island

Una took me to the beach in Marsielles.  We got subway tickets and took the bus down to the water.  The mediterranian c'est beau, blue and rippling with little waves and nobody on the white sand at all.  We go behind the rocks and get in, cold.  Come out salted and skin stretched, oceany and happy and the wind blows us dry.  Kids in swim suits come, shrieking like we just did, diving in and splashing out, fast.  D'leau froid.  Hows my french spelling?

We are walking across a parking lot (here is a picture I am taking for you) walking, Una and me.  I am in my boots that get stinky quick, Una has her curls tied back, we foot to foot across the parking lot, there by the beach water.  A pink balloon is blowing towards us, in the wind, straight towards us.  It is followed by a little girl with big curly hair, crying and holding her hands out.  The wind is faster than that balloon.  It blows right into my hands, and she takes it from me and runs back to her mother, without saying a word.

Beautiful nights in Aix en Provence.  The city has a nice market place, where the apple cider man gives me a free apple and the boys play jazz by the fountain and the pretty girl at a colorful fabric booth smiles at me.  Una speaks the good French, I sort of tail along and catch what words I can.  She takes me to a park with a reading tree, two guys on a park bench drink and smoke and tell us about Corse.  This is especially interesting because I am aimed at Corse and so I listen, Una translates.  It is not a big island, but it is so beautiful.  I will find out.

On the bus to Toulon, I sit to eat my baghette and fromage du chevre and olives, but I never get to, because this guy comes cursing down the aisle and talks to me until I dont talk to him for a minute.  He has may be a scottish accent when he anglaishes (englishes) but he is French.  He asks me where I have been and sometimes doesnt wait for an answer.  I turn to the girl in front of me, a very pretty brown girl, and she is listening to us.  Tu comprend? my friend asks her, because we were speaking in sort of broken english, and she says she understands a little bit, and so we get to talking.

And then, glory be, we get to singing.  I sing her snatches of all of the african songs I know, and she sings 'killing me softly' in a soft soully voice and I get to laughing a little bit because it sounds so nice.  I tell her I think that I am going to be late to my ferry and she offers to guide me through Toulon.  We get out the bus and jog through the city.

Well, I made it to that ferry in time for sure, and bid that kind soul good bye.  Alls well and I am on the ferry, bound for Corse (the island known as Corsica).  The ferry is HUGE.  Floors and floors and restaurants and sleeping cabins, and very few people are there, so you can sleep on any floor space anywhere, pretty much, between the seats, only I don't sleep.  I go up stairs to finally eat my dinner on the top deck and watch the city lights dissappear.  A girl and her dog stop to sit for a minute, and I try to talk to her in my broke french accent which she cannot understand much of.  I eat and then, fatigued, go down to bed.

Only I never make it to bed.  Fifteen men are having a party on my level.  They sit me down and give me wine  and tell me to sing.  They pass a paper plate and fill it, threatening to take it away when I stop singing.  They dance, and sing, and drink, and hump each other.  They laugh.  Clean shaven men, all of them in black, loud and jovial, good european souls.  They all work for the Tour de France, some how aide for the bikers.  They are going to Corsica for a race of sorts, thats what I gathered.  They were fun and welcoming, and had a large spread of food before them. They broke out the desert and we dined.  They filled my plate with more than 60 euros, and after that we chatted at the bar until the wee hours.

Yes, loves.  I have been dreaming of you.
Awake and asleep, I have recalled your faces and your songs.

OH the joys of arriving at dawn, on a boat, to an island, to an old city where the steeples of the churches rise over the buildings and houses over the port.  The fog flees into the mountains, the people flee into the town.  I sit at the train station for a while and sing about sea gulls.  Three high school girls join me for a few minutes, they thought I was lonely.  No, I am not lonely, I tell them.  How can I be, when everyone is so friendly to me?  They are cute, and bored with the island, and due to be at school at Nine o clock, so they go and leave me to sings songs about sea gulls.

The train is a wild wild west thing, with windows.  The island is mountains and canyons and rivers, and as beautiful as everybody said it.  Celina Jaffe caught me at the end of the train, and thus began my Corte adventure.

There is a voice in the city of Corte, that is young and graffitti'd all over the walls in the center of town.  And on the out skirts.  And on rocks by the beach, hours away.  A voice that cries for freedom.  That cries for independance.  That cries for arabs to get off the island.  That cries for french people to get off the island.  The hand that writes the voice is different (ive been told) but I cannot see that difference yet.  Black words written all over the buildings and road signs.  Slogans and phrases in a language that is a mix between Italian French Spanish and something else.  Maybe this is how it is, on islands.

Can you tell I have been in the mountains?  My speech is deep in my head, I am just trying to tell you where I am.  I am here, on Corsica.  Tonight, Loic and Octav made pizzas and Charlotte came over and we all ate and then went to a movie in a little room, which is octav's apartment.  The day we spent climbing up and down mountains, steering around steers (cows on the road), and hiding from the rain under big river rocks.  After all that, I went to Charlotte's for tea, and parley'd in franglish until the mid of the night, with a big day tomorrow.  I am full of black tea, corsican beer, french cidre, algae farts, pine sap, new words, and an ancienter appreciation of life.

Ever heard of Esperanto?

pictures

1
the tower steps
up to the tower
this morning we rapelled into the garden
down to the theater and caves
where I sleep
when the dinner bell rings
through this door is where
everything smells like food
manger manger manger

2
at Monte Saint Michel
we see a cat
climbing a wall
and imagine monks
who live in the forest
and turn into birds
who turn into
dogs
who run in the sand

 3
kim could see
all of us
through the camera
and now, mom,
you can see
all of us
I had a dream
where I took five photographs
this is not one of them.

4
Joe and Kim
on the Terrace over Thore La Rochette
before Kim pours the glasses full of cider
and Joe hits the table and it spills all over
swearing it was her fault for filling them full
and then we clink glasses cheers and make up
so the rest of the cider falls into my dish
with the zuccinni and mushroom pie
and it is good. and salty. and soggy.

5
I dreampt that I was taking five pictures
for a project
and so
here are five pictures
of my district aujard oui (today)
Kim Joe Nancy and Jean Pierre
what it looks like
over here
love you all
Travis

refuge and refuse

 Jean Pierre Dutour is eighty, sitting at the table next to me, we are drinking wine and I am eating olives, waiting for the dinner bell to ring.  He is speaking to me, first bit in English; which I understand fine.  We...do...Did... the first three words or so in English, and then he will say some words in French that I know, like theater or table, and then he will begin going in French, which I do not know so fast, until he is laughing and waving in his joyfullness.

Jean Pierre was in theater for years and years and years.  There are masks all over the living room, costumes in the attic, a stage in the basement.  He is writing and rewriting a stage play in his office, every day.  How to say?  He is easy to understand.  He talks with his whole, wise old body face.  He talks with his eyes, looking woefully at something in the next room.  He talks with his hands, weaving them like birds, or pointing quickly at some precious air.  He talks with his mouth, pouting, roaring, laughing, pooting.  I dont know what pooting is, but I am sure Jean Pierre would.

He is laughing, and then he calls to the next room, NANCY, and Nancy comes, his wife who is the light of this LightHouse.  Traducer, he says, and she translates, what he has just been telling me, which is often something like "Jean Pierre says that, there are not many Dutours in this country, but the craziest and the most famous live in this house."

I stayed in Thore La Rochette for 10 days, until Kim and Joe returned in their bed/van.  We climbed into the cave riddled hills, with ropes and harnesses and cookies in baskets on our bikes.  We took headlamps into the long dark corridors, past the places where the weasel left his skull, past the buried mine cart and the bricked up passage way.  Through the underground where German soldiers hid guns and ammunition after the war, where some teenagers blew up themselves, as the rumours go.

I climbed up alone to the upper floor, and Nancy gave me her camera, and by its flashing light I crawled into a pit cavern.  and Just like an old Dungeons and Dragons game, I never knew what was around the bend.  FLASH of the camera.  Another tunnel.  FLASH  a small room.  FLASH a stone bench.  So I sat there in the dark.  Jean Pierre said there used to be a fortress, and there used to be a cult, and those caves have been habited for thousands of years.

Kim and Joe and I drove to Mont Saint Michel, the city on the island with the Abby of the Angel shining over the rising and falling tide.  We visit Kims home town of Dieppe, walk along the beach where the Scottish regiment died round Dday, where the Canadians died.  Where the fighting was.  Dieppe is a new town, because the old one got bombed.  The north border of France.  The closest place to England.

And then back to Paris, to pick up my sister.  An all night party in Paris.  Guisane and I dancing in the streets, sleeping on the steps of some Cathedral, waiting for the Metros to run again.

And tonight I am again at Malakoff, where we have spent the last hour with the Devil in our hands, that is, a cart for carrying heavy shit.  How do we say it in english?  A dolly.  Here a dolly is a devil.  We carried the Devil around Malakoff, picking through the Poubell, that is the trash; because it is Sunday and that is when the trash goes out.  We took our favorite trash in the devil, and put it in the basement of the house at Malakoff.  That is where I will sleep tonight.

Bon réve.  Good dreams.