jam tarts in bed

There is nothing quite like jam tarts in bed, crumbs wriggling into sheets as you take a bite. It is comfort, safety, like a bedtime kiss from a parent who says it will all be right.  A chill draft is sneaking through my window, but I under my Welsh blanket I am eating jam. Slivers of pastry linger at the back of my mouth as I creep, deeper into my bed. There is nothing quite like jam tarts in bed. Do try!

watching what sophie calle saw...

Sat in the Perrotin gallery, I watched three screens, three backs, three people watching the sea, meeting the sea for the very first time. I watched what Sophie Calle saw. I watched the waves roll, shoulders shift and then one of the people turned, faced me, watching me as I watched him having first seen the sea. On another screen a man turned, faced us, watching him as he looked out of the screen, the experience marking each line on his face. Eyes closed, open. Tears ran. On the third scree, a women turned. Faced us facing her, her face facing us. All of meeting in the gallery, for the very first time. Sat in the Perrotin gallery, I watched  the three screens a second time and then, a third. Mesmerized by first times, I wanted to stay there, in the pure white room, in the tenderness, caught in a neat nostalgic rewind, for the first time, another first time, another first... 

Octobering Paris

On the twelfth day of the tenth month, we steal days soaked with Parisian rain. Days measured in city steps, marked on pavements, eyes drinking in roof-tops and capital smells.

Three days made from ramen soup, tempura and Molière's statue, in the elegant shadow of the Palais Royale. We eat and sleep in the 1er arrondissement, crammed with Japanese restaurants where pin thin chefs, with aprons wrapped round non-existent waists, whisk metals sieves of udon noodles from bubbling baths of broth. Morning coffee is pertained from moustached barristas - moustaches are the latest ting - who draw tulips into milky froth and treasure a collection of miniature owls. In the Marais, we drink lemon tea from glasses in the Jewish quarter, split a bitter poppy seed rugelach and watch doe-eyed families shopping for Friday Sabbath. After, we hunt for Sophie Calle and find first and last times in words and videos and I sit, stop, watch, think.

Watch the backs of the people discovering the sea, watch them turn to face us watching them, for the first, the very, very first time. Think about first times, memories. Fresh, unscarred by the tread of time. Nothing is ever the same. The next day, coffee drips through paper filters. Drips it drops to the sound of rain. Men wear scarves draped carelessly around wet necks. Silk, wool, cotton, knotted into negligent Parisian chic. It rains and we walk to the the Quai Branly Museum and fall into continents, dreaming time. Aboriginal Australian art.

I stop, once again, at these topographical wonders, journeys measured in dots and lines, circling sacred space. The museum is breath-taking, both the form and content. Then, in the evening, Chekov, starting and stopping, a Benedetti's version with pauses into which the audience can stride and gaze - for a second - upon casual tableaux, the actors on the stage with the ease of horses. Sunday, we eat boiled eggs. Walk. Get wet and then, come home on a silent train. Remembering all that rain.

Stealing the last piece of summer

Far too early in the morning, I took my holiday feet back out for a stroll, accompanied by three pairs of lovely shoes. Before the sun rose, I put my sandy plimpsolls on a boat bound for Jersey, to the nearest bit of England from here. The plan was to steal the last bit of summer, continue to drift in an unplanned way - keep loose before life tightens. It felt almost right, this last snatched day, felt almost right - despite the fatigue - to tease the summer out before la rentrée, before timetables loom on the horizon, before school, before workshops, before manuscripts are to be written, train whistles blown, before time is cut into predestined pieces and improvisation cast to the administration dogs, who are asking for papers, appointments and my signature, just at the end of the page, s'il vous plait. Before all of this, we took the time for ice-cream, to dip our limbs into an art-deco swimming pool, dream and admire the turquoise. 

Nostalgia : a wistful yearning for the past

Going to wrap my journeys up, all of them, in bus tickets printed in alphabets that I don't understand, in the taste of Spanish cakes and Korean spice, in the smell of otherness as I step off the plane, train and out of the van door, bouncing on a hotel bed and sleeping on a mountain floor, I'll put the thoughts of wandering in my dreamland, until I repack my bag and start moving, all over again.

nostalgia (n.)1770, "severe homesickness" (considered as a disease), Modern Latin (cf. Fr. nostalgie, 1802), coined 1668 by Johannes Hofer, as a rendering of Ger. heimweh, from Gk. algos "pain, grief, distress" (see -algia) + nostos "homecoming," from PIE *nes- "to return safely home" (cf. O.N. nest "food for a journey," Skt. nasate "approaches, joins," Ger. genesen "to recover," Goth. ganisan "to heal," O.E. genesen "to recover"). Transferred sense (the main modern one) of "wistful yearning for the past" first recorded 1920. 

Returning

We are still returning to everyday life. We joke that summer is going, "Away, away, away..", as we finish salted almonds, drink the last bitter orange drop of Vermouth, the plastic carton bought from a dusty mountain shop. We cling, with tenderness, to the memories of hot days that stretched from the morning to evening aperitif, new friends, mountains, cards games and a Jeff Koons dog. I have left some of the bags unpacked. The smell of summer crouches, hiding in folded clothes, crumbs of earth from our journey roll inside, whispering to each in foreign tongues: Matarana, Navarre, Pamplona, Bilbao, Estella, Charentes. There are rollos de anis aniseed Spanish biscuits that are yet to be eaten - squirreled for a rainy Breton day, there are wrinkled black olives and garlic octopus in jars. I wear shorts and a misshapen T-shirt as I work, tackling revisions of my book, the clothes make me feel free and the hours suspended and open, (somewhat silly, but true.)

This morning - before breakfast

From the wall of Santa Barbara hermitage, La Fresneda, 2012

I planned a series of posts about Spain, a list of the things that I love: eating dinner at ten at night, eating lunch at three, days reconstructed by the very hot sun, siesta dripping, endlessly, the tortas, the tapas, the wine, The Guggenheim, the plastic curtains separating the inside of houses from the outside world, the surreal ice lollies, the olive groves, the greenest river pools you ever saw, the hermitages stuck onto the sides of dry mountains, rivers sewn through the heart of stone, the old men gathered in white short sleeves, the teenage swimming pool girls who serenaded mine, the drive across the desert, the second breakfasts ( we think of ourselves as hobbits when we travel), the cortado, the living in the van ( which a man called Dusty named our wagon), the sleepy Charentes, the Navarre mountain plateau where horses rode wild, the...but the day is dawning and today is back to work time and today - before breakfast, I must eat something -  I imagine time going backwards, the unpacking of bags, the unreading of maps, the places travelling back from my mind to the page, evrything becoming unknown again, the unpicking of a path.