Gifts, Gifts, Gifts!

It's September tomorrow, where did the year go? I'm already dreaming of Christmas presents, and think that all my holiday shopping is going to be done online.

I promise to be back to my regular Provenciana mode very soon, but at the moment I am really hung up on Etsy. I made a list of my favorite things over there. If like me you're already thinking of buying something for friends and family, click here to see my Etsy Treasury: Soft, Begging to be touched! It's only up till dawn of Monday, September 3, so go now if you can.

Good Morning!

I don't know what got into me but it's 7:30 in the a.m., and I've been up for an hour and a half. To commemorate this rare occasion, I'm posting a photo of this very early morning light, for all those other days when I only roll out of bed after 9:00. Here I am, enjoying the sunrise and a cup of coffee.

Why I Go Slow

"You've lost the Manila driver in you," Pierre kids me a lot these days, because I'm paying attention to all the road rules. I put on the warning a good few moments before I turn, never honk my horn, will only overtake if it's all clear, yield at all the broken white lines, and when I see the red sign, I make a full stop. It's the gendarmes, I tell him, there are too many of them on the road, I don't want to be paying any fines or losing my points. He chuckles, but perfectly gets it; these days, he refuses to touch the wheel if he's had a drink.

I lie though.

Driving in this country, I always see them. Pinks roses, white lilies, yellow chrysanthemums, bouquets of flowers on the roadsides. One time, on a bridge near Saint Bauzille de Putois, the blooms were accompanied by a plaque, "Pour Maman." I think of them, those to whom these offerings are left, lost sisters, lovers, fathers, and friends. I see Maman, studying her lilies because after the terrible accident she has nothing else to do, looking forward to when they are replaced every two weeks or so, until the day comes when they forget. The last of the lilies turn brown around the edges and wither away. She is left staring into eternal nothingness.

I see them, and I remember to slow down to 90.

He's a Sweetheart

To celebrate the great news of the last entry, last night my husband took me out to our favorite restaurant. I had the foie gras and the lamb curry. He had the same entrée, but after went for le tournedos de boeuf. Being the very social people that we are, by dessert we were happily chatting away with the couple at the next table.

At a certain point in the conversation, Pierre just had to tell them: "We are here tonight because of my wife," he paused to smile at me. "She just won at the Academy Awards for the Best Writers in the Philippines."

Roll out the red carpet and bring me my Monique Lhuillier gown, mga ate. This guy makes me feel like a star! :)

P.S. Congratulations to the two other people I know who won! Dean Alfar places second in the Short Story for Children in English category, and Jerome Gomez wins second for Short Story in Filipino.

Good News Come in Twos

2007 is only half over, and I'm loving it already!

Lots of good things have happened, and the latest of these had me screaming at the top of my lungs barely an hour ago, sending the cat scampering to hide under the bed and my husband come running to see what heinous crime was being committed. Instead of his wife all bloody, he found me with a grin slicing my face in half, dancing a weird kind of jig to a strange kind of chant. When he'd finally managed to make me coherent, he understood that I was repeating over and over, "I won a Palanca! I won a Palanca!"

That he replied, "Congratulations, honey, I'm so proud of you... but, uhm, what's a Palanca?" is the subject of a different blog entry altogether, but if you're asking yourself the same question, you can read about the awards here and here.

I placed second in the English Essay category for my piece, Culture Shocked: A Story of Recovery, which, it's easy enough from the title to guess, is a lot about you've been reading about in this blog for the last two years.

Oh, and the second piece of good news is that the shortest short story I have ever written in my not-so-short life, Making a Garden, has been accepted for publication in the flash fiction anthology being edited by Vince Groyon for Milflores Publishing. Groyon writes me that the tentative title of the book is Mga Kuwentong Paspasan: Very Short Stories for Harried Readers, and that it is due out before the end of the year. And, yes, I also danced a jig when I found out about this one.

P.S. (a.k.a., Let Me Plug): Remember Sawi, the Milflores anthology I told you guys was being launched in December 2006? Well, it finally did come out, but a couple of months ago. If you're interested, you can buy it through National Bookstore Online.

Etsy Shop Update

During the weekend, I kept getting calls from family and friends on their way to a vacation somewhere, ending up stuck in one of the South's infernal summer traffic jams. (Yep! Another summer indicator aside from bare peripatetic feet!) I felt bad for them, really, I did, but I sure was glad that I chose to stay home quiet, with just my fabric scraps and beads for company.

The result of my own little weekend away in my head somewhere: I just updated my Etsy shop. It's at www.lapomme.etsy.com, or click here to go. Lots of fun products in there, so why not visit? Have a good week ahead, and stay away from the highways if you can.

When Love Sucks

I always get asked, "Don't you miss the Philippines?" And the honest answer is No. After the initial period of adjustment, I'm finding that what my sister Bel once said is true: "Pareho-pareho lang yan kahit saan ka magpunta." I'm living exactly the kind of life I had wanted for myself in Manila after quitting my old job, except that here I'm not eating as much rice. My family? They're a YM Buzz or a phone call away. Pinoy food? I can cook it up whenever I want to.

Pressed about it, I would have to admit that there is one thing I occasionally look for, something I can't recreate over here. "Gutom" is what I call it. Hunger. It's this fierce energy you find amongst artists' circles back home. In a country where most everybody has to fight just to survive, every time you create something, you're proclaiming, Hey, I'm still here, taking up space, breathing in as much oxygen as I can, hanging on even if it's just by the soggy threads of Lucky Me Instant Noodles. I suppose you can't have that attitude if you know that even if you don't sell a painting, at the end of the month, you still get your RMI*.

So as a way of again tasting that energy, and because we really should be paying more attention to talent, every now and then in this blog I'll be telling you about the works of Filipino artists.

Today it's Wasted, a graphic novel by Gerry Alanguilan that delighted me when I first read it in the 1990s. It's angry, violent, insane, bloody, and some parts are hilariously funny. It's all about love. Go see for yourself. Wasted is being serialized online.

And I'm going to do the same as Budjette (from whose blog I also stole the image above) and say that if you haven't ever read Wasted before, then you should click here for your introduction. Afterwards, for your daily dose, it's here you want to go.

By the way, speaking of Filipino komiks, I was a big fan when I was a kid and one of my favorites was Mantisa, about this gorgeous woman who would seduce a man to her bed and then turn into a giant praying mantis to eat the hapless stud. I have absolutely no memory who the artist was. Do you?

* financial aid from the government given to unemployed French citizens

Signs of Summer

How do you know that summer in the South of France is in full swing?

Some will tell you it is by the unique sound made by the singing of cicadas.

Others will say it is all about the sweet scent of the lavender ready for harvest that perfumes the air.

There are those who will identify summer in the South with the fierce midday sun that scorches the skin; relief is found under the shade of a tree, a majestic olivier or a gorgeous platane.

For my husband summer begins when flocks of les hirondelles begin to fly over the ancient walls of Aigues Mortes. They make him remember the joy he felt at childhood, when the coming of the birds signalled the beginning of freedom, no more school and playing in the streets until nine in the evening because the sun did not set until an hour later.

I have lived here only two years, but already I have my own way of marking the season.

How do I know that summer in the South of France is in full swing?

Feet. Yes, bare French feet hanging out of car windows, they come in all shapes and all sizes, and in different degrees of cleanliness. June, July, and August come, and these naked extremities begin to wave at me on the roads, happily at never less than 30 kilometers an hour so that I never have to sniff this strange flower, for I am sure that the odor has nothing in common with that of lavender. I suppose that it is supposed to be a happy sight, the owners' declaration of freedom -- "Look! No shoes! Yes, I'm not in the office/school/metro!" -- but I cannot help it: Bare feet hanging out of car windows never fail to make me think of construction workers.

Hi, There!

Okay, I'm still here. Whenever a funny thought runs through my head, I find that I haven't stopped telling myself at the same time, "Hey, I can blog that!" I suppose that means I don't really want to delete all this just yet. Still, I need a break, so I won't be blogging as often as usual until summer starts easing up, which happens end of August.

Meanwhile, I'd love it if you could drop by my Etsy shop. Etsy.com is a delightful website devoted to all things handmade. Crafts-crazy person that I am, I've been telling myself since late last year that I need to be in there. And, now, I am. I just have six items posted today--one of them the funny little lavender-filled bird in the photo--but I'll be adding some more tomorrow. Go! Now!

Fade Out

"... [A]fter a while, my brain seemed clearer. I was writing a lot more... ideas I had never thought of before....it took me a while to figure out why it felt, you know, so different. And then, one day, …, I realized that I had spent the last two weeks away from most of my habits. TV was in a language I didn't understand... So, all I've been doing was... walk around, think, and write. My brain felt like it was at rest, free from the consuming frenzy. And I have to say, it was almost like a natural high. I felt so peaceful inside, no... strange urge to be somewhere else, to shop... Maybe it could have seemed like boredom at first, but it quickly became very, very soulful. It's interesting, you know?"

That was Céline, telling Jesse about a visit to Warsaw when she was a teenager, in that sequel that made us all swoon, Before Sunset. I don’t generally like using movie quotes when I write, but this particular passage was irresistible. Céline describes almost perfectly my experience after having just moved to France.

It was a strangely beautiful time. Without the distraction of all things familiar, I was able to step back, to cast a critical eye on all my so-called accomplishments and also to take a deep breath to face all that I had failed to do. I recognized clearly who I had permitted myself to be. After the not-always-pleasant self-examination, I received my gift: The radical change of address was the perfect opportunity to reshape my life into what I wanted it to be--creative and healthy, full of integrity and empty of bullshit.

Now I have a barrage of new habits to replace all the old abandoned ones, and although sometimes I do miss the quiet period, I also know that my mercurial nature can only take so much soulful peacefulness!

The point of this blog entry being: Provenciana, the blog, was meant to be fuelled by the energies of a Manila girl experiencing adjustment difficulties after moving to provincial France. When Provenciana, the person, has no more real adjustment difficulties, the blog becomes moot, doesn't it.

This is not yet a goodbye, but soon, I think…

Social Creatures

Pierre and I used to think that we were solitary sorts, a rather picky couple who preferred being surrounded only by people we knew very very well. I don't know why we were so deluded.

For Pierre's birthday celebration (a barbecue, what else?) from an original guest list of eight, by the time Saturday came around we were a party of 14. At around two p.m. the doorbell rung. The voice at the other end of the white box announced: "J'ai un recommandé pour Monsieur Massebieau." ("I have registered mail for Mister Massebieau.")

We were both busy attending to the food, so it was great that some of the guests were nice enough to introduce the latecomer around. An example of how it went: "Charlie, I would like you to meet my friend, Isa, and Pierre and Apol's postman."

We really are very friendly, you see. The postier, whom we kept handing beers to but whose name we never did manage to ask, he ended up staying for a good part of the rest of the afternoon.

Mystery guest no. 15

Getting to Know Me

Showing off my balls, my paintballs.

"The thing about this game," intoned burly Bernard, the boss of the place, "is that it will reveal the kind of person you really are."

Whatever, I thought as I put on my helmet and unlocked the safety on my rifle. We're just here to have a bit of fun, and whoever thought of searching for deeper meaning in paintball anyway?

But as the game progressed I started thinking that what Bernard said was true. There I was, jumping flat on my stomach into a ditch because I'm game for anything, thinking first before making a move because I'm only a moderate risk-taker, and covering my teammates' backs because I'm very loyal. Paintball psychology, who would have thought it true?

Later on in the afternoon, and game no. 4 was about to end. Only three of us were left, all girls. Caroline and I were attacking for the Orange team, and Elodie was defending the Blue team base. Though she was outnumbered, Elodie had a great position, and Caroline and I couldn't advance. I had an idea. Finding a gap in the bushes where I hid, I fired shot after shot, quickly painting the Blue team's plywood tower with splashes of green.

"Go, Caroline, go!" I told my teammate, hiding behind a tree five meters away.

"Go where?" came her girlish voice.

"I've got you covered, run to the base," I said.

Silence on Caroline's part.

I waited 30 seconds and realized that she hadn't understood the strategy. After a slightly longer pause I heard a loud, harsh voice, and it wasn't until I had closed my mouth again that I realized that the voice had been mine.

I was screaming: "Go to Elodie, Caroline! Kill her! KILL HER!!!"

From his observation post to my right, I heard Bernard laugh.

Winner!

I love action films. Watching something with Vin Diesel or some other hunk in it is one of my favorite ways to relax. Stunned by the gun fights, the car crashes, and the exploding buildings, my brain goes on blissful pause. I don't have to think.

Lately though, quite out of character I've found myself developing a taste for French films, specially love stories, like Michel Leclerc's J'Invente Rien, Eric Lartigau's Prête-Moi Ta Main, and Pierre Salvadori's Hors de Prix. You've got to hand it to French filmmakers, even when they're tackling love they don't go all sappy on you. Instead, their films are sophisticated and smart, full of quiet humor and the occasional dash of whimsy.

Then yesterday I clicked on to Editrixia's latest entry and I made another 180-degree turn. French films may have the smarts and the sophistication. They may have the careless elegance of Charlotte Gainsbourg and the charming vulnerability of Audrey Tautou, but they will never have Azenith Briones. Watch the video clip. She's better than car crashes and exploding buildings; probably equal in power to ten train wrecks. I love Azenith.

Dum-Dee-Dum

When a girl friend of mine procrastinates, she organizes. When I do, I blog. And badly at that. Instead of telling you all about the burning car I saw on what was supposed to be a friendly night out drinking wine and listening to music while Montpellier celebrated the annual Fête de la Musique, I tooled around with flickr and did this:

My daylilies are blooming, even if I planted them just a month ago!

Amazing plants. Clockwise, that would be the second and fourth photos.
The first is an abutilon, the third sauge bleue.

No Water, No Problem

(Clockwise) The micocoulier on the terrace. A wildflower keeping
the Helichrysum italicum company. Helichrysum microphyllum
'Lefka Ori.' One of my potted gazanias.

They say the apple never falls far from the tree, and while I'm sure there are exceptions, this particular Apol has landed right at the entwined roots of the trees Gerry and Priscilla. Just like my parents, I've turned out addicted to gardening. Not a very easy thing to be, given the very special environmental conditions found in the Camargue--very hot summers, strong winds beginning autumn, the air salty, the earth poor and sandy. After a lot of experimentation, I've had some success with succulents, ornamental grasses, and hardy herbs, my favorite being santolina.

Then just when everybody was saying the garden looks jolie, this spring I began some serious digging, for four days turning the earth on the rectangular piece of land facing the marsh. Inspired by the work and research of Olivier Filippi, I am going to try to make un jardin sans arrosage, a garden that doesn't require watering. The experts say that water is going to be a big problem in the very near future, but I'm not the hardheaded creature that I am if I'm going to let that stop me from enjoying my plants.

If you live in Europe, Pépinière Filippi can deliver their drought-tolerant plants to you by mail. If you read French, and you'd like to try making a dry garden yourself, I suggest you buy the book (you can get it through the website). Good luck digging!

Now, time for a Before shot of my project. As one of the things you have to learn about gardening is that it requires patience, the After photos will come in a year.

Anniversary P.S.

I love my husband, really, I do, even if sometimes I feel like kicking him for yet another jaw-dropping show of tactlessness, a trait which he seems to have a knack for displaying in front of my girl friends. Two lines I recently heard him saying:

To E: "You look like the fiancée of Popeye! What's her name again? Olive Oyl! Yes, you look like Olive Oyl!"

To K: "You have a Ph.D. from Harvard? But you don't look like it!"

Girls, you've been warned. A thing you also have to know is that he is impervious to smart come-backs; he'll just laugh. So if you ever see him, I suppose the best thing you can do is duck.

Yesterday's Feast

Pigging out on charcuterie before the wedding, with my dad.

Despite what my mom Priscilla will tell you ("Ang kinakain lang nila sa France, tinapay na matigas!"), where we live the eating is always good. We're starting to harvest some lettuce and radishes, and just the other day I opened my door and found outside a crate of potatoes left by a generous and gifted-gardener neighbor. Whatever else we lack, there's the twice-a-week market. The vegetables from les petits producteurs are fresh and largely chemical-free. We know the butcher and once gave him an earful when we weren't satisfied with the beef steaks.

Aigues Mortes, being year-round a host for tourists, is home to several good restaurants. Our favorite is Bouzigues, and we almost always get the fixed-price menu, three courses for 22 euros. I start either with oysters or foie gras, move on to a nice cut of meat, and finish with dessert, often something chocolate, but can't resist stealing some of Pierre's cheese, usually Pelardon with honey. When we're in the mood for exotic, we go to Timgad. Karim's mother makes the most excellent meat-and-prunes tajine.

Even with an open-air picnic, you can still have a feast. At the main-street boucherie, get a few slices of chorizo or other charcuterie, a few grams of rillettes, a slice of terrine. Don't forget your bread and your wine. At the cave cooperative, a decent bottle goes for just two euros and fifty.

However, human beings are funny; we always want what we don't have.

Yesterday was our second-year wedding anniversary, and Pierre asked, "So you want to go to a restaurant, honey?" I shook my head no, and instead took out a blue flyer I had been handed the last time I went to the city. Pierre chuckled; it was publicity for Domino's. For some time now, we'd both been craving for a greasy, ingredients-straight-from-a-factory, nothing-in-it-must-be-good-
for-you, hard-to-find-over-here, fast-food pan pizza. It had been at least two years since I'd last had one, three years for him.

So we drove 40 minutes to find the place, drove another 40 minutes back, heated stuff in the oven, and installed ourselves in bed with a film to enjoy our anniversary feast: two pan pizzas, an order of buffalo wings, a big bottle of Diet Coke, and a tub of Ben&Jerry's. For lunch today I'm relishing the leftovers. There's time enough for the rest of the week to go back to good eating.

Why I Think I'm Still in the Philippines #6 (a.ka., I'm so showbiz!)

Can you hear the carabao English?

13. We all know who said, "Long-legged legs" (and if you don't you should go back to whatever other galaxy you came from).

I have a friend who after all these years still has a fondness for copying Ate Vi, in moments of gratitude saying, "It's a blessing from the skies."

Then there's my own personal experience with a sexy starlet I found myself sharing a ride back to Makati with one evening in the late '90s. There was this huge billboard on EDSA from the anti-gun movement, featuring a pistol with the barrel blocked into a knot and the slogan, "Let Buy Guns be Bygones." An obvious play on words that was totally lost on the starlet. "Ah, ganyan pala yung saying," she pointed it out to me.

I moved and thought that I had left the world of linguistic mishaps amongst showbiz idols behind, when weeks ago I began watching Nouvelle Star, and came upon contestant Julien. I think he's the best of the lot and I'm hoping he'll win the prize, however I can't help but chuckle at his rendition (scroll down to find it) of "Strangers in the Night." He is French and you have to know that the French thinks their language is the best, but this boy takes it to the extreme, applying the rules governing le français even when speaking another tongue. He decided to omit the final "s" in "strangers."

There he was going, "Stranger in the night, exchanging glances, we are stranger in the night," transforming the popular standard into a schizoprenic's personal love song. In the middle of the performance, letting it all out, he decided to make things even creepier. "Stranger than the night," he mangled it on national TV. I don't think anyone else in this non-English speaking country noticed, but tell Ate Vi that I have found her spiritual son.

[CLICK HERE! Why I Think I'm Still in the Philippines #1, #2, #3, #4, #5.]

My Buzz

I think that it's a testament to how I relish extremes that I spent part of my old publishing career taking midnight taxis from Mandaluyong to Quezon Avenue to sit at a restaurant and take notes while an insider, "our mole," told me who in show business was sleeping with whom, who was fighting with whom, and who said what juicy bit of backbite and when for the gossipy Prattle pages of The Sunday Times Magazine, whose editor and my former boss Jo-ann Q. Maglipon has since gone on to establish the wildly popular Yes! magazine, a monthly serving of everything Philippine show business; and now I live with someone who can't even tell Jennifer Aniston from Angelina Jolie, an absolute uninitiate who, when I announced horrified that Britney Spears had shaved her head, asked, "Why did your friend do that?" (I think he thought I was talking about Lille or Tara, both of whom he thinks are very nice but slightly mad.)

Extremes are addicting though, and so like an ex-smoker who every now and then must have his nicotine fix, this morning I felt an urge to light up my Mozilla. I smoked up the links, getting high on the goings-on thousands of miles away. Some tsismis gathered from this morning's giving in to weakness: Marjorie Barretto and Dennis Padilla are on a cool-off, Ogie Alcasid and Regine Velasquez are a couple, and Yoyoy Villame is dead.

The news that most affects me is that Ruffa Gutierrez and the Turkish Yilmaz Bektas are filing for divorce. Ruffa cites cultural differences as the root of their troubles, and I feel deep empathy for her. I remember my own difficulties with Pierre, like that one time I was trying to have a conversation with him about unforgettable '80s pop idols. I was attempting to illustrate the spectacle that was Leni Santos in The Punks delivering her classic line, "Hindi mo kami maiintindihan, Ma, punks kami"; and for some strange reason that got him reminiscing about how absolutely lovely Sophie Marceau was in her first film, La Boum. I fumbled through an explanation of how, despite the rhyming names, Leni and Sophie do not inhabit the same planet and how, if they ever met, it would generate such intense energy their meeting place would instantly transform into a blackhole. He failed to get it.

As I said, I feel deeply for Ruffa. Cultural differences are tough.

Survival Tip from the Diaspora

Maybe it's because I grew up with three sisters, but I find it essential to every now and then be surrounded by my girl friends. Even though no one can make me laugh as hard as my husband, I find that the thing about men is that when you start telling them of your troubles, they'll instantly start offering you solutions, failing to get that we're not really looking for any advise, because we're all grown up and know exactly what to do, all we're really looking for is an ear where to spill our worries.

And because I'm really a girl's kind of girl, the thing that I'm finding wonderful is that regardless of nationality and regardless of language, women everywhere are the same: gifted with the ability to find deep release in what to the unperceptive observer looks like nothing but banal chichat. Today's survival tip for the Filipina moving at least an ocean away from home: Instead of staying cooped up being homesick, go out and make friends.