Guggenheim Bilbao

Guggenheim Bilbao

June 28, 2012

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is like an enormous golden flower blooming by the side of a bridge upon a river.  I suppose it would have been a great idea in Norway or Sweden, where the light is muted, where the reflection off of Frank Gehry’s metallic surfaces would have shone on to the surroundings, bringing sunlight into a somber, subdued, darkening winter afternoon.   But the Guggenheim is in Bilbao, where the light is a flat white, where there are hardly any shadows, where trees do not line the riverbank, where what one longs for is not glitering golden metallic surfaces reflecting the heat from the pavement and radiating it back on to unsuspecting passersby already wilting under the sun.   I don’t know why Gehry chose to build such a monstrosity here of all places. 

Why did he choose this particular style of building in a place like Los Angeles (for its Symphony Hall) or for Bilbao, where heat and light are scarcely in demand, where what one longs for is shade and muted colors?  Where the sun already blinds you so that you don’t need an over-large, shiny, metallic object towering over you and zapping you with concentrated heat rays?

Modern Bilbao to me looked like a city made by a child out of blocks of Lego.  In fact, now that the city is striving to meet Gehry half way, decorating the bridge next to the museum with a bright red screen that looks exactly like a large Logo block, the place looks more like Disneyland than a real city.  Perhaps they did get that bright red object out of Legoland, in Germany.  Everything in Bilbao is metallic, even the benches at the bust stop, where I nearly got second degree burns on my bottom by sitting down in my sundress.  The temperature outside was 40 degrees centigrade even though it was only June. 

Everything looked washed out, preposterously artificial and unnatural.  And to top this illusion of technology and space age, there stood in front of the Guggenheim museum a sculpture of a puppy dog so garish and large, it made Gehry’s building look diminutive, if such a thing were even possible.  Why a puppy dog?  Why in front of the museum?  Was the idea to make the preposterously large building appear small?  Was the aim to humanize it in some way?  I really have no idea, not having read anything about it since it was first built. 

The fact that the dog was made of real plants growing real flowers in yellow and white and red did not make it any less unnatural.  I am not sure who was trying to play a joke on whom.  Did someone deliberately try to give the finger to Gehry by allowing this hideous creature to tower over his masterpiece?  Or did the city of Bilbao just throw its hands up in the air and say, “We want to be famous, at any cost, even if it is just for our grotesque public monuments.”

Looking at the museum and the dog, I couldn’t help thinking of San Francisco, in gratitude.  Our symphony hall and our library are, in comparison, modest and tasteful.  Even the De Young Museum, which almost no one I know likes because of its upside down shape and because it looks like a building still under construction, is not as overpowering as Guggenheim Bilbao.  Its steel mesh construction blends into the trees of Golden Gate Park. 

For me the effect of Bilbao was silly, gaudy, irreverent, and ultimately, unaesthetic. 

Much of modern art is like that, I suppose.  I struggle to understand it, and then give up.  If it doesn’t appeal to me immediately, I wonder why I should bother with it. 

Inside was an exhibit by a painter named David Hockney.  I knew nothing about him.  In the first gallery were his outlandishly large paintings of Yosemite valley made on an I-Pad.  The colors were unreal, the proportions too huge.  You had to step way away to get any perspective on the pictures.  But then I saw a movie about him in the hallway; watched him stand in the cold English countryside – he is from Yorkshire – and try to paint the branch of a tree over and over again.  It was then I got fascinated by him.  In my eye, I was still seeing the realistic, mystical impressionist paintings I had seen in the D’Orsay only a week or two ago.  Comparing them with Hockney’s garish colors and larger than life canvases was hard at first. 

But when I went into the gallery displaying his Yorkshire paintings, I got mesmerized.  For he had painted the same grove of trees, the same road, the same canopies, over and over again, to reflect the different textures and colors and hues of different seasons.  What I loved about Hockney’s work was his dedication to the observation of nature, and to trees in particular.  I recalled the group of painters I had met at the Mission in San Juan Batista (made famous by Hitchcock in Vertigo) on way to Pinnacles recently, who explained to me the French Plein Air movement started by the impressionists.  Apparently, with the advent of paints in tubes, as opposed to the age old method of mixing them and grinding them from raw materials, and the invention of the steam engine, painters discovered a new freedom.  They could now travel to places on trains, paint outdoors, and create their visions of nature, while before, they had strictly drawn portraits.  This was how the impressionist movement began.  But the fact that the original movement still survives was new to me. I wanted to join the group and make sketches of beautiful places (I can do a decent sketch, particularly from a photograph).  One of the old ladies, who had been an art teacher, told me it was acceptable to paint or draw from photographs, in fact, in the beginning stages, that is what they want you to do.  So I might do this when I get back to California.

I thought David Hockney has created a new impressionist movement of the twenty first century, one that relies on, what else, technology of course, but one that encourages us to see art and nature with the new millennium’s eye.  That is quite a feat.  He uses composites of photographs, I-Pad drawings, and other techniques, painting parts of a landscape on multiple canvases and then putting them all together.  His work is very technical in some ways, he breaks it down into recognizable pieces so the mystery is gone.  At the same time, one wonders how he can keep such massive pieces into his head in order to be able to integrate them. 

The other exhibits at the Guggenheim were not worthwhile but I got inspired by David Hockney.  I felt as I had felt when I had first gone to the Modern Art Museum in the Smithsonian, right after graduating from Berkeley, and  seen works by Alexander Calder, Salvador Dali, Paul Klee, and Miro.  I didn’t like all of them, but I began to understand what they were trying to do.  When I went to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh (he was born there but never wanted to acknowledge it), I began to understand him a little more too.

So David Hockney introduced me to a new dimension of art.   His paintings slowly grew on me and mesmerized me until I wanted to be in that room, surrounded by the large canvases, forever.  It was as thrilling as being lost in  a real forest.

Abundance

Abundance

June 27, 2012

(The dates on all these blogs are scrambled up.  Actually they start on June 18^th and go on from there, almost every day or every other dy.  I messed up on that.)

My friend Adria always says that one must have a sense of abundance.  That if one is miserly, one does not obtain riches.  On the other hand, if one has an attitude of abundance, she says, one will never lack for anything. 

The first time she told me this, I had an uncanny feeling that for once, someone had understood me perfectly.  For, I always act as if there is abundance in the world. 

Yet, I grew up in a poor family in India.  I was malnourished as a child, partly because my mother, even though a good cook, just did not relish feeding anyone, even her own children.  She herself did not enjoy food; she only craved sweets.  So it was impossible for her to imagine that her daughter might be hungry. 

It was a different matter with my brother Prakash, however.  Perhaps because he nearly died as a baby – of diphtheria - perhaps because he continued having illnesses like sunstrokes, or simply because he was a son, an only son, he got fed all the time.  We always gave him the best of everything.  I thought it was natural, I did not mind it. 

But the overwhelming feeling I remember of my childhood is that of being hungry. I was very thin, and as I became an adolescent, anemic.  Whenever there was anything in the house to eat, I raided the cupboards.  My parents called me khadad – the greedy one.  They paid no attention to the comments the school and college nurses wrote in my folder every year to the effect that I needed “improved nutrition.”

This is all by the way of explaining why I have always practiced the notion of abundance, not consciously practiced it, but intuitively, I have always understood that if one spends money, one gets money.  If one thinks that there will be plenty, then there will be plenty.  That there will be plenty of food in particular. 

I know Americans – particularly some Americans who grew up rich - who are so miserly you wouldn’t believe it.  Of course immigrants are miserly for a reason.  Either way, people’s cheapness always bothers me.  For, most of the time, their policies result in the old adage of penny wise and pound foolish.

In contrast with such people, what I have enjoyed throughout France is a natural attitude of abundance.  In America, traveling for business to different cities like Chicago or Atlanta, I have had trouble finding any food in the center of the town, particularly fruit.  American cities are like deserts, all you can find inside them is a CVS pharmacy, that is if you are lucky.  CVS was where I used to buy milk for making tea in my hotel room in the morning on my business trips.  The only thing American hotels have going for them is the coffeemaker which can be used for making tea. 

So at first I missed the coffeemaker in France.  I had access to a teapot in the B&B in Amboise and so I kept thinking that I needed that everywhere.  What I did not realize was that it was more fun to walk to a boulangerie, buy a croissant, then eat it with my tea, sitting at a café.   It is not just the tourists who do this in France, but locals too.  So one can watch people while eating breakfast. 

What a civilized world this is. 

At first, I was hoarding food during my travels in France.  It is a lifelong habit of a person whose one fear is to go to bed hungry.  So I carried with me on every train and to every hotel room cheese and bread and fruit and prepared foods, so much so that I had to throw some of it away.  Until I realized that in France you could never go hungry anywhere, particularly in small towns where streets are full of produce and cheese and bread and chocolates and biscuits and pate and foie-gras and you name it.  As if this were not enough, they have market days once or twice a week when food overtakes the village, when abundance acquires a new meaning.  These markets are not for tourists, but locals, who get into living with abundance with such a flair, I don’t think I have seen anyone love food as much as the French do.

India has markets of course but the presence of poverty is never too far in India.

In France, I have yet to see poverty or even a hint of it. 

I became conscious of this after I took the train to San Sebastian two days ago.  I was actually looking forward to the visit.  Ever since I went to Spain in the nineteen nineties and saw San Sebastian on the country’s map, I had wanted to go there.  Partly because the town was named after my son; partly because I had this mental image of an exotic coastal Basque town. 

So I took the SNCF train to Hendaye, a French border town, where Hitler apparently met Franco after the occupation of France.  The idea was that Spain would join in with Hitler.  But upon meeting Franco, Hitler thought of him as a buffoon and so the collaboration never took place, perhaps changing the course of history. 

Everything was OK until Hendaye.  But then I rode the so called Eusko train (no doubt a Basque name) across the border.   I was exhausted and closed my eyes for a second – the Eusko Train runs like a milk train, one can literally hear the wheels grinding – and when I opened them I noticed that we were crossing over what looked like a sewer canal.  The sight was so unfamiliar after over two weeks of not seeing any urban squalor that my stomach turned.  Walls of buildings were marked with graffiti; facades of edifices had black moss growing on them.  The countryside lacked charm.  It was as if I was back in the third world.  For a moment I thought I was in Latin America, even though at the back of my mind I knew that Ecuador or Peru would probably look a lot poorer, that if a Spanish person heard my thoughts he or she would be horrified.  It was just that my eyes had gotten used to clean streets; I had begun taking the shiny paint on ancient buildings for granted; I had gotten accustomed to the utter lack of dirt or poverty here in France. 

I felt a little sheepish.   Here I had been longing to be across the border where I could speak Spanish; I had been waiting to be with a culture and people I feel more comfortable with.  Just that morning, sitting in my favorite café in St. Jean de Luz, I had been moved by a melody streaming on to the sidewalk from the bar, a familiar song from the Buena Vista Social Club, of which I have a CD at home.  The tune was what prompted me to make the journey to San Sebastian. 

And yet I thought, “Spain is poor,” as I rode the Eusko Tren into the country. 

And in that moment, the problems of the Eurozone became obvious to me. 

Still, I hoped it was just the Border Town syndrome, like you feel when passing into Tijuana from San Diego. 

But it was not.  When I got off at San Sebastian, two American women from Los Gatos guided me into town.  It had taken me a while to realize they were mother and daughter.  The pavement was radiating heat, even though we were walking by a so-called river.  It was a typical European river, its waters contained within a high embankment.  It exuded no moisture, no cool breezes came off its surface, no trees shaded its banks.  There were bridges across it of course, marked by golden pillars.  In the distance was a glass monstrosity, and beyond it, the beach.  Even though it was only a half a mile away, it was hard to imagine that anything as natural and vast as an ocean could reside anywhere in the vicinity of so much concrete and stone and metal. 

Was it the quality of the light that made the place glare so?  I hated the look of the place and was glad I had chosen to stay in the small town of St. Jean de Luz across the border. 

The idea of abundance was gone in Spain too.  I mean the center of the city and the old town were full of ice cream shops and restaurants but they seemed about as appetizing as an American hardware store.  The foods exuded no particular aromas; the products just did not have the texture and look of actual food. 

So sitting on a bench in the one hundred degree heat, I ate my apple. 

This is one of the things that has always puzzled me about Latin America too.  I have often wondered as to why given such beautiful weather, they do not eat more fruits and vegetables, why their diet seems rather sparse and monotonous, full of meat and potatoes.

In San Sebastian, there was the obligatory cathedral in the old town, and a Constitution Plaza.

But the place was noisy.  I guess that is Spanish character for you, loud, vibrant, full of energy.  The French, on the other hand, probably follow the English dictum of “children should be seen and not heard.”  For, even in the most public of places you do not hear children shouting in France the way they do in San Sebastian.

All these thoughts made me feel as If I was betraying my adapted culture of Latin America.  But the truth was, I couldn’t wait to get on the Eusko Tren and head back to France.  

On the way back, I noticed that the graffiti stopped as soon as we crossed the border. 

I thought of how, once upon a time, the Italians and the Spanish were the underdogs of Northern Europe, as depicted in numerous E.M. Forester novels.  They were the third world for ordinary middle class Northern Europeans like the French and the British who happened not to have any colonials like Indians or Algerians around to beat up on.  In John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers, made in the nineteen sixties, the Spanish servant was the comic equivalent of the Mexican illegal immigrant in the Hollywood of today.    

Now with the Eurozone falling apart, perhaps they will go back to being that way again.

I am in a bubble in France; I can’t talk to anyone because the French refuse to acknowledge that other idioms exist in the world, even if it means dying with their dying language.  But that has made me a better observer.  In the Spanish speaking world, I fit among the people so I observe less and learn less. 

So what am I to do?  Learn to speak French?

Once back in St. Jean de Luz, I ate my leftover food from the market day in my room, then went for a long walk along the promenade.  The sun was bright, the breeze cool and soothing.  I waited for the Green Flash.  It did not happen.

Green Flash or not, I was back with abundance.  I am glad the French allowed me to experience something I had always longed for. 

Katherine Hepburn in Venice

June 25 2012

Dialing the TV channel years ago, I stumbled upon a Katherine Hepburn movie.  In my memory, this movie is in black and white, perhaps because the TV was black and white. What a silly movie, I thought at first, expecting it to be yet another romantic comedy.  But then the movie grew on me.  All I remember is Katherine Hepburn wandering through the lovely streets of Venice, popping into little glass shops, and longing for, what else, love.  When I finally went to Venice a few years ago, I was disappointed that Venice did not quite look like it did in that particular movie, even though it was fabulous.  Maybe it was in color, and not black and white.  Maybe there were too many people compared to in the movie.  The Venice of my imagination will always remain Katherine Hepburn's Venice, even after seeing the real thing.  

Suddenly, I thought of Katherine Hepburn today as I walked by the seaside of this little town named St. Jean de Luz in the Basque region of France.  I was returning home from the beach to the hotel at about 8:30 PM when I thought of exploring a side street which seemed to have quite a few shops.  So I walked, carrying a zillion bags with me.  I had taken to the beach a towel and a water bottle and a computer and a Kindle.  In my hand I had my dinner in a plastic bag; I had been hoping to eat it at the beach but then  I just hadn't felt hungry.  I also had a bag with some cheese I had bought at a store and another bag with some face lotion I bought at a pharmacy because I forgot mine at the last hotel. I need to be careful next time I pack.  I managed to leave my adapter there too; thankfully I had brought two with me. 

It is this darn sleep that I am having so much of here in France.  I seem to sleep ten-eleven hour nights at times and on top of them, need a nap in the afternoon.  Perhaps it is the constant change of weather from place to place.  Or it is just the emotional exhaustion of traveling alone. 

So with my heavy backpack on my back and three bags in my hand, I ventured out into the strange street.  Slowly restaurants gave way to hotels and hotels to a promonade.  I kept walking.  I just did not know that on the other side of the beach was this path along an embankment.  It rose slowly up to a hill and beyond, to a little grassy area and then a park.  I did not go all the way because it was getting to be past nine.  But when I looked over my shoulder at the curve of the bay, my heart stopped.  For, in the distance were the Pyrenese mountains and in the foreground white buildings of St. Jean de Luz hugging the bay.  It was a sight so moving, that my loneliness became larger than life.  And suddenly the image of Katherine Hepburn jumped into my mind.  I was Katherine Hepburn, longing for love.  Why I thought of Katherine Hepburn in that moment, how her image came to me, I don't know.

Why?  Why did I not have love?  Walking past a window, I caught  my reflection.  My new colorful sundress enhanced my figure; I thought any man should be lucky to have me. 

All I remember about the movie is that she found out she was in love with a married man.  Venice was her fantasy.  How poignant she was, so vulnerable, so genuine, so human. 

In that moment, overlooking the Bay of Biscay, a place I had never planned to visit, I became Hepburn.  Yet, deep down, I knew that I was Hepburn and I was not. Because I have not been a spinster.  I have had love. I still have love.  I have two sons who love me very much.  Ravi and Sebastian are always telling me to have a good time; they are happy when I am happy.  And I have had the love of my parents.  Such selfless, endless love.

A few years ago, I did a workshop, you know one of those self-help new-agey, California type workshops.  It lasted for two and a half days over the weekend and on the last day, we did a guided meditation.  The leader's voice was very deep, very powerful.  He asked us to lie down on the floor, close our eyes, and imagine that we were leaving this world; we were dying.  Slowly, I saw myself saying goodbye to everyone I loved,  Slowly, my soul left my body.  I looked down upon myself and saw what unfinished business I had left behind me.  The workshop leader played the tape in which a man says "I have been loved."  My body began to shake, so violently that the man next to me had to hold my hand.  I cried and cried and cried. I was crying for the opportunities I had lost to love.  But I was also grateful that I had been loved.

Yes, I have been loved.  Which is perhaps why I can do such a journey by myself.  I have the inner strength to love what I see, because I have been loved, because I love myself. 

So this evening, as I began to think of Katherine Hepburn, I also saw the woman I had met in the Bed and Breakfast in Amboise in my mind's eye.  At day's end, I was sitting in the garden as usual with my computer when slowly the other guests began to stream back in.  The American military man, his wife, and two small children returned.  I asked them what they had done that day.  We started talking.  The man and the children finally went away but the young woman lingered.  I don't know why but I mentioned that I was glad I was alone because if I was with someone, I would have to negotiate.  This time, since I was by myself, I said, was satisfying my own desires and fancies. 

Suddenly, the woman blurted out that she had to compromise a lot with her husband.  He was a military guy (stationed in Germany) she said and was gung-ho about seeing all the military museums and installations.  So after making a one day token visit to the Loire to satisfy the wife, they were planning to stay for 3-4 days at the D-Day beaches.  As the woman spoke, I could see the sadness inside her.  The man seemed pleasant enough but I could tell he was perhaps a bit hard to deal with.  I wondered if, behind the closed doors of their house, he was like the Great Santini, played by Robert De Nero. 

Yet, when they had first arrived, I had been a bit envious of their beautiful family.  Now I knew that perhaps there was trouble ahead. 

The next morning, I heard a sound outside of my window and saw the military man dressed up in his riding gear, uncovering his bike.  He was gone for several hours, leaving his wife in charge of the kids.  I don't know if I would want to be with such a man. 

I thought of all of this tonight as I walked up the bluff overlooking the bay.  When I came upon the top of the rise, I saw that on the other side, a vast ocean stretched ahead of me.  Suddenly, I knew why I was alone.  Because I was supposed to learn something precious, something that would carry me into old age and death. 

In Leonardo Da Vinci's Garden

In Leonardo Da Vinci’s Garden

I sit in the garden of my Chambre d'Hote in the Loire Valley, and surprisingly I do not feel sad. I just ate my dinner here at the outdoor dining table, a hodgepodge of taboule (which really was couscous - the French don't seem to know the difference between the two), lentils, chevre cheese- the same exact container I buy at Berkeley Bowl - and some greens and a carrot salad, all purchased at the Carrefour, a French supermarket. Now, for the first time in days, I feel well. I have been feeling exhausted; perhaps Paris does that to you, with its noise and tourists and the subway system in which you have to run up and down stairs.

I went to the Leonardo Da Vinci house this morning. Before coming here, I did not know that Da Vinci died in France. I have yet to understand fully the Mona Lisa myth. At the Louvre last week, I had trouble locating her. And when I finally did find the Grand Gallery, so many people had thronged her, their I-phones held over their heads for a quick snap, that I could not even get a good look at her, let alone understand her power. Did these tourists really know anything about art, or were they simply acting like sheep?

 But today at Leonardo's chateau, I understood his genius. There were the tanks and the airplanes and the swing bridges he had designed, all in model scale of course, but they gave a hint of his powers of analysis and imagination. He had even designed a canon running on steam. Alas, he just could not make the leap to a steam engine. For that he would have needed a whole scientific revolution which did not exist during the Renaissance. It just goes to show you that scientific advances need a whole movement just like art does.  During the renaissance, so many artists were stimulated by each other.  In fact, Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci were contemporaries.  Both homosexuals, both esthetes, both artists par excellence.  A person cannot do art in isolation.  And the same goes for science. 

I am particularly drawn to Leonardo because he was both an artist and a scientist. Americans often ask me how come I am a writer when I was trained as a physicist. They start talking of right brain and left brain. I tell them that I have only one brain. I tell them that historically there has been a tradition of intellectual individuals pursuing philosophy, literature, mathematics and art. Take Bertrand Russell for example. Not that I want to compare myself with Bertrand Russell.

The Loire Valley is a magical place. And yet I did not make it to most of the sites. What I really enjoy is just sitting in this lovely garden or walking the streets and browsing at little shops. That is what the French countryside is all about, after all.

Finally I am feeling content to be here alone. I never thought I would feel this way. Sometimes, when you have bad company, you realize that your own company is preferable. That is what happened to me on this trip. Now I know why people say that it is better to travel on your own. Because you can take things at your own pace; you can indulge yourself to linger where you want; you can eat when and where and what you want. You can reflect, you can read, you can muse. You can be active or lazy. You can reach out to people. I wish I had learned some French though. I do have the dictionary but the app on my cellphone does not work. And I am afraid to make it work because of fear that it will gobble up all my minutes on the simcard.

 Who would have thought that I would be traveling all alone around France one day? Not in my wildest dreams - or nightmares - would I have imagined such a fate befalling me. But now I realize it is not such a bad fate. There are worst fates than this. Of course it is costing me a pretty penny because I am not sharing the room with another person. But then again, do I really want to share a room with someone? Give up my privacy and my realm? I have been having naps every afternoon, something I perhaps would not be able to do with another person.

Then there is the whole sightseeing mania one gets drawn into when one is with company; one ends up seeing sights that do nothing for one's soul. But most of all, I am learning to be comfortable with myself. I am learning to cope with a foreign culture on my own. I am learning to survive the trains and all the little inconveniences. And yet I can't wait to leave this town and embark on another journey tomorrow morning to the Dordognes. Hopefully the hotel there will be as good. Hopefully, I will have just as much of a good time as I did in Amboise. I was so afraid of coming here alone and it turned out so very wonderful!

Cro-Magnon Man

22nd June, 2012

 I went to see the pre-historic cro-magnon caves today. And what I realized was that the cro-magnon man was wiser than me. Because the cro-magnon crawled inside caves that were 10 kms deep to paint. She drew art that I am convinced she knew would last for eternity. So the man or woman who took the trouble to do this had a perspective on life; namely that it was transient but if you wanted to glean some meaning out of it you had to create something lasting. I should know that because I am a writer. I too am trying to create something lasting, namely the written word which will hopefully outlive me. But I tend to forget this so very easily.

Last night, I forgot what I was all about; what this trip was all about. I forgot that just days before, I had been ecstatic about traveling alone. That I was glad that I had no one to distract me. Why did I feel so lonely last night? I don't know.

Yet, the day had started out well. I got up at the crack of dawn. Made myself tea in the kitchen of my lovely bed and breakfast run by a couple named Yveline and Patrick. I washed my hair, packed up, and had my breakfast before all the other guests were up. Yeveline said Patrick would give me a ride to the train station so I took him up on it. I should have taken a picture of the place; it was so very heavenly. But I did not. I just did not feel that well.

I discovered that the Amboise railway station  is so small that it does not even have a live screen on Platform 2. I took my bag down the stairs of Platform 1 and up to Platform 2 where two young men were sitting on a bench, chatting. I asked them "Sarlat?" They said yes, the train was going to Sarlat. So I sat on the bench talking to one of them who said he was a teacher at a lycee and taught engineering and science to pupils who were two years out of school. It sounded like he was teaching polytechnic or trade school. He said our train was delayed by 5 minutes, which I already knew because I had seen the screen at the entrance to the station.

After a few minutes, he listened to an announcement and said we needed to go to the other platform because the train was coming right away. He said I needed to take that train. I think he wanted me to take the early train because my own train was way delayed. He said he would carry my bag. We rushed down the stairs thus and up the other stairs to Platform 1 where the train was about to leave. He made sure I was in, carried his bike with him and asked me to sit down. When I got to Saint Pierre des Corps fifteen minutes later, he told me to get off and ask the guard about my next train. I was talking to the guard as the nice young man - named Gerome - waved goodbye to me from the window. I wished I had taken his email. All I know is he teaches in Tours and probably lives in Amboise. What a guardian angel! My second one on this trip. This experience confirmed my belief that European young men are much different, much humanized and nice compared to American young men (with the exception of my sons who have been trained by me of course). I noticed that with the German and Italian young men I met in Guatemala too and I notice it here. I was moved to tears by Gerome's kindness.

At St. Pierre Des Corps, I figured out the platform eventually as it appeared on the screen. I managed to transfer from that train to the high speed TGV at Libourne. I asked the guard or the conductor at Libourne how I would find seat number 63 and whether it was written on the car. I asked this because on the high speed TGV train, all seats are reserved. He said "No." What he didn't tell me was that my ticket had a car number ton it too (it said "Voire"). So I needed to find the car number before finding the seat number. I didn't know what "Voire" meant so I got in the wrong car- number 18- and then had to backtrack to number 15 while the train ran. Luckily, it had not picked up speed yet.

The French trains are a marvel. I love them. And the countryside is spectacular. It is all so green and pretty, covered with miles and miles of vineyards and orchards. There are stone cottages and Chateaus dotting the farmland. It is so peaceful, so easy on the eyes. No outlet stores line the outskirts of railway stations; no billboards mar the beauty of the countryside; no Golden Arches and car dealerships reside outside every town. The French Revolution’s aim was to create egalite, and egalite they did create. They did not let capitalism corrupt their sense of esthetics or morality. I love the French. So far I have not met a single mean person.

I got to Sarlat finally. But the first impression of the town was not positive. The hotel room was not bad, but it was not lovely like the B&B in Amboise. Suddenly, I wished I had stayed in the Loire for another day. Suddenly, I felt all alone.

I walked around trying to find the cathedral, not realizing that it was not on the main drag but tucked away behind some alleyways. By the time I found it, I was so hungry I sat down at any old restaurant. I actually ordered foie gras - I know California readers are going to hate me for this but this is the local specialty so I wanted to know what the fuss was all about. After all, I have eaten a lot of pate when I lived in New Zealand and the foie gras tasted just like it. I ate duck with white beans too. It was a three-course meal for 13.50 euros so I ate dessert as well. I was so hungry I needed it.

When I went back to the hotel room I felt so down I wanted to call United, change my booking, and go home. I felt like an utter loser traveling alone.

I went to bed early, thinking "Tomorrow is another day."

And it was.

This morning, when I woke up the first thought I had was that I needed to go on a tour to the famous Lascaux caves, the ones that Werner Herzog made a movie about recently. The first time I read about those caves was in my son Sebastian's middle school history book. Two kids go on a walk with the dog and discover prehistoric artworks. It sounded so fascinating I could never forget it. I did not know at the time what part of France they were in but it turns out they are right outside of Sarlat.

I had written half-heartedly to some French tourism website when I was in Amboise asking them about a tour to the most famous of the caves, at Lascaux, and they had written me an email saying that at such a late date I would have to contact the local tour company. I had the number they had given me. I pulled out my email (It has been so wonderful to have my little Gateway computer with me. I could not have survived without it.) So at 8:30 I called, asking if there was a tour that day. He said yes, at 9 AM. Luckily, the tour leaves right at the bus stop outside the hotel room.

I threw some clothes on and ran downstairs to get their overpriced buffet breakfast. I desperately needed tea too. I ate and drank quickly, sneaked some boiled eggs into my bag and was about to run when the hotel manager ran after me. She wanted to know when I would be back. I did not know why she was asking me this. Then she said I had to pay because I was leaving today. I said, no, I was staying for 3 days. Then I realized that I had not sent an email to this hotel but called in person and I had made a booking just for one day thinking I would extend it later. Her husband came and said that other people needed the room so I would have to leave it. I asked if there was another one and he said yes but I would have to move now. I said I couldn't move now because I had to go on the tour and it was 9 already. I was afraid the tour would leave without me. He said then they would have to move my things for me. I said, fine, just be careful with my computer, the charger and the adapter. He said not to worry. So off I went and met the most fabulous tour guide and a marvelous group of people.

 I realize that throughout this trip, I have had this experience. It sounds like a cliche when people say that when one door closes another opens. But that has happened to me all along this trip.

 We went to the famous museum of Les Enzies-de-Tayac first and saw all the archaeological evidence of cro-magnon people. Cro-Magnon simply means hole in the yard of some guy named Magnon apparently. That was where they found the first bones of early humans. The museum is by the side of a cave.  

 After the museum we went to the famed Lascaux which is a replica of the original which has been badly damaged by human visits. Looking at the paintings of horses and bison and bulls, tears sprung to my eyes.  I felt I was in the presence of humans that walked the earth 17,000 years ago.  It made me realize how miniscule my own preoccupations, my loneliness, and my worries were. These humans lived through the ice age, yet they left their mark on the world.  And people ridicule me for traveling alone in France?  What is wrong with me?  What is wrong with them?

Lascaux was such a moving experience.  When I read its story in Sebastian’s book, I had no idea that one day I would actually go there.  But I did.  It all worked out.

Afterwards, we ate lunch by the river Vezere, sitting outside at picnic tables.  It was French country food, a quiche-like pie called the tourte, which I did not realize was made with cheese.  To make sure I had enough protein, I ordered the one with meat and potatoes – I am eating everything I am not supposed to eat on this trip.  Oh, well, I decided that since I am alone I want to please myself and indulge in culinary delight.  The country food was so hearty and good.  The woman asked me if I wanted bread and when I said yes because I wanted to taste their home made bread, she began to chop a whole round loaf.  I wondered what she was up to until she put about half of the slices in a basket and handed the whole production to me on a bamboo tray.  Salad, tourte, and bread.  It was marvelous.  I wished I could drink wine but I can’t because I only get a headache. 

 In the afternoon we went to some real caves (not replicas) called Rouffignac.  Here, the drawings were made out of black manganese and featured mammoths as well as horses and bulls.  The people who created this art are called Magdalenians because their remains were first discovered in the nearby town of Magdalene. 

We rode a little train to view the carvings and drawings and at the end got off to view the ceiling and the walls. 

The day was so beautiful I wondered why just the night before I had longed to be home.  That is what travel is like.  Just when you feel beaten down, something exciting happens.  I loved the company; was reassured to find a single American woman named Lynn on the tour, and met a very interesting couple from Australia.  The kind of arrogant, obnoxious Americans I saw in the Loire were absent from Sarlat.  I suppose it takes the diehards to come to a town like this. 

I think everyone who feels sorry for himself or herself should see Cro-Magnon art.  It will cure anyone of the deepest blues.  It is awe-inspiring, magical, spell-binding.  No one knows what the purpose of the art was, whether it was spiritual or artistic.  Neither does anyone know why they painted and drew only certain creatures, ignoring other widespread species like reindeer.  The art is quite sophisticated, using natural materials and techniques of perspective and imagery. 

I will never forget the Magdalenians as long as I live.   I went back to the hotel feeling so re-energized that nothing could have rattled me. In my new room, all my belongings including the computer, the flash drive and the charger, were laid out neatly. I had been so worried about losing the flash drive. I had even called the owner from the cave museum to warn him to be careful not to misplace it.  But all my stuff was there. 

 Human beings are essentially good, I think, you just have to give them a chance.  I am surviving here purely on the kindness of strangers just as Blanche DuBois did in A Streetcar Named Desire.  We are all pathetic in that way, or heroic, depending on how you look at it.  We are all trying to survive the ice age, one way or another. 

Hot Chocolate and French Men

June 23

I am sitting at a café in Sarlat, hoping to get breakfast.  It isn’t as easy as it sounds.  For, French culture is far too complicated, subtle, and sophisticated for anything as simple as a ton load of sugary cereals, mountains of scrambled eggs and potatoes, and an overabundance of cut, tasteless fruit that will freeze you to the bones.  I am referring of course to the one too many buffet breakfasts (they are actually called continental breakfasts even though they bear no resemblance to the European breakfast tradition any more) I have eaten on business trips in the US.  Here, you have to find a place that will serve tea in the morning (I am still not sure if a brasserie or a restaurant or a café actually serves tea or not.).  The one I stumbled upon this morning is actually called Salon de The which is quite lucky because they do have jars of tea leaves on the counter, labeled with names like Jasmine and Chai and various other exotic products.  I was hoping therefore for a teapot and tried to communicate as much to the owner but then gave up.  What was presented to me in the end was just a teabag in a cup, in hardly enough quantity to suffice me on a morning such as this one.  

My reaction was similar to what I had felt years ago during my first visit to a Starbucks where I had been given a lecture on various tea infusions, only to be presented with a tea bag on the side of a cup in the end.  I mean come on, the tea has to be “mashed,” (Derek’s word) immediately in the boiling water.  Even a minute or two of delay could damage the taste.  Every English or Indian person knows this but Americans have no clue.  Neither do the French, I suppose, their traditional drink being café.  But at least they do know that a drink like tea or café has to be prepared at the right temperature and so the woman brought me the tea bag inside the cup of hot water, not on the side. 

As instructed by her (with an expression that said how stupid not to know that the croissant is never sold at a tea shop but at a bread shop), I had already gone to the Boulangerie across the tea shop and bought myself a croissant, following the philosophy of “Do in Rome as the Romans do.”  Then I sat at an outdoor table which is equivalent to being in heaven as far as I am concerned. 

It is a perfectly wonderful morning in Sarlat, with just a nip of chill in the air so that I am comfortable in my light, long Ann Taylor Loft cardigan that I have already gotten so much mileage out of.  I don’t know what I will do when it is time to replace it.  Because it is very thin and lightweight and being black, goes with everything.  It can be packed in a small backpack or just thrown over the shoulders stylishly the way the French women do. 

I have been reading  Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon but after I googled him and came across several critiques commenting on how he exploited his son, storing the kid’s every action and every word for future use in his writing.  And suddenly, the unease that had been at the back of my mind surfaced, yes, I had felt all along that the kid Luke was a bit overindulged.  That Gopnik had gone to Paris at the New Yorker’s expense to do nothing more than visiting the French Institute at night with his son in a stroller and cooking huge French meals that no one ate.  It seems like an incredibly good shindig.  This is what happens to writers in America who make it.  The rest of us just languish in obscurity, making our living by some other means. And yet, when you note the difference between the quality of Gopnik’s writing and many others I know, you realize that it is not that great.  In fact, his book about Paris is full of trivialities which he justifies in the Introduction by saying that small things are just as important as big ones.

In fact, he sheds little light on the current state of French literature, politics, society, or culture, focusing on saving a small brasserie in the Sorbonne area instead.  I can’t help thinking that I would have written something more meaningful about France had I been given a chance but the only problem is that I don’t know the language.  But given the kind of shindig at New Yorker rates, I could have learned it, and very quickly too, I might add, for I am good at languages. 

Back to the Salon de The.  While I waited for the tea, I watched two youngish men sitting at a nearby table.  They were obviously French.  The grumpy waitress who knows no English brought them two steaming cups of hot chocolate.  One man opened the white bag from the Boulangerie, the same bag that I have, and took out a chocolate pastrie of some sort.  I don’t know its name.  Then he ceremoniously dipped it into the hot chocolate and began to eat it with such savoring expression I wanted to ask him for a bite.  The other man just sipped his hot chocolate.  Then the older man passed him the white bag, obviously asking him to help himself, and the younger man silently, gratefully opened the bag, took out an identical pastrie. He used both hands to break it in two, not horizontally, but vertically, so that he could dip the long rod of it into his hot chocolate and eat it greedily, hungrily.  Chocolate on chocolate.  The idea thrilled me; it seemed to me the essence of sensory fulfillment.  But the trick was to only have one.  An American would buy ten of them until he was sick to the stomach and would never relish it as much again; the French men got up after eating only one each.  A sensory high can only be achieved when you stop well before you are satisfied, so that the next chocolate pastrie will taste just as magical as the last one. 

The younger man politely waiting until the pastrie was offered to him, the silent demeanors of the two men, the peaceful camaraderie they shared, is to me the essence of French life.  I am sure that if I were hanging by the door of a train, they would leap up to their feet, help me on board, then disappear into the night. 

I love French men.   All the mythology about them happens to be true.  I don’t think they cheat on their wives as much as they are reported to be.  So far, all the husbands I have met hang by the sides of their wives.  There is a sense of manner and etiquette and courtesy. 

J'aime les hommes français!  Thanks to Google translate for that last bit.  In fact, I have been using it quite a bit on my little Gateway computer (Gateway Jindabad!  Long Live Gateway), translating my messages into French and sending them to unsuspecting hotels for reservations.  In fact, given a little more time, I could practice phrases too, because there is a feature called voice. 

Anyway, it is nice to be able to say, “J'aime les hommes français.” I love French men!

Letter from the Loire Valley

Letter from the Loire Valley

I am sitting in a beautiful spacious room in the most divine bed and breakfast place in the world.  Outside my large window, birds are calling.  Nearby is the Loire river, with its winding sprawling waters shaded by trees that are straight out of a Monet painting.  I cannot believe I am here in the town of Amboise in the Loire Valley, traveling all alone.   

And yet what a trek it has been just to get here.  This morning I woke up in my friend Lana's apartment in Massy, a suburb of Paris, having slept a long and peaceful sleep in days.  I made myself tea - I finally seemed to have figured out the quirky stove with its vertical gas pipe and a valve that needs to be turned on first.  I also seemed to have at last mastered the technique of lighting up a match and then turning the gas in the burner just so to sustain the flame.  I can't remember what circa stove in the US needed matches.  It was so long ago, I have forgotten.  I sent my column to India Currents, wrote a bunch of emails, then packed up my stuff.  Lana was asking me about the opera on Thursday and our proposed trip to Normandy but I was ready to leave Paris.  I realize that in the future, if I want to spend more than a week in Paris, I will have to stay in a quiet corner of the city so as not to get overwhelmed with the noise and the commotion. 

Lana said to go to the train station early just in case.  So I packed up and rushed to the station which is right across the street from her building.  I got a ticket.  The agent told me to take the 11:10 train.  My train for Amboise was not until 12:38 so I thought I had plenty of time.  But I could not figure out which platform to go to because there were no signs. I needed to take the C Line for the railway station which I had not taken before.  When I went to the platform on the right hand side, a man said that there had been a death on the track and the trains had stopped running.  Just my luck.  I kept doing what I had done in South America, namely, ask everyone the same question until I got a consistent answer.

A man wearing headphones connected to his phone (this seems to be the common thing here; everyone has elaborate headphones with tiny microphones attached to the wires that they speak into) said that I would have to take two buses and a subway to get to Gare Austerlitz train station.  I said I could just take the B line instead which was on the other side of the station.  I was trying to decide whether to walk over there when finally a train arrived.  But the man would not get into it because he said that it would not leave right away.  I asked a woman sitting in the train and she said it was going to Paris.  I didn't know why everyone was not getting into it though.

I followed the suited and booted man into the other train even though I could see that the train on the opposite side did say "Suite Desserte."  A moment of indecision.  The man's train was going to stop at more stations.  The other train at fewer stations.  Yet a majority of the riders got on the man's train.  The logic of the train riders defies any analysis here.  When I ask them questions, generally they know as much as I do which means very little.  The system doesn't offer a lot of clues either.

Anyway, I got in.  Just then the train on the other platform left.  Aw shucks.  My train took its time.  I figured five minutes per station which for 16 stations would take 45 minutes, or 30 if I was lucky.  And it was already 11:45. I sat anxiously, studying the train maps, counting the stops and the minutes.  At some point, I realized I was not going to make it and just surrendered to the situation.  After all, I could take the next train.  I could take a different train to Blois and from there catch a connection to Amboise. 

A middle aged man opposite me was more anxious than me, and toward the end, at about 12:25, held his head in his hand.  He had no luggage.  I should have talked to him but I was in no mood to talk, as if I was the one driving the train and any distraction would prove fatal.  At about 12:34 we got into Gare Austerlitz.  I moved my bag to the door even before we stopped.  The man asked "Where are you going?"  I told him Amboise.  Everyone speaks English here, or at least most educated people do.  He said he was going to Amboise too.  I asked him where to transfer but he could not quite articulate it. "We have 4 minutes," he said, "We have to run."  I knew there was no way I would be able to figure out where to go in 4 minutes, given the complexities of French stations and platforms.  I said, "I will go with you."  Then corrected myself by saying, "I will just follow you.  I can run fast." 

So we jumped down.  I literally ran after the man, up and down staircases, lugging my bag, glad that I had left some stuff in Paris and brought only the bare essentials.  Still, climbing stairs as long as the stairs out of BART's Civic Center station with a bag and a heavy backpack was no joke.  I am so glad I am utterly fit.  At each turn though, the man paused to see that I was behind him.  The French men are so very nice.  I have not had such experiences with American men.  This is the second time I have encountered a kind Frenchman.  The last time was in Italy, in Cinque Terre when I was lost on an isolated hike in the hills and had no clue how to find my way.  French men have a way of turning up in my life just when I need them!

We got to the platform.  Of course the SNCF train was late too, which I had been hoping for.  The kind man pointed to the yellow machine.  I validated my ticket.  He asked me to get in, then disappeard to buy his ticket.  I felt I had met a Guardian Angel.  I was so exhausted from all the stress of Paris and the worry about the train that I just relaxed for a while.  I was sitting opposite a couple and I watched them in contentment, thinking that if I had not met the man I would not have made the train because it soon left.

When I got to Amboise I could not open the train door.  I did not know its quirks.  Another important lesson; always get out where other people are getting off, just in case.  The train was about to leave.  I shouted for help.  A woman got up and helped me.  I jumped off and just then the train took off.

I walked a leisurely walk into town, following Rick Steve's directions and came upon a  big red wooden door.  I rang the bell and was let into a lovely little garden.  My room here is spacious, with a large window overlooking the roses.  I wanted to lie down but I felt hungry after all the trauma, even though I had eaten my snack of couscous on board.  I walked into town, had lunch at a cafe, and sat there reading Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon.  I am really enjoying comparing his experiences of Paris with mine. 

I realized my feet were aching from a week of walking around in Paris.  I saw people walking down the river embankment from the cafe but I could not move. I came back to my room and lay in my luxurous bed for a little nap.  I felt so very happy. I can easily stay in this place for  a week.  It is so beautiful and the couple who keep it are so friendly and helpful.  I am definitely staying three nights but I am wondering whether to ask for a discount for a third night because the whole place is empty. 

After my rest, I sat at the picnic table in the garden, reading my book and at 10 PM had a little snack of salad, toubule and cheese I got from the grocery store.  I went to bed while twilight still lingered, at 10:30 PM! 

What a day!  I feel so proud of myself for traveling alone around France.  This experience is giving me a new level of confidence.  I am not anxious to return to Paris.  I love being in the quiet countryside.