Reading Winter Sunshine

2001
The night I returned home from three months in Paris I had a dream: I was arriving back in Paris and I said, “I’m back, I’m finally back.”
That winter I woke up in the evening, my roommates were gone for the break and I kept one room warm in the top of the house. Mine was the only light in the neighborhood. I would be awake the whole night, depressed, and during the day I’d sleep and I’d dream, “I’m back, I’m finally back.” I didn’t see daylight for a week.
But things got better, as they do, and I met a girl who I’d known for a year. We secretly danced in the dark under trees. We fell asleep tangled in her bed and then I’d dream about being in Paris, being back, finally back.
I’m sure I studied around this time because I remember walking to German class in the snow and swearing at it for visiting Seattle in March. I took the class because I’d met a German in Paris and schemed to go back and woo her with my painful conjugation of simple verbs. But the scheme faded as the snow melted and I kept waking up tangled with the girl on white sheets, waking from the Paris dream again and again.
I had the same dream, warmer, later in the Spring, after we fought about nothing and I walked home alone, looking up at the trees drip in the rain. We had fought about the world: I thought it was incurably sick, while she was more optimistic, and I slept alone, tangled in sheets in my warm room.
Despite her optimism, we stayed together through the summer. At her cabin we swam in fresh water. I pulled myself up the ladder to lay on the dock in the sun, the boards scratching my chest. We swung in a hammock and slept there together in coins of sunlight, and I dreamed of Paris.
In winter I woke up, untangled, alone, in Paris, I was back, finally back. I descended dark stairs to a wet, stony street and walked in the rain on a bridge. I wandered the Left Bank until I found a hotel and carried my things up dark steps to the desk. A young man smiled and motioned down the hall. I walked down the hall and stopped at a door, behind which she waited, asleep, tangled in white sheets.

So, I was in India during the tsunami

by Mike

I was in India during the tsunami. I was eating dinner with a friend in a restaurant that sat at the top of the beach and we started hearing waves, the Arabian Sea, which was a surprise because it was low tide. People were shouting and I ran to the front of the restaurant to see Indian men knee-deep in water, grabbing chairs and tables as they drifted away. I thought, “How desperate they must be to think about chairs and tables when this is happening!”

We’ve had health care abroad.

If there is a god, then why do stupid things happen to smart people?

by Mike

Azure and I have had plenty of health care encounters abroad, so I thought I’d tell some of the fun stories about how we get treated when we leave our own country.

Chatter

It was light at 4am because we were so far north and I laid on the couch where I woke and watched the men get ready to go fishing. For a few minutes I pretended I was doing serious independent travel and imagined describing the scene in my dispatches home: “These men are obsessed with coffee. They drink it every morning, at least two cups, and then bring a thermos with them on the boat. When they run out of coffee on the boat everyone crashes and takes turns napping on the narrow benches. They play cards late into the night and laugh constantly and have dedicated their lives to fish.”

Snow on the olive farm

by Mike

Azure and I, picking olives, noticed that the sky was getting dark up the valley. We asked Margarite, “Is it going to rain?”
“No, it won’t rain,” she said.
We didn’t really believe her, so we kept working. But the darkness grew and we were startled to feel an icy wind flee down the valley in front of the cloud.

We looked up and saw that the darkness had crossed a ridge and was heading for us and whether it was rain, it was serious. Claude screamed orders to get the full olive caisses up and we scrambled to move our equipment inside, protected, and to get the olives out of the cold. Then it hit – snow rioted through the orchard and the temperature must have dropped 25 degrees.

There was a lot of confusion but we eventually got everything moved in and spent the rest of the day wide-eyed at the snow falling just 30 minutes from Nice.

Of course Margarite was right – no rain.

More from the allee

by Mike

Last night we went into the allee (it’s an alley of trees) to take some pictures from inside. Azure said that with two people there it wouldn’t be as frightening so she offered to chaperon me. When she was there it wasn’t as terrifying as it was when I’m alone, in fact it seemed a little silly to be so afraid. We took some nice pictures then started walking back toward the chateau.

I decided I wanted to take a few more pictures but I didn’t want Azure to be bored, so I said she could go back inside since we were so close to the driveway and I was over my fear. Well, that was a bad idea. She went to do some emailing and when I clicked the first shutter for a long exposure (Click, 1, 2, 3, 4….) the night started growing larger and I felt like little eyes were watching me. I heard noises like a tin can being swept in the forest and another bird took off and my heart went from 70 to 150 bpm in a flash. So I ran out of the allee and when I was finally in the open I set up for another picture. I opened the shutter and counted. I heard a noise in the forest again, but then it got really silent. There are really no good options for night in a forest. You don’t want it to be too quite nor too noisy… I was crouching down for the photo and at that moment there was a loud splash behind me that seemed to be coming at me. I turned and in a moment of completely unplanned instinctual response I literally hissed in the direction of the noise.

I thought, “ok, this shit is getting to me,” so I went back to the chateau and found Azure and we walked briskly back to our room.

Brocciu three: Only one mystery solved

Cyrus and Patty wait patiently while the supplies are bought at the cheese farm.

by Azure

After the first attempt at making brocciu failed, Mike called the farm to get more supplies for my birthday. Do you want to good news or the bad news first, he asked me after he got off the phone.

It turns out, the milk they had given us was pure, unpasteurized, whole goats milk. Which, on another note explains some things about the bowel movements that were happening on the days when I thought I was drinking 2%. The good news was that they had all the supplies, so Patty drove Linda, Cryus, Mike and I to go get more milk and petite lait.

It was 6pm when we arrived and she happily gave us all that we needed for only 3 euros. This time I got enough for two more trials, one slow cooked and the other faster cooked. She filled the buckets we had brought and sent us on our way.

When we got back to the chateau we realized that we had forgotten the fresh milk. Linda, Mike and I piled back into the car and drove back out to interrupt their dinner and retrieve the milk for brocciu.

After dinner, around 11pm, we started the first trial. This one was slow cooked. I added less salt this time and the proportions were perfect. It got hotter and hotter and finally when the bubbles parted we waited longer and sure enough the brocciu arrived! I scooped in out and put it in my little pot and couldn’t wait to taste it. I got a little spoonful and put it in my mouth and it was so so bad. It tasted just like curdled milk. I had to spit it back into the pot.

Try number two, we figured we had overcooked it time before, but being almost 1am by this time, I had to heat it quickly. It went faster this time, I didn’t spend as much time watching it. I feel like I am getting to know the milk, so I don’t need to. Anyway, when it heater up, I didn’t want it to sit in there too long again, so I turned off the burner as soon as it split, but the brocciu never arrived at all. It was just foam! Again I was so disappointed.

Perhaps it is actually really difficult to make brocciu like people have been telling us. Mike could see that I was getting really down. He told me that when Phillipe had asked how many times Mike thought it would take us to get it right, Mike had answered 10. That made me feel a little better, but I am just not good at this whole persistence thing. That’s Mike’s department. I guess I need to learn that too. I’m counting down though, only seven more tries until I eat the sweet brocciu.

Bone collectors

by Mike

We’ve lucked out again and found ourselves staying on the grounds of an 11th century chateau near Poitiers – it’s in the middleish of France. Azure’s cousins (hi!) were caretakers here back in 2002 and Azure stayed with them for what’s become a legendary stretch of three months of roaring fires in the medieval fireplace and drinking games and long dinners and various other shenanigans. This year, having nothing to do and no more scooter, we decided to head to the chateau for the end of our trip.

The chateau seems to collect characters, one of whom is Patty, an American ex-ish-pat who’s living on the chateau grounds for now but nothing’s ever really declared here. Where will you live next year? Eh. What did you do for a living back home? It doesn’t really seem to come up. What’s the latest on the financial cri- don’t even think of bringing that here. Here’s one thing I’d love to share about her, though – she collects bones for soup stock. She boils the bones “to nothing” over days, mixing them with lettuce or brandy or whatever’s around and adding water as needed. Her last stock was 72 hours of boiling. We haven’t tasted one yet, but I’ll write about it when we do.

During the days we walk the treed trails on the grounds, we work in the garden, we cook a little lunch, we investigate mysterious buildings on the 50-acre property. The days are great. Night, though, surges onto the place. It paints the windows black, it suffocates flashlights. It squeezes my ribcage until it itches and it makes footsteps sound like faint music. Night sneaks into every empty room, making noises along the way, and waits, and you can hear your breath the whole time. The chateau is enormous, it’s too big for the night.

At dinner Patty talked about the ghosts. There’s one that sits down on the edge of her bed while she’s sleeping, she can feel the impression. Someone else talked about a man in a long coat coming into the room at night and speaking French. Apparently the long coat man has been seen a couple times here – he belongs to the chateau, the story goes. I was wondering what I’d do if I came face-to-face with the man in the long coat one night, too late, maybe too drunk. I’d like to think I’d talk to him and find out what he’s about. But that’s not what I’d do.

After the ghost stories I stayed up to take some night photos of the chateau from the entrance. It was midnight and clear, a moonless night. Here’s how night photos usually go – I click the shutter and start counting. I look up at the stars, I look for other angles I could try, I listen to the night until I get to whatever I’m counting to and then I close the shutter.

Here’s what happened last night on this ancient property: I clicked the shutter and started counting. I was counting to 50. When I got to 10 I heard footsteps in the trees that never materialized into a person. I noticed that the vapor from my breaths wasn’t disappearing and I wondered how many breaths the air could accumulate. When I got to 20 I could sense someone was behind me. I looked over my shoulder into the thick darkness but I kept sensing they were behind me after I’d turned. At 30 my heart was racing and I was taking shallow breaths so I might be able to hear anything coming at me. My ribcage was itching and I was imagining my death. At 40 the tree I was under burst into noise as an owl decided to flee right at that moment. At 50 I closed the shutter, grabbed the camera without looking at the photo and sprinted back to our room where Azure was waiting for me.

So that’s what I’d do if I saw the man in the long coat – I’d sprint.

(this was written on the wall when we got here….)

Brocciu two

by Azure

I attempted my first unassisted batch of brocciu today in the kitchen of the chateau. Everyone else had gone to the brocante (a big flea market) in Chauveny and Mike and I stayed back to have a leisurely lunch and make the brocciu.

Patty had introduced us to her cheese man who is impossible to get near at the Chauveny market, but parks his cheese van by the Abbey on Fridays and is available for chatting. We had asked him for some “petite lait”, pronounced “petite lay” which, coincidentally, Patty would also love to receive from the cheese man, though not for the purposes of making brocciu.

He brought us two buckets of it to the market (for free) and told us where to go to get the fresh milk. We went to the farm and asked for some fresh milk and they brought us 2 liters for 2.50 euros. A cheap project!

When I started the process today, it looked like everything was going well. I figured out the temperature conversions and did everything right on schedule. We figured out that at the exact same moment that the pot boils, the brocciu arrives. We watched and watched and it started to smell like cake, just as it should. It arrived. The foam on top began to part and we turned off the flame and I dipped my ladle in the pot to scoop it out and there was nothing there. What happened to the brocciu????

We had done everything right, I checked and rechecked the proportions and couldn’t figure it out. The tough part was that I could see the brocciu in the pot, but every time I tried to scoop it out, it went through the holes. I then realized that the woman, instead of giving us fresh-from-the-udder goat milk had given us normal drinking milk. Sure enough, I took a sniff and it was so mild. I drank a little and tasted normal, 2% or maybe even fat free.

Mike said that he hadn’t thought it would go smoothly the first time. I was disappointed, but with the discovery of the wrong milk, I was relieved that it wasn’t human error. I could at least have hope that I could still make brocciu given the correct ingredients.

I have decided to try again. I’ll have Mike call the farm ahead of time and ask for all the correct ingredients. I am determined to get this right before leaving here, so I can be confident that I know how to make it. Stay tuned for its arrival.

Cheap hotel, plastic bottles of wine, lesser hell.

by Azure

We are still in Paris. My meh has turned to a MEH!!! We’re not actually in Paris, just outside in a really really cheap hotel. Although we’ve ended our long and abusive relationship with Avventura, the shop that sold us the scooter, we are still in Paris suburbia hell. Mike says there are days in Seattle when he feels like he has spent the whole day doing nothing. That is our existence here. We wake up, post some ads on the french websites listing the scooter and wait for emails to arrive that we neither fully comprehend nor have the means to respond to. That doesn’t stop us from trying, but it does hinder the amount of responses that we have gotten to our replies. Or maybe not. Maybe these guys are just too lazy to write back or come see the scooter.

Here are some of the correspondences over the last week (translated to English of course).

“Hello, I am interested in your scooter. Is it still available?”
“Yes, when are you available to come see it?”
-nothing-

“Your scooter interests me very much, I propose 1000 euros?”
“Yes, that sounds fine, when would you like to see it?”
-nothing-

“40,000 miles, I will propose 800 euros.”
“No thank you.”

“400 euros.”
“Go fuck yourself”

“400 euros.”
“Sounds great, when can you come look at it?”
-nothing-

“Your scooter looks perfect, but I can only afford 800 euros.”
“Ok, that will be fine, when can you come look at it?”
“I can bring 300 now and the rest in one week.”
-we’re leaving tomorrow?-

“Is your scooter still available? I can trade a computer and 100 euros.”
“Ummmmmm”

“I am interested in your scooter, I can trade it for my diesel truck”
“Thank you for your response, however, the ad says I must leave Paris and can’t take a scooter, how will I take a truck?”

And it goes on and on and on. Not one person has looked at the scooter. If they did, I know they would driven away with it. Mike finally wrote a rant on Craigslist, but since no one looks at it here, there were no responses, oh unless you count the fake response that you get every time saying that they want the “item” and they will pay by check and also pay for shipping. Um, do you know that it is 200 pound scooter?

Today we thought we had found luck when we called a scooter shop and they said they bought scooters. When we took it out there, the guys said it was of NO value to him. NONE! We said, well is it worth 10 euros? And he said, well of course. To which we responded, well how much is it worth then. We are starting to think that people think differently here. Almost everything in worth something, especially when it has taken two people to Corsica and back with no problems last week.

As we drove back, I kept looking at people walking. I thought we should give it to an immigrant man or someone who it would be of value to. At this point it is no longer about the money. Current Azure has already borrowed the 400 euro that she is losing from future Azure that is richer and has disposable income. Or maybe she is just less cheap. We respond to the ads where people are nice, they use common courtesy words like “hello.” We want the scooter to go to a good home, since we know what it has and can do for someone.

It is a difficult situation since we no longer want to be here, we are ready to move on, it’s time to put the scooter to bed, but we don’t know how. Tomorrow, we are planning to take it to Jean Paul’s house and sell it on ebay. After MUCH worry and discussion, it seems the best option. If all goes well, that will be the end of our journey together. If all doesn’t go well, we will be paying a 1500 euro fine for not having insurance. Just a little more to borrow from future Azure I guess.

As it turns out, we might end up selling it before it gets to the house. There seems to be a few serious options that we found tonight. We can’t count on people anymore. That is the hardest part for me, not being being able to control the situation at all. We don’t have a phone and email is hard for a lot of people. There are so many queries, but no follow through. It’s like dating and I can’t tell if it is them or us. As Mike says, we love her too much to burn her, so the search continues for someone else to love her.