Hi, all. Another pathetic post from a discombobulated traveler. I’m missing contact with my friends and family, but have already lost my cell phone once somewhere along the winding streets of Lacoste. It was returned to me this morning by a groundskeeper, so it must have fallen out of my bag somehow.
Also, I got home much later than expected last night. Despite a nice, colorful, and very official-looking schedule on the Internet, there does not, in fact, appear to be a bus to or from Lacoste. I found this out yesterday by waiting for a long time at the stop and eventually going back up to campus at dark to call a taxi. The cab driver confirmed it. As it turns out, there are all of two cabs here (two as in two cars, not as in two companies; here as in the whole region). They’re clearly not very reliable or available, and they’re very spendy, so that’s not going to be a long-term solution for me, especially since there are nighttime lectures and events I need to attend, and they double their price after dark. I tried calling a Ford dealership that the student coordinator at the school recommended for renting a car, but spoke to someone who did not understand English at all. I’m pretty apprehensive, since the last price I found online was $84 a day, which is way more than I can afford. I may as well buy a crappy car (if such a thing exists) if that’s the case! I’ll look into resources today, though there doesn’t seem to be any point in renting one until after I get back from (or maybe while I am in) Paris. A contributing factor to this conundrum is that, because I’ve never had occasion to, I don’t drive a manual transmission, and I don’t imagine that these narrow, hilly streets are the place for me to learn. So I’ll have to find an automatic, which I know is both more difficult and expensive here. Yikes.
But, wait. I need to say before anything else that this place is incredible. My apartment, Bonnieux, unbelievable. And my school, Lacoste, this crazy hilltop town beneath the ruins of the Marquis de Sade's Castle -- unreal. Getting a grip on reality and juggling the pragmatic necessities of life is difficult in a setting like this, with jet lag like this, but it has to be done.
I am going to be dropping one of my classes, Continuity and Discontinuity in Architecture, and just keeping my Art History class, Treasures of Provence, and an online Historic Preservation class with the riveting title of Law & Advocacy. One reason for this is that I need the extra financial aid I’ll get by having fewer classes, especially since it’s now clear that getting a car really is going to be necessary. Another reason is that the content seems to be redundant with other classes I’ve taken, and so far the discussion of buildings has been very focused on Savannah, which doesn’t do anything for me as an eLearning student. (The only student not from Savannah, by the way, as well as the only graduate student, as far as I can tell.) So far, I feel like a complete fish out of water at this school, at about twice the age of all the other students. They’re all piping voices and creamy skinned and smooth faced. And every single one of them is beautiful. I wish this was something I’d known about youth when I had it – it makes even the more plain gorgeous and dewy and fresh… Anyway, as rude as it sounds, I’d like to spend as little time with them as possible and am glad to limit my days on campus to two. That won’t be an option next week, in Paris though. I had to ask to get a private room, which will also cost me more. Argh.
My adorable little hostess and landlady (she couldn’t be more than four and a half feet tall and must be over 70) has been so kind, feeding me since I haven’t had time yet to buy any food, clothing me since it’s been freezing and/or raining most of the time so far and I didn’t bring a coat or umbrella, and arranging for me to be dropped off at school by her good friend Pierre (who deserves a long description later, as does she) or her dashing young doctor son, who really makes me wish I were 20 years younger. But this can’t go on—she doesn’t have a car herself, and Jean-Camille lives and works in Marseille and only came out for Sunday dinner to meet me and get his new Mac. Michele’s English is as bad as my French, and though we limp along to the best of our ability, there’s a formality to our time together that is somewhat taxing. She is the type who will pour your coffee and milk into a tiny china cup and insist that you sit in the front seat of the car. Both nights I’ve dined with her, she first sat me down in a Louis XIV chair and fed me salted peanuts and champagne, and then served me four course meals. I can’t impose on her friends and neighbors for rides anymore, either—one of them is driving me this morning, and she doesn’t speak English at all. It makes me feel uncomfortable and beholden—not my favorite sensation.
Add to all this the fact that, walking up the steep cobblestone street to my crazy 12th-century apartment within the walls of the ancient Roman city fortress (much more on this later) in the darkest dark I’ve ever experienced, I fell last night and twisted my ankle something fierce. It’s all swollen and painful. I smashed up my knee on the other leg too, and tore the one pair of jeans I currently have with me, but that’s not as big a deal as the ankle, considering that all the streets here are steep, narrow, and made of slippery and uneven cobblestones. It also discounts my other projected form of transportation, at least for now, and that’s the three-kilometer hike between the two villages. That may be an occasional possibility in the future, but the path is pretty washed out right now, and is apparently pretty rugged, with streams to cross, etc. Cycling is also out, since this is the same mountainous path for bikes, and the main road is much longer and quite treacherous, with everybody whizzing around in their little Peugeots and Citroens and passing each other on these ridiculously skinny tracks above dizzyingly high drop-offs.
By the time I got home last night, nothing in this tiny village was open except for one brasserie, which was no longer serving food, so I had a glass of wine on an empty stomach while nursing my ankle and trying to convince a pair of local dogs to visit with me. (I swear the dogs here are as French as everything else. Quite self-contained and a little aloof—in other words they don’t put out.) Then I stumped on up to my very incredible and spooky dungeon and ate old pasta someone had left in the kitchen with butter and salt left for me by Michele.
So, talk about adventures! I know there must be a reason for all this madness. As you know, I have been pretty much queen of being alone, and it doesn’t get much more solitary than this. There’s a lesson here, but I don’t know what it is yet. And my reduced class schedule begs the question of what, exactly, I’m going to do with my time here. Aside from schoolwork, that is, which won’t take all of my energy. If I have a car, I plan on doing as much exploring of the region as I can. But I’m also facing the uncomfortable fact that, if I don’t write a book now, while I’m here, I don’t know under what circumstances it will ever happen. I’m just tiptoeing around the edges of this idea right now, feeling pretty cautious and dubious about it, but it’s what I’m looking at. Phew.
I love you all and I miss you. I miss Bodie and Ed. But I’m OK. Really. The scenery and my home here are mind-blowing, and if nothing else, I’ll have a lot of good stories to tell. Not exactly Eat, Pray, Love so far, but maybe Blood, Sweat, Tears...
XOXO Carla
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