Beth Arnold

Jours of Our Lives: 26) LILY OF THE VALLEY

 

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.

 

DATELINE: CÔTE D’AZUR.  We were driving through billowing clouds along the corniche, and moment by moment the vapors surrounding us were pierced by stunning views of storybook villages floating on peaks, and mountains plunging steep into turquoise sea. The scented air hummed with a profusion of herbs and flowers, while blossoms of hot red, magenta, yellow, purple, and pink burst in our vision. No wonder the glamour pusses who can afford to go anywhere in the world choose this.

Menton, France (Image via Gerard Cohen at Wikipedia.)

Every village, town, or city that we saw or passed through had its allure. Eze and La Turbie were aeries in the sky for eagle people to fly in and land. Menton was a garden delight, with seaside café tables bearing hula-skirt umbrellas to shade the hot sun. Crossing the border into Italy was barely slowing down, but once we drove through the tunnel, the landscape was transformed. It was less developed and not as crowded as the French Riviera. Terraced hillsides covered with vineyards replaced a grid of multi-million-dollar houses.

Letter From Paris: Wisteria Lane

On this Easter Sunday, I want to wish everyone peace and love, the wonder of change and renewal.  The mysteries of birth and death stay with us throughout our lives.  In this natural cycle, death must occur before a new life is born in whatever form it takes.

The gorgeous wisteria on my terrace shows the fragile grace of vivid life and beautiful death perfectly.  Two weeks ago, the blooms were glorious, and today they are fading and scattered in pots and on the marble floor. 

My Wisteria Lane....

Jours of Our Lives: 10) EACH STEP I TAKE

Illustration by Elizabeth Cannon

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’S HILARIOUS SEEING “The Simpsons” in France—Homer and Marge speaking French with Bart and Lisa, and better than Jim and I do. As irony would have it, we saw an episode in a hotel room in Rouen, in which the Simpsons somehow go back in time to 15^th-century France (since they were speaking Francais, I didn’t quite get how). But Lisa becomes Joan of Arc. And there we were in the city where Joan was burned at the stake.

The next morning we were off to Étretat, on the Normandy coast. We tried to listen to our French CD in the car, but it almost put us to sleep after our fine lunch. The most interesting village we passed through on the way was Fécamp, which has been a fishing port for centuries. It’s built on a hillside leading down to the harbor on the English Channel. Fishermen sailed first on schooners, and now trawlers, from here to Newfoundland to catch the cod in cold, fog, and bad seas. As is the case in such towns, where men have made their livings from the deep, many never returned—lost in icy waters. It’s one of those ways of life that is fascinating to me—the mysteries of oceans and the people who live by and from them.

At Étretat...the arch that many painters have painted

 

Letter From Paris: Giving Thanks

Image by Feuillu via Flickr

 

It is the season of giving thanks to those who surround us in our daily lives and help us through it.  Not to mention those who live far away and support us through their thoughts and good energies, the conversations we have, and the letters or emails they send.  To the people who don't even know they make a difference in our lives, but lend a hand when we have fallen down or smile when we feel alone and scared.

 

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.   --Mark Twain

 

In this season of hope, and families and friends coming together to find common ground and rejoice with each other, I would like to give big joyous thanks, music dancing and wings of angels fluttering!

 

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

--e.e. cummings

 

That yes is crucial to open doors, move forward, and live with vitality and meaning.

Letter From Paris: In Honor of Brent

Image via Wikipedia

On the 20th of November it will be 20 years since my brother Brent died, and my heart cracked open and bled away.  The life leaked out of me as he took his last breath.  It was after a few hours during which Brent struggled to live--or was it to let himself go?--that the rattle of death surged through him.  I begged him to stay on this earth.  But Brent was as elegant in his last moments as he had been his entire life. 

My brother was handsome, brilliant, and charming, fantastic fun for anyone who followed him--he was a Pied Piper of lost and lonely souls, as well as for all others.  He was clever, generous, and kind, lapping up life as if he were a fine Cheshire cat drinking Triple Cream.  Life was a wonderland of adventure for Brent, and that didn't stop until the air seeped out of him forever. 

Letter From Paris: The Influencers

Image via Wikipedia

CREATIVITY.  ALTHOUGH IT may come in different packages within us, we all have it.  We use it every day. 

Some of us are in the business of being creative, and some are creative in our business. Some of us may not even understand that we're creative.  We grieve this lack, and wonder how we find that part of ourselves, or how we can awaken it.  In others, creativity sparkles on their surface and resonates as the deepest part of their identities.  They live and breathe it.  They must create or die. 

Some have outlets to the larger world in which their talents can emerge, though many don't.  The Internet has helped with this, allowing us to present our digital calling cards in whatever ways we choose.  But that doesn't solve the problem.  Creators create for themselves and also so other people can see, read, experience, and connect with their work in some way--and be transformed by it.

I am a major proponent of recognizing and encouraging creativity, and I've run across two pieces of media that discuss aspects of this divine atttribution of ourselves--and I believe creativity is at the very essence of our true selves, our deepest me being me and you being you--that we all need to consider, individually and in a larger way. 

Some of you may have watched the first one already--a short film called Influencers that discusses the result of someone's natural creativity, how their actions and style--their presence--creates a new wave of culture. 

"I think an influencer has a certain confidence that probably not many people have.  They know that what they're doing is the right thing, because they're comfortable in it.  To me, an influencer is somebody who has a different way of thinking and a different way of expressing themselves...

"There's a group of people that are really just early adopters that really embrace all forms of culture..."

Here it is:

INFLUENCERS FULL VERSION from R+I creative on Vimeo.

Letter From Paris: Happiness

Image via Wikipedia

I needed an emotional boost this morning, and I thought you guys could use one, too. 

What is happiness, and how do we get it?

I have posted a 2004 TedTalk from Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard. 

From TED: Ideas worth spreading...

Why you should listen to him:

After training in biochemistry at the Institute Pasteur, Matthieu Ricard left science behind to move to the Himalayas and become a Buddhist monk -- and to pursue happiness, both at a basic human level and as a subject of inquiry. Achieving happiness, he has come to believe, requires the same kind of effort and mind training that any other serious pursuit involves.

 

Letter From Paris: A Parisian Outhouse

The Lone Wolf and I were marching ourselves down Avenue Gambetta on a vigorous morning walk, when what to our wondering eyes did appear but...

 

a Parisian outhouse.  Oh, my, I said to the Wolf, this is a true public toilet in our neighborhood of young artists.  I mean, it's so Marcel Duchamp. 

Letter From Paris: The Nature of Balls

Image via Wikipedia

Like everyone else I know, I watched the tragedy that is the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico with feelings of horror and helplessness.  America's Gulf Coast, and New Orleans in particular, have had more than their share of disasters over the last few years.  It has been bad enough when they've been natural like the devastating hurricane Katrina (pictured above), and there's absolutely no way to stop it--even if there had been a way to prevent many of the dire consequences that destroyed and paralyzed this great Southern city.  But when they're man-made--like this oil spill--there is positively no excuse.

I occasionally write about our oceans because of my love for them and the danger they're in--and because piggish humankind is raping them.  We are knowingly and with vigor destroying the quality of our water and the wildlife within it for greedy motives, nothing more and nothing less.  The conservation of the planet and the future of their children and grandchildren are of no concern to those who use their mighty resources to this end. 

As my regular readers know, I'm an admirer of Ted:  Ideas worth spreading.  When I watched this talk about the Gulf oil spill by Carl Safina, whose "writing explores the scientific, moral and social dimensions of our relationship with nature," and here gives us a clear picture about the consequences that will stretch far beyond the Gulf, I felt it was important for me to pass this along.  Even if you are oil spill fatigued, it's worth 20 minutes of your time to watch it.

Letter From Paris: An Education

Cover of An Education

A few months ago, the Lone Wolf and I hightailed it to the cinema to see the film An Education .   In case you haven't seen it, the movie is a coming-of-age story--the autobiographical memoir of British journalist Lynn Barber who has quite a good story to tell.

We were knocked out by it.  We loved the way the film was shot.  The period of 1961 England was captured as pure charm as were the performances of the perfect cast (as far as I was concerned), including Carey Mulligan who stole the show.  Watch out world.  A new Audrey Hepburn has arrived.  Ms. Mulligan is dripping with star-power.

When the film began, Mulligan was a schoolgirl, working extremely hard so she could get into Oxford.  By the end of the picture, her school work was hardly the education that she had received.

I recently watched a very funny and visionary TED talk of Sir Ken Robinson, who believes that we're educating people out of their creativity.  Robinson referred to this crisis of human resources as our "second climate crisis" and asserted that we needed to address it with the same urgency as global warming.