England's green and pleasant land

I have just returned to London after a visit to Manchester, a first for me. Taking the train up I was astonished at the beauty of the English countryside, even at this time of year. I think what struck me most, as a Canadian with roots in the much more sublime landscapes of the North American west, was the human scale of the land: rolling green fields, hedgerows, streams and canals, farms, cows, sheep, a man walking in a field with a dog. The clouds were low, sometimes very dark, but the sun was shining through and the leaves were yellow, some on the ground, a lot still on the trees. I thought I could get down and sit in one of those fields quite happily, for a long time. 

Yesterday

On my way to Hélène Cixous's first seminar of the year at the Cité Universitaire yesterday morning I walked to the Metro through the Luxembourg Garden which was empty, except for the odd person like me and a handful of joggers. The sun hadn't been up for long, the tops of the chestnut trees were still gold, the limes lemonier, autumn chrysanthemums gold and purple. Buttery leaves round the trunks of trees, more of them marshalled into wire pens where, later in the day, coming home, I saw gardeners raking them into trucks to be taken away and turned into compost, I suppose. Very cyclical. The trunks and branches of trees showing black through the remaining leaves. 

The café beside the bandstand on the eastern side of the garden, Pantheon side, was closed, but the tables were lined up, two chairs per table, all facing southwest towards the setting sun. 

Then I was out the east side and down into the Metro and up again in the Parc Montsouris, a wilder, less groomed Paris park. And into the Cité. The seminar was full, old friends, people I don't know, Emmanuelle Riva was there, dishevelled like us all so early in the morning, before we've had time to wet the backs of our heads and tame night's cowlicks. And the seminar was wonderful, a digressive riff on Rousseau, Genet, Shakespeare and Derrida.  Sadly it's the only one I'll be able to attend this year. They are one of the things I miss most about living in California for a large part of each year. 

Shadows

It finally hit me--the difference between city shadows--or maybe Paris city shadows--and country shadows.  

Country shadows--Edward Thomas, leafy, bobbing, irregular, trembling etc.

City shadows--all straight lines, vertical, horizontal, angled, according to the planes of buildings. No vegetation within sight. Hard-edged, precise, moving in ways that could be plotted across the surface of buildings. Sundials.

Cubistic. Obviously. If Baudelaire is the originator of the city poem--as some would have him, maybe the city poem engendered Cubism, with its overlapping plane surfaces. Just a thought. Because the weather has been nice. Good for shadows. 

Spindry

One review complete, I think. One I'm still reading for. Two other bits of journalism maybe almost done. Four translations-in-progress, two now with the publisher, who wonders if I'll take on something else by the same writer. Yes, I will, because I learn so much myself, and because it is gratifying to publish books. Once a bookworm always a bookworm, but to produce the things yourself? You feel you exist--a kind of super pinch-me.

Sunday morning. Husband gone biking in the suburbs, friends coming for early (by European standards) supper. Two painters, a physicist and a computer person turned sculptor with bits of old pianos, also a collector of stone tools (from the ground) and partner-backpackers. 

Yesterday afternoon: Centre Pompidou, on foot (nice walk) to check out the children's art classes, the Robert Delaunay show and Frank Gehry (crowds there). Sat on the 6th floor sofas at the entry to the Duchamp show and watched people come and go, ordinary people with lots of kids apparently consenting to Duchamp. What would an 8 year old make of Duchamp? They should like the idea of turning stuff into art. I read the last section of the poetry book I have to review there. Bought underwear in a shop (Intimissimo? Italian?) and thought about how French women have nice underthings, which sure isn't Protestant. Lots of 20-somes trying on red lace bras and asking for bigger sizes. Me: something invisible to wear under gym leggings.

Washing machine just stopped spinning (silence suddenly, and not the silence of between spins, but the end-silence--what's the difference?) 

Reviewing

I like reviewing books. Well, I like it once the first draft is done. The first draft is a pain, but then it's sheer fun, fiddling with it. And I have just finished 500 or so words on a new poetry book, which I have made myself file away until tomorrow when I can reread what I've written like someone else's work (this gets harder at each stage of revision).

There are touchy political issues in reviewing. You want to be honest, but the world of poetry books is small and reasonably paranoiac and it is generally not a good idea to make enemies. (How i did Michael Hofmann have the courage to review Martin Amis's new book as he so pungently does in the latest LRB?) In fact, it would be better if poetry books were not reviewed by poets, just as films are not usually reviewed by filmmakers. 

Mostly the books I get to review are neither very good nor very bad; they are in that middle ground, and they make you wonder--for yourself as much as anything--why they aren't better, what would make them better. Is it lack of nature or lack of nurture? I would like to figure this out and also maybe say something helpful to the writer--though, like me, she will hate anything less than superlative, and especially advice from someone whose right to criticize is hardly a given.

I have another book to review. I haven't looked at it yet; the problem is going to be the sensational background to some of the material. Suicide, terminal illness, child abuse--throw them into the poetry pot and it changes everything. 

A little humour goes a long way.

Origes, orgies

Paris. The sky is California blue, the shadows on the stones of the church across the street sharply cut, like the stones themselves, even if they are falling into the street at intervals and needing to be wrapped in nets pending the arrival of a philanthropically-minded company, foundation, individual (Dan Brown, who used it in a movie?) , and subsequent restoration--probably not near the top of the things that need financing in France at the moment.

It seems, according to Le Monde this week, that the bottom line at Paris's Big Stores (grands magasins = department stores) is down, only somewhat mitigated by the Chinese whose tour bus companies are bribed to drop off tourists on their way to and from the Mona Lisa. It has been many years since I set foot in the Galeries Lafayettes or Printemps but I can't resist the Bon Marché and my husband is a sucker for the BHV (Bazaar de l'Hotel de Ville, on the quai near City Hall) basement hardware department, which has a café with workbenches for tables, and everything else, from doorknobs to nails, that anyone with a fixation on Parisian buildings could dream of. It reminds me that when I was little my mother used to take us to the basement of The Hudson's Bay Company store on Granville Street in downtown Vancouver (or Eaton's?) for a "malted milk," a flesh pink shake so thick you could cut it with a knife. Small wonder I have a sweet tooth.

Later in life--not much later--I had holiday jobs in the upper levels: filling ketchup containers in the restaurant, selling socks... . That was before I was old enough to be a full-fledged waitress at a summer resort in the Rockies and lived in the longest log cabin in Canada with a matron guarding each end of it, notwithstanding everyone slipped out every night with blankets for orgies in the--what else? primal forest.

Back...

in Paris, and a day spent catching up on emails and filling the fridge. Now home and watching it grow dark outside at 5pm, which makes it much harder to spend the late afternoons reading Borges on a chair under the Luxembourg Garden redwoods, even if the weather is warm enough to do so. 

There were pumpkins "for jack o'lanterns" in the supermarket--a first. In the south we observed the Toussaint (All Saints, Nov 1, the day of the dead) in advance by doing a little cleaning up of my husband's parents' grave, reminding me of the year we visited, by ferry--extra sailings in November--Venice's island cemetery over All Saints. Whole families sweeping tombs, picnicking on and beside them. My husband says he was dragged as a boy to Marseille's cemetery every year in November, and hated it. 

Chrysanthemums--France's traditional cemetery flowers--everywhere, huge sprays of them in autumn colours. Once, as a young bride in the south of France I took a bouquet of chrysanthemums, then just pretty flowers for me, with perhaps Asian associations, to a dinner party, and my hostess looked at me strangely. Later my husband explained. Couldn't he have told me ahead of time and saved me the retrospective embarrassment? Not the last time someone in France was to look at me strangely--say for sitting on a sofa with my legs curled up under me, or, running around the house barefoot.

Finished reading Elena Ferrante's Story of Those Who Flee and Those Who Stay. Two more volumes of hers waiting on my doorstep last night. And that it one thing about Amazon--I can buy Italian books, which would otherwise be difficult to obtain, as easily as if I were living in Italy.

Favourite Walk

It is four o’clock in the afternoon and I am walking to the next village, some 45 minutes on foot, 10 in a car. The road climbs through olive groves and vineyards, reaches a col, winds down through vineyards—Cotes du Rhone now, so every available patch of land is cultivated. The grapes have been harvested and the vines are turning yellow—soon they will red. I eat some of the tiny clusters the pickers left, glean more to take home for supper. The light is beautiful, warm, glittering off pines trees on the hills above the road.

This is one of my favourite walks—because it is beautiful in the way of land that has been farmed for ages, whose fields are contoured by time and geology; because it goes mostly uphill one the way there and downhill back, as all good hikes do; because the other village, off the beaten track, has changed very little in the past thirty years and because its Place de l’Eglise has a spectacular view of the Dentelles de Montmirail. Houses tumble down the hillside. Above the church there is a rock molar with an old iron cross askew at the top. Its limestone is crumbly. The Dentelles de Montmirail are known to rock climbers around the world; here signs warn us clear, even of the trail that twists up to the cross.