Beth Arnold

Jours of Our Lives: 40) KICKED OUT…TO PARIS

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.

 

This column is dedicated to Snapp Morgan—handsome, smart dog about town in both Little Rock, Arkansas, and Paris, France. He was the dearest of dogs, a true friend, a vital member of our family. Snappman, I know your grandmother met you in Heaven with a juicy bone, and you are flying high.

 

ALMOST AS SOON as we returned to Collioure from Morocco, our 67-year-old landlord informed us that we would have to move out of our garret loft so his latest girlfriend could move in. Even in the spirit of Sowing Late-ish Oats, I couldn’t imagine why he would prefer a romantic arrangement to our good company and the enticing aromas of my cookery drifting down his stairwell (he dined with us quite often). But he did and kicked us out anyway.

Our apartment in Collioure

As longtime homeowners and newish nomads, we weren’t used to being evicted from our household. But in spite of that shock, this nudge gave us the opportunity to do something I had been wanting the three of us to do anyway—move to Paris!

Jours of Our Lives: 39) MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

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 .

 

CLEAR LIGHT BURST open the sky, illuminating clues of Henri Matisse hidden in the muddle of Tangier. We stood on the periphery of the Grand Socco looking up and down for the way to the Grand Hotel Villa de France, where the Matisses had stayed and Henri had glimpsed scenes that matched his artistic vision. Jim was armed with a book of the paintings, and I carried my Morocco guide and map. We looked every bit the awkward rube tourists, but most Moroccans don’t know much, if anything, about the artist whose lush paintings have etched the colors and forms of their country in the minds of art-lovers throughout the world. A couple of guides, real or faux, approached us, but we convincingly declined. I don’t engage in conversation with hustlers unless it feels safe and right. In any case, we wanted to be on our own.

 

Le Rifain assis by Henri Matisse (1869 - 1954). Oil on canvas, 200 x 160 cm. In the collection of the Barnes Foundation. (via Wikipedia)

Jours of Our Lives: 38) THE PORT OF TANGIER

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.

OUR FIRST IMPRESSION of Tangier was of a big city with a big-city feel, though that changed. We checked into another incredible hotel, the El Minzah, an elegant jewel with a touch of shabby chic. Our room had a terrace with a spectacular view to the sea. The downstairs piano bar, with its cozy banquettes, was a wartime favorite of Allied bigwigs and various spies, and is said to have been the inspiration for Sam’s “Café Americain” in Casablanca. Whether that’s true or not, I could definitely see Humphrey Bogart holding forth there. The El Minzah so utterly evoked romantic visions of what a colonial hotel should be that we hardly wanted to leave it.

The Port of Tangier conjures up images of mystery and intrigue, of spies having secret signals and hushed conversations, of men slinking through the night like worn but agile tomcats, and of old gay men coming from the West to find solace and pleasure in their select young parallels. It is a city of and for men. I felt this nowhere else in Morocco, but these cafés told the tale. They are full of men huddled together in conversation, sipping their hot and sugary mint-infused tea, dragging on smokes, staring into the streets, their lives, their worlds. What do they see? So many of these men need work.

Unlike in France, women are almost completely nonexistent in Tangier café life. The only female we saw in one was a random European who must have been either very brave or very foolish. I’m a fearless traveler, but either I didn’t have the courage or I had the good sense to skip this experience. I didn’t feel unsafe, but the scene was a little creepy and didn’t suit me. (If you want to debate the point that the whole of Morocco has this culture, I will agree theoretically, but Tangier is vastly different. It doesn’t slide neatly into a Moroccan pigeon hole.)

Window at Tangier by Henri Matisse 1912 - The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. (via Wikipedia)

Jours of Our Lives: 37) ON THE ROAD

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.

 

AS AZIZ DROVE us out into the Moroccan countryside, we saw many sheep with their herders; newborn lambs; donkeys carrying riders or gigantic water bottles, packages, God knows what. We stopped for cows to cross the road. Sometimes their front legs were tied together so they wouldn’t wander too far away. I felt sorry for the hobbled animals. There were no fences anywhere.

The land was covered in verdant green grass that looked woven like the carpets, with neon orange flowers as their embellishment. Omar said that in two weeks time red poppies and blooms of blue and white would add to the vibrant landscape. Vineyards spread over plains, and men and women hoed the vines with their own steam. The plethora of satellite dishes that topped every house and building—no matter how primitive—seemed out of place.

Jours of Our Lives: 36) WOVEN VOICES

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.

 

I OPENED THE sliding glass door of our swish room in the Palais Jamais, which once was the palatial home of a grand vizier to the sultan. This posh hotel, an oasis in the Moroccan landscape, is one of my favorite places to stay in the world. As I stepped onto the terrace, the sun was up and shining, the air cool. I looked down upon the hotel’s manicured Andalusian gardens and sapphire pool and, beyond, to the ancient medina that sprawled across the panorama. Its warren of path-sized streets and buildings bloomed with the minarets of scads of mosques. We knew they were there but not in such numbers.

The morning call of prayers had been our crowing rooster that someone was up, while dawn   still had the good sense to hold back. I slid back into bed while Jim showered. Within minutes,  a flock of petite birds were hopping into our room, flitting up on chairs and the foot of my bed. No doubt they had breakfasted on the plates of nuts, fruit, cookies, and crumbs of croissants in the elegant Palais many times before, but no luck with us. Our stash was covered, though the brave little birds added to my curious morning sensation that some people unwittingly refer to as cheerfulness; or in this case, perhaps it was the dizzy delight of waking as a sultaness.

Jours of Our Lives: 35) CALLED BY COLOR

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.

 

THE IMMENSE MOUNTAIN that juts out of the Pyrenées-Orientals, Le Canigou, was magnificently robed in ermine snow with billowing white and gray clouds hovering over her. Canigou is usually our first sign of home, but this time she was our portent of leaving. We were racing up the highway to Toulouse, on our first big trip since returning to France—our first voyage for which we’ve had to leave our good dog Snapp (he’s being attended by our new American friend, Rachel).

We were pursuing another important passage in the chasing of Henri Matisse—I’m speaking of Morocco, where the scenes, colors, light, architecture, dress, and physical mannerisms of the people captivated his imagination and resulted in an important series of paintings. Our first stop from Toulouse was Amsterdam, and if you look at a map this makes no sense at all—but KLM offered cheap tickets, so we were flying to Morocco through the Netherlands.

Porte de la casbah, Tangier, winter (1912-13), The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, (photo of painting from book).

Jours of Our Lives: 34) RIDERS OF THE STORM

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.

 

THE WIND HOWLED, and rain steadily pounded the roofs and streets, land and sea throughout the night. The leak in our skylight, that streamed down Matisse's “Odalisque á la culotte grise” for the first time when we were away, was back and silent drops of water were glazing the floor. I stayed up and read. I was close to finishing Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser, and since I've become quite fascinated with "that Austrian woman" as the French would say as a slur during the lifetime of this much and wrongly maligned Queen of France (in Ms. Frazier's opinion and now mine as well), I couldn't put the heavy tome down.

I am on a course of reading French history to understand the roots of the country I'm in. I've gone from Middle Ages to Revolution, or, to put it another way, from murder, mayhem, and pillaging to murder, mayhem, and pillaging. Some things don't seem to change in time—with the exception of who’s doing it to whom. Constant warfare together with inhumane atrocities weren't a daily routine in the France of the 18th century, as they had been in the 11th and 12th, when survival often depended upon the whims of one's ruler and/or conqueror, as well as on the Pope and Church, and on what terror was improvised and who owed what revenge to whom. That is, until the people rose up against the royal family and aristocracy and chopped off so many heads that streets ran thick with blood. As the heads, hearts, and various other entrails of whoever was the last to be tried and found guilty of some treason real or made up were paraded upon pikes around town, the rioters were literally covered in the sticky red fluid that courses through life or drains from the lack of it. The radicals were evidently delighted to mutilate bodies, which is a bit disappointing, but the blood of their victims reflected some sort of (twisted and anti) communion with their freedom. The point of changing the system in France was valid; these actions were dubious at best. But this is inevitably the question of revolution: Must it be murderous and violent?

 Archduchess Marie Antoinette, Queen of France (1755-1793), Kunsthistorisches Museum, (Image via Wikipedia)

Jours of Our Lives: 33) MY CIRCLING THEORY

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!

 

Jours of Our Lives: 32) LIFE IN COLLIOURE

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.

 

WE SPENT 13 months in the village of Collioure on the Mediterranean Coast, with the Pyrenees Mountains rising behind us. I had always imagined us living in a fishing village, and that's just what Collioure had been until the town’s livelihood changed from fishing to tourism. We were fortunate enough to find a small loft in a village house that was freshly renovated. Everything in it was spanking new except the thick wooden beams that sliced across the ceiling of our living room. As the ceiling dropped to the sides of the house, the beams were of head-banging height, and at times the top of Jim's head was bloody from all the knocks he'd gotten from forgetting to duck. He just didn't ever learn. Jim told our landlord that the flat should come equipped with a pair of motorcycle helmets.

Head-banging wooden beams in upper left corner.

Jours of Our Lives: 31) THE LAST SUPPER

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.

 

WE LEFT OUR luxurious little nest at Hotel Le Yaca as the real Bravades procession wove through St. Tropez. We could hear the fifes and drums while we loaded the car.  

Jim and I were having our Leaving Spat that couples the world over engage in whenever they’re trying to get out of town and go anywhere. This time it took the form of whether Jim should get in touch with a friend of a friend, who happened to live in the area. He didn’t want to do it, which was true to form. He knows that if I think something is important, I’ll do it. And in fact I did (and do) think that making contacts in a foreign country—expanding our circle—is  something that’s eminently worthwhile.

I admire this typically male behavior in some regards. It’s pleasing, as well as efficient, to do only what One wants, what One is interested in, and what is of the import to merit One’s  attention. But usually for us females (inevitably me), this leads to being knee-deep in One’s manure because it’s in my/our best interest for whatever it is to get done. Another appropriate appellation for wives could be “Pack Mules.” Hee-haw, hee-haw!

We wound through the hills and vineyards to make our way to Aix-en-Provence, which wasn’t technically on our Matisse itinerary—but Henri Matisse greatly admired the painter Paul Cézanne, who hailed from Aix, and had bought one of his paintings when the Matisses could ill afford it. Matisse kept the picture for many years as a touchstone of sorts, a prized possession that he wouldn’t part with, no matter what.

The Basket of Apples by Paul Cézanne. Art Institute of Chicago. (Image via Wikipedia)