,

but while living here,

just quietly.

Then, later, I took Rae to the train station to catch the midnight train to Nice. We ate Bueno Bars. Then I watched her disappear on a moving train into a chilly night.

My mind is a blank now. Or rather, it is a vacant lot where new people and adventurous ideas come to mingle and suggest themselves to each other. I am no longer working at the lycée. And now that my guest has departed, I feel the craving for a purpose, a project. There are summer trips planned, but not yet a grand piece of work to tackle. I thought of this tonight on my walk back from the station. I love the abandoned feel. The grimy isolation.

Love this town. Its crossroads. Its secrets. Words are fewer and farther between these days. I am saturated with fantastic imagery.

Everywhere.