A city boy learnin’ the country life.
Today began like every other at Le Petit Chateau, the summer vacation home owned and operated by Mike Shiels, an old college buddy of my dad’s, and his family, at the round kitchen table eating fresh bread from Cladette’s around the corner with nutella and raspberry jam and an Italian coffee. Mike and Petra are already up and working by the time Georffrey, their 18-in-four-days son, and I meet up at the table for breakfast at 9.
After breakfast today, however, we had to put off the beginning of our workday to go bring the horses back, as they had escpaed sometime during the night. So we drove the car up a few hills until we found the two horses, one big and one small, and the donkey hanging out munching on the greenest of grass at the top of the hill. Geoffrey strapped a rein to the big one and held it out the window of the passenger side while I slowly drove back down to Le Petit Chateau. The other horse and the donkey follwed behind the car at a leisurely pace, stopping every few steps for another munch of roadside grass. Our morning procession looked pretty ridiculous, but there were only a few people around to see it, farmers mostly. This place is right at the foot of the French Pyrannes, a few kilometedrs from the Spanish border, as the bird flies.
Le Petit Chateau is under construction, its usual state in the spring before the summer season starts at the end of May. I arrived one week ago off the train to Lannemezan, the closest notable town 20 minutes away. In the last week I’ve learned a little bit about everything, I guess you could say. I spend most days working from the morning to evening with a break for lunch, learning construction from Mike, who learned the craft living in Germany (subsequently, most of the technical terminology I’m picking up is German), and Geoffrey, who’s been part of this spring routine since he was old enough to roll cigarretes for his dad, which was 11; putting up dry wall, sanding away old paint, cutting holes for wires and pipes with a diamond-blade cutter, removing and installing door frames, fitting insulatoin, etc.Yesterday Geoffrey and I spent 8 hours splitting wood and stacking it North Carolina style, I showed him, next to the frame the teepee in the backyard.
When I can I work on my school stuff, writing my paper about pilgrimage for Eric and juggling a few creative nonfiction pieces for Cynthia. Before dinner everyday, whe nthe work is finished, we sit on various surfaces in the Sol, the main room downstairs that functions as a 19th century cafe in the summer but is momentarily the headquarters for the construction process, or out on the new tiles of what will soon be the cafe’s veranda and enjoy a well-derseved drink. Sometimes it’s margaritas, the other day we killed three bottles of champagne, but mostly we drink imported German beer from the bottle. We smoke rolled cigarettes, another bit of knowledge I’ve gained here, and I listen to the group, which usually includes the roofers or the electrician or the jointer, etc., tell stories and jokes in French or German. I am content to just watch or let my eyes wander out of the windows up into the snow capped mountains over yonder.
Dinner is prepared by whoever has the motivation and energy and is usually laid out by 8:30 on the small circle table in the living room in front of the fire place. When I’m around the family sticks to English, for the most part. But when business matters are discussed or during arguments, it’s German or French. I’m learning a bit of both. My least favorite new word is ‘poncage’, which means ‘sanding’ in French.
After dinner we play cards or dice or get out the guitar or turn on the stereo and dance until bed time, around 11. Mike tells stories of my dad and uncles and of his various travels in Europe and elsewhere. Sometimes Geoffrey and I stay up later listening to the music of Francis Cabrel, my new favorite artist (listen to ‘La Corrida,’ the main riff will hit you like left hook), and drinking Tequila or beer and smoking spliffs with hash. Last night Geoffrey and I took the car (he doesn’t have his drivers license yet so I do most of the driving in the manual transmission 4x4, which is quite a joy on the winding mountain roads) up into the mountains to a spot on the ridge, literally the middle of nowhere. We dranks a couple beers and smoked cigarretes and screamed at the world as loud as we could and listened to The Beatles as loud as the car would go. For us, it was the middle of everywhere. On the way back down Boheamian Rhapsody came on the radio. It was perfect.
My hands are rougher everyday with cuts and scrapes and plaster stains. I’m a city boy at heart, but I think I’m doing well out here in the country. My hair is still growing and my beard is looking worse than ever (which also means it’s still growing). My clothes are dirty. My mind is clean.
Mike is surely my dad’s kindred spirit, and he enjoys talking with a North Carolinian, resurrecting the southern English he adopted during college. It’s nice for me too, to be stagnant for a little while and to be learning so much everyday.
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As far as the future is concerned, I’m pretty unsure, to say the least. My world got rearranged earlier this week when I learned I was accepted into the SIT Tibetan Studies program based in the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile community of Dharamsala in Northern India. It is quite an opportunity, but I am so settled on the idea of returning home for the fall - I have my classes all picked out and an apartment with my friends and rugby and glitter… I think I will try to defer the SIT program until the spring or fall of 2010. My heart is at Guilford, right now. Also, I’ve convinced Geoffrey to travel a bit with me and then come to the States to live for the summer and fall,which will be ‘fucking awesome’, his favorite new American phrase (his English is exceptional, so I’m teaching him all of the more important colloquial stuff and building his vocabulary to include words like ‘immaculate,’ which we used to describe our firewood stacks).
So that’s the life now. Sorry I haven’t updated for so long, it’s been pretty bust ‘round these parts. I hope whenever I get back and see all of you again, you’ll accept me back. I am certainly a different person than the one you knew a few months ago.
More soon.
Missing and loving YOU from the middle of everywhere, which is coincidentally right in the middle of nowhere.
MBG on the soft yellow sheets of his bed in his third floor bedroom in Le Petit Chateau down the road from a town called Esparragos near a bigger town called Lennemezan in the Midi-Pyrannes of southwest France in Europe in the world in the universe in digi-ink of the captial C in an important email I recently received.
PS. Do not fuck with Yaari. It is a headache.
