Lovely and Desolate... like your MOM!

The best hour of our trip to France so far was spent at a tiny café in Saint-Émilion, a tiny wine-making village outside of Bordeaux. The town was desolate but gorgeous, all creamy limestone buildings centered around the village church, L’Eglise Monolithe whose construction began in the 12^th century. This time of year, nothing’s doing in France’s wine region. Many of the homes and businesses are, literally, shuttered. The overall impression was beautiful desolation, like if Edward Hopper got all Frenchy. It felt as if we had the whole place to ourselves.

We wandered the cobblestone streets for a bit until we found the aforementioned café. Thankfully it was ouvert, as we needed a little break from the chill. Inside, the first thing I noticed was one of those diner dessert cases that usually house baked goods like carrot cake with individual slices each decorated with little frosting carrots. This dessert case housed weed.

Look how lovely and desolate. I took this photo heading back to our trusty little Citroen. (In an earlier post, I think I said it was a Renault and journalistic integrity demands I correct my error.)

Because I sometimes take sleepy-time gummies before bed, Martha researched whether I could find myself thrown into the gaol if I tried to secret my stash into the EU. Perhaps she was worried I would end up like Brittney Griner, the American basketball player tossed into a Siberian gulag for having some CBD on her person. I did not share Martha’s concerns.

The French marijuana laws seem a little hazy to me at the moment. While it’s still technically illegal, it seems like medical marijuana laws may soon be passed and it sounds like low THC content products, like my gummies, won’t get you arrested. I wasn’t sure, but I brought them anyway because when Paul McCartney got arrested for possession in Japan back in 1980 it just made him seem cooler.

It does seem kind of funny to me that smoking pot would be illegal in a region devoted to getting people fucked up on wine, but that argument’s been made forever so it’s not worth rehashing here (“rehashing” is a terrific pun).

We didn’t buy any of the CBD products.

Instead, Martha ordered herself a hot chocolate and I got a pot of tea. When she went to pay with our bank card, the proprietress told her that they don’t accept debit cards, which was a first for us in France. The only reason this is interesting at all is because it necessitated a trip to the ATM “just up the road”. I volunteered to brave the foreign elements all by myself because I am a big boy.

There’s always a smidge of anxiety when I venture forth alone in countries where I don’t speak the language. The anxiety is only about, I think, looking foolish. It’s a strange anxiety for somebody like me to have because my entire career has been about making myself look foolish. The difference between that and this is, when I am performing, I’m in control. When I’m wandering around a medieval French village in the cold looking for money, I am not.

It's a feeling with which I am trying to grow more comfortable because I’m fascinated by the sensation of being illiterate and dumb (“dumb” in the traditional sense of not being able to speak) for the first time since I was a toddler.

Visiting a foreign land is the closest an adult can get to returning to a time of dependency and wonder. Here I am, unsure of what to do or how to do it, and trying to be ok with my idiocy. Which lane do I choose for the toll plaza? Ah, I chose the wrong one and now have to reverse on a highway. What do these unfamiliar signs mean? How far is “just up the road,” and how do I ask somebody when I cannot find my destination?

It’s frustrating and marvelous, sort of like that feeling I’ve written about when one has been traveling a lot and wakes up not knowing where one is located. Sometimes the feeling produces panic, but sometimes I try to hold onto that weird jamais vu (the opposite of déjà vu) as long as I can because mystery is in such short supply in today’s technocratic world.

Mystery is different than wonder, I think. Wonder is exposure to that which defies explanation, whereas mystery is exposure to that which begs for explanation. Traveling abroad is wonder and mystery. How do these people live? What do they eat? What are they saying? These are all mysteries but not wonders, and yet the L’Eglise Monolithe in Saint-Émilion is a wonder. What defies explanation isn’t the construction, but the devotion required for Benedictine monks to spend a couple hundred years hewing it from the mountainside and lifting it to the heavens. Mon dieu!

Our drinks at the café were restorative and warm. I eavesdropped on a couple around our age dressed in shorts and light outerwear, surprising outfits given the chill. They looked as if they’d just come from a vigorous pickleball match, although I don’t think pickleball has quite caught on here yet. (Apparently, though, there’s a guy named Garrett Weinstein looking to change that, as this article about pickleball in France makes clear.) Actually, to say I was “eavesdropping” is a misnomer, I suppose, because I couldn’t understand a word they said; probably something about how they hope pickleball becomes more popular in France toot suite.

We finished our drinks and wandered back to the car, snapping some pictures of the town – a UNESCO word heritage site, by the way – as we went. From there, we drove around the gorgeous, dead countryside admiring the dormant vineyards and talking about how farming must be difficult work but, as we learned at the City of Wine Museum in Bordeaux, there’s lots of downtime during the winter. I’m a big fan of downtime, but not a big fan of hard work, so farming probably isn’t even for me. Nor do I think I would want to live in a region so dependent on a single industry. It’s one of the reasons I don’t live in Hollywood. But it’s lovely to visit and I imagine the spring and summer must be the best kind of nuts around here.

Merci, Saint-Émilion, for a lovely pot of tea and a marvelous walk. It brightened both of our moods and made us excited for the next leg of our trip, when we get out of the Bordeaux region. Tomorrow, we head to Toulouse, which is, I’m told, one of the country’s most beautiful cities. I’m looking forward to either validating or refuting the claim in my patented authoritative manner.

For tonight, though, we are quietly ensconced in our chilly Libourne Airbnb, about to make ourselves big plates of pasta to be washed down with a selection of pastries obtained at the adorable patisserie down the road. I like adorable shops and I like French pastries so I’m content. Perhaps I’ll head back into the streets for a little more mystery and wonder. On second thought, perhaps I’ll just take a nap.