Two Fragments of France, Summer 2023

 

-The delight I take in closing the shutters at night, always spending a few moments out on the darkened patio, the light now shut in by ancient painted wood. So many stars here. Their number is rivaled by the blinking lights of planes, of satellites, always in a hurry. Why such a rush, when surrounded by such beauty?

 

-Even in France I long for France.  Barely engaged with the outside world, didn't even dine out once.  I wasn't really in the mood for moneyed chic Riviera France.  I wanted quieter meals in the villages and towns up in the country.  But I knew from the number of ambulating tourists that I'd had to dodge in the narrow lanes of Ramatuelle that it wasn't the right year for it. Instead I passed long mornings out on the terrace and read, until the heat bullied me indoors.  My reading led me to Paris, and its writers and painters of the 1920s.  And introduced me to the familial bohemian scene at the Vila America, an hour's drive from here in Antibes. 

 

On the turntable: Belle and Sebastian, "A Bit of Previous"

 

 

Driving through the Breadbasket

 

Past Nice, the road leads up a long broad valley, the flanking hillsides already taking in an Italian look.  Large villages defy graffiti at the edges of cliffs, staked into place by the tall church spires at their heart.  The road climbs and narrows, eventually becoming a thin ribbon carved into tall rock walls, their tops jutting out in a way that must threaten any high-clearance vehicle that attempts the journey.  Where the walls drop away small villages appear, with the obligatory auberges, their low squat forms weathered and atmospheric.   We fill our tank in one of these villages, a timely act as we very quickly begin to climb a steep set of switchbacks that wind and wind amongst themselves, the views of mountains west growing more and more spectacular with every curve.  The ski resort at the top, Isola, is quiet for the season but for a handful of people enjoying the summer cool.  Just above we meet a long stretch of flatland, at first right out of the American southwest, but then morphing into an almost Swiss landscape familiar from early 007 and other 1960s films, where flash cars operated by well dressed men zoom powerfully through the turns, usually pursued or in pursuit.  This is one of Europe’s highest roads, the 2350m Col de la Lombarde.  We cross into Italy, goats stacked up the hillside the only border guards.  Here and there are roofless stone ruins, the beauty of the landscape obviously no match for the cold winters and the loneliness.  While France too is heavily Catholic, here in Italy it is far more overt, as evidence by the frequent roadside shrines.  Some might even be for a long dead biker or bicyclist, for this route seems popular with those who prefer only sky above their helmet.  Then we zig and zag and zigzag down to meet the main road that is a quicker thoroughfare leading from Grenoble.    

Following the long broad avenue into Cuneo to the inevitable piazza.  While Lai Yong looks for the parking pay kiosk, I quickly grab my guidebook to see what might occupy us here.  Our restaurant of choice is closed, but there are many along the same narrow lane.  Bove's doesn't disappoint, both with the food, and the beautiful curved brick ceiling within. It's good to be back in Italy, with its lightness and joy that seems an antidote to the critical and intellectual heaviness that can all to often weigh down its neighbor to the west.  We grab our dessert a short walk away at Arione, whose rum-filled chocolates were an apparent favorite of Hemingway.  Munching happily, we look back through the long unbroken canyon of four-storied Baroque buildings, toward the rocky mounts of the French frontier through which we came.

Turin is compact enough that we can hit all the major sights in a single whirlwind afternoon. Thankfully things shutter late in summertime Europe.  Highlights aren't necessarily what we have in mind.  Rather, we meander around the grid of streets in order to get the vibe of this old historical university town.  I find the crowded wings and salons of the Royal Palace to be headache-inducing, a visual cacophony of shapes and colors and textures.  (In such places it's easy to see why Westerners were so taken with the emptiness of Japanese art and architecture, which provide space for the mind to rest.)  As usual with these cluttered European museums I find my eyes drawn to the outdoors.  As I gaze out over the Roman ruins in the courtyard below, a tram car glides rattling by.  There is more peace to be found in the adjacent Cattedrale di San Giovanni Battista, famed for the shroud.  (Though a visit the following morning to Santuario della Consolata will introduce me to what is now one of my favorite churches in Italy)  Lai Yong peels away to rest but I continue over to the Mole Antonelliana, which houses the National Museum of Cinema. I spiral up the walkways that lead to smaller chambers separated by theme, each highlighting in text and celluloid a different facet of the film-making process.  The upper levels are all Italian movie posters of international classics.  I am still moving quickly but feel I could spend a full afternoon in here.  Italy as a whole is cinematic in itself, and the streets down disappoint, particularly the Piazza Vittorio Veneto where the city residents are beginning to settle into their post-workday aperitivi.   I still face a short climb up Monte dei Cappuccini across the Po, for views of the mountains out toward Switzerland.  The light is poor in the low hanging sun, and wanting to share this with my wife, we return in the morning, thus rewarded with the photos I'd hoped for.  We take in even greater views from the heights of the Basilica di Superga, a name befitting a cathedral having all the subtlety of an Indian palace.  We stand before this monolith, trying to figure out which far off peak is the Matterhorn, which is Mont Blanc.  Then we turn, for Milan awaits.

Two days in the city teach me that I'm not terribly fond of it.  Too false, too pretentious.  I far prefer the subtlety of Turin. (Admittedly, driving into any unfamiliar Italian city rarely creates a good impression, the traffic bullying you forward through busy industrial suburbs.). We spend these couple of days visiting a dozen museums and galleries, and simply wandering streets both broad and narrow.  Aside from one incredible lunch at Bice, all meals seemed subpar somehow, satisfying but not as amazing as Italian meals inevitably tend to be.  We walked and walked, linking sights major and minor:  La Scala, the Galleria, The Last Supper, the comic strip panels of Chiesa di San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore, the Grand Hotel (where Verdi found eternal rest), the stunning Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio, the flippant L.O.V.E. sculpture, and of course, a clambor along the rooftops of the Duomo.  The highlight (and the lynchpin for the timing of our visit) was to see Elvis Costello play the Castello Sforzesco, who played a stripped down variations on his old hits, the full moon serving as central spotlight.

Ham and Cheese.  Bertolucci  and Pasolini.  That's what Parma promises me.  It is Bertolucci I see first, in the empty land loaction of his epic 1900, a landscape today filled with the ruined hulks of estates right out of that very film, as if Donald Sutherland's character had won.  Food rings supreme, with lunch at Trattoria al Tribanele, then dinner at Ristorante Gallo d'Oro, where my local charcuterie is accompanied by torta frittas, reminiscent of the sopaipillas familiar from home. The town is compact and easily walkable, but dawn is when it shines, as the fresh morning light lights up the siena-colored facades of the buildings at the center of town.  I sit post stroll in a caffe beside our digs at the Palazzo Dalla Rosa Prati,  just off the Piazza del Duomo, my cappucini accompanied by Stendhal's eponymous classic, and the sound of hymns echoes through the stunning architecture of the Battistero. 

Any visit to Bologna should start with a plate of the famous meat ragu, even if foodies tell you that it isn't actually authentic.  It is Sunday, and a concert is roaring in the Piazza Maggiore, bringing with it the crowds.  I sit out the afternoon heat on the terrace of my room at the Grand Hotel Majestic già Baglioni (hosting an Anna Magnani photo exhibit beside the Roman ruins in the basement), reading and listening to Italian covers of 1970s songs echoing from the piazza.  When the heat drops we stroll, a large loop to take in Le due Torri, its towers wonky and straight, the block-long hint of a canal, the remarkable vaults of the Basilica santuario Santo Stefano (refueling with gelato at Cremeria la Vecchia Stalla), all culminating in dinner on the alley sidewalk before the tidy little Vicolo Colombina.  Another stroll at dawn presents a city near free of people, but for a pair of crusty punks who look like they still haven't gotten home from the concert of the previous day.  We eavesdrop briefly on their conversation with a local street sweeper, then wander over to the porticos of the Biblioteca Comunale dell'Archiginnasio, where I try to sneak through an unlocked gate for a peek at the 16th century Teatro Anatomico operating theater, until a staff member busts me mere steps away.   

And the liminal places. Stately Castell'Arquato offering views almost Tuscan. The straight arrow road bisecting Reggio Emilia, mocked by the drunken lean of Basilica di San Prospero's tower.  A detour to Modena isn't to take in any of the speed factories of Ferrari, Lamborghini, or Maserati, but rather for slow food at the market, eaten in the shade of Palazzo Ducale, thrown diagonally across the Piazza Grande.  All that's missing is BGM by local boy, Pavarotti. Wine tasting, and buying, in the sleepy village of  Torrechiara,  The highlight meal of the trip, a simple black truffle pasta at Vecchio Borgo, down a side lane of Borgo Val di Taro, a village famed for its mushrooms.  Then winding the narrow mountain lanes toward the Liguria.

A well deserved rest at our friend' B&B, the New Arcobaleno Ossegna.  I pass the time reading, enjoying the quiet views.  Dinners taken on the terrace, wine ever present.  One afternoon I go down to Varese Ligure for lunch and coffee.  One morning I hike the hills that have been tempting me from my balcony.  It is a steady easy walk to a grassy summit of Monte Porcile, enjoying the views of Sestri Levante, Portofino (its tell-tale narrow bay crowded with cruise ships) and dozens of cookie-cutter mountain villages to the north. I cross the lovely tree-lined ridge to Monte Verruga, then face a four-limbed scramble to the rocky summit.  An iron cross marks the peak, from which dozens and dozens more villages appear, rolling away across each range.  Rather than a zigzag backtrack, I shoot straight down the hillside, with a couple of knuckle-biting moments as I pass a little too near an overly alert bull, then crash through the thickets, trying not to wake any dozy vipers.  

Thus refreshed, one more night in Alassio to break the journey home.  A couple of beach-front meals, a couple of Mediterranean dips, a night's rest at the "wrong" Grand Hotel.  Sun loungers march down the beach in even rows, while neat homes are stacked up the hills above.  One of which, at the town's southern end, teases me with what I imagine to be a sort of paradise.  What a wonderful perch for days, weeks, a season.  But instead, tomorrow's return to France, beckons...  

    

On the turntable:  The Andrews Sisters, "The Best of The Andrews Sisters"                      

 

The Super Parisian

 

 

The house on the land adjacent stood empty for a number of years, since about the time that the previous caretaker had been found hanging from the rafters there.  We sometimes used its driveway to access the trail that paralleled the stream running along the foot of my wife’s property.  During one such walk, we noted a bit of activity there, some basic clean-up, then nothing again for years.  Until the Parisian appeared.    

He came down three or four years ago.  His project had started off modestly at first, resuscitating the vines, midwifing a modest little vineyard whose wines had soon gone on to win awards.  Thus, like most city people living part time on the land, his designs quickly moved beyond squiring a simple country life in harmony with the land, toward schemes involving how to maximize his investment, how to manipulate and squeeze out profit from it.    

He’d already insulted Lai Yong by asking her to sell off some of her land, mentioning that as it wasn’t worth much, he wouldn’t pay much.  Where he saw wasteland and scrub, she saw a healthy natural environment.  Of course she refused.  But he since began actively felling trees along the other end of the vineyard.  The wood stood stacked out front, accompanied by a “For Sale” sign.  But the locals have their own wood.  So the stacked logs took on the form of a fence that lines the top of his property.  A tidy row now, quite attractive in fact, but it won’t be long before rot sets in, and parts begin to topple into the road.  But never mind that now, there’s land to be cleared.     
 

It here is where the Parisian and I intersect.  Through most of the Covid times, I’d remained in Kyoto, spending nearly every night there, bar a handful.  As the pandemic dragged on, I grew more and more fed up with being in the city, more and more fed up with its near constant noise.  Nights were generally quiet, but without fail, the newspaper delivery bike would wake me at 4:30.  Sometimes I’d drop back off, but most times not.  In the afternoons, someone in the neighborhood would begin banging on something, a rousing aural representation of the Japanese inability to sit still.  How I had looked forward to being where I am at this very moment, looking out over the peaceful mountains and the valleys, the hint of green through the trees that are the fruit of the wines to come.  Instead I get noise.      

The Polish workers start early in order to beat the heat.  The rumbling of machines rises with the sun, punctuated by the odd chainsaw, like a frenetic woodpecker working his way through the trees. There too is the occasional faint whiff of a worker's tobacco smoke on the mistral. The first week it had been the bulldozer planing the earth to plant new rows of vine trellises.  But the trees continued to fall elsewhere, followed by the arrival of larger machines to remove large rocks and debris, then the return of the bulldozer to follow with the tidying up.  And the grinding carries on, a hurried frenzy to finish by autumn, to get next year’s grapes into the ground before the frosts.
 
Their work has severed a section of borrowed scenery, a dirt appendage now standing where an unbroken flow of trees had once been.  Hopefully when the vines are eventually planted, the green will return, leaving us afloat on a sea of grapes.  It will be attractive and quiet then to be sure, but where will the Parisian’s ambition take him next?  Based on how the climate is going, drought seems inevitable at some point, and if his investment in the grapes fails for a year or two, will he pull up roots and abandon that to which he never grew connected, beyond its monetization?   

Then, I guess, the land left alone will make decisions all its own, as is its wont. And the locals will laugh at this silly city fou, and shake their heads and turn their backs to the plow, as they have always done here.     

 

Addendum, late August 2023:  Operations at the winery have been suspended due to the illegal felling of trees mentioned above.   To the locals, an even greater sin was the "debarking" of the world -renowned cork trees, from which can be developed the eponymous product. 

On the turntable:  Phish, Baker's Dozen"

C'est la Guerre

 

 

The fires beat their retreat just shy of the stone marker that stands at the edge of an expansive vineyard.  It honors the partisans who parachuted in on the night of July 14, 1944, to subsequently chase out the fascists who had invaded two years before. In a house on the hill above, a Browning rifle leans against the fireplace, a decorative item that Lai Yong found in a shop somewhere.  The gun scares me a little.  How many people had it killed, or was the person to whom it was issued himself killed?  

I watched many films during the pandemic, including a number of classics that dealt with the European theatre of WWII.  It was an educational exercise for me, wanting to learn more about the history of the continent, and film can often provide evocative waypoints to better, more detailed sources. I usually abhor violence, particularly the Hollywood variety, where behind high bodycounts is a person to be grieved for. This feeling became particularly acute while watching Stalingrad, in those dark months after the death of my own son.  

I am amazed that war has lasted as long as it has.  Man’s greatest advantage over his fellow animals is his intellect.  So war begins where intellect fails.  But diplomacy in general has been scarce of late, might has again become the order of the day.  Like most of us, I was shocked to see Russian tanks rolling into Ukraine, as land invasions feel oh so 20th century.  We all have a different take on these events, and while I do paint Putin as a villain, so too are the heads of state whose bullying and aggression propelled those tanks into motion.  And now many of those same “leaders” seem dead set on bullying China in a similar fashion.  How do they not see that war is a failure, that all military gains are temporary?  The world order today is nowhere the same as in 1918, 1945, 1991.  Politics change, borders shift, ideologies prove a mere product of their time. We should have evolved intellectually to a place beyond war, where we can sit together to find compromise and solution. Yet war continues to flare up time and time again.  It is the place where man devolves into animal, and the passions that serve as ignition are equally beast-like.  

My travels through a vast number of long-dead civilizations and empires along the Silk Road have proved to me that in the end, only the land is eternal, and the letters carved in stone to mark long forgotten heroes will themselves fade with the eternity of time.  

 

On the turntable: Dinah Washington, " In the Land of Hi-Fi" 

 

After the Fire, the Fire still Burns

 

 

The pandemic kept me away for three years.  Emotionally I’d held up well during the whole global implosion, but when I eventually did hit rock bottom, it was inextricably bound to this place.  The heavy rains that bombarded Kyoto during the summer of ’21 had already done a number on my spirits, as I felt imprisoned within my house, unwilling to distract myself in some risky indoor venue, and unable to spend time at the lake or in the mountains, places that my soul craves desperately.  But it was the fires here in France that summer that threatened to sink me through the floor.     

The flames started a few valleys to the north, but high winds had coaxed them down toward the sea.  Day after day I followed their progress online, feeling such hopeless as I watched this disaster play out in slow motion, from such a distance where I could do absolutely nothing.  Lai Yong too watched from England, fatalistically optimistic, but her voice betrayed anxiety, a tone I rarely hear from her.  

We had assumed the house lost.  But as is often the way with these things, the winds shifted suddenly, the flames reaching 100 meters from the front drive but mercifully no further.

The drive in last weekend betrayed little fire damage, as five seasons had coaxed out new vegetation.  Things were beginning to green, as the odometer had rolled over into September. But flashes of black seen from the car increased as we entered the long straight drive that led away from town.  The steep little bridge that Sora so loved to hop at high speed in the Jeep had been replaced, and the forest beyond was all thinned out.  It reminded me of the old Matthew Brady prints of the American Civil War, great debris-filled spaces bordered by the agonized twisting of charred trees. The hillsides too bore scars, but you had to know where to look for them.  

But the house and the land surrounding it looked as they always had.  It, and all it contained, had survived.  Yet it is the scars within, a week’s worth of memories growing less and less visceral, that lead me to finish this paragraph with the words, “survived yes, but for how long.” 

 

On the turntable: Bola Sete, "Tour de Force"

Gift from the Saharan South

The original idea had been to continue our Van Gogh pilgrimage that had started in Amsterdam last February.  Though it had started before that, with Vincent and Theo, Irving Stone and Lust for Life.  After Arles we'd loop through the Nimes of Truffaut and the Romans, then further west to Uzes and Durrell.  But the forecast showed temps over 40 degrees, every day.  So rather than the hot south, 
we'd climb into the hills a little north.   

...at Ventabren, the double-tiered bridge begs to be called Roman, but instead is as young as 1849.  Like paper dolls, hand-in-hand across the gorge.  Stones interlaid into arches, rough hewn to inadvertently create steps, as if predicting the sport of rock climbing to come a few decades later...

..the trio of windmills, at Ventabren, Saint Saturnin-les-Apt, and that of Daudet at Fontvielle...

...the parched earth somehow giving life.  Wheat fields stretch to farm house outside Éguilles, the lavender of Valensole (now fenced off the the selfie hordes),  and the ever present grapes.  A pair of vineyards built upon the soil of the Romans:  the old chapel tucked behind Chateau Bas in Vernègues, an apt setting for this repurposed temple that honored older Bacchanalian rites; and the old agricultural settlement near La Roquebrussanne, where the ancient blood in the soil feeds the grapes of the Domaine du Loou...

...Les Baux and bauxite, the latter carved into crumbling citadels with steps slick with the feet or invaders and tourists, and quarries on whose walls shine Van Gogh.  Arm of a trebuchet raised toward to hot sun. Catherine Wheel of roof lines when seen from above. Washi exhibited by an American woman from Arles. The nativity dolls in an old church converted to a gallery space, with marble floors and elaborately colored walls. The valley of Enfer stretches along the valley, complete now with new resorts with glistening pools.  Scrambling through low brush across private land to get to the old church, and its ancient Roman Trémaïé...

...the ancient Roman aqueduct outside Fontveille, a long straight dusty line of stone spilling down hill into vineyards below...

...Tarascon and the tarasconcon.  The town's idiot inhabitants, not quite plugged into the reality of common sense. (My greatest take away memory of the place, though Ford Madox Ford adored the place.)  Denied lunch, a quick hungry ascent of the old castle, spiraling up from tower to tower as if in a video game.  Gazing across the The Rhône at the parallel castle of Beaucaire, left for another time...

...quick peek at the old Frigolet monastery.  A very old tour group rests in the shade, probably post-lunch.  Interior of Gothic church almost velvet, with columns of purple and gold...

..Finding the Frédéric Mistral birth house closed, a modest boxy farm house in a garden of shade...

...Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole filled with Americans.  I get a few minutes along in Van Gogh's old room, spartan, nearly bare.  The cloister below quiet, but for the occasional ringing out of the nasal twang of middle American. Thumbing through catalogs later to match the paintings with the real locations... 

...scrambling around Glanum in the late afternoon, the heat still high.  Moving from the lower Roman to the upper Greek sections of town, lingering among the latter's temples to the gods.  Then a higher climb to the overlook, back to a more primitive time of the Celts...  

...refreshing dip in the pool of Hôtel Le Saint-Rémy, simply bobbing awhile after a full day visiting hot ruins.  (While we'd tried to escape the heat, the high for Europe was ten kilometers away, hitting 43 degrees C.)   Long dinner in the shade of plane trees, served by an Italian waiter (and all the female staff Asian for some reason).   Wandering the maze of little lanes at dawn, passing the birthplace of Nostradamus, and the Hotel de Sade.  A cluster of Muslim women in the main square...

...The chapel of Saint-Sixte, in Eygalières, subject of a hundred tourist posters...

...the stunning wall of the Orange amphitheatre.  Seeing a performance here is now on my To Do List.  Wandering the adjacent lanes on market day, looking for lunch, then finding it at a small and hot bistro just across from the old theatre...

...a pair of walks around the ruins at Vaison-la-Romaine, at sunset, and again early dawn.  The geometric perfection of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth de Vaison, and its stunning cloister.  A pair of beers in the shaded square below our room.  Late night dinner across the Roman bridge in the old town, at Bistro d'O, with its friendly chef and wrap around view, the patrons seemingly melting at their windowside tables.  Strolling the old town in the fading light of the day, topping out at the old ruined chateau, the lights filling the valley below...

...looping through the valleys of the Drôme, in search of old villages and Roman bridges.  Backtracking up and over the bald peak of Ventoux, passing the Tom Simpson Memorial, and its forest of water bottles left in tribute.  Winding through the forests of the southern face back to the Vaucluse... 

...rapid wandering of the lanes of Apt at midday, between ordering of lunch, and the usual lackadaisical arrival.  Pop into Cinema Le Cesar, built into an old church. The Cathédrale Sainte-Anne, clock tower, arched entryways to the old town.  Post lunch drive out to the 2000 year old Pont Julien, crossed by a bicyclist who comes out of nowhere.  Then circle toward home...
 

On the turntable:  Daniel Lanois, "Belladonna"

Beneath the Song of the Cicada...

On the turntable:  Bob Dylan, "The Freewheeelin' Bob Dylan"