This Austin Life

La vie en rose…. or rosé

Are you feeling too settled, too sedentary, too frustrated with the recent swing of the pendulum from spring to winter and back again? Well, pack your (metaphorical) bags and take a trip with me…to Provence, France.

Each time I pick up Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence, I am instantly standing knee-deep in freshly sown fields in  southern France.  I can smell the woody terroir, the dense soil, the warm sun on grass, and I can see the sweaty bottles of rosé, the sunny vélo-ways, the piles of radishes and garlicky aioli.  Suffice it to say,  this book is southern France in a few hundred pages, a look at the France that once was (the book was published in ’91 and I find each reference to francs genuinely amusing) and the idyllic France that still is (with a few minor reality adjustments.)

This book focuses on what I enjoy most about French culture- the close relationship that each person has to their region, to the very soil beneath them. Every meal is made from ingredients found close by and every proprietor believes that their cherries/cheese/wine/asparagus is the absolute best (or, as my French host father would say, “le TOP!”)

One of the passages that had me salivating earlier today:

“The pale shoots (of asparagus) were as fat as thumbs, delicately colored and patterned at the tips. We ate them warm, with melted butter. We ate bread that had been baked that afternoon at the old boulangerie at Lumìeres.  We drank the light red wine from the vineyards in the valley.  We supported local industry with every mouthful.”

This is key- and this is what I believe so many of my generation long for- this connection to place, to the very elements that produced our food.  I am thankful to live in a city with varied, diverse, and most of all, numerous farmers’ markets every night of the week.  I realize this isn’t always the case but I believe hope that there is a revolution afoot.  The more we pay attention to the people that produce what we consume, to the countries, to the work, to the skill that it takes to produce what we so easily purchase- the more engaged we become with our global story.  And that can only makes us a more conscientious population.

Bon appétit, everyone.

This is how it starts.

A sniffle.  An itch in the back of your throat.  A glassy eye.  A keen awareness of every other person’s sneeze pattern.  An indescribable fatigue.  A series of rationalizations.

I’m not going to say it, because it is only Monday, but I would not be surprised if I crash full-speed, headfirst, enveloped in flames into sickness this week.

Alas, this is not why I came to write this today.  I came because I had a moment today where I lingered over the last three pages of a wonderful novel for thirty minutes because I desperately didn’t want to leave the well-crafted, intimately beautiful, and utterly complete world of The Night Circus.

The Night Circus is Erin Morgenstern’s first novel, and it is an immeasurable delight.  It has, what I’ll refer to here as “Chelsea Triggers,” which are as follows:

- Lengthy descriptions of ink, quill pens, and different types of antique paper

- Shakespearean sonnets used in the most intricately beautiful way

- Turn of the century England

- Turn of the century pastoral scenes, described at length

- Magic

- Star-crossed lovers

- A lovingly created, complete world, richly colored and expertly woven, so much so I can imagine wearing the story like the most beautiful textile

Read it. Preferably all at once.  Just set aside an afternoon and disappear completely. I’ll meet you at the circus.

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” – Oscar Wilde, 1888 (quote taken from The Night Circus)

Images courtesy of Amazon.