The farmers hereabouts have begun in earnest in the past three or four days to denude their fields of the summer’s crop of wheat and hay. If I were, in my usual presumptuous way, to assume it was about me I could almost guess they are working their butts off, as they do year round, to rub it in as I spend my last two days in my beloved Haut Var.

Driving through the countryside borrowing the fresh eyes of first-time guests, one might suppose, as they do, that what they mainly grow is grapes. So multitudinous and wide-spread are the vineyards, and so alien to the vision of U.S. Northeasterners, all these domaines do give the impression this is the chief, perhaps the only, crop. Equally alien to us Yankees, of course, are acre after acre of wheat, the deep tawny shade of a mature crop. It’s a color of great depth and richness, somewhere in a highly selective spectrum of mine, between amber and yellow ochre and gamboge. Of course, this being Provence, the color changes with the light, and the time of day, and sometimes moment to moment. And if the wind is blowing, forget it.

One does not notice the variety and the plenitude, or the vast expanse of acreage—even in a part of the country which is one of the most heavily wooded in all of France—except from a distance. The height of the hill on which our village sits just happens to be precisely right for a vantage suited either for studious contemplation, or pure esthetic indulgence. And of course, work looks best from a distance, the monstrous machines reduced to Dinky Toy proportions as they move inexorably from one end of each meadow to the next, boustrophedon, “as the ox goes” is the way the Greeks put it (a huge animal pulling a plow is most efficient turning once at the end of each parallel row); it’s a term applied to a manner of writing, which Leonardo, among others, used—be glad I don’t. There may be majesty in purple mountains, but it is nothing to the majesty of noble labor in golden fields of grain.

The machines are gigantic. One is sensible of their potency only by close observation—and there is no greater testimony to their inexorable, if not terrible, power, than to see, as I did, the operator of one these beasts, clamoring over a combine-harvester with his sinuous arms, one of them missing a part of itself ending four inches below the elbow. And instantly I can imagine that one singular gruesome harvest, a life lesson, but a man must work, and work he obviously continues to do.

In most instances, the machines travel from field to field, or farm to farm. As long as I’ve been sojourning here, I am still not clear on the division of land. In fact, I do know that often a single owner has tracts all over the place, each planted differently very often, depending on the yield of a particular parcel, or the market demand year to year. The machines are so big and so expensive there are few of them, and it’s my guess they are used cooperatively, or they are leased cooperatively, or they contract with the operator to take care of all the wheat in a commune (French for incorporated town or village). The first machine to appear is a combine-harvester, as I mentioned, which reaps and threshes in one operation, separating the grains and collecting them, and then leaving the stalks and chaff in long parallel rows along the length of the field. Next comes the baler. In these parts, and at least this year and last, they have been using rectangular balers which leave neat little right-angle parallelopipeds, box-shaped bales—to differentiate them from the rolling balers which leave huge cylinders neatly spaced in rows for the farmer to pick up with his tractor and trailer.

Haying season, which begins about the middle of July and ends with the month, means the roads are at some point, as you travel from village to village, temporarily impassable. Farm equipment by law cannot exceed a speed limit of 25kph (about 15 miles an hour) even on open stretches of highway. But the farmers are the dearest, kindest men (I have yet to see a woman operating this equipment, or driving on the open road; doesn’t mean they don’t, I simply have never seen them) and get out of the way with the first opportunity. They work, and they live for that matter, at a certain pace. And one cannot help get the notion that that pace is somehow in tune with a resonant sense of the pace of living things themselves.

All action is measured. Great amounts of work get done seemingly effortlessly. One leaves in the morning for marché. Does frenzied shopping. Leisurely sits and quaffs coffee and some viennoiserie. On the road to the market town, one sees a field of wheat. On the return trip home, the stalks have been hewn in mounded rows. On the next trip to town, perhaps the very next day, for a dinner reservation at that restaurant one wanted to try, the mounds have been replaced by neat bales. And two days later, the bales are gone. In a week, another machine has been brought in. A harrower. And the field is clogged with great clumps of the marvelous terra rossa, the red earth of this region. Often one has not seen one bit of machinery, nor a single human, as if the labor were done by unseen hands stretching down from the firmament.

In the 22 years of my visits, all too short, however long, this has been the enduring cycle of the days. It happens again in late spring, when the winter wheat, which first sprouts, in late November, an unexpected bright green of shoots quickening the frosty air of December, not very long after the grape harvest. The latter is performed by another genus of huge machinery, tall as a three-story house, and which rumbles snail-paced athwart the neat rows of vines, which have been dressed and bound, row on row, from the start in anticipation of the orientation of the maw of the mechanical picker. The more valuable vintage grapes are picked by hand, but these precious crops are truly unseen, as they lie in vineyards past woods and dales, sometimes several kilometers from the open road, hence out of sight.

Once the winter wheat is planted, and has safely begun to sprout, it’s time for the harvest of the other great fruit of this region. The noble drupe known as the olive. Again, there are mechanical pickers (actually shakers, which, with a quaking motion, force the mature fruit off the trees and into nets spread on the ground at the base of the gnarled trunks). Smaller orchards use the same techniques, but manually.

The other drupes which grow upon this fecund land, the plum, the almond, and the luscious cherry each have their own season. Watches and clocks be damned. Every village has a clanging bell to toll the hour, every hour, all through the day and night. Farmers, as I have pointed out, work to some deeper, slower temporal measure. There’s a rhythm to it. A pace.

And the effect on their lives, and on the daily life of those who devote themselves to this labor is evident even to a dilettante like me. Never mind to the extraordinary common people who inhabit the towns and villages, the hamlets, and assemblages of stone cabins so few in their aggregation that there is no name for it. Dirt roads off the paved thoroughfares that join the market towns go on for great distances, seemingly to nowhere, when they suddenly debouch upon a homestead, and then another, and another, in a small clutch of houses that must surely be the smallest indivisible unit of what can only reasonably be called civilization. And that sense of the pace and rhythm of life is evident even here.

It humbles me. It should humble any man, or woman, who comes here from there, that anywhere whence each of us arrives, usually a city, or some bustling place, filled with the hurly burly, with the Jamesian blooming, buzzing confusion of the so-called civilized world. But I am humbled further, as I consider my reasons for coming here from time to time.

I have described the work of this place, the quotidian activity that defines it, and has defined it for I would guess a millennium. I presume to call what I do, or wish to do, or hope to do work, and I end up, more recently than not, even with my age, and the accumulated experience that comes now with the package that is myself, feeling confused, not clarified. Filled with diffidence, not its opposite. Out of tune, not harmonious or resonant.

This place more than any other—for me, as I can speak for no one else—hums with the eternal, most evident in the quietest moments, when the cicadas are mute, the birds are silent, the woodland creatures have bedded down so even the rustling in the undergrowth has stopped, and the wind has ceased. And in the stillness, the black mantle of night radiant with the unstinting unblinking points of a billion stars, I am overcome with a sense of my own uselessness.

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For the first time since I arrived, three weeks ago, inclement weather threatens.

Actual raindrops just fell on my car as I returned from the boulangerie down the hill with my morning croissant and a baguette. The sky is quite dark to the west and northwest, which are the prevailing directions for wetness. And I heard actual rain falling in the alley next to chez moi as I drank my espresso and sucked down the croissant. I rushed upstairs to the keyboard, because you have to take advantage of these moments.

And now damn it, the sun is dappling the ancient tree in the place just outside my window. In fact, it’s getting stronger as I type, like one of those scenes in a bad movie as the hero’s fingers race over the keyboard (or the keypad on the nuclear device, or the dials on the safe with the exonerating papers…) or like Peter Pan exhorting us to clap ever more enthusiastically to save Tinker Bell, as her inner light dims and wavers.

I was looking forward to the village people (no, not what you’re thinking; I mean literally, the locals here in the village) having some other subject than heat to talk about on the theme of weather. The weather isn’t boring, it’s the talk. Heat heat heat. Oh it’s hot! Hot today. Wasn’t it hot?

Relentlessly, day after day, week after week, as the summer makes its indolent way through the phases of the moon (which has now been waxing itself, also since my arrival), and the sun beats down unceasingly, at least 14 hours a day. All of this so much so that it reinforces one’s natural tendency to lose not only a sense of time, but of time passing altogether. Without the internet, I am convinced, or the need to get to marché each week, or every three days, for fresh produce and a nice piece fish, no one would know what day of the week it is. No civilian that is, because the French who own the banks, and merchants who make the endless cycle of visits to villages on the marché circuit—if it’s Aups, this must be Saturday—they always know what day it is, because for the one, it’s a matter of making sure that people’s lives are inconvenienced periodically on a hebdomadal basis [irrelevant note here: writers who pledge themselves to writing about life in France must understand that pledge to include the obligation to use the word “hebdomadal,” and a few other lexical rarities, like “lexical,” in their production]. You see the banks, like many many shops are simply closed on Mondays.

The critical time unit is the week. Let’s face it, each day is the same except for the folks who have to shlep tomatoes and French tschotschkes, with cicadas embroidered or laser-cut or molded into otherwise marginally useful household objects, like little olive bowls with even tinier bowls inside, one for the pits and the other for toothpicks—I used one of these yesterday while having dinner out: it actually had the words “noyants”and “piques” fired into the surfaces, in tiny black letters, of those tiny bowls, in case you might get confused—or the bankers, who need one day a week to count their money, which they are not lending to anyone, even here in France. They know what day it is.

The bankers may be losing track of time. Like all establishments in rural precincts, in hamlets and villages, even the bank branches (never mind the post offices, the offices of the Public Treasury, sort of the local outposts of the national treasury, where you can pay taxes, and have interminable discussions about whether you really have to pay the television ownership tax since you don’t have a tv, never had a tv, can’t even stand French tv), everything closes for lunch. This is in addition to having all of Monday off. However, on this trip, I noticed something quite interesting.

There has been a radical remodeling of the local branch of the Crédit Agricole, which among its other accomplishments holds my mortgage, along with those of the majority of the populace, making it, I think, one of the largest banks not only in France, but in Europe, which might explain their difficulty in hiring local personnel for their thousands of branches and who individually have enough brain cells to rub together in order to be able to answer simple direct questions. That, or it’s my accent, but then, most of the questions that have gone unanswered have been via email. But, back to the remodeling.

Whereas formally, the bank resembled a corner branch of Fort Knox, or the French equivalent, assuming they have an equivalent; it’s also possible they’ve used up all their gold embellishing the Empire gimcrackery on the buildings in Paris: domes, balustrades, corbels, etc. etc. Instead of plate glass so thick you could not see inside to reassure yourself that the tellers were in their little stalls, the managers were temporizing behind their desks, probably playing Sudoku, which has apparently taken rural France by storm, because I know they’re not doing anything to learn the bank rules any better for my rare visits when I can pose my unanswerable questions in person in my impenetrable accent, there are now automatic doors that slide open as soon as you get within about five meters of them (that’s about 20 feet). Instead of a double door system with a waiting cubicle smaller than a French phone booth on a hot summer night when you not only have no French coins, which French phones no longer accept, but no French credit card, with their little gold printed circuit “puce” or, literally, “flea,” which contains all your personal account information and is the little key to your pitiable little financial kingdom, and is the only way you can use a French phone, unless you are making a call to a “numéro vert” or “green number,” that is, the quaint French way of saying a toll-free call, wherein (in the cubicle, not the phone booth; I know it’s difficult, but pay attention) you wait, while tiny little, well, traffic lights, they’re red and green see?, flash on an off while in some mysterious way someone or some thing inside the bank determines you are not bent on some underhanded business if they admit you to the bank and then presses a release button to let you through the second door. And it can be an ordeal in summer, because that little cubicle is not air conditioned. And then you do the whole thing in reverse on the way out, as a security measure. It is possible, you’ll admit, that you may have cleverly disguised yourself as a retired farmer in jeans or overalls, or a tired housewife in an even more tired housedress, or an American tourist in goofy shorts and athletic socks with your ankle-high Cons, and actually were coming in to do something underhanded, instead of asking innocuous unanswerable questions, and then you thought you could just sashay out of there with the underhanded ill-gotten gains of your visit. No, you must do the double-door-cubicle, stuffy and hot, the door behind you locking before the light can change to green and the door in front of you unlocks.

As I say, all gone. You just sashay in at virtually all hours. The sign proudly announces that there is access from some ungodly hour in the morning, when no one should be in a bank deep in La France Profonde doing any kind of business, until ten at night, when the sun has just set, at least if it’s anywhere near that time of year called the Summer Solstice. What they’ve cleverly done is eliminate the need for any staff with any brain cells to rub together, and provided three automated banking stations—one for deposits, one for withdrawals, and one, well, I’m not sure what it’s for, because I’m afraid to go in there. The only reason I ever went into the bank before was to get a roll of one euro pieces for the laundromat across the street, whose computerized control system only accepts one euro, two euro and 50 cent (euro) coins, and no one has that much change in their pockets or it would rip the pocket right out of your shorts, because it costs about 14 euros all told, washing and drying, to do a single eight kilo load of wash and dry. The other reason I’d go into the bank would be every three years to get my new ATM card, which they will not mail to you, no no no, but you must pick it up in person. Not so bad, as I only use the card in France, but there’s a little catch. They also issue the four-number PIN to you—you can’t compose it yourself, and I don’t dare ask if it can be changed, because I think this will fall into that category of questions I have already belabored. However, they mail the PIN to you, and only after issuing the card, which you must sign for at the bank. And well, my bank statements and all other mail go to my U.S. home address, because, damn it, I still happen to spend the preponderance of my time in the good old U.S, of A. The timing of this all gets rather tricky.

My current ATM card has another year to run, thank God, so I have all that time to sort this out once again, and muster the courage to walk between those automatically sliding doors and scope out the vision of the 21st century that Crédit Agricole has implemented. I might even run into someone who works there, so I can polish my question-asking skills. I still need to know the mortgage interest I paid in 2009 for my American tax return. That always stumps them. They can’t comprehend that the government, any government, would in fact lower one’s taxes for any reason, least of all paying interest to them, a French bank (to whom I think we U.S. citizens still owe loans they made to us during the Revolution, our revolution) on a home mortgage. So maybe their silence or confusion in the face of my questions is less ignorance or incomprehension or lousy oratorical skills, and more a form of long term shock. These are bankers, understand, so it might even be a fiduciary version of some other disorder, a kind of petit version of PTSD. I’m a little wary of trying to find out, as French fiduciaries, like their American counterparts, are now somewhat in disfavor, and they may be a little sensitive. It isn’t Monday, after all, which is their refuge.

But it will be a good day to go, because I see that the sun has, once again, won out, and the rain is no longer pittering or pattering on the ancient streets, and as the photo below attests, taken moments ago from the window I see through just above my monitor, when I raise my head, it shines once again triumphant, as it has so many thousands of times before on the ancient, inscrutable tree that is, no doubt, as insouciant of the day of the week, as it is of the prevailing meteorological conditions.

Final note, for my Cambridge readers. The subject of this blog essay is “La Pluie” or, simply, rain, because in my excitement at the prospect of some variance in my dull but strangely satisfying routine that’s what I chose to call it. No homage to W. Somerset Maugham. Not even a not so oblique reference to that carriage trade spa in the heart of Harvard Square, which demurely and in the most chic of manners calls itself “La Pli,” not only two fewer letters, but with a different meaning. No doubt aimed at their chief audience, women, and not a few men, of a certain age, and a certain magnitude of bank account (they’re a part of a group of 40 spas and salons around the country, catering to this trade, called “Halcyon Days Salons and Spas”—I will say no more), the name of the spa means, “the crease,” “the fold,” or, dare I say it, “the wrinkle,” any or all of which I know they are dedicated to preventing, or ameliorating, or—there’s no way to get away from it—disguising.

Now for all the relentless sun, which once again, and I’m saying this for the last time today, has prevailed, there is nary a wrinkle one finds the local populace worries about or, for that matter, manifests personally in any noticeable way. Les plis seem to be reserved for the venerable trunks and branches of the trees hereabouts, which seem to thrive for centuries even with the paucity of la pluie.

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The Sunday New York Times of a little over a week ago (Sunday, 4 October 2009) has a chilling account of the effects of a particularly virulent strain of E.Coli on a young woman in the midwest. Ordinarily a vegetarian, she consumed a hamburger at a family barebecue, eating a burger, prepared by her mother. Mom used frozen patties obtained presumably from a local retailer (actually, it was Sam’s Club, which, for some really really lucky American citizens is a local retailer) and supplied by Cargill, a humungous conglomerate. How big? It’s only the largest privately held company in the United States, with sales of over a hundred billion dollars a year.

The young woman, otherwise healthy, robust, physically fit and active, is now paralyzed from the waist down, with kidneys in a very delicate condition and constantly threatening to shut down as a result. The cause of her present state was a disease, caused in rare instances by the ingestion of especially virulent strains of E. Coli, called hemolytic uremic syndrome, which occurs in from five to ten percent of illnesses caused by the pathogen. The effect in this young woman was, obviously, catastrophic.

There is no doubt that the disease was caused by one of the patties of a product Cargill labels “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” It seems, and the exhaustive deconstruction of the sources of the ingredients appears in this article, that it is mainly beef, it is true. However, as one might suppose, especially if one is of my generation, and in his or her late 50s or early 60s (or older, for sure) it is not meat ground from a single piece of beef selected by the customer or butcher, and ground on the spot in the store where purchased—and I do not mean to suggest that such simple methodology eliminates the possibility of ending up contaminated food.

Rather, the Cargill product (whose product label contains a litany of, nothing else to call them but, lies—that’s my supposition, but I feel safe making it: no chef of any nationality selected anything, except insofar as he might have a title connected with his corporate employment that, for conveniences such as this, require he or she be called “chef;” “angus” as a designation of a kind or type of beef has been so denatured and compromised in use that it is meaningless; and as the article states, the patties in question also include bread crumbs and spices in the formulation) is the result of the mixture of already ground beef from at least four major sources, at least one of them located in Uruguay. The patties are not whole beef parts ground up, but only partially so, mixed with what the industry calls trimmings, wherein by several different processes the extremely high fat content bits of cattle parts in question are treated to reduce that fat content to a designated level. These bits are then ground up in massive volume and the end ingredient packaged and shipped with the fat content designated. Cargill combines the ground products from its various sources to produce a patty that has an “ideal” fat content of 26.6% (in case you’re interested).

Incidentally, it is only after all the ingredients are combined that Cargill takes any steps at all to test the product for contamination. Otherwise they depend on the assurances of their suppliers (and in turn, up the chain, their suppliers) that the meat in question has been tested. Therefore it is virtually impossible for Cargill to know the source of any contamination should they find it—or should some hapless and unlucky consumer “find” it. Only good old deductive detective work long after the fact can maybe provide an answer, or point to one, though without the conclusiveness that makes any one of us feel comfortable. And, of course, Cargill is not in the business of doing such detective work. That’s left to government agencies, who do it as they see fit within the constraints of limited budgets (and mindful, as one of the USDA officials is quoted as saying, of the entire industry, and the impact of any interdictive or punitive actions on businesses supplying the consumer, and not merely mindful, in singular and focused fashion, on the simple matter of public health), or by the few news gathering, investigating and reporting organizations left to us—like The New York Times—who still have the resources and the will to look into this nasty bit of work.

Like the old saying about legislation and sausages, there are two things you don’t want to witness: the making of laws, or the making of hot dogs. I would strongly recommend a third, and that is, not even to read the account, which is quite detailed in the Times piece, of how so much of America gets its beef burgers. The burgers in question, incidentally, cost $1.30 a pound to manufacture by Cargill, who meet a cost of one dollar a pound for the actual beef ingredients.

I don’t know what Sam’s Club (where, it indeed turns out, the unfortunate victim’s nearly fatal lunch derived at retail), a division of Walmart, pays Cargill for the boxed products. There is no product available at this time on the Sam’s Club website with the name of the burgers that paralyzed poor Ms. Smith of Minnesota for whatever life is left to her. However there is currently a “customer favorite” [sic] 100% Organic Classic Beef Burgers, packed in a box of 32 four-ounce burgers, at a cost of $60.22. That’s a few cents more than $7.50 a pound for hamburger patties, frozen in a box, for those of you not disposed to do the math in your head or wherever you might.

These available burgers are guaranteed 100% from grass-fed beef, with no hormones or antibiotics administered. Sounds pretty good so far, and sourced in Australia and Uruguay. There is no mention of the breed of cattle. There would seem to be a propensity to “not go there.” “Angus,” is, after all, an actual breed of cattle, and the one preferred for any number of reasons that needn’t be belabored here, as it has been in so many other places. A lot of effort, suffice it to say, has gone into instilling a sense in Americans that “Angus” is a superior breed that, by logic, produces a superior kind of beef. No comment. For Wikipedia’s take on “Angus,” see here http://bit.ly/angus_beef.

The burgers that caused the illness were packed, according to the Times’s account, 18 to the box. No mention of grass-fed, etc. But, using some simple rules of the marketplace, such as economies of scale, I have to suppose that proportionately, these questionable burgers were even more costly than the current product on offer.

“Grass-fed,” “hormone-free,” yada yada or not, it is fair to assume that the same slaughtering, butchering and processing practices come into play as did in the case of the contaminated products that caused so much mayhem in 2007. Even if you remember this case, as it did make the national news back then, and I do not but only vaguely recall it (speaking of recalls, it seems there are so many involving the U.S. food industry that it’s a little unfair to expect anyone, except people who make their living preventing such outbreaks that result in recalls, or who track these things as a profession, to remember any incident—I happen to wonder why any U.S. citizen in his right mind eats anything that comes out of a cardboard box or a cellophane bag imprinted with a national brand, and especially if purchased in a frozen state) it is safe to say this much about how we get informed. We should not be surprised to discover, as in this instance, that it takes two years of dedicated news and fact gathering, and other investigative measures, including the interviewing of both cooperative and statutorily non-participating sources, to glean the facts and form them into a coherent and, as I suggested at the start, horrifying underlying story.

This essay is entitled “The Price” to mean several senses of the word, of course, but adhering strictly to matters of cost—as in the exchange of legal tender for the goods—let us consider the alternatives available to us. That is, alternatives to finding inexpensive alternatives for favorites in our diets.

Let us just accept for the sake of this argument that a preponderance of Americans are lovers of beef. Before you respond to me with some snarky remarks, and attendant attitude, about how you personally are a virtual whited sepulcher when it comes to red meat consumption, I will cite only two statistics from this article. One, about the output of just one of the beef processors (there were four suppliers feeding ingredients to Cargill), indicates that they produce seven million pounds a week of their product. Their “product” is the output of the following steps. They take “trimmings,” consisting almost entirely of fat, and process and render them so that they can deliver to Cargill as one of the already processed ingredients in their ground beef products what they call “fine lean textured beef” at a cost of 20 cents a pound more than actual ground beef. I will only take a moment to mention two matters of fact about this company’s product: their process includes treating the animal parts they are processing—I refuse to call this “meat”—with ammonia. The other fact is that one major user of this company’s products are the producers of hamburger meat for the federal school lunch program.

The other fact involves American Foodservice (a company that supplies food products—well, one food product; their motto is “The Best in Burgers”), which bills itself as “one of the industry’s top ground beef processors.” Doesn’t burn too much mental energy to conclude that there are several “top” ground beef processors, which means we are dealing with arithmetic, if not logarithmic, progression of the numbers involved. Anyway American Foodservice, which apparently was not involved in the Cargill product that paralyzed Ms. Smith, grinds 365 million pounds a year.

That’s only two companies. They each produce a million pounds of ground beef or “textured” beef per day. Multiply that by four (for a quarter-pounder, assuming that great innovation of the 20th century was pure beef) and you’ve got eight million hamburgers a day from just two companies. Enough for a burger for every citizen of New York City proper.

So, admitting there’s the alternative of a quarter pounder (or the much newer product, a premium and higher quality product, if one is to believe the marketing, a third-pound “gourmet” burger at McDonald’s, the universal touchstone and icon of America’s love of beef—I chuckle as I add this, but these new, bigger, better, more expensive items are called, of course, “Angus Burgers”), which you buy, cooked and ready to eat of course, at a cost of $3.99 per burger. It’s their most expensive item, and it’s unlikely I will ever eat one. Satisfy yourself with this account in USAToday, from just a couple of weeks ago. I mean it is America’s newspaper, what better source?: http://bit.ly/McD_Angus_Burger. Multiply that number by three, and we have the jolly fact to contemplate that for a mere $11.97 a pound, you get not only the meat, but the cheese and other accouterments, the packaging, the preparation by underpaid food handlers, the friendly service, the esthetics of McDonald’s architecture. The whole quintessential American experience (and at least as far as the esthetics are concerned, I know this is also true of Europe, where prices may vary, and I know that the beef itself will contain no hormones or antibiotics, because it can’t by law).

Incidentally, a quarter-pounder, the price of which I checked locally, in Cambridge MA, as of the Sunday of the article I alluded to, costs $3.49 with cheese. For further context, I’ll note as well that a famous Big Mac (the cornerstone of McD’s hegemony in the realm of meeting America’s meat jones) is also $3.49 (it wasn’t worth the time to research the amount of meat, by weight, in a Big Mac). There is a formidable bargain to be taken note of as well, in that a so-called “Double Quarter-Pounder” (which, according to the old math I learned in the 1950s would make it a half-pound of whatever it is they use for animal products at good old Mickey D’s) is a mere $4.29, a bargain. Consider that a double-quarter-pounder gives you a pound of meat for $8.58 a pound, only a dollar more, per pound, than that “customer favorite” at Sam’s Club, which arrives in several days after placing the order, and in a frozen state, and without the bun, garnishes, sauces, wrapping, packaging, bag, and general conviviality and feel-good vibe of a bedrock American experience in dining.

Having said all this, on the inspiration of the story of the pathos of Ms. Smith’s fate at eating what could be a fatal hamburger indeed, my purpose is not to analyze the comparative costs per pound of questionable exempla of that phenomenon known as a hamburger.

I could as easily have spoken of a porterhouse steak at Peter Luger’s, without the manipulative undercurrents of a tragic instance of food contamination. God (and the kitchen help and wait staff) knows what happens in the food preparation areas of Peter Luger’s. Some journalist or team of them will one day, if they have not already, follow the no doubt equally intricate trail followed by a steer from a breeding pen, through the feed lots (or pastures surrounded by a sylvan landscape, if that makes you feel better about all this), to the purveyors who deliver the product to the docks at the steak houses of the rich and famous. And in its own way, it may be equally sordid and discomfiting. Though I am sure the features of that story would entail a different set of specific facts.

No matter. Beef is beef. And the American taste for beef is predicated not only on what happens to the animal once it’s slaughtered (whether that act is performed in Kansas, or Australia, or Uruguay is again of no consequence), but on what we do to produce it for presentation to the knacker. Michael Pollan, my pathologically perseverating personal nemesis, has, with several other writers, covered this ground (and even more broadly, as the implications of grain-fed, i.e., corn-fed, protocols for beef cattle reverberate to every shelf of every pantry in America, and from those shelves to the tables at which we serve ourselves and our children).

In the end, what we have done with our taste for beef—and I have it too, I don’t deny it, though I do deny myself beef for dining all but once or twice a week, if that, and it’s beef that doesn’t come from Cargill—is alter the landscape. Not only the literal landscapes of the United States, and all beef-trading nations with which we do business, but the virtual landscapes of our sense of what constitutes good food that is good for us. We have curtailed choice, at the same time we keep raising the stakes of of avoiding the kind of contamination that can cripple, if not kill us.

There is a counter movement, for sure, but as long as beef is affordable, the effects of change, assuming it can occur, will be agonizingly slow. These are elastic terms economically; we’ve long had a fatal romance with tobacco, the use of which, though on the wain, is still enacted by millions and millions of Americans—I’d say the more obvious addiction of the sot weed only adumbrates the more subtle addiction to an ever narrowing range of foods that we ingest for sustenance, but eat for the rhapsodic pleasures of consumption—and in New York City—where I am at the moment I am typing these words—depending on the brand, a pack of cigarettes could cost $9.27, remarkably close to the cost of two double quarter-pounders. Though, to be truthful, a pack of Parliaments presumably would allow a far greater number of pleasurable moments than even the slowest eater could induce; and the pack of Parliaments in and of itself won’t kill you, and the statistical chances of long-term, if not mortal, damage is infinitesimal compared to the risk of biting into that one bit of burger that has some lurking pathogen. Further, of course, getting people to stop smoking, which involves in so many instances long term agony, and has been slow so as to give the relativity of speed new meaning to the extent that the serious effort has been ongoing for 50 years… I would predict it will take even longer to wean Americans from beef, whether it’s good beef, bad beef, anything but fake beef.

Whatever is required to change our eating habits, I am sure it will not only be the cost factor that effects the transformation. $9.27 is a far cry from the 25 cents a pack I used to pay for Camels (when there was only one version of that brand) back in 1965, but the increase in price I think barely outpaces the rate of decline in the value of the dollar. The purchasing power of the dollar has diminished by a factor of 6.82 times between 1965 and 2008 (the last year my on-line source afforded as a base). So that pack of Parliaments should cost about two bucks. But it costs over four times that. And, for one, have to wonder, who’s getting the additional seven bucks?

It’s more likely the answer to that question is more accessible, after prodigious effort, and with a reporter’s credentials in one’s wallet to open the right doors for finding out, than it would be to find out two things involving our taste for beef, and the apparently concomitant taste we have for not paying a lot for it, or anything else.

Consider this, as I take you back to McDonald’s for a moment. They have been, for a while, offering the so-called dollar menu, where a selection of regular menu items—I believe there are eight or nine of them, including sandwiches or boxes of nuggets, comprised of parts of what formerly were living animals, as well as beverages and dessert—carry a cost of one U.S. dollar. That would be at it’s current purchasing power (which means these items in 1965 would cost about 15 cents apiece, which is probably what they did cost—Hey! Economics works! Sometimes!). That would also be absent the taxes, etc.

Among the McDonald’s Dollar Menu bargains is a double cheeseburger, which I note from anecdotal voluntary testimony on-line on a variety of blogs, the McDonald’s website, etc., is considered the gold standard nationally for a quality burger at a reasonable price (I infer at even more than a single dollar this would be the prevailing sentiment). Now, a single burger, the basic burger at McDonald’s, weighs 3.5 ounces before they start to cook it (I guess that would make it close to a 1/5-pounder; but assuming a similar nominal fat content of at least 25 or 26 percent, what ends up between the halves of the bun is likely around three ounces or less). If they can sell two of these, with the fixings (mustard, ketchup, relish, maybe some other things; my notes have gone missing, and my nausea is keeping me from checking), that means McDonald’s contrives to sell to the public at a cost of $2.29 a pound (before cooking) 100% beef products…

Likely there’s hamburger for sale at retail at reputable super market chains for under that price. Who knows where that comes from, any more than they know where the McDonald’s products, which are shipped frozen, incidentally, derive.

In an economy that is making the middle class vanish, and driving people formerly aspiring of middle class status to find cheaper and cheaper ways of feeding themselves, and with less and less money in the budget to check on the safety of the food that is allowed to be sold to the consuming public, we are getting our beef fix satisfied for less and less money.

I don’t know that you need the implications of that spelled out. But I would guess a lot more hot winds blow from Washington because people are still smoking pot (the price of which blows, pardon the pun, the purchasing power of the dollar all to hell, by many multiples of the cost of a pack of Parliaments, and certainly of the cost of a burger at McDonald’s) and it’s more powerful than it was in the days when Camels were a quarter a pack, and a “lid” (an ounce) of dope was ten bucks.

The burgers aren’t more “powerful.” I doubt they are more flavorful. And I don’t doubt at all they are more deadly. And I have no idea what price we should put on that. Whatever it is, it’s way too high for me.

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[written 2009 July 31 Co-posted on the 02138.com blog]

What is strange about produce shopping in France were all the apples available throughout the summer.

I don’t know where they were coming from, as I didn’t buy anyway.

My cling fruit juices were flowing as is appropriate.

The pears were only barely beginning to appear and will be in very full swing in the autumn.

I’m still trying to get over the shock and depression of shopping for the first time since back in Cambridge, and walking through the local Whole Foods. When we were in Nice, just before we left, I took Jody into Monoprix, actually a low to middle middle class chain across France, known for discount pricing. They only sell midline brands on most things (so, although there’s no equivalent as our department stores, like theirs, are much more comprehensive, so it isn’t a department store, and they also sell OTC products, like CVS, and now have begun installing very ambitious food departments. Anyway, Whole Foods makes Monoprix (where not too many very very serious foodies would not shop; spiritually equivalent to eating at Appleby’s) look like the food halls at Harrod’s in London, or the Galleries Lafayette in Paris.

If anything confirms that the French are serious about food, it’s the food departments at Monoprix, which is otherwise a place to get cheap underwear and your favorite toothpaste at a better price. I should mention that in the Monoprix outlets in Paris, at least, they also sell, in their personal care products departments, brands for items that require going to carriage trade toiletry and pharmaceutical stores, things like Klorane and ROC.

We saw a dozen different kinds of pâté en croûte, and an equal number without croûte. Produce better than the French supermarkets (but worse than daily outdoor market stalls). Cheese department(s) that put any place here to shame, including Il Formaggio right here in Cambridge, with its cheese cave, and pretentious airs and astronomical prices. I say department in the plural because it would appear they have at least three places to buy cheese, I think according to your needs and budget.

Monoprix even has an affordable cheese section, where the cheeses are already apportioned and wrapped in plastic with a weight and price. You can buy a whole Reblochon at the attended counter (or any number of other cheeses from every region of France, never mind just the South), or you could buy a half a small round (250gm, or a scant ounce more than half a pound) for 3,12 euros (about $4.40). Aged crottin (goat cheese) were under 1,50 euro each. I checked at WFM yesterday; a particularly desiccated plate of specimens were seven bucks each. One further rung below this department is the one that is familiar-looking to us: the branded cheeses (think Kraft or a grade or two above) in thermoplastic, vacuum-sealed packaging.

Their wine section, with wines from every region of France represented in depth, and in price (from ~ 2,50 euro to over 30 euro a bottle, for wines, in the latter instance, that would be astronomical here), was at least as big as the largest outlets here that have to sit on the highway here to find a building with the room.

The butcher, charcuterie, bakery, cheese departments are all staffed with knowledgeable people who work scrupulously (I’ve watched them, re: cleanliness, precision, manners, attentiveness, friendliness) to serve you from really overwhelming choices of items.

And everything is way cheaper (and this is a Monoprix on the main shopping street, also lined with fast food outlets, chain stores, cafés, and a shopping mall (with underground garage) that takes up a city block in mid-size coastal city, not particularly wealthy except in the suburbs up in the hills, and which depends entirely on tourism, and the tourists do NOT shop at Monoprix… it’s strictly a venue the locals know about and prefer) than in the U.S.–take your pick of chains, and skip WFM, which is stacking the deck.

The lack of variety in our stores, the dearth of real choices, the degree to which food is processed and packaged, the distance you are from true artisanal products, from the sources of the food, and certainly the profound difference in quality (in terms of appetite appeal, actual taste, and concern with nutritional value) is going to be hard to prevent from being profoundly depressing.

Any assertion that food is expensive there, which I’ve heard from people who should know better, and not of extreme value, compared to the abundance and price here, is total horse manure. The comparison is odious, and the truth lies elsewhere.

And don’t get me wrong. You can buy dry breakfast cereals and sweetened soft drinks over there (of course they use beet and cane sugars to much greater degree than we do, which is hardly at all, though, ominously, high-fructose corn syrup is making inroads), it’s just who would want to?

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2009August02 4:32 PM

Today, the NYTimes ran an article in their magazine.

It is here, written by Michael Pollan, who has become a prominent crusader for matters culinary, gustatory, and nutritional, especially as they have an impact universally, well, in the United States and, by implication, for the rest of the world (because presumably when the U.S. eats too many hot dogs, the world has a bilious attack): http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html?emc=eta1

The denizens of the professional chefs’ listserv I have subscribed to for ten years have an avid interest in such things, even if they fall outside the topical purview of the list per se.

The article link was sent to the list and there were a few comments, the poster having already indicated that it was long (that is, it has a lot of words in it).

What follows is my reaction, having begun to read the article, and not finishing. I am known, I believe, on the list not particularly to be a fan of Mr. Pollan’s.

I needn’t belabor my antipathy for the work of Michael Pollan.

Two things I noted here and I didn’t have to get much further.

First. there’s the sentence early on:

“For the rise of Julia Child as a figure of cultural consequence — along with Alice Waters and Mario Batali and Martha Stewart and Emeril Lagasse and whoever is crowned the next Food Network star — has, paradoxically, coincided with the rise of fast food, home-meal replacements and the decline and fall of everyday home cooking.”

Let’s deconstruct that for a minute or two, shall we?

I don’t know what “a figure of cultural consequence” (warning, I am being disingenuous) is.

I infer from his mention of the four, well, celebrities he’s mentioned in the same breath by way of exegesis, that he means a “celebrity” (like Michael Jackson, Lance Armstrong, and Jennifer Anniston).

And if so, without agreeing or disagreeing that Child was a celebrity, probably of greater recognizability than most of the on-air talent on public television, except for Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy and Oscar the Grouch, had a certain circumscribed celebrity. As she was not a mass media, global star, like, say, Madonna, but a darling of what I will call, with a devilish smile, the privileged classes, and the trainees for the privileged classes.

Further if so, then I guess it makes sense for this fellow of interest to the public far in excess of his ability with the language (compare him to Adam Gopnick, or Louis Menand, and you will see what I mean–they are not only brilliant men, but they are literary stylists; Michael Pollan is a Grub Street hack, see below, in a designer suit) to say that Child’s being a figure of consequence is paradoxical (I take issue with the “cultural”… if anything, she was counter-culture, which makes the “paradoxically” obvious and redundant).

We are a culture, in terms of meeting our nutritional and gustatory needs (I refuse to call them culinary; only about ten thousand people have true culinary needs… ten thousand very rich people who can satisfy such needs at any time, anywhere, anyhow) that is defined by fast food access, dining-in, ordering-out, take-out, and prepared foods… So where’s the paradox?

And as for the “rise” of “home-meal replacements,” let’s just look at that phrase for a moment. HMR is industry jargon. It’s what I’d expect from Michael Pollan who is, after all, bound by his profession (which is reporting, or to make it high tone, a journalist–the other thing I noted is that Mr. Pollan is the Knight Chair in Journalism, not food mind you, or cultural studies, or history, or sociology, but journalism: in short, as I said, he’s a hack, in a long history of hacks, studded only with the rare exception of writers who made their living reporting on things, but managed to do it without compromising the notion of preserving the language and enriching it, as well as enriching the intellect and the lives of their readers; notwithstanding the Pulitzer Prize, which gets awarded every year, whether it should be or not, the list of these is very few). He is bound by his profession to enable the machinations of industry–and he’s latched onto a great meal ticket for himself, by choosing the food industry (tobacco’s been done, after all)–insofar as finding out all the nasty skullduggery that goes on with food keeps going on, despite the reporting, and will always go on, as long as Chicken Little, excuse me, I mean Michael Pollan, needs to make a living helping to sell newspapers and books about the shit the American people are shoving into themselves.

HMRs, which used to be called prepared foods, in various forms, or catering, or take-out (etc. ad nauseam…) is the final piece of the puzzle that was a puzzle only because it didn’t seem possible to make prepared foods that are as good, or better, than what the average home cook, and a significant percentage of the above-average ones as well, can cook. What idiot wouldn’t spend a nominal amount of money on food by weight or portion that was significantly better than he or she could prepare for him or herself? And without the further cost of time expended in making an inferior result? And with no other opportunity cost involved (although it’s conceivably more expensive buying the raw goods–unless you’re used to processing whole chickens for parts in bulk in quantities large enough to feed 25-50 people–you do get the benefit when you prepare your own food of the satisfaction of doing so and a whole myriad, I would suggest, of intangible benefits: being in contact with what the good earth gives up to us with some effort on our part, of creating some sense, not of culture, but of community, because even if you live alone you can cook for more than one and invite someone over… etc.), except the opportunity to nourish your soul, as well as your body, and so going the route Pollan is talking about as a done deal only carries with it the cost of killing part of your soul. Which Americans care about that any more?

In a strange way (yeah, well, look it’s me saying this; you expect it not to be strange?) I think Pollan is contributing to the problem by framing things as he does, and using the rhetoric he does (the rhetoric of the media industry reporting on its sister industries… Pollan, a viper in the breast of the body fiscal? Give me a break), and making this a phenomenon to be put between covers, and to help sell a dying newspaper.

It reminded me immediately of the report of the other end of the sociological phenomenon, which pertains to our culture only insofar as the extent to which you believe that food is part of the culture–and accepting that premise, answering the question HOW food is connected. For one, there’s the book, also just out (it’s the season after all, of books about titanic shifts, supposedly, in the gustatory lives of the top 10-15% socioeconomically advantaged people out of all the people on the planet–what’s important?) that we on the list all railed about for a bit, and made for a little lively discussion, essentially about the worth of anecdotal evidence from the field, concerning the LOSS of the French people of their patrimony: a sophisticated, elegant, patient, yet demanding, but always discriminatory, palate…

Can this be?

Are we being turned into automata by–well, who exactly?–somebody or other, and in the process our tongues, mouths, with appurtenant parts becoming dysfunctional, perhaps to atrophy in time?

The article I was reminded of came out in July 2002, in an issue of The New Yorker (maybe it’s because so much food gets consumed out of doors, we return to atavistic concerns about nourishment in a primitive, if not primordial, way and these articles and books are just an hors d’oeuvres for what’s to come in the Fall in the form of books to curl up with and comfort our sense of our lives being diminished, but we don’t know how, with a good scary read, while we scarf down some quesadillas we picked up from Qdoba on the way home from work.

It was about the advent of the foodie stove and its impact on American home life (in upscale homes) and, well, I guess we’d have to say the culture, if we’re going to follow Pollan’s lead. The ostensible subject, The Viking Stove Company (or whatever’s its corporate name), in the article by Molly O’Neill, entitled “The Viking Invasion,” was meant as a recognized icon for a larger industrial phenomenon, the manufacture and marketing of “commercial-grade” residential ranges, cooktops and ovens. Things have gotten even bigger since then, but with the collateral phenomenon, not of Viking “teaching people to cook.” They did no such thing (even though that was the avowed mission, stated by the company president). It was their intention to increase the value of homes people were constantly trading upward.

The fact is, aside from the value it adds, along with Sub-Zero iceboxes (excuse me, what are they called now?), and a few other ermine-collar brands, to a piece of real estate, a Viking stove if used, even with some regularity and frequency, and with minimal maintenance required, will work practically forever, helping turn out meals that potentially could compete with anything you wished for in a restaurant, except the ones offering molecular cuisine.

But as The New Yorker later reported, in addition to some other representative publications, was that realtors were noting that the luxury appliances people insisted on were never being used. One apartment, I remember reading about, a luxury apartment in New York, with a price into seven figures, changed titles through three or four owners, and when it went up for sale, the original installation and owner instruction materials that had been left in the oven by the original purchaser were intact, unused, and in the same location… inside the oven.

Where the paradox is, is that the people who want to emulate such excess in their own lives and who can’t afford the accouterments, but can afford General Electric, or Kenmore, or LG–the very people Julia Child was aiming at, because she wanted people to be able to “cook French” on American lowest common denominator appliances–don’t want to cook either. Of course, they also can’t afford to, and so the HMR is born.

The TV portion of this phenomenon is becoming a little suspect as a contributor. TV watching is down. People will watch anything. If some celebrity tie-in can be created: the dishes, the aprons, the cookware, all the better: the show is merchandising. Cooking shows are cheap to produce locally, and if there’s a local chef who can be boosted to national prominence (e.g., Todd English), a necessary part of the package is a TV show (Todd was an utter bust…), and what all this is about has nothing to do with food, but entertainment.

The same phenomena are at work here that have been at work since everyone calmed down after World War II, and came home, and settled down, and slowly, unremittingly, bought into the ethos of spending every waking minute concerned about making enough money to uphold the, what we call, “lifestyle” we’ve learned to emulate, and it’s engaged in our lifestyle (not living, but engaged in our lifestyle) that occupies the rest of our time, and there’s just no room for destemming snow peas or trimming artichokes in the time we’ve got.

We can’t afford to cook. It requires an act of will we are no longer capable of (I don’t mean you and me on this list; heaven forfend). I’m speaking of us as just some more Americans.

And we can thank Pollan for gving us the additional hysterical thrill of contemplating just how soul sucking and awful it all is.

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Arguably—well I would argue it—the best guide to dining in the south of France is Le Guide Gantié, the eponymous bible to good tables and where to find a decent room in the six départements of Provence–Côte D’Azur (not to mention some of the better regional goodies to take home) of Jacques Gantié. He writes much of it himself, with three team members who respectively cover the Bouches-du-Rhône, the Vaucluse, and the Italian regions known as Liguria and the Piedmont, immediately contiguous. His day job is as an editor of the chief daily paper of this part of France, called “Matin” as in Nice-Matin, and Var-Matin (it’s the latter I take in, with news ranging from the current standing of the stages of the Tour, to what’s going on in Paris and the rest of the world… not to mention important local news, like the status of the Tai Kwan Do classes for the six-year olds of Lorgues).

It’s probably this latter responsibility that gives him a perspective that few, if any, other food editors and writers possess (and he’s no slouch, being a winner of the prestigious national prize for gastronomic criticism, named for a legendary, if not imaginary, critic of astonishing talent and who mysteriously disappeared in 1972, “Francis Amunateguy”). Sort of the anti-Ruth Reichl, and well and good, I say, for she has become a phenomenon unto herself who should be stomped out—professionally speaking entirely, of course.

I thought it enlightening and refreshing to read the preface to the latest edition of The Gantié Guide, that is, the 2009 edition. I sensed something was afoot when I got here in May, only to discover eventually that the latest version had not been released, and lo and behold, indeed, the Var-Matin about mid-June announces the release of the newest book. And yet even at the beginning of July, the largest book shop in Draguignan, itself one of the largest towns within less than an hour’s drive of the village, still did not stock it. For perspective, understand that like the ubiquitous, and discredited, Michelin Guide the Gantié has a usual publication and distribution date in early March of the year to which the latest reviews and findings and rankings apply. That is, just in time for the approaching tourist season.

The tone, and the substance, of Gantié’s own remarks in his preface are an indicator of what went awry, if anything did.

Unlike the Michelin, which as far as I can determine was published on schedule, Gantié is sensitive to the zeitgeist.

My apologies, especially to my friend Charlie, for the roughness of the translation (which is entirely mine—Gantié publishes an English-language version of the Guide, but 22 euros for one book is enough to spend (as opposed to twice that for two, and the English translation somehow omits the trenchant and honest qualities of the writing style of the original; and Gantié only includes places worth visiting, but he covers them, warts and all, and the gossip sometimes is as delicious as the food, if not more so, because sometimes the choices are not exactly uniform in their appreciation of true excellence). But I was interested in you getting the gist, or at least the drift, and this is only the first graf or so…

Partout dans le monde, la correction est sévère. De Nice à Saint-Pétersbourg, de Luberon en Catalogne, à Cannes, à Londres, à Monaco, en Camargue, à New York, à Tokyo ou Saint-Tropez… couteaux et fourchettes en berne, le planète qui se met à table se serre la ceinture.

Et alors? Tous au bistrot? Plus de gastronomie, rien qu’un boule de soupe à la grimace et quelques sushi pour pleurer? Il y avait de cela en début d’année, au pied du mur des lamentations et vu du sud, ce n’était guère différent qu’en autres terroirs et capitales: on piquait du nez dans l’assiette!

And now for my very poor translation.

“Throughout the world, the downturn is harsh. From Nice to Saint Petersburg, from the Luberon [in the Vaucluse, a part of Provence] to Catalonia, in Cannes, in London, in Monaco, in the Camargue [another region of Provence, at the mouth of the Rhône River], in New York, in Tokyo or St.-Tropez… Knives and forks at half-mast, all who sit down to eat are cinching their belts.

“What’s it mean? Everyone to a bistro? Gastronomy is to be nothing more than a bowl of soup served with a frown and a few bits of raw fish to mourn? So it was at the beginning of the year, we were at the base of the wailing wall from the point of view of the South, with hardly any difference in other lands and capitals: one’s head dropped into one’s plate.”

He does go on, at greater length, to see a sunnier side to the response of the food and hospitality industry of the South of France, which depends so mightily for the health of its economy on the habits (and magnitude) of tourists and tourism. What is happening, to be possibly a skosh reductive, is a revolutionary gastronomic down-sizing; a change in perspective that Gantié is calling the track (or “way,” actually) of “bistro-gastro,” that is, the gastronomic sensibility applied more modestly: smaller dishes, less elaborate, lower costs. He speaks in hindsight of course (and hindsight is shorter here, where the season was already in full swing, and which lasts only from May to September, if that, when he went to press), so he is not to be faulted for a phenomenon we were already aware of in the United States, where the economy is more year-round.

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I took the steep
ribbed rocky road
behind the cemetery.
Earth and stones
terre rouge
sere and sharp
tricky underfoot,
that turn
the color
of dried blood
in rain,
unctuous and sticky
and stain the soles
tenaciously.

The road debouches
on the main road,
far below the junction
to the village
skipping all the
dull switchbacks,
near the house
meublés, always rented,
with one auto in the carport
perpetually in a canvas shroud.

“Saint Jaumes”
a yellow arrow points
the way, as they do
with the names of homesteads
off the beaten track.
Another pilgrim
I am.

Clinging to the ragged
shoulder painted
with a dashèd line
the sparse grass covering
the quarter meter
that keeps tires
from the hidden ditch
for run off.
Not much room
to dash
on foot from
the rushing
always parting guests
speeding not so gentle
zephyrs
faces masked by smokey
glass.

Approaching trucks
excuse to bound
across the dipping
shouldered gap.

I think of lying
broken in a ditch
dying on the road
in deep deep deepest France.
Daedalus splashing
soundless, tiny,
microscopic,
in a corner of the canvas.

Past the carrefour
forked nexus for the twisting
narrow road to Cotignac.
Past the field
lately filled
with desiccated sunflowers
permanently bowed
toward a sun now gone.
A photographic image
caught in vegetal husks.
Zen.
Priceless.
Market gone.

The field is full
of poppies and weeds.
Sunflowers.
The more precise
tournesols,
sun-turners,
not viable this sun-baked year.

In Valesole
and Esparron
the growers have turned
their lavender fields,
the endless plateaux,
to sowing wheat.

Past the miracle field
of poppies.
Poppy red and tinged
with wild cornflower-blue
companions,
a million snapshots
by roadside travelers,
stopped in their
otherwise heedless tracks,
speeding tires
cooling on the gravel
inches from the live highway
where this shock of color
makes everyone romantic.
And the farmer,
humanist,
French,
temporized
while couples hip-deep
in a sea of color
caught each other
caught themselves.

And passing that,
rere-regardant,
the village sits
athwart the hill
rightward glancing,
a rare crystalline day
each stone projects a shadow
microscopic,
the hedges beneath a frame
for my camera eye.
Ulysses I
again,
chercher Pénélope.

Broken circle
on a sign,
arrows chase themselves,
equilaterally bound,
cedez accès,
the rond-point
that swoops cars village-ward
or toward the world,
the humble hedge-rowed
route to the center
of commercial Fox,
and so I pass
Nathalie Coiffure
her windows blocked
with Masonite
and an old beauty
poster, colors
gone all fugitive
in years of blazing sun.

Ahead the old wine co-op,
La Poste
(we share a postal code
with seven other
villages and cling to our
post office,
sinecure for the cousin
of the daughter
of the sister of
some past mayor),
and hubbub:
Chez Jean and
his sister-in-law’s
bodega,
pardonnez-moi,
“alimentation”
last resort
on weekends for forgotten
butter, eggs, or goat cheese
or possibly a passable wine
or a tin of Titus sardines.

I have a beer,
an ice-cold Fischer,
in a bottle with
a fancy spring-load
ceramic stopper,
that and a box of
Davidoff cigarillos,
“O, et un bic…”
genericized butane
slab,
and the tab comes
to 17 euros, 50,
and Jean, numbers-challenged,
tells me 27, 50…
and I quietly correct him,
slurring words—
the only way the locals
understand my French.

I sit and drink my brew
in peace, the others
never speaking
above a murmur
in the cool shade of the
arbor above his terrasse.

I pass the bucket
for butts, a must
here in fiery timberland,
and bid my au revoir
to Jean and his equipe.
Retrace my steps on
the road to the old village
and hang a left
at the old lavoire,
where long dead village
women hauled their
loads of linen and farmers’
overalls for washing out
the red clay and sticker burrs.

Soldier-stiff
a row of cypress
in irregular formation
along the road,
targeted 40,
speed limit signs
for no cars
the only traffic
ados on their motos
and the clapped out
cars of their older brothers
on a spree,
always laughing as they
pass the wild-haired
American.

The hill keeps itself
to my right,
sun-baked
pensive
gravel crunch
only at the apex
of the one-laner.
A field of clods of earth
and black birds
on one side
and endless wheat
with orphan poppies
and bi-color thistle
on the other,
and a ditch
I will span
with my skinny ass
to retrieve an impossible
purple bloom
for my imagined
princess, yet to arrive,
when she arrives,
if she arrives,
as we trudge together
some time in the
near future
in the dazzling white
and the wheat
and the clods of earth.

And then just below
that point, the road
turns past old man
Jouve’s place,
master craftsman in
wood, who made
me a window and door,
the same silly signs
in the window of his
atelier:
“Vitrage et
moustiquaires”
silly in its way
as if Spinoza’s
window carried a sign
that said, “glass ground
here,” or Kafka,
“pest control.”

And past the house,
and his rows of
vegetables I see
him watering
in the lowering sun,
past the shrubs
and low trees, as the
road turns again,
and his dog,
even older,
getting a late start,
begins to bark,
and I say out loud,
“Ah too late chien,
too late; I’m gone.”

I have turned my back on the hill
and the village
and ahead the sudden vignobles,
a field someone stuck here
amid the wheat,
this one notable for its
old stone cabanon,
a sheaf of hay and
a bit of articulated rusty steel,
thrusting out, waiting for
a painter,
all baking, baking
in the late sun
like a wood-fired brick oven
optimal for bread loaves
with a chewy crumb and crust
sharp enough to cut
and the high stinging wood
smoke tang on its blackened
corn-mealed underside.

And still I walk, and the
road turns again, through the compass
and pace my pace to hit
the shadows for respite
before the last turn back
to dead reckon
90 north and trudge back up the
back side of the hill,
but before that must
pass the schizoid holding
of some suburbanite manqué
to one side, shaved close as with
a scythe or a Snapper sit-down
tractor mower, a bit of lawn
ridiculously green beside a field of
wheat, with its wavy rows
of young shoots, already tan
in the relentless summer.

Then the final turn
as the road rises
among a thicket of yellow arrows,
ancient homesteads
retrieved, east, northeast
and rising rising
with small clouds of
butterflies fluttering silently
beside the trail
and the sign
announcing the road ahead
some 500 meters is
non-carrossable,
even as I hear another clapped
out truck crunch its way toward me
around an epingle amid the hairy
weeds and wildflowers, down the road
from the cemetery high above.

And the switchbacks and
epingles begin in earnest
and half-way my shirt is
wet and I breathe in gusts
and I increase the pace.

Bob said, in winter mind you,
“Walk this every day
and you’ll live forever,”
and I’ve been doing it
every other day,
because I figure I have a headstart
and so far no one is gaining.

The old remparts appear
spotted, irregular, age-spot
shapes
of lichen the color
of something toxic,
a tinge that could convince
you there is something
maybe not so right
with squashes and fruit that color.

Old Europe, I think;
these walls maybe seven hundred,
maybe nine,
so many years, still standing,
and the brick condos of Cambridge
will be gone
I’m sure a hundred years after I’m dead,
the mortar already decayed.
They call this wall (as
the houses built this way)
dry-stone.
No mortar.
Withstanding men
and boulders erupting
from the earth
stony Leviathans.
And trees, roots athwart them.

And the road turns
and turns,
and I know I am near the top
in the place where the walls are
breached,
spilling their stony guts,
rubble of terre rouge
(and somewhere far below
on the plain, on the road to
Aups, there are furrowed
rows of such rubble, no
more than pebbles, tens of meters
long, where walls had been to divide
the fields, and where the stones had
been retrieved for building,
rural parsimony,
a heritage of earth and rocks,
priceless).

And I reach the road back to the village
from the right side round, opposite
the rocky trail down
where I had started, abreast
the stone carriage house
hard by the cemetery
where sits in the gloom
an old hearse
meant to be drawn
when needed
by horses now long dead.

Breath heaving
shirt soaked
I start the last steep incline
to the house.

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[a poem, the first I've written in 25 years; I started as a poet, many many years ago, as a much younger man; this may be the last again, for a while… I hope not]

For all of them alive I love, in memory of all I loved, now dead

Why would one do this here?

We live in an age no longer sanctified,
No sense of holiness.

We flew Swiss Airlines
Appropriately enough.
The Swiss, bankers to the world,
With noble hearts they bore us (for the mere price of half a pound of our own sweet skin and meat):
Silver, gold, platinum perhaps (in first class);
No living tissue in them to wear out,
Respond to suspect human needs;
We flew up front, and drank champagne,
The sacrament of business class.

They fed us the well-fed flesh of beef,
Blood red,
Plates and silver clinking under the din of mighty turbines.

And then we slept, dreamless
Far beyond the surly bonds of ice-cold seas
And the dirty ground.

No need belabor the swift journey to the village.
We drove into the place,
This ancient scene of peace
And calm and tranquil solitude
On rented wheels (every ding and dent and crimp
Of lacquered metal noted for the ledger, the last act
As we roared away from that other world of rude affairs
In the city by the sea far below us).

Here in the land where men, still called peasants,
Still whack
And flay and harrow the land.

There is no business here but one.

The eternal preservation men may keep of the
Adamantine cord one sees only here,
A sky-blue thread, tying us to the infinite.
For you can see it in the sky,
That unblemished unending deep transparency,
Sun the same hot ball of self-consumption,
Surrounded as you are
By the everlasting green of growth
That never stops,
Signifies an everlasting life,
A life for life.

For the infinite eternal everlasting business here
Is to feed the living and
Let the ground accept the dead.

I walk the fields
Where generations trod
The fields of wheat
That for centuries
Have fed the lusty appetites of men of war:
The Romans, Goths, and Gauls,
The Templars who, tipping stone on stone,
Built this hill-top village,
This everlasting place
Outlasting them, outlasting all since,
The bond personified, the anchor for
That tie to the infinite,
That much closer to the sky.

I walk the fields.

The fields of wheat and poppy.
The wheat, for life.
The poppies, for that sleep that does not end.

And only some, the ones who leave
This village for the world at large,
Can feel that bond, the tug of that tie
That draws them back.

The ones who shipwrecked,
Yet were saved,
Return to thank who they will,
The Virgin, if they believe,
Or what Gods they may,
Or none, but the place itself,
The peace that reigns here.

And I leave the plain,
Walking the steep pistes
Of the protective hill,
So steep, breath comes short
And hard, for the effort that
Draws me to the top.

And I hear echoes of the breaths
Of one who came here
For the bond was strong
And drew her here
For those last days
Of peace and calm,
And the breaths were hard
And loud, each one a tugging
At that cord.

And harder, sharper still
Through the long night,
Until just at sunrise,
As the blue infused the sky,
They stopped.

And there was peace.

And peace of course
There is still.

And the village sleeps
And wakes.

—2009June12 4:38 PM, Fox-Amphoux

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In a virtual conversation about pursuing a spiritual life, and its importance, I had the chance to say the following.

I’ve always felt it to be a lamentable condition that a continually growing number of people have lost contact with their own spirit, or, to say it more conventionally, their spiritual side. But the latter expression always makes it sound like your skills riding a bike.

No, I think the general state of the world, and the so-called developed world in particular, is attributable to this uncoupling from matters not immediately apprehensible in the concrete universe of things, from distant galaxies to gadgets at the Apple Store.

My agnostic self never gags at the self-ministering of others to their spiritual needs. For one, it is surely not my business. More broadly, if I remember the few tattered shreds of studying ancient Greek, when I was a stripling, gnosis in Greek merely means knowledge. To say I’m agnostic means that, “I don’t know.” Perhaps atheists have that gag reflex.

I am certainly an apostate, as, like most people in the civilized world, I was raised to be a believer–in the tenets of Judaism in my case–not a bad proposition in its fundamentals; it’s when we Jews attain to rule-setting and determining behavior that I take the exit (as I did when I was 14). So I am not a believer, and I am certainly one to repudiate organized religion, as I believe it has caused more harm than good since long before when “my people” were still desert nomads worshiping snakes.

I don’t attend church (in the broadest sense), but I try to stay in touch at all times in a way (isn’t that what mindfulness is about?) with my inner being, as it is always apposite to my outer being and its relations with the rest of the physical universe.

I always kind of liked certain Taoist concepts, certain Buddhist ones. I don’t bother myself about the afterlife, which I assume is unknowable in this life, and will take care of itself if there is one. What I like is the sense that we are all in this together, not just we humans, but all things, and especially with that particular metaphysically curious notion, or perhaps it’s simply some corrupted Berkeleyan notion) that whatever happens would have happened differently, if at all, if I were not to exist. This seems especially true of more proximate incidents… When I was in the immediate neighborhood so to speak.

On the other hand, that popular expression, and whatever even its broadest interpretation may be, “the family that prays together… etc.” to me doesn’t mean it will stay together, but that there are certain periods when those family members aren’t talking to one another (which may, of course, be a good and salutary, if not a therapeutic, thing: we often get into as much trouble talking as we do not speaking). In short, what you (or anyone, other than me in fact) believe or do is not my business. I may be interested, and if I were to come to know you and care for you, even to fondness, that interest might transcend mere curiosity and involvement, but it’s not for us (and of us) to judge one another.

As I’ve grown older, and accumulated whatever poor notions I can however feebly define as wisdom, and especially given the lessons I learned about living from my dying wife, who was, as I understood at the time only inadequately, and more so since her death, a most amazing human being: heroic, brave, life-embracing, life-affirming, kind, generous, and forgiving, and even more so in the face of an inevitable confrontation prematurely (is the general consensus–she would have been 58 last summer) with her own mortality.

I don’t ever want to cause anyone any harm, and I try to live accordingly. I fail I’m sure, but with this particular bit of mindfulness at work, I am sure it occurs less often.

There has been no damage, I don’t think, to my essential nature and the personality that I cultivated–good or bad, the me I am is the me I got–and so I am the same person I always was, with the same neuroses, and parallax views, with the same disjointed ways of seeing the same things others look at. It’s the variety of points of view that ensue that are part of what make life interesting I think, and make each of us potentially compelling to others, one on one. As I like to say, I like people, and I’ve grown to love many of them (and there are others from whom, sadly, I’ve become estranged, perhaps irretrievably, but that too is life), and I have many many friends, some of whom take the trouble to point out to me (I guess because they think at that moment I need such bolstering; indeed we all do, probably more often than we admit to ourselves) that all of them adore me. I’ll take that on faith.

But, as I also like to say, it’s mankind I can’t stand. The history of civilization at least (which is a redundancy I suppose/one of the facets of civilization, if you think about it, is its habit, once it identifies itself as such, to record and sustain its own story) is a mixed one, though far too replete with tragedy, sadness, and cruelty. And of course, the state of diminished spirituality. A kind of Second Law of Thermodynamics as applied to the soul.

And with no discernible reason for any of it. Human nature is not an explanation, and it is certainly not an excuse, and never an exculpation.

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• Whatever the motive of the person who feels compelled to talk about your behavior, if you feel it requires a response: comment or explanation, don’t bother. Whatever you say, you’ll then be told you’re being defensive.
• Many women will see the only gauge of your interest in them in terms of your asking questions of them, about their lives, about how their day went at work, about where they bought the blouse they’re wearing, about the age of their children, whatever… It doesn’t matter what your personal strategy for learning about another person. It doesn’t matter how patient you may know yourself to be about the time the process takes. Ask questions. Force yourself.
• The only people who are truly interested in your friendship are the ones who have the money ready for their share of the check when it arrives. If they do nothing, even as you pick up the check, they have other motives. With some it involves you. With others it has nothing to do with you, and never will.
• Believe nothing you are told by someone other than your spouse what the true feelings of your spouse are. If your spouse is dead, believe nothing you are told by anyone concerning your spouse and you. It doesn’t matter if the other person believes every word they are telling you is true. They will swear to it in court. They’re not telling the truth. It’s best to concentrate on controlling your feelings and keeping them to yourself.
• Don’t wait for the phone to ring. It won’t. If you want to talk to someone, anyone, you call them. If you have to leave a message, leave it. And call again later until you reach them.
• To quote Stephen Sondheim, “…the kind of woman willing to wait’s/not the kind you want to find waiting.” It’s one of those cruel truths you have to accept about your own nature.
• The grief will never end. Concentrate on learning to accept it, and finding a place for it. It’s one of those cruel truths about life.
• No one is a replacement for anyone else, and cannot be. Stop looking for the same woman. Only one of her will ever exist.
• If you enjoy your own company, you’re ahead of the game. If you’re not there yet, start playing your favorite music. Have something playing all the time.
• Friendship is a two way street. No doubt about it. However, assume you are the only driver. Accept it. Get the keys out of your pocket and drive.
• As a man, you can be friends with a woman, with nothing else happening, ever. Three women in ten believe this too. One in ten accepts it.
• Tell people how you feel. Don’t wait for them to ask.
• The list of things you will never get unless you ask is endless. Ask.
• Never ever make a promise you know you can’t or won’t keep.
• If another person does you an injury, even if you know it was unconscious or an accident, tell them.
• If you discover you have done someone an injury, apologize, and mean it. Don’t worry about the words. Use the best ones you can think of. It’s the speaking, not the eloquence, that counts. If you can’t or don’t mean it, don’t bother. And accept that your victim is not a friend of yours.
• Some people simply cannot accept that you are perfectly entitled to have nothing to do with your blood relatives. And that you don’t have to explain yourself. So don’t try. In their eyes, you’ll only look worse.
• You can love someone your entire life. Even if you never see that person again, up to the moment you die.
• Everybody you know is truly busy, or so they believe. Don’t ever take it personally.
• Don’t tell anyone the truth as you see it about their children or grandchildren. Even if it’s spot on. Even if they know it. They don’t want to hear it. Unless it's praise.
• If someone gets your goat, that’s what they were trying to do. Don’t take it personally. Some people have nothing better to do. As for the rest, it’s just part of their personalities.
• Never cook to satisfy anyone but yourself with the results. If other people enjoy it too, consider it a bonus.
• As a man, if you think a woman’s age is critical, you probably don’t feel very good about how old you are. Grow up.
• A woman can be 25 and beautiful. A woman can be 65 and beautiful. The only difference, which is irrelevant, is elasticity.
• Living successfully and happily with a another person is a co-production. Always be prepared to negotiate with an open mind.
• If someone does something that pleases you there are two things you must do as basics. Smile, and thank them.
• Look people in the eye.
• Smile at people.

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