by Beth Arnold
An ongoing series about uprooting our lives in America and moving to France. For what's happened before, see previous Jours of Our Lives entries here.
IT IS DIFFERENT now. The crowds are gone. The village is quiet. Most stores and restaurants are shut for rest and renovation. This was happening before we left in September, but while we were gone Collioure has returned to herself. The feminine usage: She seems like a woman to me with her safe, liquid harbor and brightly painted skirt that surrounds it. Her home is wall-papered with vineyards and the Matisse blue of the sky, and her light is in the sunbeams. Like a siren, she calls artists, sailors, and searchers to come to her shores.
Though we missed a chunk of it, winter is the window of opportunity to really become part of the life here. The cold months are the time when residents warm to invaders such as we are. After the hordes have deserted, opportunities to have little chit-chats avail themselves and the Collioureans open up—especially when you have a dog. With Snapp along, more people speak to us—which is mostly for the good. They stop to pet him or compliment his well-groomed visage. He is handsome, after all. But there is the white-haired woman with her little white fluff dog who fusses at Jim about Snapp, because he is not on a leash all the time. It’s possible that she’s concerned about Snapp’s safety and not Jim’s canine etiquette—plenty of dogs run loose with their masters—but Jim doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand what she’s saying, but he knows she’s not happy with him. I keep telling one of my friends to get a dog, and she’ll meet people. You know who you are. Get a dog, and you’ll meet someone!
Collioure is French Commando headquarters, and winter is wonderful Commando watching time. Imagine a platoon of hunky muscles-bulging-through-their-camouflage French soldiers training to carry out war and survive. The other day one company was practicing getting their buddies across the canal in a rubber raft one by one. The rafter had to lie down with all his gear and guns, while on the beach another faction furiously pumped up other rafts. The idea seemed to be Commando vessels for a getaway to sea. There must be a requirement for the men to be good looking. Trust me on this, ladies. It might be worth a trip over. The "Sex and The City" nymphs would be hitching a ride for a hopefully happy ending—a Mediterranean sunset or at least a bumpy spree.
Here in Collioure when I am the morning walker of Snapp, we often follow the street that runs by the side of our house and which our balcony looks down upon. It is the last rue on this side of town, and though I hate to admit this, I’m not able to identify which direction it is in the earth’s magnetic field. I think I have known since I’ve lived here, but my memory fails me, and a natural sense of directional bearing is not one of the talents I happen to have. I think I used to be better at finding true North, and I’ve spent days and days in the car being our navigator and done very well—but then there are those moments in a city when I can’t for the life of me look at a map and figure out how to get to where I want to go.
This is made worse because France is a country that spins you round and round in circles wherever you are, and I mean that quite literally—so when you come out the other side of a rond-point you’re never quite sure which direction you’re headed. This must be just as much the case for those who aren’t impaired at finding their bearings. There are loops on narrow rues and big highways and at turning points to go anywhere. I don’t know how long the physical road structure has been this way. Did 12th-century pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compestela hike around these spherical intersections looking for a sign to point their way to the bones of St. James?
The good thing about the roundabouts is you can have as many chances as you want to determine your route instead of making a wrong choice that is a commitment to driving forever down a road looking for a place to turn around. Jim grumbles when he doesn’t know where he is or which direction to go. I have learned not to be as nervous as I once was, because the other great advantage of the endless rings around everything in France, as well as the signage—whether a pig-trail of a small village rue or a four-lane city boulevard—is that sooner or later there are always signs to Toutes (all) Directions that one can follow to find his way anywhere.
It has recently come to me that this institution of dizzying circles is a symbol for more than the traffic routes in France. On television, talking heads are forever discussing whatever-it-is, which doesn’t stop for more salacious prime-time trash, bad sit-coms, or the culmination of some stupid reality show to elevate ratings. And if you’ve read Polly Platt’s book, French or Foe, you understand that nothing gets accomplished in French business meetings except talking and talking and more meetings to come. I also learned from her that engineering is one of the most prestigious professions, and my circling theory comes to a gyrating point with them and the architects. I’ve lived here long enough to appreciate some innovations and to recognize that others (like some modern architecture) are original but bad. I think the competition to produce something inventive must be quite intense.
With my circling theory, I recognize that looping round and round in life is culturally apropos here. Getting anywhere as the crow flies is not the French way.
When Snapp and I amble up the rue, a high stone wall shelters us from the chilly wind. We pass by a tree loaded with lemons and a garden that an old woman lovingly tends. When we reach the end before the street curves toward the village, a tidy family house comes into our view. It is two stories with blue shutters, and even when the mornings are refreshingly cold, the windows are thrown open to a hillside of vineyards climbing to the sky.
I hear a rooster crow, and Snapp and I make the arc that takes us into town—and to the rue de Soleil that circles us back home.
Beth Arnold
Collioure, France
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Unless otherwise indicated, photos by Beth Arnold. Not subject to use without permission.
Beth Arnold lives and writes in Paris, where she produces her "Letter From Paris" new media project.
Jours of Our Lives illlustration by artist (and couturier) Elizabeth Cannon. To find out more about her, click here.
You can find the Chasing Matisse book by James Morgan here at Amazon--or you can find it in or order it from your favorite book store.
If you'd like to start at the beginning of Jour of Our Lives, click here.
Rond-point illustration via La Clé de Voûte.
