one year, they went to france (where, it’s said, they kissed on main street*)

it was a young love song with clarion-voiced backup singers and an african beat. he was sure it was the first time he’d ever heard it this clearly with words he could repeat without the liner notes unfolded and laid on his lap. there was no hesitation in his delivery; he wasn’t sure if that was because he wanted it so bad and had waited so long or if it was the melody that every one of his friends who had heard it before were singing. all he knew was that he could open his mouth and the song sang itself.

language didn’t seem to be a barrier nor did their differences (there were only the ones of hair and height) — although now when he looks back at this time he only sees a melding (hot wire soldering) of two dancing and jiving bodies and minds pressed up tight against each other, the bass beat of sex the common denominator (only divisible by 2.)

france happened (there was kissing, if not on main street, then on the champs elysée, les halles, pont des arts, café flore, giverny, chenonceau), times spent with friends in paris, then alone on the road, the exhaust of a citroën forming a heart of protection around them–recognizable by the french, it was a language they knew well–which was a free pass, that common bond; a honeymoon he would have called it, had that been a verse of the song he was singing.  if you have listened closely to the french singing when it’s your second — or third — language, then you will know why he decided to go with his own words; he wasn’t singing for them, but just for the two of them.
*

a la recherche du gay bars perdu (with apologies)

M. and I were in the middle of a driving tour of the Burgundy (les vins!) and the Loire (les chateaux!) one year when we found ourselves staying at the Chateau Beaulieu. Beau it was not, but regardless it was outside of Tours and we decided one evening to drive into town and have dinner. We ate at “_____ et ______” (or something like that) and it was the only time i have ever sent food back to the kitchen while dining in France. You can’t even imagine. (Remind me sometime to share with you the story about the “Cherries Jubilee” served one evening at the Chateau Beaulieu, but I digress.) So after dinner, I’m driving—a rare treat considering the anality — I realize it’s not a word, but he can be so insistent on his ‘rightness’ — of M. when he said a propos of rien, “Let’s go to a gay bar!” To which I responded, “but we don’t have a Guide Gay.” (En Francais, mais oui.) “Oh that won’t matter, I can always tell when a boite is gay.” I trusted him.

“There, that’s one,” he pointed to the gauche, waving his finger under my nose, pointing at a dingy little door with a blue light flickering over it.  I swerved into a parking place, two wheels on the sidewalk a la Francaise, and we headed back down the street to the ‘gay’ bar.

“You’re sure, right?”

“Oh, most definitely,” he asserted. I opened the door ahead of him and stepped into the movie set of the early life of Edith Piaf (it was in black & white, I swear to dieu.) The bartender, Gauloise perched menacingly on his fat lower lip, a dingy wife-beater pulled loose from repeated wearings the same color as the towel he was using to wipe a glass—dingy—stared at us; there was a couple dancing, a la Apache — she in a slip, he in t-shirt and beret — stopped dancing and swiveled their heads toward us — did the music stop? It could have. the few patrons sitting at the bar — true, all men, equally true, not gay — rheumy eyes glowering, a cigarette on each lip — at which point M.has squeezed in behind me and is looking over my shoulder at the mise-en-scene avant nous.

I must pause here, to reflect on our appearance: we look like Americans, try as we might to look otherwise, a sweater thrown over shoulders, for instance, we think might make us fit in sartorially, but sadly it does not and tonight, ici, we are looking particularly foreign and particularly gay— if there is a universal ‘gay’ look, that was the ‘look’ we were sporting that evening.

The bartender, “Oui, messieurs?”

Us, “Oops! excusez-nous, pardon, pardon…” as we bowed and retreated I swear the music started up again, the dancers returned to their dance, the patrons to their drinks, the bartender continued to wipe the same glass, the door closed quietly behind us, just like Brigadoon when you’re not looking for it (the Scottish angle best saved for another day and the Cherries Jubilee story).

The moral of the story (if you can call it that): whenever M. gets all righteous with me and insists he’s right, I’ll remind him of that night in Tours, “just like you know a gay bar when you see one? mm-hmm.” And that’s the end of that.

all of the above prompted by this:

the Château de Tanlay, France via archimaps

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magnolia seed pod dop dees ailongam

as long as i’ve been living with magnolia trees–since 1990 when i moved to hawaii and then to california–i never really paid any attention to their post floral display.

last thursday afternoon i’d driven to a nondescript office complex in the irvine spectrum (so nondescript that i drove right by it the first time) for a meeting. while i waited for my boss to arrive, i walked down a sidewalk lined with magnolia trees.

the underside of magnolia leaves have always made me think of bronze-colored velvet with a green glossy satin top and of course, what’s not to like about the magnolia blossom, i ask you. those dinner plate sized blooms (i had typed in an extra ‘o’ to bloom, which in a way seemed appropriate considering their size and pungent odor, but corrected it so you wouldn’t think i was blind to those little squiggly red lines that this platform’s spell check places under your every typo) have always charmed.

but these trees this past thursday were not in bloom and i turned my attention to the grassy median they were planted in and noticed this seed pod laying at the base of the trunk of one of the trees. i picked it up as one does when one has come across something so ancient-looking and carefully examined it. there seemed to be the entire floral history of the earth in this shamanistic (a rattle, a fetish, an archetypical symbol of the fecundity of our planet) written in its fuzzy handle, its exploded pods, its dark loamy color (caramel, chocolate, coffee).

i picked it up and felt its weight and admired its intricately carved handle and thought that its ‘petals’ reminded me of the stiff curls of a 18th century wig set atop of the delicate head of the queen of france, towering above her blue eyes and how her subjects (the nobles at least) would have oohed and aahed over the creativity of her perruquier.

it is fuzzy and smooth, soft and hard, sharp and dull; it smells like the past–a little dusty, musty, and old. the seeds (a dark, dull red) have all popped out of it, do birds eat them? are they dropped then in bird shit a mile from here with their potential dormant until one day they sprout and someone says “look here, a magnolia tree has sprung up in our yard, let’s let it grow here”?

a shaded bower and re-incarnation

when i was 14 or 15 i bought a ratty old paperback at a used bookstore titled “the world is not enough”. it must have been 4 or 5 hundred pages long and concerned life in a castle in france during the 14th/15th centuries (as best i can remember.)

the protagonist was a young page to one of the knights of the castle, about the same age as me at the time who falls in love with the daughter of the prince whose castle it was. there was much mooning about, secret passageways leading from one bower to another; the young page could often be found sitting in une fenêtre of the castle tower watching the goings-on in the castle’s court with its smell of horses, shouts of the other pages, clanking of armor, and the smell of cooking fires. the book seemed to me to be my autobiography from another life and time, so much so that i could not shake that sense of dèja vu, of having lived that life for years afterwards (still can’t, obvsly.)

i lost the book years ago and now i believe that i do not correctly remember its title–i’ve searched for it over the intervening years, wanting to read it again to see if it holds the same spell over me it did so many years ago, but i’ve not been able to find it and all i’m left with is my memory of it and the belief that i lived there and then.

palate (palette) cleanser

"constellation with exposition" oil on linen 1955 by richard paul lohse, 47.25" square

[free of any symbolic relationship with reality, these blocks of color are in and of themselves a concrete object.  the foundation of constructivism or concrete art began in russia & spread across europe & into latin & south american art in the 1930s & 40s.  richard paul lohse was a swiss artist & one of the major proponents of the movement in western europe.]

i looked up from my dessert & tears were streaming down his face.   spoon in one  hand, he couldn’t take his eyes off the plate in front of him.  “what’s the matter, sweetheart?” i inquired, “is everything okay?”

“it’s just so beautiful, i don’t want to disturb it by putting my spoon into it,” he sniffed back a sob.    “the whole meal has been so wonderful & now this, this plate is the last part of it & i’m hoping if i just hold my breath for a second longer it won’t end–i don’t want it to end.”

all this over a plate of seven different sorbets.  one scoop per flavor, all arrayed in the most spectacular display of ices that one could ever hope to see (at the hotel au raisins de bourgogne, in beaune, france, should you ever find yourself in the neighborhood,) & now at last, he dipped his spoon into the first one, his pink tongue catching the bottom of the spoon & pulling it into his mouth, a beatific glow (a halo really) arcing over his head as the first taste buds reacted to the flavor of the sorbet & sent his eyes rolling toward the heavens.

& although they were served as a dessert, their purpose was to cleanse & rejuvenate & enliven the rest of his evening (they succeeded, if memory serves me.)  sorbets (or ices) have been used that way in haute cuisine to ‘cleanse’ the palate of the diner between courses (most usually during a tasting menu composed of several different dishes.)

this is what i thought of when i first saw this painting by lohse.   i kept going back to it, for the color, for its simplicity, for its impishness, for its delight was my delight & when i turned away from it, its colors sweetly, but without over-shadowing, informed my view of another work of art (which i’ve forgotten, of course.)

but even now when i look at it, i get that same bubbly feeling (champagne freshly poured into a crystal flute,) even the same little spritz of it as you put your lips to the thin rim of the glass for that first sip (its dryness — sec — already tangible.)  i am somewhat surprised that the artist titled the work, for usually these high concept art genres eschew titling work so as not to influence the viewer (should there be any.)

“constellation with exposition” — the stars on display & you see when you look at the colors how they twinkle against each other — look at the night sky & tell me you don’t find the very same colors in stars (near & far) — you won’t be able to.  i’m sure there are scientific reasons why your brain reacts the way it does to certain colors & how artists manipulate that experience through the placement of one color against another, but in this instance, for this moment, i don’t care.

all i want is the visceral knowledge, the evocative emotion, the base instinct that’s triggered by color & shape & composition.  this painting is brilliant & it, like those sorbets, brings tears to my eyes & cleanses my senses for whatever is to come next.