Saturday, May 26, 2012

May 18, Villard-de-Lans.

My boys in the woods (we gathered pieces of bark, from spruce trees and elm trees, fallen, their texture like art, hollered at lucky cows, smelled the grass.)

Thursday, May 17, 2012

May 17, Saint-Ismier.


Today is a holiday in France (another one of those Christianity-based holiday religiously honored as a day off in the most non-religious country in the world) and we drove to the Vercors mountains and to the town of Villard-de-Lans, where I spent most my childhood summers.  It was the last stop for my brother Patrick, who died there another summer almost twenty years ago.
We hiked a short trail, had lunch at the café we always went to, walked the streets we always walked and where I remember a perfect childhood bliss, and everything looked exactly the same, the same shops, the same atmosphere, and not even a new building around to spoil the scenery, breathtaking, the town looks as pastoral and postcard-perfect as it did thirty years ago, and it was resplendent in the spring light.

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

It's Hollande.

May 6, Saint-Ismier.

Joy then, in spite of all the years gone by, in spite of time, and doubts.
Memories of so long ago, 1981 and the arrival of Mitterand, a breath of fresh air, and I was improbably young then, and we moved to Paris shortly after, out of the miasma of decrepit sun-seekers to the electric youth of Paris, in time with what felt like the much-needed renewal of the country, so long in the hands of the right, so stagnant and old, a breath of fresh air with the first Socialist president, thirty years later and in spite of all the disillusions and the distance, in spite of such a different world and such a different life, joy still, and pride in this country that is not quite my own anymore now, pride for electing a new Socialist president and choosing a new hope.
And I can almost taste that vibrancy again, the youth, the electric hope, on the eve of going back to the U.S. and starting life anew on my own.