unthematic french casino
last night
All right, I’m racing against the clock here but this is the perfect way to relate this tale.
It actually begins ten years ago, the first time I went to France, just before starting my last year of high school. We went to museums, medieval towns, Paris, etc. and ended things with a week long home stay in the Basque region (Bayonne, if you long for narrative specificity like I sometimes do).
The situation I found myself in was AWESOME. The people I was staying with, Michel deBarbeyrac and Helene Plumet were rad, unmarried post-their-original-divorces, portrait-perfect older French artist types. Michel smiled a ridic amount for an oldish French dude, made his own cherry brandy (GOOD SHIT), introduced me to drinking with fat Basque dudes in the middle of nowhere and really drinking while gesticulating in general. He was a cartoonist for some satirical left-wing publication…I wish I knew what it was. They lived in an old mill and manor Michel had restored - GORGEOUS. Unfortch, the manual camera I was using had a issue with the lens opening all the way, something I did not know until it was FAR TOO LATE, or else this would be an illuminated text.
Oddly, the person who really sparked my imagination was Helene Plumet, his non-wife. Her father was some kind of military figure or maybe an archaelogist or professor or something but they did a lot of globe-trotting throughout her life and it made her verrrrrrrry awesomely international, mysterious, intuitive, understanding and above all things RAD. I idolized her smoking, flaring temper, ability to make simple and awesome meals without seeming to even try and her ability to speak with insight about seemingly anything. One night after fighting with Michel and his son about some kind of discipline issue that surely ended in ‘you’re not my mom!’ she asked me if I wanted to go to the beach with her - I assented a quick hell yes and off we went.
I don’t even remember what we talked about, but we ate ice cream and she smoked and we watched the sunset, dusk and early evening pass on the beach. I wrote a sort of wish-fulfilment fiction about a thinly-veiled-her secretly being thinly-veiled-me’s mother, because I felt like we had an otherworldly understanding/connection.
Not that I ever contacted her again, of course. Did I ever try? Who can be sure. I’m sure I must have sent them at least a thank you note, but I don’t know if I received anything in return.
I’m wandering through this memory because she recommended a book to me - one that sounded like the book of my dreams. I try sometimes to remember what I was reading at the time (I think I was over my Anne Rice phase by then, but I’m not sure what I had moved on to). Anyway, I’m not even sure if this was the book she recommended…or rather I’m not sure why I’m so close to sure but still not quite certain. But somewhere along the lines, I realized it must be ‘House of Spirits’ by Isabelle Allende (who quickly has climbed the ranks of love after I read ‘Eva Luna’).
I have only finally now found a copy and am devouring it. Last night, I couldn’t sleep so I read it for a few hours and thought of Helene for the first time in years. I could swear I phantom smelled cigarette smoke while I was reading it.
Anyway. I was just thinking about that and her. So. There you go. ‘House of Spirits’ is a reeeeeeeally badass book.
Two bonus random facts from the first franch adventure:
1.) I got picked up by Michel and his son at the train station and they picked up a hitch hiker to join us - I was SHOCKED but awesomized by that.
2.) After speaking French semi-intensively for the first time ever, my brain was swimming. I had a hard time sleeping that night and dreamed that I couldn’t sleep because they were having a party with everyone I’d ever met downstairs and they kept telling everyone to be quiet. One of the most vivid dreams of my young life!
