En route

I'm taking this opportunity, in a dingy little internet cafe in Perpignan, France - a strange little village most definitely NOT originally on my itinery to Barcelona - to publicly thank loud Americans who complain about everything for making me feel so much less annoyed about French strikes cancelling my connecting train, screwing up my travel plans and postponing my arrival in Spain by three hours, if only to spite said loud Americans who complain about everything.

Thank you. By trying to tune you out, I've gotten to pay a lot more attention to the hauntingly beautiful French countryside and, in trying to escape you, I've learned that the closer you are to Spain, the better the bananas are, even at tiny little hole-in-the-wall bodegas. So it turns out it's actually not that bad.

Thankfully (and a bit self-righteously) yours,

Holly

Indulgence

My father travels a lot on business. As a result, my house (and my closet) has accumulated its fair share of international trinkets: wooden clogs from Holland, soccer jerseys from Poland, maracas from Peru (I think it was Peru), and a whole lot of chocolate. Of my favorite such gifts are two globe shaped candle holders from some country that I now forget. They are small, about the size of a grapefruit, slightly translucent, and hand-painted in some mysterious - assuredly brilliant and simple - way such that the flickering of a candle flame causes the painted scenes to dance across the glass surface. The tiny buildings take on an extra dimension, a sort of hazy after-glow that makes it seem like you could reach out and touch the thumb-nail sized roofs. Windows glow in what seems to be the light of cozy fireplaces and stars shimmer in the blue-black night sky. They are at once comforting and fascinating. And they have nothing to do with what I'm about to talk about. I do promise to return to the candle holders. Just indulge me for the next paragraph and a half.

Today, whilst waiting to enter my scenography (look it up) class, I was scanning a bulletin board filled with posters and event listings and bemoaning my general lack of culture. I have attended one play since coming to Bordeaux and I would love to have those three hours of my life back. (It was Really Bad). I entered the classroom feeling uninteresting and uninterested. Three hours later, I walked out and noticed a new poster. "Les Bonnes" de Jean Genet. Opening tonight, playing for the next couple of days. Now here was an idea I could get behind. I impulsively reserved a ticket for tonight and spent the rest of the day reminiscing about the production of The Maids I was in last spring and anticipating a night of pretty incredible French theater. After letting the cast and crew of last year's The Maids know where I was headed, I jotted down directions and hopped on my bike. It's a pretty perfect night for a bike ride. Crisp, but not to cold, and the moon, waxing full, provides quite the nightlight. And then I got lost. Like really lost. Like call Kate with one hand while braking with the other while looking at the useless directions with the other while not having enough hands lost. The soft light of the moon became the harsh lights of high-beams and florescent gas-station signs. The wind-swept blush in my cheeks became a sweaty, stressed-out flush. As I circled around parts of Bordeaux I'd never before seen, I watched the time. 8:17. 8:24. 8:31. Missed it.

Ultimately, and dejectedly, I made my way back to charted territory (after asking for directions from a lovely man who made me feel slightly less stupid and made sure the lights on my bike were functioning). I was angry at myself. Angry for forgetting my map, for not writing better directions, for not leaving enough time, for blowing my own moment of spontaneity. Yes, so I'll go tomorrow instead, but by tomorrow it won't be spur of the moment! It's like leftovers. Who wants to see left-over Jean Genet! For those well acquainted with me, you know how good I am at finding all the reasons why I should be unhappy in a given moment, especially if something has gone wrong. I was in mid-self-chastisement when I looked up and noticed l'Eglise Saint-Pierre and the Cathédrale Saint-André, softly lit and looming into the night sky, and exuding that same soft, tactile after-glow as the tiny paintings on the candle-holders on our mantel. I slowed down, looked closer, and experienced a little bit of an inward struggle. Self-indulgent bad mood versus really pretty churches that remind me of home on a lovely fall evening. "Fine", I said, aloud and begrudgingly, "I'll stop now". And so I did. I stopped berating myself for getting lost. I stopped worrying about the potential consequences if the strikes in France continue. I stopped feeling bad for not finishing a book I'd planned to finish this weekend. And, in a symbolic gesture, I stopped holding on to the handlebars. Almost fell off. Held back on.

Baby steps.

At the risk of sounding obvious, indulging in flickering candles, shimmering sky-lines, and a autumnal breeze is much more interesting and a lot more fun than indulging in self-pity and self-critique. There is a time and a place for constructive criticism and it is not all the time nor is it in every place. I need to give me a little break. Thus is my resolution to myself:

Pretty things are pretty and I'm gonna look at 'em. Especially when they make me change my mind.

Chocolate and Arachnophobia

This past weekend, I treated myself to an all-day wine tour. I'm in Bordeaux and thus, this was necessary. The weather was perfect; sunny and crisp, tasting of ripe leaves and earth. The tour was small and personal. I found myself cruising through the Bordeaux vineyards with a couple from Australia, a couple from Florida, and a couple from Colby College - one of whom is on the same study abroad program in Paris as a girl I know at Williams - because the world of private, New England colleges isn't small enough already. Over the course of eight hours, we tasted over twenty different bottles of wine in three different tastings, watched short films about wine making with laughably melodramatic voice-overs, ate Sauvignon Franc grapes right off the wine, and listened to an embarrassingly American woman from California talk about "her" grapes as the silent, sturdy Frenchman behind her swiftly and dexterously proved that they were much more his. In between tastings and visits, we stopped in the bucolic and postcard-ready town of St. Emillion for lunch. The couples dispersed and I ambled leisurely along cobbled paths, reminiscent of both San Francisco and Piza, searching for the perfect spot to indulge in a private, three-course meal. I ended up in a surprisingly sprawling cave of a restaurant, with sloping, irregular walls and dim lighting. It was, suitably enough, exactly like a wine cellar. Over the next hour and a half, I never once had to reach into my bag for my book, the just-in-case-I-can't-handle-the-alone-thing backup. I just didn't need it. I was perfectly happy to sit and enjoy myself by myself.

I have felt similar rushes of gratitude in solitude over the past couple of days. Riding my bike home from the university in the setting sun, running along the quays with the wind whipping at my back, cooking dinner to the sounds of Miles Davies streaming from my computer. Recently, I have caught myself indulging in the occasional piece (well, bar) of dark chocolate after dinner. Not only am I getting this whole being alone thing down, I'm also turning into an adult! (My reason being that only adults eat dark chocolate). Needless to say, I've been feeling pretty smug, secure, and grown-up lately. That was, until I walked into my room the other night and found this



His name is Woolf Spider and he is terrifying. He also has nothing to do with my happy little adult dream world. In fact, he makes me want to renounce everything having to do with adulthood and independence. After a panicked few minutes, during which I'd exhausted all of the options involving me not having to do anything - make my mom/dad do it (wrong country), make my boyfriend do it (wrong country AND hates spiders more than I do - sorry, Ev, but it's true), make my neighbors do it (I don't have neighbors that I'm aware of) - I decided to heed the advice of a friend who'd responded to my urgent Facebook message. In the ensuing battle, I squealed a lot, lost the stupid spider, tore my room apart, found him again, and considered moving to Finland where it's too cold for Woolf Spiders. I finally managed to trap him between a folder and a plastic cup, which was barely able to hold him and was also unfortunately transparent. I then threw the whole cup out the window, feeling only a mild pang of remorse for my litter but mostly glad I hadn't given the thing the chance to crawl out of the cup and seek his revenge. It's been two days and still, I find myself scouring the room every couple of hours, certain that his progeny will be back in an organized coup for vengeance.

All of which is my way of saying that dark chocolate, solitary meals, and wine tastings are all well and good, but I still really don't like hairy, crawly, leggy things in my living space and I am perfectly okay with that. And sometimes a bar of Hershey's chocolate is delicious.

Black cats, spilled salt, broken mirrors and other stories

They say bad things happen in threes. For a long time, I didn't believe it. Bad things happen in other numbers, too. Ten, for instance. There were ten plagues. Two is also an option. There were two world wars, no matter how many times sci-fi writers latch onto the intriguing, proverbial prospect of a third. Bad things can happen in ones, too. Mononucleosis. You can only have mono once. (In other news, I just figured out why "mono" is such an appropriate prefix). Lately, however, I have become somewhat of a believer. When I arrived in Paris this weekend, I was at number two. Number one was the week long shenanigans surrounding my apartment disaster. Number two was getting my credit card information stolen. I'm not sure how it happened, but someone managed to spend $1500 of my money on airline and train tickets to, from and potentially around Peru. Whilst in Paris, wandering around the Cimitière de Montparnasse (where you can find Jean-Paul Sartre, Marguerite Dumas, Eugène Ionesco, and Ricardo who I thought was a very loved cat but turned out to be a person who just really loved cats, as made evident by the very large, very porcelain, and very colorful cat that marked his grave), I mentioned to Yanie and Michaela that I hoped having two buses drive straight past me without stopping on Friday morning might have constituted number three. Yanie reckoned no. She was right.

While exiting the metro on Friday night, lighthearted for being in the presence of women I love and excited for the bar we were heading to in the Marais, I skipped happily into the waiting arms of a Gendarme (I recognize that this is an incorrect use of the term, but I'm appropriating it here for dramatic effect), all uniform and stern face. He would like to know if I could please show him my validated ticket. I could not, thank you very much, because I had thrown it away, I'm so sorry, Monsieur. This was a lie. In fact, I had not bought one. This is besides the point. This particular bout of being-in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time cost me 40 euros and my good mood.

However, as I stalked angrily up the stairs of the metro station, I found myself unable to wallow in my misfortune. In fact, as we walked along in the crisp (read: a little too cold) Parisian air, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. I was done. My bad things had come in threes and I was finished. I considered buying a lottery ticket. But then, as I sat in the Quatre Etages (thanks to Margot for the find) with my girl friends and my snifter (I've always wanted to use that word) of delicious, if over-priced, Amaretto, I realized that I have all the luck I'll ever need.

Of course, I now find myself compelled to knock on wood for writing an entire blog post tempting fate. There. I just did. Superstitions exist for a reason and I've decided it's time to take advantage of the opportunity to relinquish a little control to fate or luck or karma or this counter top which I've just realized is not wood at all but vinyl. In the meantime, I'm going to go find something wooden.