The Black Diamond

I had been eyeing it for some time, nose pressed up against the glass like a child outside a pet shop. The price tag took my breath away…but so did the thought of having one of my own. One thing was for sure: I wasn’t going to wait for a man to buy me one, that could take years after all.

Surely, this little gem had already been waiting for me for at least that long, nestled under the ground, its value growing slowly but surely in the obscurity. I would just have to buy le diamant noir for myself.  La Truffe du Perigord; that coveted truffle from the Perigord region of France.

I beamed with pride as the cashier stopped to take a whiff before handing me my treasure and smiling, “Ça sent bon!”  The little clod of earth was the size of a button mushroom–they don’t come much smaller than that.  At 1,190 euros a kilo, my precious 20 gram tuber melanosporum came out to 23, 80.  And while a truffle may be referred to as a black diamond, diamonds are forever and truffles store up to a maximum of two weeks only. So don’t buy one until the time is right and you’re ready to cook. Tonight being New Year’s Eve, I’m ready, and yet…I won’t slice it up right away. I want to take advantage of its pungent aroma, as my friend Emmanuelle advised me to do.

Following her conseil, I’ll put six to twelve eggs and the truffle in a sealed box in my refrigerator. Tupperware, to ensure that truffle isn’t imbibed by every last food in my fridge! Within a couple days, my eggs will have been flavored by the magical mushroom, the latter still whole and intact, ready to use in another recipe. See you in a couple days with an update and a French recipe for Brioche aux oeufs brouillés à la truffe.  (Truffle scrambled egg-filled brioche).

p.s. A truffle may be worth its weight in gold, but call someone a truffe in France and it won’t be taken as a compliment!

Quelle truffe! What a dim-whit!

le diamant noir: the black diamond

Ça sent bon!: That smells good!

un conseil: a piece of advice

Aquarelle

Like an aquarelle

my life

runs away with itself,

tries to capture the light.

Kept from the edge

by the brush

of Your Hand,

blotted from ruin-

continue, Peintre.

 

une aquarelle: a watercolor painting

un peintre: a painter

The Haunted House

An ancient stone wall, a rusted iron gate, and acres of overgrown land surround the home which I’ve affectionately named Gaping Wound Manor. Located just a few blocks from where I live, I pass by each day in admiration of its intrigue, asking myself, Home to who? Or what? What is the story behind its bizarre façade? One’s imagination only knows. The building was supposedly squatté several years back.  Inhabited illegally, or at least unofficially.

I see a face created by the reflection on the 3rd-story window panes, just to the left of the “scar.” Down the left-most column of the window, the 3 squares of glass reveal an eye, half a nose, a mouth with fangs.

But everyone says it’s just my imagination…

Falling Leaves

l’Automne.  My favorite time of the year.  September finishes with the tang of an apple peel curling off a paring knife. October steals around the corner of the calendar year, trailing a scent of chimney smoke. The air fairly crackles with expectancy.  Is it only the cold, or also the deeper recognition that an end is coming, which makes everything so crisp and vibrant? From my balcon, I survey the treetops and watch their leaves turn at the edges– old photographs browning in the fingers of Time.

I’ve oftened wondered at the trees. Today their loveliness leaves me pensive until a question rises and throbs in my throat. I wonder whether I will be able to stand tall as these arbres through the seasons and storms to come. All the present realities at my fingertips, glowing vividly as summer, will fade one by one into sepia souvenirs of themselves, brown and curling at the edges.  When will I have to loosen my grasp so as to let them fly? How to surrender the very things I cannot cling to, when change claims them once again?  I realize à contrecoeur that my questions are  rhetorical, posed only to hover overhead, unanswered like some prayers. I think of my mother, watching her daughters  disperse to the winds. How like a woman, a tree.

I am not strong enough to face today what tomorrow will demand of me.  I can only watch the trees en silence, the way some watch the ocean’s tide moving in and out, searching to comprehend the embracing and relinquishing that is Life.  These strange creatures preach to me in their stance and sway, their silence.  I cast my questions out over the courtyard and let them fall. I pray for the  wisdom of trees, who stand tall when leafless, brave when bare.  I pray for their grace, to relinquish with arms outstretched, to trust the wind and when it comes, to let go.

———————————————————————————————

l’Automne: Autumn

balcon: balcony

les arbres: the trees

souvenirs : memories

à contrecoeur: grudgingly, reluctantly (literally to do something “against heart”)

en silence: in silence

—————————————————————————–

OCTOBER by Patrick Kavanagh (Ireland, 1904 -1967)

O leafy yellowness you create for me

A world that was and now is poised above time,

I do not need to puzzle out Eternity

As I walk this arboreal street on the edge of a town.

The breeze too, even the temperature

And pattern of movement is precisely the same

As broke my heart for youth passing. Now I am sure

Of something.  Something will be mine wherever I am.

I want to throw myself on the public street without caring

For anything but the prayering that the earth offers.

It is October all over my life and the light is staring

As it caught me once in a plantation  by the fox coverts.

A man is ploughing ground for winter wheat

And my nineteen years weigh heavily on my feet.

Magnifique

Meet your typical 21st Century Renaissance woman. Hannah, all of six years old and practically trilingual, speaks English, French, and some Arabic. During one of our tutoring sessions, Hannah was learning to read and spell English.  English monosyllables were getting frightfully dull. Isn’t everything when you’ve just put on a pink tutu?  Then, in a sudden flourish of inspiration, she shuffled through her alphabet flashcards with the practiced hands of a Vegas dealer…and dealt.

“LOOK!” she cried.  “I SPELLED MAGNIFIQUE!”

Hannah the "Manyfec"

 

Confessions of a Jet-Lagger

When it comes to life, I’ve always felt a little  late to the party, and not fashionably so.

After graduating high school, I dropped in and out of college. A lot.  There always seemed to be something better to do than what everyone else was doing. Between stints as student and salesclerk, I lived in England, travelled the British Isles, camped my way around the European continent, and worked as an au pair in Italy.

When I finally buckled down to finish my first degree, the result was…anti-climactic.  No cap and gown, no triumphal entry with “Pomp and Circumstance” playing, just the sighs of my parents’ relief.  My diploma arrived by post, and having majored in Nothing-In-Particular, I did what seemed natural. I flew to France by the seat of my pants.  Moving out from under my family’s roof and all the way to a French flat would be avant-garde instead of  ‘about time’, non?  Transplanted in non-native soil, surely I’d feel more like a fleur exotique and less of a late-bloomer.

It was a bumpy ride. Upon my arrival, the ensuing jet-lag hit just as hard–a 9-hour décalage horaire that didn’t right itself for weeks. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and appease my hunger pangs with Lindt chocolat. Worse, those late-blooming tendencies hung around far after the jet lag had subsided.

My first 3 months in Marseilles, my speech was limited to Bonjour, S’il vous plait, Oui, Non, Merci, and Au Revoir. Nevermind my prior French study. As soon as it was my cue to speak, all possible permutations of French crowded the walls of my brain like masses of people boarding the morning metro.  Inevitably, the 30-second window of time would close, my listener’s eyes would glaze over as I searched for words, I’d miss my connection.

What I dreaded most was that moment when a group discussion lulled long enough for all eyes to turn to me. Me, as in the only person who hadn’t yet offered up an opinion on the subject at hand.  (One must always have an opinion in France, and the French couldn’t care less what it is, as long as you have one.)  In all my life, I’ve never made such an effort to be invisible.  Mingling at a gathering, one can slither in and out of circle, dodge and even hide behind others. But it’s hard to hide at a dinner table, and that’s where the French prefer to do their talking. You can only drop your fork or excuse yourself to the restroom a couple of times.  After that, people start to get suspicious.

One day, a colleague of mine came alongside me and said, “Don’t worry, it’s just not time yet. The French is there, germinating inside your mind. It will come out when it is ready. One day, it will be time. And you’ll speak.”

Ah bon? It was so off-handed, so nonchalant, and yet so profound. No one had ever told me that. I felt absolved, of everything. Forgiven for being a lagger. Amazing, how a few reassuring words could liberate me from the perceived pressures of that infernal measuring stick looming in my imagination.

The language did come, and it is still coming, after 3 years in France. I’ve learned that the voyage through life and language is subject to false starts, turbulence, and interminable layovers.  I’ll never forget the night I emerged from the Cinéma du Prado after my first full year on French soil. It was the first time I had understood the entire French film I had paid to see, without subtitles.  Fast forward two years: I’m checking out French books from the local library. I’m reading short romans on the subway. And rarely do I miss my connection.

Fellow jet-laggers on the Boeing 767 of Life, I salute you. Let’s toast to fewer white knuckles, and more pink champagne.

—————————————————————————-

une fleur exotique: an exotic flower

le décalage horaire: time difference, or the resulting jet-lag

le métro: short for le métropolitain or French subway system

ah bon?: oh really?

un roman: a novel

La Bonne Vivante

I will die in Paris with a heavy rain…

from laughter, old age, or a lovesick heart,

Certainly not from too much champagne

or another framboise tart!

Girl, la vie is for living

and won’t be forgiving

if you don’t gather roses while you have the chance,

Eat, drink and be merry; if Europe’s an oyster,

the pearl has gotta be France!

Hell, I’m footing the bill…

Fine. You won’t? Then I will.

“Pardonnez-moi, monsieur

I’ll have the merlot.

My friend doesn’t speak un mot de français,

but she desperately needs that chocolate gateau.”

--Katelyn Aronson

The Lovely Leah, a true gourmande and the only girl I know who orders red wine at high noon.

The Mistral, the Motorcycle, and Marilyn Monroe

I awoke this late-July morning to a cloudless sky, the awnings on my balcony battering to the gusts of a surprisingly cool wind. I recognized the signs of the mistral: force and froid.

In the summer, the mistral wind comes as a reprieve from sweltering days–a break in the heatwave that lingers through July and August in Provence. Here, the vineyards and olive groves are sun-drenched to perfection. The rest of us are sweat-drenched, due to a general lack of climatisation.  Perhaps this is why I welcomed the erratic thrashing of my curtains this morning, instead of cursing it, as is my habit with the wind. I have my reasons for the latter.

In the winter, when the mistral barrels up the long streets of Marseilles, I tremble like a bowling pin waiting to be pummeled by the brute force of nature. Wind in the South of France behaves nothing like it did back in California.  Le mistral has a mind of its own, and its mind is evil.  I remember the first time I watched it blow a motorcycle over. That’s what I said, a motorcycle. Luckily, the bike was riderless, but since that time I’ve been anticipating the worst: a child, swept off the street and flung into the Mediterranean before my very eyes. It hasn’t happened, so far.

Other naughty habits of the Marseillais wind I have come to loathe include stealing. There was the brand new pair of fleece pajama bottoms, a Christmas gift swiped right off my laundry line one January day. I checked every rooftop within view of my fourth-floor apartment but never found them. Little did I know that was a mere foreshadowing of what le mistral had in store for me.

I decided to take a walk one late afternoon last summer, happy to be wearing my latest acquisition from the bi-annual sales that whip an entire nation of French shoppers into a frenzy.  It was a robe en foulards, a dress made of two long satin scarves sewn together. Between their colorful pattern and light weight, they might have been two butterfly’s wings hovering around me, held down by the ribbon at my waist. I walked down Rue Léon Bourgeois, feeling unabashedly pretty, a spring in my step and summer in my heart.

Le mistral slunk around the corner.  Maliciously, it pirouetted into a miniature tornado and surrounded me, encircling my legs most inappropriately. My skirt inflated. It started to rise. I panicked. The dress was long, but aerodynamic, and I tried everything to hold it down: right hand in back, left in front, turn around…  Having performed this hokey-pokey to no avail,  I turned to face a nearby wall, to hide at least the front of my body from what was about to happen.  My parachute of a dress floated over my head, exposing me from the belly-button down.  A pair of black, not-so-sensible panties were my last line of defense against a world where even the wind itself had gone berserk. It was all I could do to pretend to be  “engrossed” in the advertisement I found plastered against the side of the building.  I willed myself to melt through that wall.  My cheeks burned. All four of them.

A few eternal seconds later, the wind let up and my robe let down. Maybe no one had seen me.  I turned around hesitantly to find two men and a woman who had been passing through the narrow street “just in time” for the unveiling.  I couldn’t meet their gaze; I wouldn’t meet their gaze. They had seen everything.  They were the uninvited witnesses of my non-consensual romp with the wind.

Pride goeth before a gust.

la force: strength

le froid: cold

la climatisation: air conditioning

la robe: dress

le foulard: scarf

The No Swimming Sign

Startling evidence that dogs cannot read…

Doggie Dip

…or at least that they cannot read French.

The Prisoner of Alcazar

The Alcazar municipal library, Cours Belsunce, downtown Marseilles. After nearly 3 years living as an upright resident of France, I was finally admitted there last week. I even have the inmate’s identity card to prove it. The one that reminds me I will be paying all fines for overdue books, and don’t forget that facilities aren’t open mornings, evenings, weekends, Mondays, or holidays. Bien sur.

Have the French authorities been notified by the Orange County Public Library system of my former life? How else would they have known to be on their guard for the notoriously and perpetually overdue book-borrower Miss Katelyn J. Aronson?

I plead guilty. When one is a first-born, Christian-raised, ex-salutatorian, private school alumnus, perhaps there is a certain perverse glee in-at last!- coloring outside the lines. The French would call it my péché mignon, but unlike other petty crimes, book-harboring is always caught and punished in the end.

And I was. Last Thursday, lured in by the ornate façade that used to welcome visitors into a famous music hall, I found the ancient lieu utterly transformed. Reinaugurated as a library in 2004, today it evokes more of a futuristic, high-tech penal institution…or perhaps a sober, modern-day tribute to Versailles palace’s Hall of Mirrors, with all that plexiglass and reflective surfacing. I boarded a see-through elevator and ascended 4 flights so fast I think my stomach was still on the ground floor, wondering where I’d gone.  Guards patrolled every level, on constant “cell-phone alert”. Excusez-moi, madame, was that your phone we heard ringing, in breach of our stringent code of silence? Dehors!

It has been one week and truth be told, I am one satisfied patron prisoner of Alcazar. Enraptured to find that I can finally read and understand books in French. Delighted to flee the city streets for a luminous, book-laden sanctuary. Tickled that I can waste an afternoon away, researching everything from why the mistral blows to how to choose olive oil to how to train my dog for truffle-hunting ( if I had a dog). May my overdue book fines subsidize the great glass elevators, and may my jail term be renewed year after year!

Bibliothèque de Marseille à Vocation Régionale

bien sur: of course

lieu: place

péché mignon: expression meaning a “cute,” or “innocent” sin

dehors!: get out!