fear and love

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”
— John Lennon

The Joys of Being French

 

The First Million Years or So

600 Years of Unwanted Guests

Middle Ages and the Turn of Provence

Wars of Religion and Hocus Pocus Popes

Oppression, Resistance, Quel Renaissance!

Debating The Age of Bad Taste ou Epoch Classique?

Post-War brings Socialist Mitterand and the Revival of Occitan

The Joys of Being French, Oui or N’est Pas?

 

C’est La Vie in The South of France

Santon Fairs in the Var et Renoir at Les Collettes

Columns, Columns, Columns and a Bridge

Troubadours Cansos, Love Story, La Californie of Europe

Hug the road winding the Cote d’Azur

Bordeaux, Beaujolais, frescoes in Peille

Sailing to Promenade du Soleil

 

Down the Rhone: Orange to Beaucaire

Malabar’s bulging biceps swell

Jagged Alpilles, rocky plains of the Crau, marshlands of the Camargue

For the Rhone is a Saturdays Child

On to Nimes, the Gard and Montpellier

Le Vin’s de Herault and Agde founded by the ancient Greeks

Narbonne, the Corbieres and the Aude, Castles and Cathedrals abound

Last but not least, there’s the Catalans of Roussillon

 

Getting There

By Air, By Coach, By Car, By Train

By Boat, By Bus, By Bicycling

The Song of Summer, Cicadas tune

Siesta under pine trees and game of boules

Tender is the Night with starry skies

Bouillabaisse, Aioli, Thirteen desserts

Estocaficada and onion tart

 

Before Laying a Bet, will it be

Holiday Destination or Life on the Riviera?

Like the Fitzgerald’s and Hemingway’s

You will not be the first to stay

Avec votre coeur dans la méditerranéenne.

Red Light Life

     You once saw this chick with wild, fiery-red curls sitting at the stop light of Magnolia and Pine. You marveled at her hair and her shiny, silver 1963 Stingray, not sure which you liked more. Perhaps it was the feeling it gave you. She had the top pulled back and "Boys of Summer" cranked, pumping out of the cabriolet, as she puffed out a series of tight smoke circles in the air with her Marlboro Red. You knew it was a Marlboro Red because the white and red pack, wrapped in cellophane, sat on the dash, staring at you. You were tempted to lean out the window and grub for one, forgetting you quit smoking ten years ago when you were young and dumb and free and dating old what’s-his-face. Yeah free. You remember that feeling. She felt like the silver-bullet train of freedom to you, in those two minutes and thirty-two seconds at the corner of Magnolia and Pine. You re-lived life before marriage and mortgages, before diapers and daycare, before disillusionment and divorce. The light turned green, that girl in the ’63 Stingray with the crazy red curls popped the clutch and stole across the intersection, leaving you in her wake with your memories. You released your foot off the brake of your SUV, littered with lost Barbie shoes and yesterday’s half-eaten PBJ, and once again contemplated leaving. Sighing, you knew you can never escape yourself. Instead, you stuck your hand between the seats, fished out that half-eaten PBJ, and thought who needs freedom anyway.

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.

The Cat
We’re all mad here.

Alice
If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?

The Queen: Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!

Alice
I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle!

The Duchess
If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a great deal faster than it does.

Alice
I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir, because I’m not myself you see.

Alice
What is the use of a book, without pictures or conversations?

The Hatter
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you’re at.

The Queen
Off with her head!

The Duchess
Tut, tut, child! Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.

The Duchess
Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.

The Mock Turtle
Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with, and then the different branches of arithmetic — Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.

The Mock Turtle
Well, I never heard it before, but it sounds uncommon nonsense.

The King
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.

Alice
I don’t believe there’s an atom of meaning in it.

The Queen
Sentence first — verdict afterwards.

Alice
You’re nothing but a pack of cards!

Alice
But then, shall I never get any older than I am now? That’ll be a comfort, one way — never to be an old woman — but then — always to have lessons to learn!

The Queen
Now, I give you fair warning, either you or your head must be off, and that in about half no time! Take your choice!

Alice
It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.

Doorknob
Read the directions and directly you will be directed in the right direction.

Mad Hatter
No wonder you’re late. Why, this watch is exactly two days slow.

Alice
Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin; but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever say in my life!

The Duchess
There’s a large mustard-mine near here. And the moral of that is — The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours.

The Mock Turtle
What is the use of repeating all that stuff, if you don’t explain it as you go on? It’s by far the most confusing thing I ever heard!

Alice: But it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

….and Nostalgia Came Creeping In

Do you remember the time when you glanced at me

…and I swear I could see right down to the bottom of your soul

…and it felt so good

a moment captured in time, when all was good and right

…and you knew it too, you felt it same as I

and we thought it might last, we said it always would

but moments like these seldom do

for fear he captures our souls and he whisks us away before our very eyes

before we can recognize that life is too short to let these moments pass us by

…but so often they do