Saturday
Aug202011
Terroir or Terror
08.20.2011 
Something odd happened at Kitty’s party, afterwards too, but first things first:
It was the second night of the Loire Valley wedding weekend. We hitched a thirty-minute ride with Alfonso and Gigi from Chinon to Bréhémont, the tiny village where Porter’s mother, Kitty, was giving a party for the wedding guests.
Alfonso had flown in the day before from China. Seven time zones away. No jet lag, he said. Not if you’re in your late 20s, there’s not. Alfonso’s job takes him all over the world.
I sat in back with his girlfriend, Gigi, who looks like a French Gigi should look: young, fresh and full of zest. The element of beauty is often the anomaly, and in Gigi, it’s her slightly Asian eyes in a classical French face.
We described our ecstatic cheese experience at La Cave Voltaire. Gigi exclaimed that she had studied cheese-making in France for years, in college, no less. She had just returned from a year in Wisconsin as a cheese marketer, teaching cheese makers the concept of terroir. Terroir, she said, was both an agricultural region, and a practice of combining wines, cheese and other foods from the same earth that “go together” harmoniously.
I ask her if she knows the concept of synchronicity. Terroir sounds like the sensual counterpart to synchronicity, I say. No, she doesn’t, but when I describe it, we both agree that it’s somehow analogous to terroir, one emphasizing what goes together in space, the other in time.
Gigi was surprised at how excellent the Wisconsin cheeses were. She loved the United States, and wants to return there to live. Next time, try California, I suggest.
Kitty lives right next door to the bride and groom. She and Porter’s late father bought a house in Bréhémont. After he died, Porter bought the house next door.
At Kitty’s house, Porter stands in the courtyard in a barbeque apron, greeting friends, radiating his native Birmingham, Alabama charm. Louise is in the living room in a sleeveless, low-cut long dress, bright flowers against a black background, pale Irish skin, orange hair tied in a chignon, looking more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her. Nothing like a wedding to bring forth Aphroditean splendor.
Kitty stands in peach shirt and white pants in front of the fireplace of her fine old stone house. At the opposite end of the room, a boar’s head is mounted on the wall, with a gold hunting horn above it. Kitty describes how she found it in a Paris brocante shop and carried it home on her lap in the Métro. How people did stare! You can see where Porter got his charm. The French kings used to hunt boars in the forests around here.
I talk for a while with David, Porter’s oldest friend at the party, an Andover classmate. David, in black tee-shirt and jeans, a red bandanna around his forehead, has a strong nose and a way of getting straight to the truth. He had made a short film while he and Porter were in boarding school, based on Crime and Punishment. Porter had played the part of the policeman, and he was very good.
David and his wife and children live in NYC, where both work in theater. David began by writing original plays, then discovered that his true talent lay in adapting others’ stories for the stage. Next fall, Natasha begins four years at the High School of Music & Art/Performing Arts in NYC. “Flashdance,” David says.
Richard and I gravitate towards the big stone fireplace. David introduces us to his Greek-American wife, Erana, and their daughter, Natasha. Erana is as open and friendly as her daughter is closed and sullen. Nothing her parents say or do is right. Richard says later, “She’s a typical 14-year-old.” But judging from the sample pictures Erana shows on her iPhone of her daughter’s work, she has a true gift for painting.
The four of us talk about a possible swap with their apartment in Manhattan. Do they like cats? We can’t swap places with anyone who doesn’t want to live with Marley. They have three cats. Erana shows us pictures. Perfect. And after the kids have grown they’re thinking about moving to Paris.
Soon we meet another couple, Richard and Margarita. Both have sculpted Nureyev faces, high cheekbones, are lean and good-looking. They live in Sligo, Ireland, Yeats country, our favorite part of Ireland. Richard’s family have been merchants there for years, and knew Yeats. Margarita is a Russian mathematician. When they marry, it will be a second marriage for each.
They have recently bought and renovated, with Porter’s help, an apartment in Paris. Margarita is ready to move here; Richard, not yet. “You must help me persuade Richard to move to Paris,” she says to me in the deepest voice I’ve ever heard in a woman.
We file around the buffet spread, then all bring our plates to the low table in front of the fireplace.
Mora and Ludovic join us. They’ve just driven from Paris to Bréhémont. Ludovic is a tall slender Frenchman; Mora is Venezuelan, refreshingly ample-bodied after all the skinny minnies in Paris.
Mora is an architect who’s helping Porter renovate a client’s recently purchased apartment in the sixième arrondissement.
Mora, in black with a star-scattered scarf, dark eyes and gleam, tells us how she came to live in Paris. She attended the Sorbonne for college, continued on for a Master’s in architecture, then went on for a PhD.
From time to time, she’d go home to Venezuela and feel depressed, homesick for Paris. She realized she was getting one degree after another mainly in order to stay in Paris.
We wax eloquent about our love for this city. The first six new people we’ve met at this party, by some quirk, all gathered by the fireplace—from NYC and Greece, Ireland and Russia, Venezuela and France—all have a passion in common, a conviction that there’s no better place on earth to live than Paris.
After we’ve eaten, and stacked our plates in the kitchen, the “play” begins. The bride’s Irish family and friends set the tone. Nicola, one of Louise’s bridesmaids and former schoolmate at Trinity College in Dublin, recites a poem about a girl who sits on a porcupine, and has to be taken to the dentist and upended to have the quills removed from her bare bottom. The dentist has taken “things” out of these regions before.
Louise does a dramatic reading about tooth decay in the persona of an ancient hag, folding her lips over her teeth to create the impression of empty gums.
Richard and I had each brought a poem of ours to read to the bride and groom, but quickly discover that the spirit tonight is one of broad humor, Irish humor, which our poems don’t match. We sit back on the couch and admire the Irish genius for memorizing long stories and poems, one after the other.
On the ride home, Alfonso suddenly stops the car. There is a spiny creature waddling across the middle of the road. A porcupine? Or more likely in these parts, a hedgehog. Alfonso shines a flashlight into its eyes, hoping to inspire the little guy to scoot over to the side of the road. But the hedgehog is now terrified, and curls up into a ball.
Is this terror or terroir? Comedy or synchronicity? Coincidence in time or space or both? It is odd right after the long poem about a porcupine.
What to do? Alfonso returns to the car.
Gigi says, “You can’t touch him; he probably has mites.”
Alfonso returns and gently, gently with the toe of his shoe nudges the hedgehog to the side of the road.
We drive back to the Lion d’Or, and dream about porcupines and hedgehogs, terror and terroir, Kitty’s house and Paris, Porter and Louise, and new friends from around the world.
Reader Comments (14)
Your stories create such longing to be there with you and your world of friends! My son says there is no coincidence...only synchronicity! The Universe's Terroir for our palette...
Kaaren and Richard, Queen and King of the Creative Expression of Experience.......
I love the idea of Terroir and Synchronicity combined in one environment in a way that looks, feels, tastes and sounds right. My family and I have been involved in the conviction that if we embrace the people and experiences that swirl around us every moment of our lives and connect with positive, infectious, creative, aligned, considerate, collaborative, celebratory, joyous and loving actions we will build a place that represents Terroir at its best. When a place is harmonious and is assembled with pleasing parts that 'go together' it becomes an energy center for the body and mind. We have all been to places that immediately feel right and are nurturing. I think Paris is one of those places as a whole and that exudes the energy of Terroir. I will now add this beautifully descriptive word, Terroir, to my everyday receptive acceptance of all that is infused with harmony. We love you dearly.
Jon and Leatrice, King and Queen of Creative Harmony and Place.......
Dear Elena,
How happy your message makes us! I have a fantasy of a bunch of friends going in on the purchase of an apartment in Paris to time-share. If our stories create a longing to be here, it's incumbent on us to help our friends figure out a way to do so. I know you already had a deep connection to Paris. So I think you may find yourself living here one of these days.
We agree with your son. Synchronicity is happening all the time, we just don't always notice the web of "coincidences." I've noticed that they happen more often the more conscious and awake I am.
"The Universe's Terroir for our palette." THAT is such a felicitous phrase, it deserves a poem--by you!
Love and gratitude,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Jonny!
What a delight to hear from you. It's true! You and Leatrice really are the King and Queen of Harmony and Place. We don't know of anyone who combines awareness of synchronicity AND terroir as seamlessly as you do.
Terroir: we'd heard the word before, but Gigi gave us an in-depth understanding of it. It makes perfect earthy sense, doesn't it?
Your home is one of those places that feels right and is nurturing. And so are the green building projects you're creating. It all comes from harmony of spirit, which just gets stronger in you as time goes on!
Much love, K & Q of H & P,
Kaaren & Richard
Dear Kaaren and Richard,
What a lovely gathering you've taken us to! I love Gigi's unanticipated respect for Wisconsin cheesemakers... I love the delightful Irish stories... I love the hedgehog and Alfonso's gentleness... I love the deep passion for Paris in people of such varied backgrounds... and I even love Natasha's teenage sullenness! And perhaps most of all I love how you have so beautifully conveyed this evening's very human warmth and fullness with your eloquence in words and extraordinary eye for images (and the ability to capture them!). Thank you for sharing your experience and your artistic gifts with us...
And, of course, it always makes me smile to see dear Marley. :)
Much love,
dawna
Dear Dawna,
We love your appreciation and we love you!
I too was tickled by how knocked out Gigi was by Wisconsin cheese and the sophistication of cheese-making in the U.S. Also, being in the business of cheese, she was impressed by the freedom of American entrepreneurship, and the opportunities for women in business. As much as we love Paris, we're still Americans, and pleased when Europeans appreciate the best of our country. On the other side, Gigi lost her job because of the budget cuts by the Republican governor of Wisconsin, who is also trying to decimate state worker unions.
Aren't the Irish hilarious? What a gift for words! No wonder so many great poets come from this land.
The hedgehog... he was like an apparition in the night. We all had the same first take: "Noooooo, NOT a porcupine, but yes, it is... but wait, in France?" It was as if the story by Nicola had summoned up this creature.
Paris: it's a beautiful city in France, but it's also a state of mind, a (passionate) set of aesthetic and artistic values that go beyond national boundaries, and unite people from all these various countries.
We also glimpsed Natasha's charm and shyness and sensitivity, so are sure that the 14-year-old phase is just a phase.
Marley told me to tell you that he misses you, and hopes you'll come visit him in Paris soon.
Much love,
Kaaren (and Richard(
I love the world through your passionate eyes and compassionate heart. Every woman has a unique beauty, each person is infinitely interesting, everything tastes delicious, and synchronicity abounds. I'm so happy that France loves you, as much as you love her!
Dear Diane,
France could not possibly love us as much as we love her, but we are besotted nevertheless. We just happen to be meeting some wonderful people lately, who would look this good to you, too, if you were with us. (And I know you will be again before too long.)
Thank you so much for keeping the writing group going.
Much love,
Kaaren & Richard
The vacation this Capricorn always needs is so easily accessed by reading your words and looking at your images. The dirt, the earth, the territory, la terra, le terroir, however you choose to phrase it -- you create a path for my feet so that I can tread from here to there.
I am, simply put, in love with you both.
Ah, Anna,
WHAT did we do to deserve a friend like you? You are loved fully as much as you love, and that's beaucoup.
We are simply part of your advance network, for when you live in Italy. You COULD wrap up your Lucrezia novel before you live in Europe, but somehow I picture you finishing it in Rome. And our visiting between Rome and Paris!
You work so hard. You write so beautifully. My wish for you: that all your hard work be allowed to flow into that writing.
Much love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
More vicarious pleasures from the home of my ancestors. You capture the wonderful eclectic souls merging together on a grand occasion, more talk of cheese. (there can never be enough of that) gifts that come with the terroir-atory i guess.
I think you should have dared to go pluck a quill from the porcupine (or hedgehog) and used it to write a poem about it.
-- the boar image invoked a flash of the Sardinian hogs in Hannibal.
-- the orange-haired girl could be the femme in a story i'm working on. spooky synchro
-- love the Police National painting... with a pigeon (real) for feet
steve dj
Steve:
We ARE quill plucking. It's one of our favorite tools to write with. We only want pointed and trenchant prose.
We are also bird-obsessed, and are pleased you noticed the pigeon-toed policeman.
Hugs,
--Kaaren (and Richard)
Kaaren & Richard:
How will you get fluent in French? How did you master creative writing? The hard way.
Be well,
Steve
Steve:
The MFA was "easier" because I at least understood the language. Here I am as a child. Or an idiot.
Good to hear from you!
RB