Sunday Papers: Frederic Gros

"To arrive on foot at a place whose name one has dreamed all day, whose picture has lain for so long in the mind, casts a backward light over the road.  And what was accomplished in fatigue, sometimes boredom, in the face of that absolutely solid presence that justifies it all, is transformed into a series of necessary and joyous moments.  Walking makes time reversible."


On the turntable: "International Pop Underground"
On the nighttable:  Frederic Gros, "A Philosophy of Walking" 

Sunday Papers: Antoine de Saint Exupery

"What saves a man is to take a step.  Then another step.  It is always the same step, but you have to take it."


On the turntable:  "Nirvana Lounge 3"

Over and Back

 

I'm probably the only travel writer to spend two weeks in Provence and not dedicate a syllable to it.  I did write about the flights... 

Midwest summer clouds throw great shadows upon the plains.  Yet this is Siberia.  The plains are intercut by the amoebic grey blotches of cities.  I once flew a similar course in winter, from Seoul to London, over a Siberia that was colored an endless white, interrupted only by the massive black gashes of rivers.

As I am flying KLM, the announcements are in Japanese, English, and Dutch.  The latter sounds like a record played backwards.  I am wedged into my window seat, surrounded mainly by large Europeans.  They like to stand for long intervals, unlike the Japanese whose heads dangle like jewelry, bobbing with the fits of turbulence.  The Europeans like to watch you as you pass, making your way to the washrooms.  

Over Holland now, a veritable forest of wind turbines, both onshore and off.

Amsterdam Schiphol airport clean and tiny, smelling of the tulips for sale everywhere.

Flight south toward the Mediterranean, passing directly over the snow-tipped spikes of the Alps. Villages wallow in the green grassy spaces between.

A great circle over the sea, above the whitecaps of cruise liners and pleasure boats.  Then Nice. 



And on the return, all is cloud.  We arc close to the pole, but I never see it.  The only views to be had are out beyond the long grey horizon of the wing. The moon hangs full above, in a sky that never completely goes dark.     

As the smoke is birthed from the kiss of rubber and tarmac, it is a day later, and I am a year older.


On the turntable:  The Wolfgang Press,  "Queer"

Prelude

"In a surprisingly short time [...] Anne and Mary felt that they were there in Aix instead of perching, which is the usual state of wanderers in any country at all, even their own."

When I came across these words by M.F.K. Fisher, I'd already decided to start this blog, and I had even chosen the title.  There was of course an instant ironic connect with the word 'perch,' but even more so with the sentiment of being there, and in the coincidence of it happening too to me in Aix. I'd gone there on my second trip to Provence, and by the fourth day of that visit the French words learned over two years in university began to emerge from beneath the strata of my more lived-in Japanese.  Within another day or two, those French words linked hands as sentences.  

But the realization of being there is more intuitive than intellectual, and goes far beyond language.  It is when one can scan a landscape and know what lies within it, what trees, what hills, what villages.  It is when one sees a mere photo of a place, and can feel the temperature of the air, can smell what hangs upon it. The closest parallel is the intimacy one has with the body of a long-time lover.   

This happened before to me with New Mexico, albeit only at the end of my two years there.  But here in Provence, it happened much more quickly. In celebration of that, I decided to start this blog, to follow the journeys of body and mind in a country that is quickly becoming like a second home.   

I will pre-date this introductory post to where this journey began, to the day when I first sat myself on the edge of the veranda and heard for the first time the dry raspy voice of the mistral, and began to learn her secrets.


On the turntable:   Brand X, "Unorthodox Behaviour"