02:12 Toulouse
11 June 2010
(Photos)
Spent most of the morning listening to this radio station here. The French love their hippityhoppity music, but someone needs to teach them what a playlist is supposed to be. It’s really hard to find out what is currently playing. You can get some useful information from their twitter posts. The problems are that a) it’s not perfect and b) I had to a lot of research even to get that far… Regardless, great music most of the time.
Heard an excellent version of Sunny, but I’ll be damned if I’ll be able to figure out which one it is.
Eric. What a man. The confidence of Zeus and the stamina of a wilted lily. Again he slumbers on the couch unable to defend himself against the slings and arrows of his closest friends, with his shoes on. “But we are nice people.” I’m quoting him.
So, what a night. I don’t even know where to begin. Let me tell you first that I was on the verge of tears at moments for reasons I wasn’t able to parse. But let’s talk about food. The whine can come later.
I don’t get it. I really don’t. If quality exists, something in me insists that things should towards that ideal, whatever lies at the pinnacle of the quality path defined by that thing. I don’t know; maybe it’s that competition is alive and well in France.
Julien has been making his own spiced rum (rhum) for some time now. He gets rum from the store and spices it himself. We had several different concoctions. Now, Seattlites, this is perfectly legal even under our drakonian laws. You take commercial rum and add whateverthefuck you want. We had one that was peppers, black pepper, and cinammon. Spicey. Best with a bit of ice.
I don’t even know what I’m listening to…
Oh, this is starting far too deep into the night. Day is one life; night is the other life. Of course we had to run around doing more of that domestic bullshit. That’s how life works. Every time you have plans life puts a cactus up your ass and you have to dig out all the thorns. Crap. That’s brutal.
Anyway, so Ikea, Babou, Go Sport, quisaisqua, and back to the homestead. Left-over flam-flam. Fuck, it’s excellent after a day of running around in the blazing sunchine.
Back to the pad to assemble a bunch of mass consumer crap and make the pod maximus glorious. Fill in the details at your will.
I’m sure there was some sort of preamble. I know I snagged a pair of Eric’s shoes. We are the same size and I traveled light. We were going to a fancy joint. No table clothes mind you. But they did have nice glass topped tables and a lot of chrome aesthetic. Et les femmes.
Les femmes… I realized earlier that I am standing in a country where all the girls surrounding me speak French. And they each kiss me on each cheek like I was a child about to fall into sleep. I am ready to rest. Let me fall.
Where was I? Oh, the tapas place with the awnings. Right. We had several bottles of the same wine there. It was a Saint-Nicolas de Bourgueil from the Loire valley (Domaine du Grollay). It was very dark (fonce), but it was was soft and crisp and so very fruity. We drank four bottles between five people and then a fifth bottle between seven. (Eric and I, Cedric and Celine, Florent, and finally Julien and Maëlys.) It was a vivid night.
But the food. We started off pretty light. A plate of sliced aged sausages—a trio of stuffed intestinal yumyums—and a bit of some sort of port encased sausage, grilled.
(In fact: Assiette de charcuterie espagnole (Lomo, Salsicha, Chorizo) and Petites Saucisses de Magret de canard (duck). Also there was Rillettes de Saumon (Salmon) Fumé.)
The conversation was challenging. I followed along like a puppy following a morsel. Ma vocabulaire est très miniscule.
When I studied French at Seattle Central, I was under the impression that studying a language could help me in my pursuit of poetry. I can’t say why I thought this. But as I studied French I recognized that there was a shift in my writing. I have always thought to associate it with the discovery of a new and viable sentence structuring technique. What a fucked up theory. Just a random dart throw really. It turned out to work, so I can’t complain.
Yet there is an interesting compliment here. My skills as a poet assisted me in speaking with these folks who don’t know what it’s like to try to talk to me. Don’t pity them; they clearly had the advantage.
Damn it. I was talking about the food. I was asked to select a new item from the menu. I perused said menu (carte). I found a dish with duck hearts. I shook my head to clear my eyes. Yes, duck hearts. This region is famous for duck.
Brochettes de Coeur de Canard (skewered grilled duck hearts).
What choice did I have? I ask you, what could I do? They came with big salt crystals falling from their surfaces. Surely that can’t be even sort of bad.
Ces ete le paradis. Je pleure.
It is possible that I will encounter something in the next month that will change my opinion on this, but those duck hearts were certainly the hight of my trip thus far. I can’t say how many I ate after the first, but I can say that I have been transformed.
There were also more of the both sausage plates and some calamari. Someone also ordered Assiette de Couteaux (a thin, rectangular shell fish so named because they look like a small knife); in English we call these razor clams. They were merely delicious.
You remember I told you about getting the couch? That couch came from Julien and Maëlys who live exactly across the street from the tapas joint (L’Annexe). Or at least exactly across when you can’t quite walk in a strait line. Back up all those stairs knowing I didn’t have to carry anything back down with me. That was a bit of pleasure in and of itself.
Turns out that Julien makes his own spiced rum. I rather already talked about the spiced rum, but there was other stuff once he saw I was interested. Out came a calvados (apple brandy approximately). Delightful. Then a wonderfully soft Scotch. Oh, and prunes macerated in armagnac.
All good people have to go to bed. And these were all good people. I perhaps am not. Eric and I tooled back toward chez il and found an excellent parking space. Almost right across the street. We walked back down to this little almost convenience shop who stays open past eleven and picked up another bottle of Corbières Rouge. We talked with the Chechnyan who runs the place. He is a pleasure as always.
Back at chez Eric we had a sip of wine and discussed the lighting for the thousandth time (really challenging lighting with these low fucking ceilings). And Eric, wait for it, passed out on the couch sporting his fanciest shoes to date. I charged passing strangers to rub his thighs. He’ll feel so violated.
This leaves me on the roof deck, sipping wine, listening to this crazy radio station, and telling anyone who will listen that I’m alive and doing well.
I should also say that Eric—after years of being tormented by friends on multiple continents—has finally learned not to pass out with his shoes on. He has solved this little problem by taking his shoes off as he enters his home, Buddha style as he might say. Regardless, please forgive me this minor indulgence in my story telling.
Oh, and to my newest friends: I look forward to your Seattle visits.
